And That's Why We Drink - E288 A Podcast Done via Ouija Board and a Bewitched Cow

Episode Date: August 14, 2022

Hello! It's episode 288, tune in to see if the entire show is done via ouija board because Em's heart may have actually stopped this week. Post-ambulance, Em is bringing us the pre-Salem Witch Trials story of Mary Webster aka the witch of Hadley aka half-hanged Mary. Then Christine covers the brutal story of the Van Breda family. And extra credit points to anyone who knows why Em's last pre-heart-stopping thought was about Virginia Tech... and that's why we drink!

hey m why do you drink this week uh my heart stopped oops cheers thank you for so quickly taking the reins on that. Had to do it. Had to do it. I took the reins and then I threw them at you. You went, bleh, your turn. I went, my turn, your turn.

Yeah, that was, it's been a really shitty week. It's been a really shitty week. Yes. It's been very shitty. I'm, I will, first of all, everyone, I am fine, obviously. Otherwise, like, Christine would not make me host an episode. The spirit of M is here from beyond the grave. And for the rest of the show, it's done via Ouija board. Woo!

I, yeah, no, it's been a rough week. I was home. We had a death in the family. And and so that we've been dealing with that um and going to funerals and all this so it was already a grim week for me and uh then my and then even I received a picture of em in a an ambulance so that's how things presented to me i you know it was unnecessary well i don't it was unnecessary i couldn't find it i couldn't find a place to be upside down that's the only problem because i told you where were you when this happened so i was at a restaurant i was meeting deirdre for lunch i got there before deirdre and i was just looking at the menu and i that's i told you guys it happens the the fear which has led to like this

whole brand new like wave of anxiety in my life because i just never know when it's going to happen because it happens as randomly as like probably seizures i don't have seizures so i hope i'm not offending anyone with that, but it really, it just happens for absolutely no reason. Um, and I, I assume that's kind of the same condition, but I could be wrong and I'm so sorry if that's not true, but, um, it just happens for, for, I was just standing there reading a menu. I was doing nothing. And, uh, I remember maybe you read the word anchovy and your heart was like my heart was like i need to get off this planet it's time to go um no actually what i was reading was there was a because you know how like when you're in like your hometown all the sandwiches are named after like colleges and

stuff like that so they had they had a sandwich called like the hokey for virginia tech and it was like a turkey sandwich and it had I remember reading it's funny that you mentioned this because the last thing I remember reading before this all happened was about this sandwich called the hokey and it was a turkey sandwich that had um cranberry and orange like relish on it because those are the two colors of Virginia Tech and I remember thinking oh that's clever and that was the last. Goodbye, cruel world. So Virginia Tech, if you're listening, that was almost my last thought. And my thing started happening and I could feel it.

And usually the only thing I can get out, I've got like one sentence in me before I'm, I can't talk because it hurts so bad because my heart goes from a normal, to normal levels to like, like off the charts high. Sure. So I've got about one sentence in me or like one thought left to figure out where I need to be to go be upside down and solve this thing in 30 seconds. Because that's it's always worked. And so I just looked at the person at the counter and I was like, where's the bathroom? And I go to the bathroom and I'm thinking, I just got to throw my body over something enough that enough blood rushes to my head and we'll be fine in 30 seconds. And the bathroom was so small and I couldn't, I was trying, I tried throwing myself over

the sink. I tried throwing myself over the toilet, but the toilet was like too low to the ground. Um, it became a really disgusting unsanitary experience because I was in so much pain. I just didn't care. But like anyone had seen, it's like draping yourself like in a public bathroom and like my face and my arms were just all over the floor. And like, I didn't even care. And I was trying to like do a handstand basically with the toilet helping me like hold myself up and it was not working. And I was in the bathroom for an hour trying to do this.

And usually like if it happened right now, it's 1043 and it would be done by 1045 since I'm next to a bed. I'd be like, give me a second. I have to go fix my heart thing and it'd be done. But because I couldn't get the leverage, it just kept happening and it wouldn't stop. And in fact, there were times where it got worse because my heart is usually, like I said, it would take two minutes for this to be finished. Since ever, since I figured out my upside down

trick, I have never had it happen for longer than two minutes so for it to happen for an hour was just like just so painful and I was like did Deirdre show up so she she did show up once I when I was in the bathroom so she didn't know I was actually at the restaurant right and I texted her and I said like hey I'm in the bathroom my heart thing's happening just give me a second she thought I meant I was still at my mom's house in the bathroom oh and so she left oh no she was like okay well I'm gonna go like run an errand while I wait for you to get all the way over here and I was I was so I couldn't even text like my I was I didn't even care honestly it was better because I was like I don't she doesn't need, it was better. Cause I was like, I don't, she doesn't need to see this. I I'm going to be fine if I could just get upside down the right way. It was so frustrating. So I was like, my only two options are figure out how to

be upside down or like do the whole hospital ordeal, which is, I've never even done that before. So I don't, that scared me more than just being in pain in a public bathroom. Um, but I was actually glad that she left. Cause I was like, I have more time to try to figure this out. And I don't feel like I'm being pressured to do it faster. Um, and so I was upside down and I, it really was for a whole hour. And luckily, because we've been trying to monitor this, I don't know if I told you this last time, but my cardiologist and I were trying to actually hope for an episode so we could get it documented and then I could get an official diagnosis. Right. And I couldn't get my, the surgery or the ablation that I want until I got the diagnosis. So it's been,

this is actually ended up being a good thing because I got it all documented. Were you having, did you have your heart monitor thing? Yeah, I did, which is how I have it documented. So my heart rate got up to 245. Oh, Jesus. And it stayed there for like a half an hour. And at best, it got to 200 for that hour. And 60 to 100 is healthy, just in case people needed to know. So my heart was-

Like when I work out, my heart's at like 145 or something like that yeah so that is wild yeah and so just you know double that and uh it was uh it was very painful so i couldn't breathe i was sweating and at one point i tried to like reposition myself thinking like also so like so stupid. But this bathroom was one of those motion censored light ones. So for most of it, I was just in the dark and I was like, oh, no, like I can't even wave my arm because that's too much activity. And it'll it'll make my heart rate go up even more. And so I was just sitting there in the dark and I was like, I'm going to get up and try to reposition myself and try a different way to be upside down. There was only so many ways you can do it when there's a dirty sink and a dirty toilet.

But I was like, I have to do this. And when I was trying to reposition myself, I felt really woozy and I was like, I've never passed out before, but I think I'm going to pass out. out before, but I think I'm going to pass out. And in my head, my next thought was, if you think you're going to pass out, that's probably the last thing a lot of people think before they pass out. So maybe you do need to call an ambulance. And in my head, I was like, that's so dramatic. Like, I know, I know if I could just, if there was a bed here or a better incline, I'd be fine. I know like this feels so stupid to go from that to literally calling 911. And so I fought it for a second. And I was like, homie, you've been doing this for an hour. It's not working. Yeah. But I couldn't even call out for help. Like at best, I could whisper because anything else took too much energy and made my heart rate go higher.

And so I threw myself over the sink and like, I had to have looked like a body collapsed or something. Like I didn't, I, it wasn't even like a cute throwing myself over this. I looked like I was fucking hurting and it was just close enough to the door of the bathroom where I was like, I'm just going to open it and just like knock really hard one time,

like just give it all my energy, just knock really hard. And hopefully someone hears me. And it was such a small, uh, restaurant. And there was, um, it was in the middle of a work day and it wasn't even during like food hours anymore. So I was like, I've been in this bathroom and no one's even checked on me in an hour. Like one's gonna find me if i don't knock on the door and so i just like my all and docked as hard as i could and then i just like hugged the sink and uh an employee came in and i feel so bad for her because i definitely scared her she walked into a dark room because the light motion sensor thing was off and a body just thrown over the sink oh my god and i couldn't talk i couldn't talk and so in a very in a very like old sage whisper i was just like i'm sorry i have a heart condition and it was probably so scary to her it was had to be so scary and uh and the dumbest part i know how

stupid it sounds but i was like i just need to be upside down oh no and she was probably like um she probably thought oh this person's like losing it like there's no no one would say that mentally unwell something's wrong and so um she called over another employee who thank god had fucking sbt no way what that was a little angel i have a feeling if i went back to that building she like never worked there she was like only there for those minutes but so i was like i have a heart condition and she was like do you have what is it and i was like it's because they were like the manager was like we're gonna call 9-1-1 because obviously who wouldn't like well yeah

sure in my own head i was like so scared too but like they were like it's their business too so they're probably like this is on our watch exactly so they called 9-1-1 and uh as they were asking i was able to give them like some information i just had to whisper it about like my age and like what it was called and i was able to tell them my heart rate so the ambulance knew that coming in and um and so i had said like oh i have svt and then that employee was like oh i have svt i know exactly what i know exactly what you're feeling like one time my heart got all the way up to 300 oh shit and i was like mine's at 240 right now and she went okay yeah like this is what I do to feel better um and she like gave me a bunch of like cold ice packs for

my face which apparently is a her version of the upside down thing wow and so she would be like that's like my trick is ice packs on my face. And so that kind of helped. It helped me to at least keep whispering. But anyway, fun fact, if you have SVT, try that. Yeah. And she was able to like run around and like explain what was going on. I mean, they were also like literally EMTs, like they knew what was going on. But she was able to like tell them things i couldn't at the moment because they brought like the whole stretcher in and it was so dramatic and because i was like i'm not collapsed

on the floor i know i'm close to it but i'm not and so the fact that i'm climbing into the stretcher myself feels weird because i feel like in all the movies like you don't that doesn't happen right um but so she was able to tell them like i know what this feels like if you know if they get in the stretcher like it's gonna up the heart rate you know because it takes energy like they can't even like whisper right now like climbing into a stretcher is not gonna be good so thank god i didn't even get that person's name but thank god for them because they were able to like explain what i was feeling um so if you somehow listened to this, thank you. Um, and the two ambulance people, I was trying, they got me in the stretcher. The stretcher went into

the ambulance. That's when I sent you a picture and of your Crocs of my Crocs. I was wearing Crocs this whole time, which was even worse. Um, they always they always say like oh if something were to happen to you and like you become a ghost today the alpha you're wearing becomes your ghost outfit it's like mine would be crocs i mean mine would be crocs too let's be real we'll be crocs crocs to be fair i also don't know like if death would have been what happened it felt like it it certainly felt like i was not gonna make it so um so i hope i'm not sounding too dramatic by like oh i would have died but like, Oh, I would have died, but I don't know what would have happened. It certainly did not. Can you imagine you just

haunt that stupid bathroom and your crocs for the rest of your existence? Like what a nightmare. Okay. That's humiliating. Um, but, uh, they, so they got me on the ambulance, got me in there. I, and one thing that was really helpful that I, you know, it's so interesting. I don't know what's going on and maybe I've just lucked out, but in the last year with all these doctors visits and now including these two, um, EMTs who came out, uh, every time I've had a, uh, male medical person, I don't know if their training has changed or if I have just lucked out with the group that I've been around, but they have all been so on top of listening to the needs of the person. Like every, every, uh, male doctor, especially if I use the word safe, like I'm like,

I feel safest with this. They like absolutely are on board with the EMTs. Um, I told them like, this is going to be weird, but like, this is what's going to make me feel really good. And what's going to make me feel better. And they were on top of it. They were like, we don't usually do that, but if it's going to make you feel better, we're doing it. And it was, I was just so impressed. But so I told them I needed to be upside down and they didn't even ask why they were just like on board. They're like, okay, upside down. Got it. And so they actually put me on the stretcher upside down where like, usually when you're sitting this way and your legs are sticking out

sure they did it the opposite way where my i was lying down my feet were up and then when i got in the i'm sorry this is taking so long but no no i've wanted to tell you about this for a few days now i know i've been waiting um so that immediately helped and it dropped my heart rate down by like 50 points. And then, uh, when I got in there, they were like, so, uh, it's not stopping on its own. And usually we would have to like call someone to like make sure we can do this, but you're stable enough to like give us a yes or no. And I went, fuck, I went, what? But at this point I'd also asked what their names were because I

was trying to like it's so weird the human experience I still felt like the need to be polite and like kind and so I was like I kept being like I'm okay I'm okay and they were like you can stop talking you're in an ambulance no literally remember I was getting my colonoscopy and I kept being like so how are you guys feeling yeah like can you please stop talking you're on sedatives. Yeah. Yeah. And so that's it's it's odd. So I was trying to be like chummy with them.

I ended up being like real chummy with this one guy named Brad, who I posted on Instagram. Oh, Brad. And he anyway, he was like, you you're stable enough. Like we can tell the like all all you need is for your heart rate to go down. You'll be fine. But have you ever been on adenosine and i said no i have not and he went would you like to be feel good i heard uh i he asked he he asked if i'd heard about it i went no i but the way you're phrasing this makes me feel like I should hesitate to be excited about this opportunity. And he was like, yeah, I think this is really the only way that things are going to work for you.

And I was like, okay, well, what happens? Like, before I agree to this, can I know the side effects? And he was like, do you want the side effects? And he was like, do you want the side effects? Do you want to know? Jesus. Brad really very quickly went from like professional to like, he could tell I was trying to be buddy,

buddy. And he really, uh, he really let his guard down and started talking to me more like a friend, which I appreciated until he started saying like, do you want to know the side effects? I'm like, Brad, I you want to know the side effects? Brad, I need you to elaborate because something's freaking me out. And he said,

all I'm going to say is you're going to feel really awkward. And I was like, what does that mean? That's the worst descriptor. Like, sit down. I feel awkward every second of every day. Keep in mind, like, this is how awkward I already feel. I am non-binary. I have a lot of biodysmorphia and dysphoria. And I'm in an ambulance with three grown-ass firemen with my shirt all the way up. So they could put the stickers all over me to check my heart rate. So I was already feeling pretty fucking awkward. With your crotch, by the way. Okay.

That was the only thing left on with a party, three men in a truck. And so, and so I was like, Brad, awkward is what's already happening. So I need you to give me more information, please. And he was like,

I'm not going to say anything more. You're just going to feel really awkward. And, uh, and I, I saw them pull it out. He explained later that I guess it's like this really thick liquid where it took two of those grown men to push it into the IV.

Like it was like something that should not go in your body. I said, this doesn't look like something that you should inject into me. And they were like, yeah, that's kind of the point. And so they ended up, I heard them count down and go like all right three two one and then i watched two grown men with all their might squeeze this thing into my iv and i remember trying to say like when's it gonna hit me and before i could finish saying that wow it really kicked my ass it restarts your heart right it stops and restarts your heart yes uh so there was a moment where my heart was not uh was on vacation and i've heard of the that medication it i gotta say it was only like 10 seconds like it and then i was back to normal

i tried to make blaze because blaze saw your story and I was like oh so does that hurt and he's like it's not so much that it hurts I like that you said awkward because the way he described it was similar he was like it's more people describe it as like their brain doesn't like what's happening like they're because your heart is stopping and your brain is like what are you doing to me? And so you have to like, and it only lasts a few seconds, but like, obviously your body's not going to love it. It felt, I mean, if I'm being, um, if I'm being realistic with how it felt and I don't know if it feels the same for all people, but, um, it's weird. Cause I knew my, I could feel my body reacting like someone whose heart stopped like i

i remember feeling my legs twitching and like not being able to do anything about it it was really probably a scary sight i think my eyes rolled in the back of my head because i remember kind of blacking out but honestly what it felt like was that have you ever had like a g-force hit you um like when you're like going you know like the feeling of like um like a roller coaster those machines where you're like stuck thrown back yeah yeah yeah where you're like stuck and like you couldn't possibly move and it's like hitting you and it feels like oh yeah sure sure sure it felt like uh like a shitload of g-forces hit me but only from the inside oh it doesn't sound good i felt like my body i could tell i i could tell where i was

but my whole body felt like it was getting like pushed down by like 800 pounds and like um but anyway so after that it was i was fine but then they still like had to take me to the hospital and that sure it just became a whole thing and i've talked for 20 minutes about it that's all wow well i'm so glad you're okay uh we saw a photo of you in the ambulance didn't like that but was uh very comforted when you said uh that you were glad it happened because you could at least get a diagnosis out of it i didn't realize you still had your heart monitor i'm so glad that that well so i don't have the one that's attached to me, but I think I told you this a while ago, or I've been bragging about it whenever I think about it.

But if you are someone who has a heart situation and you're trying to keep, you know, and this is not an ad, although I would love for them to sponsor us. It's called Cardia Mobile, and it's literally credit card sized. And it's a heart, it checks your, it's literally credit card sized and it's a heart it's a it checks your it's an EKG bat or something but in a credit card and so it bluetooth to your phone and then you

touch the little dials and it gives you all this information and sends it to your phone and I think you can also have it hooked up where it sends it directly to your cardiologist okay good so you didn't have the one from the doctor still wearing it. You had this one. No, this was a news. I'm so glad you had that on you. I just have like a bucket of heart monitor gadgets these days. You should see Em backstage at a show,

just wandering around with stuff stuck to their fingers. I do. It's really sad. Also, I got to keep a little souvenir, which I'd like to show you now. Please. Is it a bedkey sandwich it's not the i deserve a fucking free sandwich i would have eaten the shit out of it okay they should put you on the wall i don't know what this is called, but this is the paperwork. This is like the beep, beep, beep paperwork.

Oh, like the readout. Yeah. Okay. So this is what my heart's supposed to look like. And I'm bringing this to my cardiologist to be like. This is like a show and tell. It is. And also like this really couldn't be a better show and tell because right now what my cardiologist

was expecting at best was that I would have an episode and like my random heart monitor gadgets would pick up on something but this is like from a fucking ambulance hospital like this is right it's professional and even on the side it says it says somewhere on here like um uh like it guessed what my condition was and it says spt on it so even the machines were like this is fucking spt um okay sorry it's just very long take your time this is what a normal heart rate looks like okay i'm just like uh can you see it at all yes i can okay this is what mine was looking like. Oh, no. That does not look good. It's about like three times faster.

Oh, no. Which would make sense because my heart was going three times faster than the normal heart rate. It's freaking out. Yeah, it was going... Freaking out. When it should be like... Do they have the part where they stopped your heart? That was it.

That was where it's this so it was doing this uh-huh until they gave me the adenosine and then my heart started doing this oh that is so cool to look at em isn't that crazy that is really cool to look at so this this right here was where i got the injection what you said when am i gonna well i think you know i know you don't know this but if you are a marvel person it felt just like when dr strange punched spider-man until his astral body left his physical form no you left your husk behind for a brief moment i was just like when am i gonna feel yeah i can almost imagine it i'm sure i don't know what it feels like but i can almost imagine it by your description like that yeah feeling yeah just like a like yeah i i feel like anyone

who's experienced like the like that the roller coaster that's so fast you feel like you're gonna black out and it's like it like feels like your soul's being pulled out of your body that's exactly what it felt like and that's kind of why it freaked i was like i i don't know if that's what it feels like when your heart stops like for good and that's like if i got like a taste of what your soul even your body feels like but if that's what it felt like i gotta say i'm pretty comforted because i felt that sounds pretty bad, but I felt no pain. I just felt that's good. I just felt really discomfort. I just felt like my soul is being peeled out of my body. Don't worry. It's not so bad. It's not what I was expecting it to feel like. That's for sure. Lord. Anyway, it's been literally 25 minutes and I knew I was going to talk about this, which is why my story is pretty short today. So I don't make it all about me.

I'm just glad you're okay. I'm so glad you're okay. Thank you. Do you have a reason why you drink? Honestly, like this is going to sound so petty and stupid in comparison. But I have really bad cramps today, which is very strange because like, I mean, TMI notice for everybody, but like, I don't like when I'm on the pill I don't like really get bad period cramps and I'm like what is going on with me and so I

freaked out I took a pregnancy test it was negative so I was like I don't need that in my life right now um was this your way of saying you are not on the pill currently or no I am so I'm like a little bit weirded out and I'm like I'm like what is going on with my body I don't feel good and I haven't had cramps in like a long time well I don't think that's petty I mean some people end up in the hospital for cramps yeah that's true too I don't have um endometriosis or anything so I'm thankful for that because I know that can really send people into a rough place but anyway I'm just like uncomfortable and I'm like what's going on with me maybe I'm like maybe my hormones are finally getting back to their old ways after stopping breastfeeding.

I don't know. I don't know. But I feel do you have like a go to do you have a go to way of dealing with cramps? Like some people rely on Midol. Some people do hot packs. Yeah, I'm like a Tylenol heating pad gal. But like, really, I rarely have. I mean, I used to get terrible, terrible cramps before I went on the pill and then the pill really helps that for me but so I'm not used to it

anymore it's been like a long time since I've had this issue and I'm like I don't miss it that sucks so anyway just you know well that's it I'm sorry hopefully uh blaze is nursing you back to health yeah he better be um he's like you're not pregnant he was like i better better not be and i did take a test and i am not so that has been avoided crisis it's also something it's also something we're celebrating in its own way like exactly it doesn't always have to be hip hip hooray only when it's a positive pregnancy sign well i mean for i would say for many people in my boat, many, many years long, taking a pregnancy test was much scarier thing. And there was always a celebration about a negative. And then all of a sudden, it flip flops. And you're like, wait a second,

now I'm supposed to be looking for that second line. It's a very weird, mental, I don't know, looking for that second line it's a very weird mental uh i don't know maze i guess to get through well i wish i knew what to say to make you feel better because oh no i'm fine i'm just i'm i'm glad you're doing well uh better um and i am very in my very mild situation in comparison to yours so well uh so no no worries i beg to differ cramps can be very stinky it's not fun yet but we'll see okay so my story today is uh the story of mary webster aka the witch of hadley aka half half hanged Mary. Ooh. Ooh. What's that? So,

uh, this is in the 17th century. This, the story mainly takes place in the 1680s, I think. And this was, uh, in Hadley,

Massachusetts, AKA colonial new England, uh, right around the time of the witchcraft trials as they were picking up. So, um, quick recap uh the colonial new england area was not doing hot uh in case you were wondering how the the whole witchcraft craze came about uh crops were failing the weather was terrible people were dying from illnesses left and right and science was not tip-top back in the day um and there was a little group called the puritans oh hurry those guys they were about and they were extremely uh religious they blamed basically everything you can imagine on the devil and being in a, in an environment with so many bad things going on,

they had a lot of reasons to blame the devil. Right. So our story in particular is actually, it predates the witch trials because the witch trials happened in the 1690s. Whereas this was 16, I think 1680s. It was, it was right before the heyday,

if you want to call it that. And, um, witches weren't as heard of before 1692. It was right before the heyday, if you want to call it that. And witches weren't as heard of before 1692. They just weren't as big of a deal. There weren't any real legal convictions that were happening. Well, not that often. There were still some, but it just wasn't as Salem witch trials. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It wasn't all the rage yet. Yeah. Yeah. The witches hadn't done enough to piss people off, I guess. If you asked a Puritan, I'm unclear. But so, quick story, by the way. In 1674, so almost 20 years before the witch trials, there was a woman in Massachusetts also named Mary. Her name was Mary Bliss Parsons.

And she was accused of witchcraft and tried and acquitted. So just so you know, this has been happening before the witch trials. Just wasn't happening all the time. Okay. Today we're talking about Mary Webster, who was born Mary Reeve. And she was in 1670. She married a guy named Thomas Webster. They were very poor and lived on the outskirts of town. And sometimes they would ask the community for help because they weren't doing well on their own, which I guess etiquette wise meant that they

were seen as like a bother to the rest of the town because they were asking for people's time and effort which i find kind of ironic considering this whole group of people moved here to have a community following the bible about like feeding each other and helping with the poor you know i mean wouldn't be the first wouldn't be the last time it's like wait a minute hypocrites what okay anyway anyway uh i think they they were hoping for more help from people but they ended up just kind of giving everyone a bad taste that they maybe they were asking for a lot of help maybe it was like too much yeah maybe they were energy vampires you know oh i've had a few experience with those guys i know it so i we don't know what the full story is there but it

sounds like they weren't doing hot on their own and the community was not having it not into it um and another reason could be that maybe they weren't the most upstanding christians because there's one report from 1905 that said mary was known to miss church and have a nasty attitude and speak her mind aka she wasn't like keeping sweet or whatever that sure i'm watching that right now oh really i don't haven't watched it yet even eva responded to my be real and said she's also watching it oh nice i uh keeps keeping sweet is something i heard through the duggars so that's the only reason i know about it um but so yeah 1905 there was a report saying that she just like wasn't maybe that great of a christian and maybe that's why they didn't want to help her but then i mean i could say a million

things about that um also keep in mind that was a report from 1905 so that was like hundreds of years and that probably had its own biases at that right you know exactly and also like who knows if they even heard that through the game of telephone or like a bunch of people who didn't like them said these things and none of it was true or maybe it was true we have no idea for all we know mary was just like the sweetest little peach there ever was um but if there was ever any whiff of someone saying like oh oh, she was cranky or, oh, she had a bad attitude back in the witch trial era. Like if you were cranky, that was enough to get you killed for being a witch.

So fair. Um, so who knows? I mean, not fair to be fair, but fair, valid point, I guess. Yeah. But so I don't know, we have no idea what her personality actually was but the one that has unfortunately stayed with us is that she was not a very good person um and other claims about mary ended up circling as well um they there started being these rumors around town that like not only

was she not really that good of a christian and she was too beggy and she was pretty cranky and nasty but on top of that uh cattle wouldn't walk by her house and therefore she must be witching them must be bewitching them right because that's what you would do with your powers if you could just like move a cow move a cow into a different path just push it over there i feel like you are on board with me because i feel like for the rest of these notes every time they make a claim which this is just one of many stories of the witch trials but um every time they like make a claim like that i'm like but why would she waste her time doing that?

But why? But she's a witch who can do fucking anything. She's misdirecting a cow? Why? She's in cahoots with Beelzebub. Seriously. And she's just hanging out with like bewitching your cow. What?

She just doesn't want the cow to be within 10 feet of her front door. Why? I don't get it. Exactly. It is not of a sound sound mind which is just always the most ironic part of the witch trials is just like how is it that the illogical people are right like you strip it down you're like it doesn't even make sense like if it were really true it doesn't even make sense yeah it's just that shit so there so other claims on top of that started going around

uh first was that the cattle wasn't walking by her house or like wouldn't cross her path i guess and i this seems to be particularly bad for the town because she happened to be on a like a really made major road and so like so they thought she was inconveniencing all everyone who needed to pass oh my god but here's the thing because people thought she must be working with the devil practicing witchcraft and now is uh hmm is now intimidating their livestock and thus threatening the crops of the town as is the way that i guess they took this some of the townsmen took it upon themselves to let her know that she needed to put an end to it

oh this became a apparently a common thing which like i don't know why this woman didn't just leave i don't know why but then again like why like who knows what her story is who knows if she could leave i who knows uh but where was she gonna go i mean where was she gonna go that's yeah so i don't know what her story to this is but i feel like they kept breaking into her house and beating her up and then they would just leave oh no like just to i think the story was that it would they would it would they would beat her up until they felt like she had broken the spell and their livestock could like cross great which by the way fucking makes me think that they were beating her up until like they looked out the window and saw that their cow like walked a couple inches

it worked yeah and also i'm aware of how gross that statement sounded of like why didn't she leave because i'm aware of all that no but like i'm like why like did she see them coming or like i don't at all want to victim blame i'm just confused about like i guess if they're breaking in because my first i was like change the locks but then like if someone really wants to hurt you locks back then yeah i don't know what the what the story to that is but i do feel horrible for her i'm sure if they targeted her she probably had no way of avoiding a bunch of grown men you know yeah yeah i have no idea i don't or like i thought she was married like where's her husband during all this like i maybe maybe she's not with him anymore

and then she's a spinster and obviously she's definitely much more a witch now maybe he just didn't stand a chance against a bunch of angry men i don't know well i feel so bad for her so she terrible she ended up getting beaten up all the time. Apparently she was getting whipped a few times. Oh God. Um, and basically they would just assault her. Like this is the backwards. I mean,

it's all backwards. The backwards part is like they're beating her up and because their cows are acting weird. And she's just, I guess like just having to deal with it. Just like, you just see people walking up to your house and you're like, well, I guess this is it for today. How stressful would it be if, like, the cows walked up and you were like, please walk across so I don't get beat up. Like, please keep walking, cow. Please.

I'll drag you across myself. Well, this was just the beginning of people in town blaming Mary for pretty much anything. One time a guy's hay cart flipped upside down and blamed it on Mary because it happened to happen near her house. Oh, my God. And then the rumor spread into as he walked up to her house to intimidate her or beat her up. into as he walked up to her house to intimidate her or beat her up then she got scared and flipped it back over for him using like her mind or something sure but the rumor was like almost confirming that she really was a witch because she was able to change everything and that she could be probably intimidated into doing what they wanted so that was probably comforting they were

like well good we'll keep beating her up because it seems to work god you're totally right terrible cycle another time a chicken is said to have fallen through someone's chimney oh my god mary not again and it landed in their pot of boiling water oh no oh sad chicken yeah the chicken okay um boiled chicken yikes yeah and so mary was obviously to blame because later on she was seen having scald marks on her hands and so they thought that she must have either been the chicken been the chicken yes or um she either had been the chicken or she had been like bewitching this chicken and then holding the chicken and got the skull marks on why okay but this stupid question i'm not even gonna ask like why if she were a chicken would she be like i'm gonna fall in this

chimney and boil myself alive why would you think i'm a chicken and now i'm gonna go climb on my enemies roofs and jump into a chimney and have, have to defy a lot of feats. Sad chicken. Uh, anyway, another time she was accused of breaking into someone else's house and staring at their baby until it levitated,

which like, but also keep in mind, other people are constantly breaking into her house. And like, that's fine. Valid point. Anyway. It's just like, again, I know that we're just going to ask this over and over. But like, for what?

Yeah. Like, what are we accomplishing? For what is this boiled chicken? Like, I don't understand. I literally don't understand what they were trying to prove. But whatever. Also, I wonder why, because this wasn't during the height of the Salem witch trials, where if this were during that time, maybe this was like, maybe there was. Maybe like the frenzy was building or something.

Maybe it was, and I don't know about it, but I, during the Salem witch trials, I would understand like, oh, everyone's like pointing blame at someone who's already been like persecuted. Sure. Then they're not looking at me and then I don't get called. It's an easier target, right? like oh everyone's like pointing blame at someone who's already been like persecuted because then they're not looking at me and then i don't get a target right yeah but that's not happening right now so i don't know why everyone's just like like who was like oh yeah she's a chicken we'll get this she also levitated my baby like i guess they just didn't like her you know and we're like oh you know how people get kind of in that mob mentality of sort of being like, oh, yeah, well, this happened to me, too. Oh, really?

I saw her doing this. And like, it just spins out of control. I bet everyone wanted their own story. Yeah. People like to have their own like their own flair to things. Yeah, like their own hand in whatever drama is going on. They want to like have their own story to tell. their own hand in whatever drama is going on when i like have their own story to tell well all this led to mary eventually having me having to be brought to the courthouse um on march 27th 1683

by the way i think this is actually the same courthouse that the other mary i mentioned earlier i think she also was at this courthouse. Oh. The one who was tried and acquitted back in the 70s. Okay. The 1670s. Anyway, so both Marys went to this courthouse for witchcraft. And just like last Mary, she, I think she, was she acquitted? I don't know. Let's find out, everybody. Okay.

So she was, oh, no, she was jailed for two months until she had a trial date which was in may of 1683 okay and this is a statement from the boston court of assistance on her alleged crimes this is their statement about why she's being charged with witchcraft can't wait she not having the fear of god before her eyes and being instigated by the devil no evidence by the way sure hath entered into covenant and had familiarity with him in the shape of a warrenage which apparently is a wild woodland black cat oh okay so he she's hanging out with she's turning into this thing shape-shifting into this warrenage hanging out with, she's turning into this thing, shape-shifting into this Warnage, hanging out with the devil. Sometimes a chicken, but sometimes a cat.

The chicken was practice. That was a warm-up. Oh, she did it wrong. She accidentally fell down the chimney and was like, damn it. She's like, I gotta be a different animal now. No wings this time. She, not having the fear of God before her eyes and being investigated by the devil, hath entered into covenant and had familiarity with him in the shape of a warnage and had the devil's imps sucking her

with teeth with teats and marks found on her grow okay the court on their serious consideration of the testimonies left her to further trial their serious consideration looked at her nipples to see if there were teeth marks around her? Is that what they're saying? Probably. And that would not surprise me. Because how many times have they had to, like, undress them to search their bodies, remember? Yeah.

To find proof of a birthmark or find proof of literally anything. Like, they could be like, there's no birthmarks. Aha, she's a witch because she erased all her birthmarks. Like, it doesn't even matter what they find. Well, ding, ding, ding. they could be like there's no birthmarks aha she's a witch because she erased all her birthmarks like it doesn't even matter what they find well ding ding ding because that's what they're saying here with uh the devil's minions have been drinking from her uh and they found marks on her they literally were just searching her for we talked about this before any birthmark any scar any mole any pimple anything and it was just considered excuse me i just burped

excuse me it was just considered like oh that's just proof that you are in cahoots with the devil and everyone's got a mark we've talked about this and it's not even just like a mark it's like oh well they were suckling like breastfeeding these Like, so they're literally looking at her nipples and being like, oh, was a devil hanging on here with its teeth? Like, stop. Yeah. So she's not only being, first of all, and she's just a plain old innocent woman in jail for two months. She's also now been forced to take her clothes off and examined. And now they think that she's got the marks of the devil all over her because she has a human body um and yeah so basically they thought that she was working with the devil's

familiars and she would let them suckle on her for energy and any natural mark uh on the any natural mark was used as proof so it's not good shockingly um she this is where i thought she might be acquitted shockingly she was not found guilty and she was sent home uh but this is like the only reason i can think of is her her trial date they had her in a town that was over 100 miles away so i think her reputation was i think they probably looked at her and they were like this fucking woman is doing nothing it's sort of like when they move a trial out of like the person's hometown because it's too biased yeah like the jury would be too biased they move it somewhere else yeah no i think that's exactly what happened here so interesting but into the story

walks famous puritan minister author and consultant of the Salem witch trials, Cotton Mather. Not this motherfucker. He's a horrible man. Horrible, horrible man. Horrible. And he really like would just wake up every day and use whatever logic he saw fit that day when determining evidence of witchcraft. Just like how you said, oh, well, they have birthmarks, so they must be of the devil of the devil oh no they don't have any because they erased them because of the devil because he would he would just wake up and whatever fit his narrative he would create his own fucking logic yeah bingo bingo and uh he would say that you need hard evidence but then the next this is the example i was going to use before you stepped in without even knowing it on the birthmark thing. He would say you need hard

evidence, but then the next day he would say the devil plays tricks on you and evidence isn't always evident. Terrible. So why is Cotton Mather involved in the story? Because in 1702, this is a little more of an epilogue statement, and I'll come back to the original story. But in 1702, Cotton Mather writes this book called the Magnolia Christi Americana. And it was about a very respected man in the town of Hadley, which is where the story's at. He wrote about this very respected man in Hadley named Philip, and he died shortly after Mary was acquitted. man in Hadley named Philip and he died shortly after Mary was acquitted um and he connected the two and thought oh well when Philip died Mary was acquitted aka she was back to her old tricks and she had gotten away with it and she's a witch um so just to like give you more insight on this

soon after uh she was acquitted and brought back home to Hadley, which like, again, like I would just never go back to that town if I could avoid it. But I don't know what her story is. She probably couldn't leave. I'm sure she couldn't leave for her to be like, oh, this is the town worth staying in. Especially as a woman. Like, where's he going to go? That's going to. Or maybe she was also like, I'm not going to let you scare me out of my fucking town.

Or that. Yeah. So who knows? Or maybe she was also like, I'm not going to let you scare me out of my fucking town. Or that. Yeah. So who knows? But soon after she was acquitted and went home, Philip was, he apparently got really delirious.

He spoke in tongues and he had seizures. And this is a quote about the illness that befell him once Mary was free. Okay. So he thinks this is what mary did to him from afar bluetooth remote if you will um it's it said he felt hundreds of pins pricking his arms and toes philip said a woman was in the room with him and asked if others could see her his bed allegedly shook violently as if haunted his caretakers kept finding his unused medicine pots empty something the size of a cat stirred under his blankets but witnesses found

nothing there but philip when they searched the bed it's just philip again it's just him and his little pretend cat and it said fire appeared in the bed burned nothing and then vanished so wait a minute he's so he says there's a fire there is no evidence of it but now you're so this is the most cotton matter thing i've ever heard in my life because for him to say oh well you need evidence nah never mind you don't for him to be saying oh well he obviously she was bewitching him because he saw a fire that wasn't there and nobody else saw the fire and also it burned nothing and also we're also now that's suddenly the proof is that no one else saw it because the devil made sure it like oh my god it's infuriating just decided to have an opinion

and that's the one we should all go with that's what i'm hearing yeah um so anyway that was a quote from him on how this clearly is all mary's fault sure um you can see how this is almost an origin story of cotton mather before the salem witch trials how he was already ready to just hate women and judge them for witchcraft right um before philip died he had all those experiences i just mentioned and i guess he told people that he believed something supernatural was the root to all of this that led to the town thinking something supernatural in town oh mary was just acquitted but maybe we were wrong or maybe we sent her to the wrong town and they didn't know the story as well as we do and so she should have been found guilty so the rumors just kept spreading and it basically got to this thing where right before Philip died, this well-respected man in town, right before he died, people would start going over to Mary's house to try to intimidate her again, to like break the spell from what she's done to Philip. anytime someone would i don't know how they found this out like who there is no proper source on

this but the rumor in town was anytime someone would go to her house and intimidate her she would be so scared that she would kind of lose focus and the spell would kind of die down and weaken and philip would feel better from the other side of town oh my okay and so it just encouraged people to go intimidate her because it was making ph feel better. But like, how would he know when people were there? And also what if he was just feeling better from an illness because he had had a fucking cold? Like, and now people are just harassing this woman because they think she's responsible. Um, anyway, so the fear had several people going to Mary's house. And one day they were like, we've fucking had it. We are just going to put an end to all of this. And so they go to her house and instead of just intimidating her, they beat her up.

They kidnap her. They drag her to a tree and they hanged her jesus eventually when they have waited long enough they cut her down and they bury her in the snow oh my god but this bitch survives she said whatever that miley cyrus nikki minaj whatever those tiktok sounds are you thought you could get rid of me bitch but i'm here i'm still here oh god she survives despite a broken neck despite nearly freezing in massachusetts new england snow despite asphyxiation from hanging from a goddamn tree and getting beaten up by all these men and she waits until they're gone and she just ups and walks back home no just walks back home and philip guys no yeah what were you about

to say maybe she is a witch okay right like like whoa like in a good way not in a bad way but like she's like like in a fun silly kind of way she's like like wouldn't that be the plot twist of the century she actually was a witch and they were like oh she was like oh shit they're on to me oh no but she ended up just i mean i don't know how she did it but she had a straight up broken neck and like almost froze out there and she just like walked home jesus um well that's not gonna turn out well is it because they're gonna i mean well this is such a weird i feel like if this were a book i feel like the author got sloppy at the end because my thought would be oh this like now they're really gonna

come after now they're freaking out yeah fire and brimstone now they have actual proof you know but the story ends kind of quickly i think they just saw like oh she survived a homicide attempt um that's that's enough to scare us away from trying anything else yeah maybe they thought like oh well we don't want her getting revenge let's just leave her alone or something yeah or like clear like i guess when philip died they were like oh so she killed him anyway I guess she could kill any of us. Maybe. I was expecting that to be like, now we're at the climax and this is the final fight scene.

Yeah, she just proved them all right in their heads, probably. Yeah, and I guess she didn't give a fuck either. She was like, well, think what you want. And also, I wonder if there was just a truce or something, because it doesn't sound like she... I guess part of me wants to be like, I hope she'd go after them. They literally tried to kill her, but maybe she's like, honestly, now they're finally leaving me alone and that's all I wanted anyway.

Bygones be bygones. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know. Oh my goodness. So when they found Philip dead, apparently he looked as beaten up as she did. Oh. And this emboldened the idea that witchcraft really was a play.

Like maybe she transferred her pain to him or something. Right. And the townspeople ended up finding out Mary was still alive, but they never got near her again. Even though like now she certainly seems like a prime suspect. Yeah. Okay. And I don't know if they feared her too much or whatever it was but she ended up living until 70 which again means that she lived through the salem witch trials and nobody bothered her

wow so that is wild i i guess the witch trials were happening salem was like 120 ish miles away so maybe she wasn't like in the hot zone right i mean if a town nearby like they definitely heard about the salem witch trials back then and nobody was like i know one who lives in a house right over there and she already killed a man they never even tried i think they all really were just like hey you do your thing i'll do my thing and we just don't fucking talk i can't believe she broke her neck i know also like if the whole town hates you, how did she, like, was there a doctor who was on her side that, like, let her? That's what I'm wondering. Like, how did she get fixed back up or survive so long?

Yeah. I feel like if the whole town hates you, there's nowhere you can go to get help with that kind of stuff. And also, like, on top of that, like, Cotton Mather, I don't think he was from that town. And he clearly fucking hated witches and was like ready to kill them all. I'm shocked he didn't say in Salem, like, I know a girl in Hadley a hundred miles back who absolutely needs to be executed. Like, I don't know why everyone left her alone. Maybe they were just like too excited about the new witches, the new prospects. Maybe.

She was old news. I have no idea. I have no idea. I have no idea. Maybe there's like a whole chunk to this history I'm missing. But if anyone knows, I am curious because it feels like if they were looking for witches to hunt, like I'm not saying she was a witch, but they certainly thought that. But to be fair, they kind of could turn anyone into a witch. So I feel like maybe they were like.

She's too much effort or something. Or they just had enough targets maybe. Like maybe they were like she's too much effort or so they just had enough targets maybe like maybe they were like oh we have enough right now if if we're really looking for more well well anyway that is uh the story of mary webster there's allegedly there's a rumor that the um author she's the poet margaret atwood um she may be a descendant of Mary Webster. It's pretty unclear. But she did write a poem called Half Hanged Mary and dedicated her own book to Mary Webster. Wait, which book? The Handmaid's Tale. Oh, OK.

That's probably why that name sounds familiar. But yeah, so that's Mary Webster, a.k.a. The Witch of Hadley, a.kley aka half-hanged mary that is crazy crazy town banana grams it's been his banana is balloonatoons it's balloonatoons and a half man um wow what a story i i'm sad about the witch thing but you know yeah i would like to know. I feel like someone should have interviewed her. I wish there was a report somewhere on her opinion of it all,

but I guess she probably wanted to be left the fuck alone. That's true, too. She probably did not want anyone coming in her front door anymore. Okay, I forgot to mention up top, because we were busy talking about other stuff but we have live shows that we release tickets for and we haven't brought it up yet should we we could also do an intro

for it I think we should just put it here because people skip the intro sometimes anyway so now they have to listen to it okay fair enough yes we have live shows we decided that we're going to do a handful of encore shows at the end of this year there's're going to do a handful of encore shows uh at the end of this year there's 10 cities there's a lot of texas we're going back to nashville we are georgia is

one of them um but yeah we got some good places and it's i would really like to have this whole heart thing behind me by the time we go out there but um yeah we've got we just we really like the show and we wanted people to get one last chance at seeing it and so this really is the last time by the way um yeah and uh so if you don't see it by those shows then you will have to wait until we can find a way to publicly put it out there which we do want to do so i don't have any confirmation yet how to do that so we we don't yeah there's no uh there's nothing in motion but i do i have heard from people wondering like if i miss the live show is there ever a chance i'll see it and there is a chance we want there to be we don't know how it will happen yet yeah so we're

also going to new orleans and we're going to Charleston for the first time, which is very exciting. So yeah. And we're going back to LA and San Francisco. So if you're on California side and you missed it in 2019. Good job, Christine. Thank you for all of that because I just want to make sure we got that out there before I forgot again. Well, we waited. Remember, you probably remember this whole time, but thank you for reminding me an hour into this episode. No, I didn't remember until I looked at my notes and it said live shows with a bunch of exclamation points. So let me tell you a story. This one I heard on an episode of Red Handed recently and thought, wowza, how have I never heard about this before uh i'm gonna cover it so it is a story of the van brada family and van brada is how they pronounced it and how the youtube videos i watched pronounced it but it's spelled v-a-n space b-r-e-d-a so i feel like i would have said

i would have said like van brada probably but, but I guess it's Van Breda. Oh, okay. Wait, sorry. Side note. Did you hear the news that the Somerset Man was discovered? Oh, yes. It's not official official, but it's considered solved but not confirmed, I guess. But yes, I did.

And I'm very excited about it because finally we can get some answers i never thought it would be solved i remember that being one of my favorite stories you covered and like me getting i think i got a little too into the the mystery of it so i'm glad that there's a something to assuage me yeah i i i that was one of the first Astonishing Legends series I ever listened to. And it just fascinates me. So I'm so glad someone will have some justice. But yeah, I was going to do an update on that as soon as like more information is confirmed and stuff. But yeah, I'm very excited about that.

And if and I think we're actually going to post about it on social media. Fun. Okay, cool. Yay. Okay okay so the van burda family and by the way this takes place in south africa so just to be clear there's martin he's the father he's 54 there's theresa the mother she's 55 there's the son rudy who's 22 the son henry who's 20 he's the middle child and then the daughter who's the youngest marley and she is 16 okay so this is like the very cliche of it but they appeared like a very happy close-knit family from the all start out that way. Yeah. Yeah. And to be fair, to this day, there really isn't much to go against that. Like, they really did seem like a happy family.

It's not like we dug up a bunch of skeletons in their closets after. Like, there's just, they, it, we'll get there. We'll get there. Okay. Don't get ahead of yourself, Christine. Okay. So Martin, the dad, Martin Van Breda was an engineer who started and sold multiple successful businesses to build his family's wealth. And Teresa was a successful

IT specialist for a bank, but she became a stay-at-home mother when her children were born. And so they, even though they were pretty wealthy and he was pretty successful and they made a good amount of money, they lived a relatively unassuming life, like nothing too lavish. They traveled. They coexisted as a family. They lived together. It was all pretty standard. Nothing like out of the ordinary. Yeah, or nothing like out of control as far as how they spent their

money or anything like that. So the van Breda family was originally from South Africa, but they spent eight years in Australia where the children went to school. And then in January 2014, most of the family moved to South Africa to a place called Stellenbosch. And Stellenbosch, I guess, is where, I mean, I don't know if you know much about South Africa, but the crime rate in South Africa is notoriously very high. And I guess Stellenbosch is one of these areas where it's gated. And if you have the kind of money that they had, you were able to kind of pay for safety in a way, like pay for the security of living in a place like this. And so they moved to Stellenbosch, South Africa, to be close to Teresa's family

and settled in one of these kind of gated places called the, oh, I hope I know how to say this, kind of gated places called the, oh, I hope I know how to say this, DeSalze Golf Estate. So it was D-E and then Z-A-L-Z-E. DeSalze? Sure. DeSalze? I don't know. A golf estate. So it's like, you know, upper class. There's a golf course. It's, you know, a gated community. Bougie. Bougie, exactly. you know, a gated community. Bougie. Bougie, exactly. So Rudy and Henry, the two sons, were still studying in Australia at first,

but a little bit later that year, they joined the family in South Africa and the Van Burda family enjoyed the amenities of this gated community. Like I said, there was a golf course, there was a clubhouse, a restaurant, there were even vineyards. And there was this really looked sought after sense of security. So the property and home were built like a fortress.

It was gated. They had guards, CCTV, and intricate security systems as part of the property. They had motion detectors, electric fences, and 24-7 security guards. So this is like a very, very protected place for people to live. Yeah. Yeah. So obviously, the family felt safe living here. And that was important to them because like I was just kind of alluding to South Africa ranks number three in the world for crime. And notably, it has especially high violent crime rates, including assault, rape and homicide. And so if you are able to pay for that sense of security, people will do that for obvious reasons. And so

people will pay a lot for the sense of security, especially if they have kids and a family. And so this was the sort of place where people could live and have peace of mind that they weren't going to, you know, be hurt, which obviously adds a tinge of irony to this whole story, as you can probably predict. I am predicting, yes. Ding, ding. So on January 26th of 2015, the family had dinner.

And this is Southern Hemisphere, so this is a hot summertime, just for our brains to process because it's january so january 26 2015 the family had dinner together peacefully and all went off to their separate bedrooms to go to bed and by midnight the house was asleep which seemed like a pretty usual evening this is where shit hits the fan. Okay. The next morning, January 27th, a little after 7am, a call comes in to a South African emergency line. 20 year old Henry Van Breda was calling requesting an ambulance. And he seemed pretty calm, but a bit dazed. He spoke pretty slowly, like his speech was kind of slow paced, and he spoke with a slight stutter. And this was to the point that the operator thought this might be a prank call,

because he just seemed so blasé. And so it was almost like he was calling a customer service line. He was so frustrated because he was like, no, almost like almost like no that's not how you spell the name of the street this is how you spell the name of the street and on the episode of red-handed they played like a five minute chunk of this call and it's chilling oh shit because anytime i listen to like a 911 call it gives me kind of the willies. But listening to this, it's just a long and that was only a chunk of it. This was like, I think it's a full 10 minute call that he's on the line. And it's frustrating. It's infuriating because the person, the operator is like, OK, how do you spell the name?

And he's like, this is how you spell it. And she's like, like this. And he's like, this is how you spell it. And she's like, like this. And he's like, no, like this. It's just like, it's kind of comical.

It's almost like, and you can tell she's like, what is this kid's deal? And then at the end, she's like, okay, so what you need police. And he's like,

no, I need an ambulance. And she's like, okay, why? Like, what happened? Are you the one who's injured?

And he says, can you please just send an ambulance or maybe more than one why? Like, what happened? Are you the one who's injured? And he says, can you please just send an ambulance or maybe more than one ambulance? And the operator's like, oh, so you need police? Like, what's going on? He says, no, an ambulance. And she says, are you the one who's injured? I'm obviously like, um, yeah, there's a, there's a back and forth and he's not really giving information, giving the information. And she's like thinking that like, he's not really giving information giving the information and she's like thinking that like he's either cut himself by accident or maybe has an injury and he's just kind of lackadaisical about it and so uh she's like okay so you're the one injured and he's like no my family she's like your family he's like yeah all four of them and she goes, what happened? And he says, they've been attacked with an axe.

Okay. And she goes, what? And this is nine minutes into this call. Like, he's not even expressed at this point what happened. If he is not immediately arrested, that at least this gives him uh this qualifies him in my mind as the prime suspect of like yeah don't feel like this is you're not acting like this is urgent according to this phone call it okay and it gets worse because he is finally giving her these details like oh yeah by the way my whole family's been hit with an axe in the head. And she says, like, are they conscious?

Are they alive? And he says, I don't think so. And he says, oh, but my sister's moving still. Okay. So, hello. So something is not clicking with this kid. Something's not right. And so, of course, this poor dispatch is like holy shit like 180 this whole time she thinks like

he's just being difficult and maybe it's a prank or maybe he's injured himself but he's not really helping her out and all of a sudden he's like oh by the way there's someone still alive and they've all been attacked with an axe so of course this is like highest level emergency um he said there was there were no suspects on the scene. They ran away. He said the suspects attacked with an axe. And then he says, I think I blacked out and I've just woken up. So the call is on YouTube and it's not until eight minutes in. If you do want to listen to it, the whole thing I listened to last night, it was just very chilling um eight minutes and he finally says like what's going on and expresses how big of an emergency this is like it's it's disturbing so when paramedics

arrived henry was calmly waiting for them covered in blood uh he told responders quote the problem's upstairs the problem the problem is upstairs. What the fuck? Which I will currently play. I'll toe the line currently. And I'll say, like, everyone grieves differently. Maybe he's in shock. In shock, right. And if he did pass out, because there's, you know, that argument of maybe he hit his head.

Maybe he doesn't even understand what's going on. Or maybe he's mentally ill. Like, we don't know. I mean, we do ultimately know but like at this point in the story it's like okay give me more information you know so it's just a red flag i guess yeah yeah yeah so one paramedic said that this crime scene was the worst he'd ever responded to in his 39 years oh no and so it so one of the first responders, Chris John Kogelenberg, said, blood ran like a waterfall down the stairs. Shut up. Oh, my God.

It was brutal. Brutal. The entire family was found upstairs on the second floor. So there was 54-year-old Martin, 22-year-old Rudy. They were found dead in Rudy and Henry's bedroom. So the two sons shared a bedroom and the dad and Rudy who was 22 were both found dead in the bedroom Martin was spread out on his son Rudy's bed and oh it gets really dark here but he was found with deep fatal wounds in the

back of his head he had no defensive wounds uh or indications that he fought back so investigators believe he was attacked from behind and was unaware of the first like the incoming blow yeah um and tragically there was blood pooled in his lungs which suggests he did not die immediately from the trauma um so there was suffering suffering involved there probably or at least i mean perhaps he was unconscious and his body was still alive you know what i mean like maybe he didn't feel it we don't know obviously there's no way to know but there was blood pooled in his lungs which suggested he um you know laid there for a while before succumbing to his injuries. And then 22-year-old Rudy, Henry's brother, was also in this room. He was found on

the floor with his feet facing the wall near the en suite bathroom. There was a duvet from Henry's bed balled up beside him. However, blood pooling, among other evidence, made investigators believe Rudy was actually killed in his own bed where his dad was laying. And then got moved? Moved. Yeah. To the floor beside the bed, handled a bit, and then ultimately placed near the bathroom. So it was sort of as someone killed him and then put him near the bathroom as like staging almost i wonder okay i'm i'm keeping it in in my noggin yeah and i mean to solve the crime but um

i so far i'm confused yeah i wonder if it was an attempt to be like, oh, an intruder came in. Like maybe he was trying to display a storyline, like a narrative he had come up with. Right. You know, I don't I don't totally know. But it's it's definitely strange. Rudy had wounds in his neck, temple and scalp. And just as terribly, there was blood pooled in Rudy's stomach. And it's believed he may have been alive for several hours. Oh no.

Passing away. It's almost things like that where like, if they had to be alive, you hope that like they were alive in a way where they were unaware, at least. Unconscious at the least, you know? And it's like,

it's obviously the better of two terrible scenarios, you know? But I had that same thought and this is where it gets i already have goose cam just thinking about it because this is one speculation it's so disturbing is that perhaps martin the dad perhaps his back wounds and he had no defensive wounds came from trying to cover rudy with his own. Oh, man. Come on. Don't say that. I know. Oh.

I know. And so, oh, I have goose cam. And so that was the one thought why the dad would have been face down on the bed with wounds to his back and head because perhaps he was trying to cover Rudy. And so that makes me also think like you know if Rudy was also then killed in the bed maybe that's why he moved him to like separate a story line yeah to throw off like whatever yeah the examiners would have pieced together yeah yeah so that's the only thing I can really think but it is just a disturbing thought because why else would martin be laying in his son's bed you know it's that is so sad very upsetting uh very upsetting so 55 year old theresa the mom

was found on the floor near the staircase uh near the staircase and near marley's bedroom unlike martin theresa had defense injuries defensive injuries which means she fought for her life life against this attacker. She also had severe head trauma, but there was no blood in her lungs. So the assumption is that she died pretty quickly from her injuries. And then Marley, age 16, was found beside her mother. And she sustained extensive defense wounds. She had fiercely fought with her attacker. defense wounds um she had fiercely fought with her attacker and despite the severe head trauma inflicted on her by the axe along with a severed jugular vein wow man so it feels like every single one of these blows is like just so vicious really going for the kill like brutal exactly like which

i mean i can't imagine like what a what an intentional accident like a gentle axe hit right yeah but like i mean to go like for the head and the jugular like it's just like clearly like there was rage a plan yeah someone was like planning to really hurt these people or kill them so despite this severed jugular vein and the extreme head wounds from the axe, she freaking survives this ordeal. What? How did we both pick stories where women survive? I was just thinking that. Wow.

Like against all the odds. Yeah. Against people trying to kill them, you know? Oy. Neither of them, neither of them. She has to not be okay, this girl. Is she okay now? We'll get to it.

Okay. We'll get to it. We'll get to her standing and like what what's going on with her oh my god okay but like yeah what a fucking traumatic thing to go through obviously like what were her injuries again so she had deep uh uh traumatic head injuries and from the axe and she had a severed jugular vein oh the oh she's the jugular one oh my god wow okay she freaking survived um and this adds to this whole 911 call or you know whatever call the the emergency call where henry 10 minutes in is like oh yeah my sister's still alive you know remember she's the one who was like moving oh my god how fucking dark like to know she survived i would think if like if you've wasted exactly minutes on the phone with somebody else like my first thought was oh she's moving now but like with the amount of time he's wasted like she's not gonna make it right and he almost makes you think

like maybe he didn't want her to you know what i mean like oh god it's just adds so many dark elements to it and like even if he had nothing to do with it why the fuck didn't he say my sister's still alive and someone's attacked her with an axe. Exactly. Bring an ambulance now. You know, it's just like, where is your head? Yeah. Oh, it's infuriating. So anyway, let's get back to the 911 call. Well, OK, first, I want to mention that as soon as first responders realized that Marley was still alive in this whole brutal scene, they rushed her to the hospital.

She was put in critical care. And so I just want to point that out real quick. We'll get back to her story the hospital. She was put in critical care. And so I just want to point that out real quick, and we'll get back to her story as well. But Henry, the one who called, I keep saying 911, but I'm assuming it's a different number in South Africa. So I'm not sure what the number is. But Henry, who called emergency services, was the least injured. So maybe this does answer our question of like a gentle axe wound because uh here we go henry how conveniently only suffered minor lacerations and instead of it being from an axe it was from a knife oh he was all like part of me wants to be like oh that's better but like no it's

not it's not but since but it's in comparison it feels like the the damage would be more minor they were very shallow laceration like just little cuts like it was almost like he had to do it for the appearance of the story uh-huh and it's sort of like well why was everyone attacked with an axe and then you got these little cuts from a knife right it doesn't make sense yeah so he was covered in his family's blood um and this is henry's story so i'm going to tell you what happened from henry's point of view allegedly henry says he was in the ensuite bathroom using his phone when he heard the attacks begin outside his bedroom and he came out to see the attacker in the room with Rudy. Henry screamed for help and his dad Martin then allegedly ran from the other side of the house, tried to jump over Rudy's bed to tackle the

intruder who landed a blow to Martin's head and pushed him back on the bed. Terrified, Henry was frozen in place, couldn't move, and stood there while his sister Marley and his mom Teresa were also attacked. Then the assailant turned the axe on henry who wrestled for his life the axe fell to the floor and the attacker pulled a knife on henry which also ended up on the floor in the struggle under rudy's bed he got a few like shallow cuts in on henry and then the attacker fled henry said he gave chase down the stairs he threw he says he threw the axe at the attacker as he ran and the attacker landed in the wall and then fell to the floor on the landing where police later found it we're gonna get back to that too okay good because wow the questions i have are out of

control it's like he says he threw it down the stairs and it went into the wall on the landing and fell into the landing like literal axe throwing like axe throwing at at a fun bar arcade situation um and so he says that the intruders fled he heard multiple voices and indicating there was more than one assailant and he said the main attacker was a black man of, in a balaclava and gloves to conceal his identity. Henry says he pursued him on the stairs, then fell on the stairs and became unconscious. And I think if I'm remembering correctly from the Red Handed episode, he did have, I think it was a seizure disorder or something similar. So, you know, perhaps that was what he was claiming happened, that he had an episode and, like, lost consciousness.

But again, we're going to get into, like, the poking holes in all of this. Well, sure, sure, sure. Also, and then I assume he then comes to and the attacker's gone. Yes. So, like, in theory, in theory, now the police are police are like on a manhunt for someone with a massive axe hole in their back um no because i don't think they got hit with anything he oh sorry he threw the axe but it hit the wall and fell instead of the wall i thought he hit the person and the person at the wall oh no no i'm sorry the axe he threw down the stairs aiming at them but missed yeah i should have cleared it no no i hit the wall my own brain

hit the wall yeah hit the wall and then clattered to the ground basically okay that makes a that's a much better cover yeah definitely did not hit that did not hit the killer because that would have been damn like he like that's a good that's good aim but good aim but no not good aim uh so yeah so he says he went unconscious uh while going down the stairs and came to uh later he said he woke up hours later and called for help. My God, I can't wait to get into like the evidence. The scary, the eerie part to me that we'll just never know, I guess. Or maybe we will if the story goes a certain direction. But what really freaks me out is like,

if we were to assume that the storyline ends with Henry being the killer of his family and he waited around for he's waited around for hours to call the ambulance to then like say oh I was unconscious what was he doing for those hours like was he looking at them was he just hanging out on his phone so I do have some answers for you okay okay no i'm glad you asked because can you imagine just like making a sandwich and there's blood pouring down the stairs like a waterfall it's chilling and like the again to bring up again that marley was alive this whole freaking time oh my god you're right and that his brother was probably alive for hours like maybe he was again waiting for them to die. Yeah. Wow.

I'm not sure. But it's definitely a theory I had. Oh, my God. Okay. But I do have some intel as to what he was doing during that time. Yeah. So it seemed that at this point, Marley and Henry, so Henry who called and then Marley who was in the hospital, were the surviving siblings of this like brutal crime by a stranger and were lucky to be alive. So Marley remained in the hospital.

She went through months of surgeries and treatments and thankfully, you know, came to and survived. Henry went to live with his uncle Andre, who was his mom, Teresa's brother. So 10 days after the attack, Marley, who was in the ICU and had been under police protection so that, you know, nobody could get to her, woke up from this coma or this, you know, being unconscious. And she could not make a statement about the attack. She suffered from retrograde amnesia. retrograde amnesia so of course it's like the most you know it's like if this were a movie you know that's probably how it would go that she would wake up and not remember what happened right which like by the way like i i mean i don't know her side of the story i don't know or i don't know people with retrograde amnesia after trauma but like i kind of wonder if like

it helps her process like yeah i wonder if it's like a defense mechanism of your brain to just say like, yeah, we're not going to remember this part, you know? Yeah. But also let's remember like this poor woman, not only did she, she's 16,

right? That's all she was. She's six. She's 16 year old. This has happened to her, whether or not she remembers it, this whole trauma happened to her. She wakes up in a hospital.

Probably all she wants are her parents. Yeah. And exactly. She has to learn. She has to find out from everybody no no this you're it it's horrible i can't even it's like it's like oh yeah wow it's just next level um tragedy and she wakes up she can't make a statement she's has this retrograde amnesia she specifically could not remember the night of the attack or the week leading up to it and apparently um considering the extent of her trauma emotional and physical this is a pretty normal response um this isn't it wasn't like surprising to anyone that she couldn't remember what had happened um she went to stay with her uncle and aunt and hen Henry was actually not allowed to see

Marley during the investigation because, as you so astutely guessed, they were suspicious of him immediately, and they wanted to make sure Marley was kept out of his sight and influence. So Henry left his family's place to live in a guest house, and Marley stayed with her aunt and uncle once she got out of the hospital. Five months after the attack, Marley and Henry actually did see each other under supervision and Marley was overjoyed to be reunited with her brother. I mean, we have to imagine like this is the only surviving immediate family member she has. I mean, you would not want to believe that your own brother

did this to your parents and your you know what i mean and to you i wonder if there was um you'll probably bring this up but i wonder if there's there was any history like i wonder if she like maybe wasn't that surprised that he would do it because maybe maybe there was history of like him already having some mental health problems or something so or was this like was this completely like unheard of to the rest honestly hard to say because his like i will let you know now that like marley and his aunt and they all think he's innocent like they don't think he did it um and i can imagine why you would have to believe that yeah because like why would you ever think especially as marley like oh he attacked me with an axe like yeah you would have to go through a lot of a lot more trauma

to to believe that to have to get yourself to convince yourself to live with that yeah and convince yourself of that so you know i don't blame them for one second for being over you know she's excited to see her brother she's like finally i have someone who can understand and you know a member of my family and so they were able to see each other under supervision. And in the meantime, Henry broke up with the girlfriend that he had been dating and tried to continue on with life, despite the media being all over this media storm. The press latched on to Henry. They tried to dig up anything they could find on him. They alleged that Henry was a tick addict, which is what they call meth in South Africa.

Oh, OK. And so one man claimed to be Henry's drug dealer. And some of Henry's classmates back in Australia confirmed that he was indeed a heavy drug user. He had actually spent some time in a private rehab facility in Cape Town. But, you know, just having an addiction does not make someone a murderer. So it's sort of like, you know, they're digging this up and putting this out there, but it's not proof of anything, really. So some thought maybe even though this wasn't proof that he was a murderer, maybe it pointed to a motive. motive so it was alleged that the van burda parents had actually cut henry off because of his addiction and maybe stopped giving him money um because he was spending it on drugs

so that was one of the theories that like henry was angered by being cut off but it didn't really add up because he did live at home and his parents like clearly supported him financially and they paid for his rehab it's not like they kicked him out and cut him off and didn't let him live with them or didn't feed him like i don't know right right it's sort of dynamic it's weird it doesn't make total sense and despite the obvious suspicion hanging over henry theresa's family like his mom mom's family, like his mom's family, adamantly defended his innocence. As far as I know, they still do. And they knew their nephew really well. This was a really close family. And they could not comprehend that Henry would do something so heinous.

So the argument, the best guess so far is that it was drug induced. The best guess, not that it was drug induced, because guess not that it was drug induced because i don't think he was on drugs but that um maybe he was either cut off from buying more drugs and was angry angered about it like angry at his parents or perhaps the other theory, which Red Handed kind of discussed, was that his brother Rudy was like very high performing. His sister was like very successful and his parents were both extremely successful. And he had, you know, dropped out of college, gone to rehab, had this drug addiction he was struggling with. Perhaps there was this dynamic of like being the, you know, I don't know, child with the least, the fewest accomplishments. And he felt this like pressure and snapped. You know, that's another theory. the perspective that the family had on the inside of like this is how our family works and you know

if that's the best um reason they could come up with it still feels that's why this case is so weird because it's like there isn't a clear motive and like why would you axe murder your entire family without a reason yeah yeah it's very strange if your reason is that you're threatened by your sibling success it just doesn't feel like enough that would be like yeah it doesn't feel like enough that doesn't feel like it at all i think it was on red-handed or somewhere else where i heard perhaps he tried perhaps he attacked his brother and then was like i gotta cover this up and panicked and killed everyone else to like try and stage it but that's again that's an extreme reaction it's an extreme reaction for someone who seems to not have any signs of a mental illness or i mean Or I mean, if he was if he was using it all, maybe.

I mean, if he were maybe in withdrawal or something, or maybe he was like if he happened if he happened to do drugs recently and did a lot, maybe. Yeah, I don't know. None of it seems to add up. I'm trying to think of anything and nothing. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know the details of the drugs. I mean could be wrong maybe he was on drugs but even the way he reacted afterward it seemed so calm and like yeah collected it didn't seem like he was in some sort of frenzied state or i actually am association i am also now starting to slip onto the other side

now where i'm i like almost currently at least side with him. Like I was like, like maybe he was just in shock, but then I think of like, what was, I don't, I don't know what's going on. I am confused.

Very confusing. It's very confusing. And like, I think we'll both end up back on the side that he did it just because there's more to go through but okay okay but still it it's really hard to swallow because it's like why like it the why is what's missing and it's yeah it's rough um and maybe there's a why we just don't know about that like we just don't know um and that might be what's going on. But, you know, maybe he's a psychopath and was just like, I want to do that.

Like, who knows? Like, we really don't know. Yeah. He could have had a mental illness and none of his family was aware of it. Yeah. Especially because if he was 20, right, that's usually when a lot of things kick in for the first time. So maybe he was showing signs and only so many years had gone where he could have covered it up or something. Right, right.

I mean, to be fair, as far as we know now, he doesn't have any lingering mental illness issues, you know. Yeah. But maybe. This is a tricky one. It is a tricky one. And so I do understand why Marley and like why his extended family believes that he didn't do it you know i can see why they'd be like for it to be so out of character yeah exactly that too it's it's it's unsettling almost yeah um all right so despite the obvious suspicion his family

is adamantly defending him um they said they knew him really well. They couldn't comprehend. And Martin's family, like his dad's side of the family, was a little more apprehensive about this. They were like not sure whether they were adamantly defending him or not, but they did offer to foot his defense bill. So they did pay for his defense lawyer. So on June 13, 2016, which is a year and a half after the attack henry's lawyers heard from police that henry's arrest was inevitable and they advised him to turn himself in so he did he was charged with three counts of homicide one count of attempted homicide and one count of obstruction of justice and the bail was set at a little under 7 000 us dollars that's it that does not make sense at all

seven thousand dollars well was there is there a reason you're gonna say or is that's wait so he's white i guess i don't know wasn't that isn't that also like you actually take a person you only have to pay a percentage of that or something? There's something like that. Yeah. It's like you don't even have to pay the full amount in cash up front or something. There's there's like all sorts. I mean, I don't know if that's in South Africa, but I do. Yeah, there is some caveat. So then seven thousand could only be like seven hundred. Well, so they did pay the seven thousand. His family could very easily afford that again. They were pretty wealthy. And so they paid the $7,000 and he was free to live at home while he awaited trial, even though he's being,

uh, being accused of three murders. So I personally think it's fucked up, but I also get so worried that like my American brain has been warped to think that like, I mean, I think it's, I personally think it should have been so much more but i also

wonder like i don't know i don't know i'm i i guess in my mind i feel like it should be like at least half a million dollars or something well i think that's what it usually is and i mean again maybe we just don't know south african you know the justice system justice system yeah i don't i don't know but you know i think what's frustrating about it is that you see people charged with marijuana possession. It's like twenty five thousand. And then it's like, oh, you murdered your entire family. I feel like I feel like I'm just used to this. These things being completely unfair.

Yes. Yeah. I mean, like you said, he's a rich white guy. So I I feel like you wanted a higher reaction out of me but i kind of just i'm so this the world is so on fire that nothing surprises me i'm just like well it's fair yeah i don't i you would he if you were watching this episode on like law and order if you're watching the story on an episode it would be an out of control amount of money and i would think that was deserved based on how prime of

a suspect he seems right but but yeah i just don't know what their legal system looks like and also i'm just not surprised anymore that rich white men get their get their way no and speaking of uh right to go right off that uh at some point before trial he was arrested for possessing weed but was released on even lesser bail for that because it they just didn't yeah they probably gave him a hug and said have a good day so so the actual court battle which was very bitter and intense began on april 4th 2017 where prosecution called into question henry's story from that terrible night his version of events they are now poking the holes so okay this is where we get into more of the details first of all there was no sign of forced entry

into the house and i'll have you recall the description of the security at this place like right security guards cctv locks cameras everything, everything. It's like highest security. And so the fact that nobody, there was no sign of a break-in was very strange. There was no broken windows, no doors that had been tampered with, nothing. Not only that, but a state security guards confirmed there was no suspicious activity the night of the attack and they were working that night they didn't witness anything cctv recorded nothing the electric fences surrounding the estate had not been breached according to motion sensors um it was like as if a ghost had gotten in and out without even and on their way out you'd think if they were fleeing that at least it would be on camera would at least be one bloody footstep.

Anything. A witness. Anything. And, I mean, if it was, if it only happened to their house, that would mean that this person must have a vendetta against that family or a reason. Yes, exactly. Unless in this story it was just a random person who just grabbed the quickest house he could find in the neighborhood and just decided to kill people for no reason. And like, why would you pick one that had such a high security system if you were just randomly killing people? Like, wouldn't you go somewhere where there was not a security guard and a camera?

Right. And the attackers, you literally just pointed this out, would have had to run through pools of blood while they fled and what they stayed and mopped up so that their footprints wouldn't or they just like febreze their shoes or something right and just yeah just like ran out the door and so the only footprints leading away from the crime scene were henry's the only footprints so hello uh there was absolutely no evidence that anyone else was in the house and he said there were multiple voices so you'd think somebody would have left a mark yeah anything nope there's no sign of anybody else next uh perhaps even more baffling nothing was stolen

so again you're getting on that point too like, why would they have picked this random family unless they had some vendetta? Yeah. Maybe to rob them. But nothing was stolen. There was a laptop right by the front door just sitting on a table. Still there when police arrived. Not taken. There was jewelry, TVs, appliances, even the luxury cars in the garage that the attackers could have grabbed the keys and like driven out.

Nothing. It was all left in the exact spots it's as if someone showed up with the sole intent of brutally axe murdering an entire family yeah and also yeah so he threw the axe into the wall which means the axe is still in play right do we have fingerprints on this axe we will get to the axe for sure uh that is definitely coming up um okay i don't necessarily know fingerprints, but there is more proof, more evidence against Henry. I would just think like bloody hands would be on this axe, right? And like you could get DNA off that.

Fingerprints? Yeah, I mean, I assume he did say he threw it down the stairs. So I guess maybe. I don't know. I don't know. i don't know i don't know i don't know i was just wondering if if it's already that'd be the the murder weapon is exactly what i'd be researching first and doing all my stuff on oh yeah we'll get to that for sure so the next problem um remember when henry was like unconscious for hours uh yeah so it's so weird because while he was unconscious for hours he happened to call his girlfriend somehow and oh it's like how did that happen i don't know well i was well i said it

earlier i was like was he on his phone and then in my mind i was like well he wouldn't do that because we can just trace anything well we would just they could see any activity on your phone well and that's exactly right they could and he didn't even care or realize he called his girlfriend 16 year old bianca vander west husen at 4 22 a.m but got no answer um let's ignore that she's 16 and he's 20 okay let's ignore that uh-huh and so he was allegedly unconscious when this phone call went out. But she must remember. Wait, they didn't talk on the phone. No.

So it was like four in the morning. So she didn't answer. Oh, okay. But the outgoing call was there. I was going to say, if he had the nerve to talk to her. Hey, babe. Just unconscious. Yeah.

You up? It's 422 a.m. Yeah. Then they pulled up his search history on Google. Okay. Idiot. He searched for local emergency numbers, which isn't strange in and of itself. Because sure, if there was an emergency and-

You'd want to know the number. You'd want to look up the number. Makes sense. But he searched for the numbers three hours before he actually called one of the numbers. Uh-huh so there was he looked up the numbers had it noted and then like left it for three hours before actually calling emergency services uh-huh even weirder his parents actually kept a list of emergency numbers on the fridge that he knew of for quick access if they needed to it was as if he was like debating what to do which number specifically to call um to you know try and just find the best path whereas like

if your family was axe murdered you think you would just call and be like help me anybody you know not not spend hours ruminating on which number to call. So anyway, he was basically considering his options instead of immediately making a call, which is also weird because remember there were, there were these security guards 24 seven. He could have literally run out the front door and flagged a security guard at the entrance of this estate. Like he didn't even need to call anyone. He could have run to a neighbor, but nothing for hours. He did nothing't even need to call anyone. He could have run to a neighbor, but nothing. For hours, he did nothing. He Googled emergency numbers. He called his girlfriend. And then he smoked several cigarettes. Okay. So he's not unconscious. Like we know that

because there were several cigarette butts. So this guy is calling or sorry sorry he's not calling he's smoking cigarettes he says he did this to try to calm down um and like to an extent i'm like sure if you're in shock because your whole family has been murdered i can see like grabbing a cigarette and making the call i guess but like he knew his sister was still alive yeah and he's still like let me calm down and have like three cigarettes before i make the phone call yeah it just does not add up to me i would argue he probably had to smoke a bunch of cigarettes to calm down before he made the call yes that's a great point like if you were guilty and you knew you were about because i've i have wondered about this in probably an odd amount of

times but like if you're the in-between period if i were to commit a massive crime that was like obviously going to get found out the time in between that happening and people finding out the amount of anxiety that i would be dealing with of like i better just rip it off like a bandit there's no going back back. You've got to play your cards right. Yeah. You're in this weird gray space of like nobody knows what I've done, but there's also no going back. It's almost like this is your last chance to try and set things up for yourself. Yeah. So I would imagine he had to have a lot of cigarettes to make sure he felt like he got his story straight. He had a lot of cigarettes.

He Googled every emergency number he could find. He called his girlfriend. Like, he literally, girlfriend like he literally and then he was like oh i know i'll tell them i passed out for three hours when like he obviously didn't he didn't think it through he no he didn't another cigarette i think he needed another just one more would have fixed it yeah so he smoked several cigarettes trying to calm down allegedly um but again on the emergency call he says his sister is still moving so like who stands there and smokes several cigarettes while his sister is bleeding

to death well maybe the person who did it and wants her to die i'm just yep just a theory um and again if he had been unconscious i mean now we're just like hammering at home but like how had he searched on google for emergency numbers doesn't matter right he's lying he's lying um so doctors questioned uh henry's blacking out story and uh unlike in the movies most concussions don't cause unconsciousness and if they do it's usually only a minute or two not three or four hours as he claimed and to be unconscious for as long as he was he would likely have had a severe brain injury but when he was treated after the attack he actually had zero signs of any brain trauma any head trauma at all he had to have known they were going to check not a scratch

you'd think so but you'd think they'd be like oh maybe, was he like just hope? Was he was his plan like just going on the miracle route and just being like, what? I'm fine. That's that's not what any of us. It must be because he didn't want to hit himself in the head, I guess. So he was like, oh, I'll just fake it. Yeah. So not only that, but the fact that he made a phone call, Googled emergency numbers along with his behavior at the scene indicated he was aware and awake this whole time. So this blackout thing seems like bullshit. And like I said, he did have epilepsy. So if he'd had a seizure, like he may have been unconscious for some time. However, this is where it gets a little bit dicey, even in terms of like him having this seizure disorder, is that blood based forensics indicated he had been standing up the entire time he wasn't ever laying down so it's like if he was unconscious if he did

have a seizure he wouldn't have to fall down standing the whole time and so there's no evidence at all that he was horizontal or had like even slumped down or anything like that. He was standing the whole time. So it just does not add up at all. Yeah. Then there's the family's maid. Oh,

damn, okay. Late to the show, okay. Enter precious Manyongani who worked as the family's maid. She came forward and said, this is where the axe comes in, that the axe looked a lot like the axe that the Van Breda's kept in the house, that it's their axe. And sure enough, it was. It was their axe. And remember the knife the attacker pulled on Henry?

It came from their kitchen. Okay. remember the knife the attacker pulled on henry came from their kitchen okay so like by his account this person who came in and attacked them would have shown up without a weapon but with the intent to brutally murder everyone and they thought oh i'll figure it out when i get there wow what doesn't make any sense um So obviously it's a strain. It would be strange for attackers to break in without any weapons, find weapons in the house, kill the family and then steal nothing and then leave not one footprint or any evidence on camera or anywhere. Additionally, nothing in the kitchen had been rifled through. So it's sort of like the intruder would have known exactly which drawer

to open and grab the knife. None of the other drawers had been messed through, messed with. So this person, this intruder would have had a very lucky guess. It all came from inside the house. Exactly. Like there's no other logical way to explain it. And remember how Henry threw the axe at the intruder well blood spatter specialist said the axe was actually firmly planted in the wall on purpose as if someone had gone up and smashed the axe into the wall oh shit so basically he didn't throw it from a distance he just whacked it in he just whacked it and then said oh yeah i threw that down there and they said no that clearly someone stood next to the wall and smashed it into the wall.

I feel like now with a bunch of people who work at ax throwing places, they'd be like, that is not possible. Yeah, they'd know the distance. That's like a new forensic field, you know? Yeah. And so it was suspected that Henry did this to create this narrative, this scene that fit his narrative, that he threw the axe down the stairs. So Henry's defense pointed out that Marley's blood DNA was not found on Henry, although the rest of the family's blood was, which called into question another person. And this person was Marley's own boyfriend, James. So now they're throwing another suspect into the ring. Marley

was allegedly in a relationship her family did not approve of. And so they went and got the text, you know, text logs. And here's one of the texts that she had once sent her boyfriend. They are being assholes. Can they fuck off forever? Please, can't you just come and live with me? And the boyfriend replied, right now, I feel like I want to murder the people that are around you at the moment, and I am inches away from losing it with them and breaking down completely. Whoa. So they're teenagers. It's a bad look.

Yeah. But like James testified that this was an emotional text exchange over a fight that Marley had with her parents. And Marley had even stayed with James and his family for several days after her hospitalization. It's just hard to believe that like he would come and attack the family so brutally and then like also attack Marley. Yeah. And sever her her jugular that's a good point you know even though she survived it's like she survived but like barely right yeah like she she was clearly uh like I don't think if you really loved her and won her out of that house and you won her all to yourself you would get her jugular that's not the way to do it yeah exactly exactly and she also had the most extensive

defensive wounds from the entire family right so she was the one who fought the most bitterly against her attacker yeah i don't think it was a boyfriend yeah the the context just doesn't add up from that one text where he's like i want to kill your family it's like they're teenagers they're're dramatic. She's going through a fight. Her family doesn't want her to date him. I mean, it's just like tale as old as time, you know? Yeah, I agree with you. So the evidence outside of this text really doesn't add up the context. It just doesn't work. And the jury believed it. They were like, yeah, we don't think that that's the right guy then came the rest of

the forensic evidence which was so to speak the nail in the coffin for henry so here's the rest of it okay if we need it anymore here it is the blood spatter on henry from his mom dad and brother indicated that he was standing extremely close to them while they were attacked which doesn't line up with him just standing frozen while he watches everyone get attacked. And why would he be right up next to the person killing them without actually interfering? It doesn't make any sense. Finally, the most damning evidence of all is that Henry's defensive wounds appeared self-inflicted. I think we all saw this coming. The lacerations were shallow some were barely scratches and they all looked extremely similar and intentionally clean and like done just very

purposefully not like they happened in a fight as he said right he had no bruises he had no signs of like having wrestled with anyone like he said he did and although he was sometimes emotional during his testimony court witnesses found henry's demeanor unnerving apparently prosecution even asked him to hold an axe and reenact how he had seen this assailant using it against his family and without any distress whatsoever in his face he was like okay and he took the axe and he started like acting out brutally murdering his family oh and everyone was like whoa that doesn't even faze him yeah this should traumatize you you should not want to do this be on like uncomfortable acting out your family's murder that you witnessed i feel like it just wasn't like thought through like i feel like if i

if you wanted to like at least have some of that not found like he should have washed his face or something before while he was waiting for the ambulance to get there and then he could have played like the oh I didn't know to keep it on for evidence right right right or he could have just done the self-inflicted wounds is a bad one too I just feel like there are certain things that he could have at least thought through of like oh I should act like this is really hard for me to do instead of like. Yeah. It makes you wonder if he just didn't know or didn't care or like why he was so.

Yeah. Blase about it. It's freaky. It's weird. That's weird. So witnesses at this point were stunned because they're literally just watching this kid act out his parents' murder with an axe in court. So finally, after 67 court days and over a year since its start, the trial concludes and the judge finds Henry guilty on all counts. So on June 7th, 2018, I think I even mentioned a jury and I think I was incorrect on that there was not a jury it was like witnesses uh in the in the trial yeah it says the court not the um not the

jury so i was mistaken about that so the judge finds him guilty on all counts and on june 7 2018 the now 25 year old henry was sentenced to three life sentences one for each death plus 15 years for Marley's attempted homicide and one year for obstruction of justice. So as the judge read Henry's sentence, Henry looked intense, but yet still cold and unemotional. Just kind of like he's trying to just hear what's coming. Like he just heard that he's going to be in prison for the rest of his life just looks pretty cold and unfazed um he later appealed but it was dismissed and to this day he and some others in his life including his current girlfriend and his aunt still maintain his innocence they actually interviewed his girlfriend and his aunt on 60 minutes australia

and they genuinely think he had nothing to do with it okay sorry I know that was really but I was just like that's exactly how I felt honestly I I guess you know the power of love you just want it to not be true and his girlfriend seems very sweet and kind and smart. Like, I don't think I think she just does not want to see that side, you know. And she said, like, I the reason she knows it wasn't him is she knows him. But again, like, can you ever really know someone? That's what I always say is like, you know, you think you know them. I maybe you don't. you know you think you know them i i maybe you don't i have uh i mean i feel like we've both probably thought about that a million times but i really do think if if you were all of a sudden

accused of something like that i i think despite like clear evidence i would still be in incredible denial about it yeah yeah but to be fair this girlfriend he met after the murders do you know what i mean it's not like he she knew him with fresh eyes yeah it's almost like she knew him or she knows him now but like she didn't it's not like oh i knew him and his family i knew their dynamic i knew him his whole life. Sort of like she found out after the fact. So yeah, I mean, his aunt, again, his sister and his aunt, I understand not being able to believe that about someone. I fully think it's him, but you know, and he's been convicted of it. So for all intents and purposes it was him but um some people really do you know crazy

things have happened maybe we'll find out more but to me i'm pretty sure he did it yeah well i yeah i don't know but i have a hunch yeah i mean and like according to the law he did do it he's been convicted he's the murderer so it's like you know whatever but so marley as for marley i know you asked about her earlier she recovered from her injuries she said to be doing well but doing her best to stay out of the spotlight and live her life in peace so you know let's all respect that not that i yeah doubt anyone would do you know but just just so everyone's aware just for fun let's mention that like you know she doesn't leave everyone alone want to be part of you know this storyline

which i fully understand she deserves peace uh more than most i think so that is the story of the van burda family murders whoa what a doozy right it's a really good story but i i also just the talk about the gravity of the story that's a that's a rough one it's very rough and he how old is he today do you know um he was 25 when he was sentenced in 2018. So he's probably 29. Okay. Wow. He's like our age, 30 maybe. Yeah.

Wow, wow, wow. That's something else. It is weird that we both pick stories with people that survived. Yeah. And like should not have, by the way. And really someone tried hard to not let them survive, you know? Yeah. Boy.

I guess we got to do an after chat now. We do have to do an after chat. For Patreon. Well, everybody, we just did a whole other thing where we talked for a little bit, but then we found out all of it is now delayed information because we're recording it. The Cryptid Poetry Slam happened last night and i spent a whole like five minutes uh going on a tangent about it halfway through the episode so we deleted that but we hope everyone had fun last night at the cryptic poetry slam we were so proud to support the national abortion federation and we are

thankful to everyone who was involved um and i'm sure it went off without a hitch, right? Yo, yeah. Oh, yeah. Until then, I guess I'll see you in that after chat. Perfect. See you soon. And that's why we drink.