And That's Why We Drink - E289 Jewish Deli Chocolate Milk and Microsoft PowerPoint Dissolve Ghosts

Episode Date: August 21, 2022

Welcome to episode 1... we mean 289! If you're in a funk, don't worry, because Christine can get you out of it with her creepy real life story of seeing a hotel ghost in Knoxville, TN! Then Em covers a tale we've heard about but never knew this amount of details; Spring-Heeled Jack! And on the true crime side Christine tells us the tragic and gruesome story of the Lake Oconee murders. Do you know Jack with the witchy shoes who kills on Cutthroat Lane? ...and that's why we drink! We're SO bummed we had to cancel our cryptid poetry slam last weekend! We're working hard to bring you all the poetry and auction updates as a special episode so stay tuned! And if you haven't gotten a refund from Moment House yet contact [e-mail]

happy day um oh happy episode 180 no that's not right are you kidding me i don't know every for like a year now christine thinks every episode is like 189 and or i don't understand what's happening i think the problem is and that's or beachy sandy is on episode 191 or something so i'm like very mixed up well this is only how are you only 100 episodes behind us uh well we started in december of 2018 so only. In my mind, it has been so much shorter. I know. It was pretty, um, it was right after my wedding. So. Oh, wow. It really has been that long. Okay. Well, then that makes sense. Well, yeah. Just add a hundred every time because we're on 290.

That's smart idea. That's smart. You'll forget. I'll forget. I'll forget. That's okay. In 30 seconds. I'll have forgotten. You'll be like, welcome to episode 189. Remember that time that time when i said welcome to episode one and you were like that is the farthest from the possibility like no i think we had to re-record i was like don't embarrass yourself like that um how are you um i'm i'm fine i'm still in my funk. I don't know. It's lasted for a while. Maybe I need a therapist. But here's the fun part. I do have a good reason. Ask me why I drink.

Hey, Em, why do you drink this week? I did not see that coming after 290 episodes. What? Thank you for surprising me with that question. Oh, you're welcome. I'd like to keep you on your toes. I know it. I drink because I officially, now that horrid ambulance experience. Oh, boy. I think I said it in the last episode, too, but I was like, that was actually a good thing. Because we'd been waiting for evidence of it, an official official diagnosis that way I could get a surgery date.

So as of by the time this comes out, I don't know what it is yet. But in like a few days, I have another doctor's appointment for my surgery consultation and I get a surgery date. Thank God. So and my goal is to have it done before the before we go back and do our September shows. So if that happens, it's one problem less. Although I'm also worried about my blood pressure. And so I don't know if some of the symptoms I'm experiencing on a daily basis are blood pressure related. So it's going to be its own headache when I get the surgery. And then if I still feel certain things going on, I'm going to be like, God damn it.

Well, hopefully, at least now you can you can hope that we have one thing to scratch off the list yeah a big one a big a big one a big old heart so I'm so happy for you thank you so that's why I drink I actually forgot to get a drink but I can tell you it would have been water so anyway I'm actually I'm gonna get a big old cup of chocolate milk at the end of this as a reward so oh my do you have that in your fridge or are you gonna go get it somewhere i have it in my fridge and i have been using um like old jewish deli chocolate syrup which is lovely yum so um we have we have the old school hershey's too but um yeah for my birthday a while ago i

think i said this already but allison took me to a museum of jewish deli stuff and the gift shop was like literally just like a basically a jewish deli i mean what a dream gift shop it was just i i love my people and so um anyway i ended up getting a bunch of stuff including that chocolate sauce chocolate milk has been quite a success in this house lately why do you drink Christine? I saw a ghost shut up I'm dead serious

again the second one of my life and they've terrified so it was in your haunted ass house no it was when I was on my trip The second one of my life. And they've, okay. Terrified. So it was in your haunted ass house. No, it was when I was on my trip. What? Oh, well, you went to Georgia.

Yeah. I saw a scary ghost. Was it in your hotel? Yes. Was it in your hotel room? Yes. Forget it. I know.

What happened? Oh my God, I was so scared. And I couldn't text you because I was like, I want to tell Em on the show, but I was freaking out, so I had to text my mom, and she was like, okay. And I was like, no, somebody needs to be concerned. Question of the year. Yes. Did your Capricorn no-nonsense husband see this ghost? No. Of course he didn't.

Well, of course not. But, you know, that would be too easy, right? But he did seem to believe me, which I appreciated. What happened? Okay, so we were on our way back. So I went to Georgia for a lovely, I got to reunite with a lot of my cousins that I haven't seen in years pre-COVID

and see all their babies. And so all the babies got to meet each other and it was very special and wonderful and like just a very happy weekend. But so it was very quick turnaround. So Blaze and I stopped in Nashville on the way down and it was so chaotic because it was like bachelorette parties everywhere. It was like Friday night and it was, it was a lot. Let's just put it that way. And so on the way back, I was like, why don't we stop in Knoxville? I've never been in Knoxville. It's the same distance.

And so we just randomly picked the Courtyard Marriott in downtown Nashville. I'm sorry, Knoxville. Oh, so it wasn't even like us, like, no, the spooky places. No. And I told my brother this and he was like, honestly, that's more convincing than if you had said you were staying in some haunted place and we're like looking for ghosts. And I was like, I guess that's true. I guess I was like totally blindsided.

So we drove up to Knoxville. We had a lovely dinner. I actually love Knoxville. I had never been there before. Have you? It's really pretty. Yeah. Yeah.

We were just like astounded. It was so pretty. And it was very quiet compared to Nashville. I mean, it was like a Monday or Sunday. So you know, that might be why but we were on a street called Gay Street. And I was like, hell yeah. And then I was like, that would be too, too, too easy if this were actually like the LGBT part of town. But then there was a theater district right there. And it was like, an art park. And there were all these cool young people and I was like damn this is a really neat area so I was very impressed with Knoxville went to bed and about four in the morning I heard in my room like I was dead asleep and I heard I

got like you know that feeling when you're like so asleep but then you feel like something's like pulling you awake like something like yeah an outside stimuli like somebody's talking or trying to wake you and you're like getting pulled out of your dream so i was like getting woken up and i was like what is that and then i still had my eyes closed i woke up and i realized oh god that's one of leona's toys and it's talking and it was going i know and it was going and i was like what the hell and it was going like she has like this little cell phone and it goes like, give me a call. Let's talk or something. And it started going off. And I was like, what the F? So I like kind of with my eyes open and there is a man sitting at the foot of my bed, just staring at me, like just sitting there. And I didn't have my glasses on. I just saw like the shape of a man and so I went blaze and literally in front of my eyes it just like evaporated like little particles just evaporated and I was so stunned and then I like whipped my head over to the side and blaze was completely asleep next to me and I went uh-oh that was not blaze just so you know that is

a goose cam situation it was, it was so freaky. And then I realized, I mean, this is probably TMI, but I like, I don't like to sleep with pants on. So I'm in my underwear and I'm sleeping on top of the covers, which is very weird because in hotels, I like to sleep like underneath when it's all tucked in, like tight. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I had been like, I'd like slid in earlier. And so it was all tucked in. And now I

was like laying on top of the covers and everything underneath was like tucked in. How did I get on top of the covers? Like I must have like crawled out. Like, I don't know how I got out. And I was in my underwear and I was just laying there and I was like, so this pervy creepy ghost is just staring at me in my underwear. Oh man, he saw a tush and he came coming in quick. I did not get a good vibe. And so anyway, I got real flipped out and then I had to pee. So I was so scared and I went pee. And then on the way out, I walked into the stroller and I was so scared. I was like, there's a person! Anyway, and then Blaze was like, well, you fell back asleep. I was like, no fell back asleep i was like no i needed

to like lay there for 45 minutes i listened to a meditation i was scared to open my eyes um anyway so it was very real very alarming and did you think it would come back or did you feel like you were stared at at the at the end like did you feel like now you were still being stared no it almost felt like it just disappeared um but i felt like you were alone in the room at least yes i felt like it went away the paranoia would have i would have been like oh it's gonna come back i was just so freaked out i was gonna come back and then i kept looking exactly where i'd seen it to see if like maybe there was something hanging there and i had just imagined it but it was just a blank wall and i was like there was a person sitting there like in and he was in like a white,

like, um, or what are these called? The tank tops. Yeah. It was like in a white tank top undershirt. I get the, like, you're in a hotel room and maybe he like, maybe he died in that room and that was what he was wearing when he was asleep. But like, also that, that aesthetic makes me feel like, I don't know why. I don't know.

Like is another creep factor for some reason. It did. It felt kind of creepy, especially because he was staring at me in my underwear. I was like, you're in an undershirt. I don't like this. I mean, I'm more focused on how you like melted through the blanket. That's what I was so weirded out about.

Showed up on top. There's no way that you've like just, you planned on going to bed soon, but you fell asleep no because no no and because i'd been in there for like watching on my tv on my ipad for like an hour before bed so i was and i do not like to sleep without any covers i hate it and it was freezing in that room so i was like what so i'm like also cold it was horrible what are the odds because like they always people like are always hiding under a cover when they think they see a ghost or yeah there's not even access to one but also how weird is that that if you were already covered like that just lets everyone know like a psa of like

it doesn't matter if you're under the covers or not you will not you will and somehow you will supernaturally end up above the covers. So who cares? It was so weird because I had to get out of bed to pull the covers back to get in bed. You know what I mean? Like it was very unsettling. And it was all tucked in tight underneath you? Yes, it was tight underneath because I had like shimmied in earlier. So it was just bizarre.

I don't know what happened. Did you have a baby cam on Leona? Did you record? No, she was just in a pack and play right next to me. So we didn't have like a camera. I'm telling you now that you've, I mean, they always say that ghosts really just show up with babies and little kids. So I think from now on, every time you're in a hotel room with her, you absolutely have to keep a like a recording baby cam in the room. I don't know if I want to see that.

If somebody's like looking. I do. Send it to me. I would totally,'ll quality quality check for you do a qc every time we stay in a hotel yeah you got to see me in my underwear i guess but you're not going to enjoy that you have slept next to me in your underwear i think we're good i think we've both seen each other in our underwear plenty of times it's not plenty of times i literally barely wear pants around you anymore i'm not even wearing pants right now hey

look at that yeah well, whatever. Anyway, so the first ghost I saw was at Whaley House with Al and now this one. So I've never actually seen, I've heard one, but I've never seen one until, you know, those two. So. Wow, man, that is spooky. I'm so glad I finally got to tell you. I was flipping out. I believe you. I'll tell you that right now. Thank you. I appreciate that. My mom actually believed me when I told her in person and she's like, Oh, well, um, who did it look like? Maybe it was your grandfather. And I was like, no, no, this was not a person I knew. This was a dude at Marriott, a creepy Marriott dude. And she was like, maybe he died in that room. And I was like, man, mom's my mom's believe in me on this one. So, I mean, it is, it is believable, but I also, it really makes me

uncomfortable because I like to tell myself when I go to places like Marriott, I'm like, oh, if I'm nervous about a ghost, I'm like, well, this is like such a like, like an establishment. In my mind, it's, you know what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. It's more like a sterile environment. Like you're not in. It doesn't look like it has the history. No, I totally get that. And that's why I think I was so like blindsided by

it and also I want to add that this Marriott is like brand new like this is like I think they opened like either this year like this spring or so I don't know so that was even property maybe yeah so that was even more surprising I don't know if the building used to be a hotel but then that also gets into like they just renovated the whole thing like a month or two ago maybe it's stirring shit up you know i don't know but it was like a brand new i mean it wasn't fancy but it was like a brand new place so i wonder you know where that came from um so stinking wild oh my god the the word i i wonder if anything else would have happened had you not woken up oh yeah also, so was he, so he wasn't playing with the toy. You just happened to hear the toy.

I heard the toy that woke, it woke me up. And then I like sat up and there was just a man staring at me. And I was like, what the hell? Do you think the toy went off because like Leona rolled over it? Or do you think he was using it as like energy? Yeah, the toy was on the counter under the TV. So there was like no like she didn't have almost like it sucked up it's it's electric you know something and i was wondering

that too i was wondering if it was just because the presence of the spirit or if it was like he did it on purpose to wake me up you know what i mean like yeah but like what a what a weird creepy move to be like i need you to wake up so i can vanish in front of you yeah maybe just like to and that weird thing was too it stayed there until i went blaze and then it like disappeared and i was like what the hell just happened which is one of those creepy ass stories that we've always talked about about when it acknowledges that you've acknowledged yeah oh god it was so scary how did it evaporate was it a melting or fading you know that's so interesting it was almost like particles like it looked like you know um on a powerpoint when you do a custom animation and it like uh-huh i know exactly pixelate yeah or dissolve dissolve it was almost

like little pixelate but like little like dissolve yeah dissolve by the way was my go-to transition on powerpoint i love a good star white but I know that's kind of like very 90s. But, you know, let's make that like Patreon content eventually where we just go through all the old transitions. Favorite custom animation on WordArt. Actually, that sounds so nice on my brain after everything. Honestly, how soothing would that be? Yeah, we can do that today after.

I'm sure everyone's going to sign up for Patreon now that they know we're discussing custom animation word art um i think you'd be surprised at least one person will um but i'm very glad you got to see a ghost i am sorry though that you got to see a ghost it's like one of those things where i'm happy for you but i also don't wish i was you and it's a very you and me thing where i was like at least i have a story like i went back to sleep being all like mad but i was like at least it's like content content for the podcast well i'm glad you had content my thing is just my stupid heart these days and i wanted to tell everyone um i did ask my doctor um because i was like that adenosine really knocked me on my ass and like the thing in the the thing that like i felt my i felt my soul being

ripped out of my body god forget it and so i asked him i was like did i die like what was happening because it certainly felt like a fraction of the death experience like everything i've ever heard of it felt like that and he kind of was wishy-washy on his own. He was like, eh. As in, like, you were on your way to being on your way. But I guess that apparently was not. He was like, so your heart did stop, but you didn't die. And I was like, I don't believe that sentence. So apparently the official medical report is eh. But I got to tell you you it certainly felt i it felt bad

so anyway i just wanted to clear it up because i know last week i was like uh like maybe maybe i i don't know and also i don't want to like be like tasteless about anyone actually experiencing grief or something so but i i really i was confused because I was like, it certainly felt like I was leaving. That's really interesting because you did mention it felt like you were being like sucked out of your body almost, which is like, that is, I guess how people describe it. I remember thinking, I, I, this sounds scary. This is so dramatic, but I remember thinking about my mom and I remember thinking oh she really will be my last memory or she really really it's so dramatic but i was like oh shit i was like oh

wow so this is actually my last thought and then i like blacked out and then i i woke up to them like it's smacking me in the face being like are you okay are you okay i wonder if now you'll have you know that little access to the other side or if it was not enough to get you there. Allison, I don't know if she was serious now, but she texted me after the fact and she was like, are you psychic now? Yeah, I'm wondering. Well, you're the one seeing ghosts, so I'm going to give it a firm no. I know, what the hell is that about? I don't want to be involved. Anyway, just wanted to give everyone an update. If you ever have to get adenosine, apparently you're, you are not going to the other side,

but you will feel like it. You're on your way to going to the other side. You're on your, you're packing the bags, but you don't go on the trip, you know? Wow. What a freaking tale. I mean, what a dramatic year we're having. I know. Well, I'm excited for your ghost story.

I hope for your sanity that it's the last one for a while. Me too. Although you do have a baby now, so you really walked yourself into a paranormal situation. Oh, I know. Well, I'll keep you updated. I'll keep you updated. I do have a story for you today. and oh what are you drinking oh i also forgot my beverage um i do have a bottle of wine here because we had a little and that's why i

drank happy hour last night but um we did it was very lovely it was it was so fun um but it's 1 30 in the afternoon here so i think i'm gonna abstain uh for now now. 130 would mean nothing to me. I know. It's right here. Okay. So this is a folklore situation where we don't know if it was, I think the origins where it was a ghost. And then it kind of turns into an alleged true crimey situation.

Okay. I love it. It's a blend of it all. And this is the story of Spring-Heeled Jack. I love Spring-Heeled Jack. Do you know Spring-Heeled Jack? Yeah. What?

How? Yeah, from Astonishing Legends. Oh, okay. Well, I'm probably going to give an abridged version compared to... Okay. Astonishing Legends, I feel like all their episodes are just like four to six hours long. Yeah. Yeah. So anything you tell will be abridged of Astonishing Legends. Yeah.

No matter how long. I've been trying to shorten my stories too recently. So just because I feel like it's a little overboard every now and then with the details. So definitely an abridged version so i think that's probably appreciated by most people um on our not not you shortening your stories but us um limiting our talking no i i i'm trying my best so i'm trying to keep everything offended i'm i feel like i'm just i'm going through a phase where i feel like if it's not necessary don't you know interesting don't linger don't because i feel like for it's not necessary, don't, you know, don't linger.

Because I feel like for, there was, it was years ago now, but I feel like there was a phase where people had said that, like, I wasn't giving enough detail. So then I tried really hard, but then my stories got freakishly long. And so I'm just like, you know what, let's just do whatever the fuck I want to do. Short and sweet. Yeah, see, that's exactly why you and I need to stay off Reddit because we take everything too personally.

I have not been on Reddit in months, but I have been going through stuff behind the scenes where I'm just overthinking everything about myself. So I was just like, you know what? This is like, I love everyone and I appreciate, obviously, our audience and I love working with you, but I just got like just do whatever's gonna make me happy at this point so absolutely I'm trying to set boundaries everywhere including including the things I love doing so one of my boundaries is I'm just gonna do whatever the fuck I want and I feel like I was I was doing um I mean I was doing like eight hours of research a night on notes and then

it ended up just taking so much time to get through them. So anyway, trying to shorten them. I'm still doing my due diligence on research, but I'm backing off and giving myself some mental health. I love that. Okay, so Spring-Heeled Jack, a very abridged version compared to whatever astonishing legends has to offer it would have been no matter what you could have done an eight hour story and it probably would have still been abridged from their version so it's probably let's consider our show um just like uh the commercial version of the teaser trailer it's like the trailer yeah yeah

all right so here is a quote about uh spring-Heeled Jack from a historian named Mike Dash. It started with a ring at a gate and ended with a demonic laugh. Oh, what? Yuck. And that is foreshadowing a story I will tell later about Spring-Heeled Jack. So Spring-Heeled jack is a folklore slash haunting in victorian england this is in 1837 which is the start of the victorian period which also was like during this time was also a big um this was around the same time as the spiritualist era oh sure sure um i don't know if that played into people being more you know willing to believe this

because this seems kind of not believable to me but a little far-fetched but i guess it i would love to see a like a psych study on like mob mentality or something because eventually i don't know mob mentality or group think or whatever the right word is but um because eventually like all these towns just start kind of falling for it so i i wonder what the what the science is there but it's 1837 and this is the first sighting of spring hill jack so the rumors of spring hill jack are that this started as a nickname for a random ghost that was said to be haunting the countryside so if there was a i don't know if something was like messing with your crops or if you saw a shadow run across the field that was unexplainable they would just be like oh that's a

ghost that's a ghost and this was before he had the name spring kill oh i see okay it was just oh that's the ghost of the countryside which what an. I feel like that's the mayor of ghost town or something. But so for example, in the town of Barnes, there was regularly seen this phantom of a large white bull, apparently. I feel like that. I feel like one person said something like that and there's no way everyone

ran with it right away i feel like they're i don't know what the situation was a pretty wild claim like i feel like to say oh i saw a white bull and then other people in town are just like oh my god me too like what it's pretty again someone's someone's lying yeah i don't know who just wants to be part of the story and it's okay i get that you know even if a real white bull ran rampant in the town of Barnes, why is everyone calling it a ghost? I mean, they're probably like you or me, where we're like, it's got to be a phantom. It must be phantom. So, okay, so we're starting strong.

So the town of Barnes saw this big white bull everywhere and they thought it was a ghost. In another town called East Sheen, there were reports of this large phantom bear oh what so there's just like a whole circus also like could there are there bears in england or like couldn't there just be a bear and they're just like oh it's a ghost like what yeah that's kind of it goes back to the bull thing. Like maybe it was just, maybe it was a polar bear. You know what? Escaped the zoo. You're right. Well, that's it.

The end. The end. That's the show. So there are reports of a phantom bear. And he is, here's where it goes up a notch. Because they're like, oh, you have a bull. Well, we have a bear. And a bear is more believable.

But just to really throw a curveball at everybody, he is now randomly attacking women. Oh, that was there. That was their story in East Sheen. They were like, there's this bear. He is violently attacking everyone. He especially loves women. And here's the thing, though.

People who were looking for proof could never find it because there was never a victim anyone actually knew. It was always, it was always, oh, my friend was telling me that they knew someone who knew someone,

and she got attacked by this phantom. A hundred percent. You know what I mean? That's how that goes. Oh, yeah. So, no actual solid proof. It is all conjecture?

Is that the right word? Yeah, or like anecdotal almost anecdotal everyone has a story another town called hampton they reported seeing a ghost too and this ghost was a soldier okay that one i believe a little more yeah except he has freddy krueger metal claw shaped gloves okay okay okay they're like yeah we have one it's a soldier wait you guys have a bear and a bull um well ours has claws too it's like oh shit we really gotta up the ante on our fake story um so he they had he had metal claw-shaped gloves and spring shoes and spring shoes is just do you know what spring shoes are no i'm thinking like moon moon boots or something

i thought the same thing. Don't you worry. Because I mean, you think shoes with springs, like trampoline shoes. Yeah, moon boots. And so, no, it's just another word for basically like, you know, like the classic witch, like a boot that a witch would wear

where it's like black with the lace and like the heel. Yeah, sure. A classic Victorian boot. Those were just called spring shoes oh okay i would never have known that i know i don't know why maybe you just wore them in spring i don't understand oh i don't even think of that i have i'm making i have no fucking clue why they're called spring shoes i could have done a deep dive and like i said again take care of yourself we don't we don't need the whole history we can google for the shoes if we're

really if there's a if there's a deep dive worth deep diving i will be diving in which shoes yeah which shoes are the one yeah so uh would wear these freddy krueger claws and spring shoes so so between this one town having a bull the bull actually i think is the most curious one and somehow kind of fades into existence and we hear less of that but between the story of the phantom bear attacking people especially women and this soldier with claws and spring shoes and and all these stories happening in different towns basically all of these rumors start spreading throughout other towns and all these stories start combining and collapse like so it just threw a game of telephone some people are now saying bears with

claws and sold like it's so soldiers attacking women and spring shoes on each paw freddy krueger and heels and so like um it's just it becomes like its own morphed rumor that kind of just seeps across all the towns and so from from this point on other towns are now claiming to see any combination of this and it slowly morphs into a universal phantom that all these towns are seeing of a soldier with metal claw shaped gloves and spring shoes however he's also attacking women or he's attacking people especially women and he can shapeshift into animals including a bear okay i see so it is the same now it's sort of like oh it's the same spirit it's just manifesting in different clawed ways uh-huh so okay okay uh he's now this metal

armored man and that is why he is known as Steel Jack. Oh. I know it's Spring Hill Jack, but first it's Steel Jack. Interesting. And just this is where I do a mini, mini deep dive on the name Jack back in like the old Victorian era, because Jack was kind of their version for the name John Doe at the time. I see. Okay.

That makes sense. It was also a name that was used a lot as like a nickname for people who are big tricksters or liked, liked a good case of Tom foolery. You'd be called a Jack something. So yeah, like even like Jack of all trades or like, okay. Okay. So Jack, because it was like John Doe and it was just like such a uh it was just like such a general name but like you had to put no effort into coming up with a name that's why a lot of folklore that that started from that time period um or a lot of stories that came from that time period they're all jacks like jack and the beanstalk jack jack be nimble jack frost oh my god that's jack-o-lanterns and jack the ripper john

doe and that's so interesting i had no idea okay and that was my mini fun fact situation honestly worth it and i loved every second of it and i want to say too uh that uh where was i going with this i swear this mom brain thing is real like apparently your gray matter in your brain changes when you give birth and i feel like permanently is this just who you are now it just like chain morphs and i feel like i'm losing my mind more than usual um the jack thing the name jack wow i had such a fun jack the ripper is what i was gonna say or i said before that jack be nimble jack and jill jack frost jack lantern that's a lot of jack oh i know i'm gonna talk oh okay sorry thank you um so i almost feel like today or at least for our generation the name

is bob i feel like that's always like the go-to name. Like the number of people who've written and said like, oh, we just named the ghost Bob. Like, I just feel like every ghost is just like Bob or. I feel like Bob is maybe the American Jack. The American one. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Because I would still, I mean, we still use John Doe, but that's very like, um, like paperwork-y. It's not. Yeah, I feel like that's more in a true crime sense of like finding a body and all that. But I feel like if you're like, oh, let's call him Bob. I feel like every's more in a true crime sense of like finding a body and all that but I feel like if you're like oh let's call him Bob I feel like every at least when I was a kid everything yeah just name it Bob and yeah um my stepdad has like a little pamphlet or we went through his contacts on his phone and he had like 16 different Bobs and they were all different names so there's

farmer no we have farmer Bob there was I was. Who's actually named Bob, by the way. Who is Bob. But then there's, he has TV Bob. He has Electrician Bob. He has. Well, hey, Bob the Builder. Bob the Builder. That's our Jack the Beanstalk.

So I feel like Bob is a very like universal kind of just name. Anyway, that's all. So that is the very short history of Jack. And that is why he ended up being called steel jack because he was a random dude that was dressed in metal and some stories just had him with metal claws but he was still steel jack so as the lore of steel jack went through the uk people claimed to see him just attacking random people because that was kind of what the the original story was with this bear attacking women. And it just became like there's this random dude dressed in metal attacking people across all of our towns. And we have to be worried about this.

Which is terrifying. It is terrifying. And it is very I don't know. Do you know what time period Jack the Ripper was? Not to put you on the spot there. I feel like it was the same time. Maybe people were just scared of just something bad happening to them, which is like totally valid. Yeah.

And it was later. Sorry. 1888. Okay. So it was later. Well, half a century later. Whoops. I see.

That's fine. I knew it was 1800s. And in my mind, I'm like, it's all the same. I know that it's not. But, you know. As someone says, like, oh, we were born in 1990s. That's basically 1930s. No, no, you're totally right. Like, it does not equate. attacking people and the first one that really sticks is that steel jack has attacked this uh has attacked this carpenter in london ironically on cutthroat lane okay well so way to start a story i don't even know somewhere that's probably not the one to do it not the place to go did cut throat lane really exist or was this just for the story this sounds like a nursery rhyme like

instead of like do you know the muffin man who lives on jury lane it's like do you know jack just with the shoes who lives on cutthroat lane who kills on cutthroat lane who kills on cutthroat lane hang on i love that uh but like also then i want to immediately makes me want to deep dive into who is naming streets like that like Cutthroat? Like, what? I mean, I wonder if it's... Who pitched that? And they were like, oh, yeah, that one's good. I wonder if it's like, oh, maybe the mayor of Ghost Town had to say it.

Maybe the forgotten white bull that runs rampant in town. He's like, remember me? No. So according to this story, the carpenter actually almost won the fight against Steel Jack. But then something we never hear about again. Steel Jack had like two random ghost friends on call who came in and helped him beat up the carpenter. And so the carpenter ended up losing the fight because three phantoms got him all at once. I do sort of feel like this is the carpenter being like, no, I almost had him, but I was outnumbered.

You should see the other guy until his bunnies came around. Yeah, so it's like, really? Were there three of them or did you just lose the fight? Exactly. So that's one version we never hear about again. Also, I don't know if the carpenter was real or not, but it sounds like he straight up died. So I feel like we should be...

Oh yeah, I guess lose the fight doesn't sound very good like a good end result i mean maybe he just got really beat up and like and also maybe like he'd had an accident at his carpenter job and he just like was embarrassed and he was like no no steel cut jack on me it was three guys yeah so people freaked out right away he i i guess he must have been somewhat real or people it felt more close to home because this is the one that freaked people out the most and they started looking for real help from like people higher up in town like politicians and officials and all the authorities refused refused to help and, probably because this seems silly, but two, it apparently became understood

that the upper class was not helping the working class. It seemed like, you'll see more as time goes on. But it seems- I gotta say, that's a shocking turn of events that I could never have seen coming. Ain't that right? Ain't it something? So yeah, apparently they just were like oh these people no no no and then they like smoked a

cigar or drank a martini or something absolutely both of those i think something rich um and so in 1837 the morning chronicle had an article come out that said uh it said that some thought that jack this was a real plot to us because i think they've been reaching out to the wealthy for so long and they weren't getting responses so this article comes out that says oh we think that jack could actually be a real person not a ghost and he could just be in disguise and just like wreaking havoc on towns you know what That's very interesting. Well, sorry. Continue your thought.

No, no, no. Go for it. I was just going to say, because you mentioned that this was around the spirituality or spiritualism, one of the ways of spiritualism. And there was all that kind of hullabaloo where you would go to a seance and someone would be like draped in white or have like gauze on them. And everyone would be like, it in white or have like gauze on them and everyone be like it's a phantom and i wonder if like just this guy could just dress up as like a ghost and people were like oh that must

be a ghost you know what i'm not trying to i don't think people from that time period were stupid i think it was a new it was a new totally they didn't know what was going on anything could blow their mind because special effects was like had never been heard of before right right but i do think that you really could have gotten away with fucking anything and people would have been like it's clearly a ghost and it's like i don't know like nowadays i think we'd have a more skeptical understanding of that but i mean as people who are not skeptical at all, I think we'd have a more skeptical understanding. I feel like if even you and me saw someone dressed in gauze, we would be like, that's not a ghost.

That person is probably someone we need to keep outside and lock the doors. But I don't think it's a ghost. If we're not believing it, I am confused how other people are believing it. But then I think about like, again, back then they had no awareness of special effects and makeup absolutely and i think like in a hundred years people are gonna look at us and be like what a bunch of dummies you know for sure so there's like no room to judge but yeah i i wonder if that if it was actually a person who was you know dressing up well i feel like that if it's if steel jack existed i would argue it's probably a real person dressed up before it's a ghost which is scarier almost scarier and it's also interesting that people back then were more quick to assume it

was a real ghost versus it being a person good point i know it started as rumors of a ghost and so maybe people just like landed on the ghost thing and stuck with it and then this like attacker just like went with that theory and was like i'll just let them believe i'm a ghost like it could have also been maybe i know that we're talking about it it could have been stories of a ghost and someone was like oh that's like a silly story let me copycat it and be the real steel jack you know great point anyway so people were starting to get ideas that maybe this wasn't a ghost and maybe it was someone dressed up as Steel Jack. And here is a quote from that article. Some scoundrel disguised in a bear skin and wearing spring shoes has been seen jumping to and fro before foot passengers in the neighborhood of Lewish sham and has in one or two instances greatly alarmed females

so the most important part to all that is note that they suggest that jack jumps to and fro i was wondering yeah yeah and shockingly in spring shoes that don't have springs so like what is happening here no wonder i mean i don't know what they expected they expected me to understand that also maybe because i didn't do a deep dive maybe there are springs in those shoes i don't think i feel like we would know about a time in history where clothes where your shoes went where you had trampoline shoes i feel like that's i feel like that's something i should have learned about i mean yeah i don't know i don't know either if that's the truth that's about to be my new celery vase and i'm gonna own a million of them so okay so note

that it says that he jumps to and fro because this really took off this one line uh similar i mean i mean it people just ran with that like oh he jumps got it okay he jumps okay we can remember that and so soon another story comes out about steel jack crashing a carriage by stepping in its way and causing it to swerve and he laughs that he created this chaos and then he escapes by jumping over a nine foot wall with ease because now he can jump he can jumps sure another story comes out about a bartender named polly who was attacked by him and she actually was the first person who could give more detail um again polly could have just gone to a reporter and said this happened to me and did not be true but whatever maybe she was attacked by an actual person uh but she says that it was in fact

steel jack and he smelled like sulfur apparently with his metal claws he ripped her shirt and cut her stomach and then with ease he jumped over a fence and escaped okay okay i mean okay i'm thinking about this nine foot wall still and i'm like, if they swerve and they crash their carriage and they're like, they see him like run toward the wall and maybe they are like scrambling around. They look over and he's gone. Maybe he just jumped and like climbed the wall and they didn't see it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Maybe he like there was actually like a ladder that blended into the fence very well.

And he just he just climbed right up say you're like six feet and you're athletic and there's a nine foot fence oh that's pretty i guess i guess i don't know maybe you just have a lot of upper body strength you could be like the push right or you could uh like maybe jump off something and i don't know i don't know anyway i'm just wondering like or maybe they exaggerated it was like actually a six foot fence and they were like oh it was nine whole feet you know who knows but I feel like if you say nine you might as well make it ten you might as well that's true but maybe nine was more believable because ten is like okay we're rounding ten sounds like you're exaggerating yeah hmm interesting thoughts thoughts thoughts we have okay so uh stories like this

started spreading everywhere including the jumping situation so that just makes it even more frightening like it is a freaky thought i especially because i can't do it i can't jump you know who can't you know who can't fucking jump allison that i swear to god her feet have never left the ground i've seen i've seen her try to jump and it's hilarious it's like i don't it's like i think she actually doesn't have the skill. OK, I feel like I need to mention this because someone's going to bring it up that knows me. But when I was little. Can you not jump either? So when I was little, I used to apparently my mother loves the story. I hate it.

I would just I was so proud of myself. I go, look, Mama, I can jump. And I would just like go like this and like raise my arms and not jump and just kind of like stand up. One that's hysterical and two as an adult, I think that's what Allison does. Yes. And so and then she always said like, look, mama, I can jump anytime I did any sort of sporty activity or played a sport. I'd be like, wow, you know, I won my tennis match and she'd go, look, mama, I can jump. And I was like, okay, I'm never going to like outlive this. Anyway, that's just what that reminds me of.

But I can't jump either, I guess. The second your baby is at the jumping milestone, make sure that she learned something that wasn't from you. Make sure, please, teach her how to jump. I got to make sure my mom doesn't catch sight of anything, you know, because she's going to never let her live it down. And I can't have two generations of that. But you know the episode of The Office when they're all trying to take a group picture and they're trying to jump at the same time?

Phyllis shows how she can't jump. That's what Allison looks like when she tries to jump. That's the one. I think it's very endearing, but the girl cannot jump. I'm sure she loves that story. If it's to save my but like the girl cannot jump like if she loves that story if it's like to save my life i'm not making it like she plays tennis really well though for what it's worth she's a great tennis player but she's not a great jumper yeah anyway uh allison when you're listening to this one day um i'm sorry but you can't jump and you

know it i tried to commiserate with you uh but my version was from when i was two so i don't know i don't know if they're gonna equate but i probably i haven't tried to jump in a long time i probably can't either so there's only one fact we've gotten from the story of steel jack so far it's that it was definitely not allison or christine like because if jumping right play we're out you're in the clear no prime suspects today I didn't do it so so many uh people start freaking out about Steel Jack including now the fact that he is a jumper with metal claws um and turns into a bear sometimes and he wears bear skin um but so many people are freaking out that it gets to a point where

people are getting pissed at the wealthy and the rich for not helping and so a letter several letters got sent to the lord mayor of london to be like why the fuck aren't you helping us but this one in particular really takes the cake this is from 1838 and i could read the whole thing but i'm just for time i'm going to um yeah what's the word shorten it condense it who cares yes i'm gonna i'm gonna keep it keep it tight so the letter accuses the rich uh of not helping the town because the rich are steel jack and they are all dressing up to terrorize the working class i was wondering if we'd be going here that the wealthy aren't helping because they're the ones responsible so now now we've hit conspiracies my friend and the letter also states

that by this point several women had been attacked and they were so traumatized that they may never recover and the press must know that the rich are involved because they're not they're they must be getting paid off to like not write about steel jack as often as they should be writing about steel jack and so uh this letter becomes public knowledge that the lord mayor himself saw this and uh it's like a public crisis like people are freaking out and steeljack is officially now seen by the people as a real person instead of it being lore anymore now people are like truly afraid of a person that is pretending to be steeljack because it's someone from the upper class trying to terrorize them i mean that is scary and i mean whether it's the upper class aside like if it is a person who is like cutting women's stomachs and stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. That's freaky. Terrifying. And now the rumors are going really crazy because there are rumors of Steel Jack now attacking just fucking everyone under the sun. Speaking of the sun, my next point is that there was an article in The Sun, which is like known to be like a very crazy tabloid magazine, so keep that in mind. But they alleged that the townspeople were right and that the wealthy were up to it. So they are just stirring the goddamn pot.

I love that for them. And here's the twist that the son used. The son says, so the wealthy were into it or the wealthy were a part of this, but it wasn't actually, excuse me. It wasn't actually the wealthy upper class, uh, authorities. It was their children.

Oh, and said that the children were up to it. I'm, I'm personally confused if it was like the children were, it was a bet or maybe their parents had told them to do it or it was, I don't know what the conspiracy theory is about how the children are involved. They were just like troublemakers or. They're just being like shitty, privileged, spoiled kids. Right.

Had a reason to ransack the town, I guess. But so the article says that they were doing this with hopes of earning 5,000 quid, which I guess is the equivalent to half a million dollars today. And I and I guess the reward part was like maybe they were trying to stir up trouble and then they could be they could then be the hero of their own crime and get this money or something. That's kind of the vibe I'm getting. Yeah, it sounds like the son was just kind of like it sounds like the sun just fucking made up a story and like didn't care about the all the the pothole potholes in their story right right uh so they the sun also said that the children were doing this because they wanted to scare people, wreak havoc, and then, quote, destroy the lives of not less than 30 human beings. What a very specific mission. Like, was that a story they picked before this all happened,

or did they happen to have already attacked that many, so now we're assuming that was their goal? That that was it, right. That's, okay. At any rate, so far, at the time of this article, okay at any rate so far at the time of this article they had uh attacked 80 no not 80 holy shit they had not they had attacked eight bachelors they called them old bachelors so i think that just means like old single men i guess so they attacked eight old bachelors this is a quote eight old bachelors 10 old maids six ladies maids and as many servant girls as they could this is definitely a nursery rhyme or a card game like eight old maids this is where old maid came from yeah it's i mean it really i'm like what on earth is this description but wow okay so so this is all this this whole story is from the sun so like we can pretty much

guess that this is like not the truth, but they, but it's just, it goes to show that like pretty much anything went in terms of driving a narrative. And the sun just ran with this particular version of the steel Jack conspiracy. Right.

Okay. Interesting. So now the first time it's, uh, he goes from steel Jack to spring healed. Jack is in 183838 a whole year later in uh the the penny satirist they were the first to call him spring-heeled jack um and the name just stuck and here's another fun fact apparently once he got called spring-heeled jack people

started using jack as like a not the name jack Jack, but the character of Spring Hill Jack. They started using him as like a mascot on their posters and to sell spring shoes. Like he became like, hysterical, which like, I think it's like low key fucked up. But I also think like,

what a, what a way at the time to be timely. No, you're totally right like to ride that wave of like what's timely and what's like on trend i mean wow i mean you're right now that i think about it it is kind of fucked up because like if this person is literally attacking people yeah people right but but if it was just a random phantom that was a rumor throughout town like then i would be like totally on board it's like oh you're just keeping up with the trend you know that's for sure someone now who is like a millennial in marketing

at like wendy's or one of these like twitter accounts that's really popular like that person knew what they were doing i mean i yeah i 100 and so keep in mind now everyone is pissed at the upper class because the conspiracy has blended across towns that they're up to something. Sure. Still nothing has come from the officials in helping the town about this crazed man until rumors of Spring Hill Jack started coming about where he was attacking the rich. And then those rumors seeped into their social circles and all of a sudden the rich were scared oh no so so later that year this is like the the first um uh rich family or upper class family to be affected personally by spring hill jack in 1838 there was an 18 year old girl named jane alsop alsop um who

was part of a rich family and she was at home and she heard the bell down by the gate ringing and she hears this man screaming and he says for heaven's sake bring me a light we have caught spring hill jack here in the lane whoa she's like so she's like, oh shit, they caught him. So like, I gotta go help. So she runs down with this candle because that's the only version of light at the time. Bring me a light. Bring me a light quick.

And then like, as you're running, the candle blows out and you're like, ah! You gotta hold your hand over it. I'm just imagining like having to keep running back into the house to relight it or something. To relight it, yeah. So she runs down with this candle. The man grabs it from her and from the

candle light when he holds it close enough to him he reveals that he is spring-heeled jack and she fell for his trap he lured her out that's so fucked up and he lunges for her he rips at her clothes he rips at her hair he rips at the rest of her but she escapes and she runs into the house and i guess somehow spring hill jack is quick behind her quick on her heels and uh as she locks the door he starts banging on the door trying to get in that's scary it's scary especially because now that we officially if this story is true we know that spring hill jack was a real person because this really if he were a phantom what's a door in your i mean like like a door isn't in your way that's what exactly especially if you have all these weird claws and you can shape shift i mean also in like your personal

experience bedsheets didn't get in the way you know what i'm saying so like good point not only that but you would think in your person in your story it'd be like he could walk through walls and walk through bedsheets, but somehow he made you walk through a bedsheet. Yeah, I don't love that. So no matter what, we're not winning. Turning of the tables here. No. So Jane's family calls the police and she describes him as usual, as everyone else has been describing him, wearing a metal helmet and claws. But she also says that he's wearing a white oil skin which is basically like it looked

like a big fisherman jacket it was like from like goes all the way down to your calves okay uh and he breathed blue fire okay wait wait wait okay and he had red eyes but the breathing blue fire is even scarier to me yeah i wonder if that was kind of a i wonder i wonder i feel like it's not my place to say it was a lie or made up but it seems a little wild to me i feel like she almost like finally convinced the rich and like then she had to say that and yes you went a little far with it you know now they're like you really had we should have done baby steps into this yeah yeah you had me until no one else has even mentioned blue fire and now you're coming to your rich family and are your rich social circles and

saying he's also breathing blue fire okay skeptical so officials don't believe her description but her father posts a reward for any information and police round up whoever they can that may have been in the area during the attack particularly i guess there were some drunk men that were joking about Spring Hill Jack nearby. And so they thought maybe it could have been them, but none of these people were identified to be Spring Hill Jack and the case ran cold. But days later,

another 18 year old named Lucy Scales, her and her sister were walking down an alley in town when they saw what they thought was a woman in a bonnet. But as they got closer, it was a man in a helmet and they were like oh shit this guy looks a little spring hill jackie to me well they're still walking and eventually he turns and sees them and he breathes fire into lucy's face ah and then she like falls over and has a seizure. Oh, God. So now he's getting more creatively dangerous, I guess. Like I hadn't heard of that one before. But now he's like causing seizures, which is terrible.

I mean, the fire thing again. I wonder if she was just copying the last story or if like he actually had some sort of mechanism. I don't know. I don't know. But so as she falls falls the sister that was with her screams their brother hears them and comes to get them and both siblings watch as the spring hill jack jumps onto a roof with ease and just takes off oh okay he's jumping still going strong i see he's jumping and he's breathing fire and that's about it uh police looked into this fire breathing thing and they just didn't know what to do with that.

They were like, this is a real curveball. So they looked into medical fields, like science fields, and they looked into theater, the theater industry. Interesting. They were like, what could this be? Like prop magic or something. Yeah, like fire breathing and so uh basically both groups had more or less the same theory i mean in different words they were saying oh someone is mixing alcohol with a flammable chemical in their mouth okay okay um and so now they're thinking

like okay this guy is some sort of fire breathing performer, or he's at least into like chemistry and knows like what would cause this. So now they're looking for, they're looking for basically someone that looks like Spring Hill Jack, but also might be in the science or theater world. Okay. Who also has a violent streak, I guess. And also who can jump like Superman, but okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't worry about that part.

So now they're having the search parties, but the S-H-J, as I put him in my notes in this part, the Spring-Heeled Jack was never found despite these search parties. One of the people in the search parties, by the way, just to throw a name in there, was the Duke of Wellington. Oh! Who straight up like beat napoleon

he was like ready to guns a blazing he was ready to take down spring hill jack um and like what's next napoleon done he was like if i could take down napoleon i can take down a fire breathing jumper and shj so although nobody could find him during the official searches, people still reported seeing him when they were on their own, which was very convenient, I suppose. Suspicious. So the rumors are still going strong, but no one's able to find him until nobody's nearby. Okay. Still in 1838, Spring- spring hill jack was seen again in someone's garden this time as a bear which makes me think someone just had a bear in their garden and now we're calling it spring hill jack okay um and i guess the bear chased the dog around for a while the

dog's fine they it was just like it really could have been a bear trying to chase a dog and then the owner freaked out and watched the bear escape. But it sounds like they were like, oh, it was a ghost the whole time. And Spring-Heeled Jack was tormenting my dog by like chasing him around. But anyway, the bear eventually jumps over the garden wall and escapes. And there are many stories like this of like a random animal coming into someone's property. Oh, interesting. And them saying it's Spring Hill Jack.

So it's becoming this thing where you can just blame anything for any, you blame anything for him. Yeah. And not only did these stories continue to spread, but there were others that were inspired by copycats trying to be Spring Hill Jack, including one man who dressed in a mask and a sheet and he tried to scare two women, but they recognized his voice as the doorman at their own home and so what an idiot these two women chased him down and got the

police involved and he was fined but he was only fined like basically what's today four hundred dollars for like an asshole for terrorizing someone during like a real crisis like assaulting them like attacking people i hate i hate that i know i wish i were more surprised but whatever well the biggest suspect in hindsight um or maybe not in hindsight but one of the suspects they were thinking it could have been uh of who spring hill jack might have been, was the Marquis or Marquise? Marquise? I think it's Marquis. The Marquis of Waterford,

aka the Mad Marquis was his name, apparently. He was known as the Mad Marquis. Oh, shit. Because he lived in the area at the time. He was disliked by a lot of people. He didn't particularly like women, and he was said to pull a lot of pranks. Okay, so this guy,

and he probably had money to buy like bare skins and weird shit like that or to pay people off when people maybe got on his tail yeah like that but the thing that makes him seem like he's not a suspect is he ended up moving to ireland and after he moved there were still rumors of spring hill jack running around oh but he could have moved to ireland and then like rumors were just happening that's true too yeah um so over the years reports of spring hill jack have faded away the last big story was in 1877 when a soldier apparently heard metal scraping nearby and he saw a cloaked man breathe fire at him oh gosh and then the man took off and then the last time spring hill jack was seen in 1904 in liverpool and he was still jumping across buildings even though it had been

like 70 plus years wow in the 1960s one person came forward and said that they think a local man they knew was the one known as spring hill jack because they knew a guy who was leaping from buildings all the way back then that sounds familiar here yeah he's like wait that guy okay um but apparently this is a quote from from this witness uh he was a local man slightly off balance mentally which is like what an original way to say that it was slightly off balance okay he had a form of religious mania and he would climb onto the rooftops of houses crying out my wife is the devil holy shit oh my gosh it's a lot to unpack here that we're just ignoring yeah they usually fetched police or a fire engine ladder to get him down and as the police closed in on him he would

leap from one house roof to the next and that's what gave rise to the spring hill jack rumors so they think that because this guy was just evading police and calling out his wife he maybe was the spring hill jack he was like able to jump from uh from from house to house yeah which is creepy i'll give him that it would be alarming i just wonder though maybe he was in like a line of brownstones or something and the roof just kept going i like he just jumped every now and then so it looked like he was bouncing between buildings well i'd like to make a point once more that um i'd like it on the record that once again allison and i off the list sorry off the list for sure I'm not jumping from roof to roof no matter how close they are fair enough uh and Spring Hill Jack inspired characters for many future stories

and plays but one of them includes this vintage I'm now obsessed with trying to collect all of them by the way so if you know a guy uh Spring Spring Hill Jack was one of the characters used in this vintage printed series about the macabre called Penny Dreadful. Oh, I know Penny Dreadful. Yeah. Well, Penny Dreadful was also a TV show. Yeah, the TV show was. Yeah.

So it was inspired by in the 1830s. They had this like basically like a zine. They're like little horror zines. Little horror zines. And it was like the first of its kind. And Spring-Heeled Jack remains one of the most notorious figures in penny dreadful as well as in victorian lore i freaking love that let me uh give you a picture i'll text you i've seen some penny dreadful copies in like like uh this is i assume

they're replicas but well this is spring hill jack in the penny dreadful oh god oh gosh he i love his white pants very freddie mercury he looks like freddie mercury he looks like early batman but a skeleton i'm very convinced but also like with some pizzazz like he's he's very flamboyant i will say yeah if you're on youtube look at this um and if you're not watching on youtube then we'll put it on instagram yeah um wow anyway that is uh that is spring hill jack that is great and i i didn't know a lot most of that i would say um well maybe i did at one point but i certainly i was gonna say i i have a feeling astonishing legends mentioned it for sure they may not have gotten uh done the deep dive on the name jack but who knows oh right right right you got me some good intel there oh yeah well there you go good job m

well uh i have an unsolved murder story for you today okay which is always i feel like uh it's a genre that i like and like is a relative term but i like it because it leaves some room for theories and there's some mystery to it but it is also very frustrating because i just want to know who did it. So I also do. I like playing. Right. Puzzle master. But also I'm just always mad at the end when I'll never get it. When there's no justice. Yeah.

So I'm hoping that this one maybe gives us a little bit of like hope because at the end. Well, I'll get there. But this is the story of the Lake Oconee murders. OK. And it took place in 2014. And this is one of the most confounding cases I've ever heard of. Confounding. Okay. Totally. I just cannot wrap my head around this. Oh, okay. It is so baffling. I just I can't wait to tell you about it okay oh my gosh okay well i'm hey i'm thrilled to be here folks yeah yeah you you buckle up knuckle and buckle because i got a tail for you so this took place in 2014 when an elderly couple was murdered in their lake

oconee home and here's a quote that just i mean, you said a quote at the start of your Spring Hill Jack. I'm going to give you a quote to kind of give you a taste of what this story becomes because we start quickly. We jump in quickly. So here's a quote from the sheriff who becomes one of my favorite characters in this whole story. And he was leading the case and he said, mr dermond was decapitated we do not know the whereabouts of his head oh well i immediately know one big major plot line that happens in this story then yeah yeah yeah you already got some intel uh some basic so something really fucking gruesome happened i was very gruesome i thought this was just gonna be like a missing person well you did say murders in the title but yeah it's it's definitely i think

that's why it's so confounding is it's such a gruesome brutal murder with like no fucking answers you know what i mean like that's so weird it's almost like there's so much right in front of you but you can't answer it it's it's baffling so i was gonna say especially in 2014 i feel like i feel like i know this is so stupid but i just imagine when the stories are like somewhat recent i just get so much angrier that we don't have an answer because if it's like a story from like the early 1900s or something i'm just like okay well maybe they didn't have the same technology or maybe so much time has passed there's no way to find out now but when when it's something so recent, I'm like, with all the technology we have, what is going on? What's the situation? What can be done? Yes, exactly. And

that's why it's, again, so freaking baffling. So this took place in Lake Oconee, which is about 80 miles east of Atlanta, Georgia. So we're in Georgia. It's a 1900 acre lake. And it's this like beautiful public recreation spot. And surrounding the lake are these just typical like your vacation homes owned by wealthy families who usually live elsewhere and then have like a lake house like a beautiful lake house. Sure. A lot of the homes for that reason are empty most of the year because people go back to their day job, their regular homes, and then come here for their lake house summers. And so a couple that didn't really have the scenario, they actually lived there full time, were 88-year-old Russell Dermond and his wife, 87-year-old Shirley Dermond. And they were full-time residents at the lake. So this couple has been described as the all-American grandma and grandpa.

Just like classic grandma-grandpa vibes. You know, elderly, just like happy couple. Russell was a World War II vet. Shirley was a stay-at-home mother for their four children. And according to their son Brad, they met in college. Love at first sight. They didn't date anyone else once they had met. And they had a 68-year marriage that was very solid.

They had a very solid foundation, were very happy and just content. And they apparently, according to their children, modeled that marriage to their children who also enjoyed comfortable lives in strong marriages. So this was just like a very stable, happy couple course so now it just has to be of course additionally horrific and tumultuous and they lit up every room you know of course their smiles could light up the world uh yeah classic they're just a happy elderly couple. So the Dermons had nine grandchildren and both grandparents were just beloved by the Lake Oconee where they lived full time. They lived pretty unassuming lives, just happy, quiet lives. They're said to have been down to earth people. They didn't flaunt the money they had. People said their house was the only giveaway as to their wealth. So, you know, they weren't driving like fancy cars and all this and showing off.

Although it is mentioned that Russell did own some expensive things like he owned some Rolex watches. And so maybe if somebody had spotted that as a target, like, oh, that man has money. Maybe that's where this attack came from. But anyway, they seemed like pretty unassuming people. They also lived in an area with virtually no crime. And that's a quote, which again, I feel like is a red flag in these stories, like a sleepy community. You know, it's always some sort of a cliche. Before this, according to the investigator, we had virtually no crime, none. So this was a gated community. it had its own private security team and there is one problem here which is that there's this 1900 acre lake and you can't really control that so

while people coming by car had to pass a security checkpoint you could just get in a boat and go across the lake without being you know stopped or without having to show any paperwork or security badge. There was no like on the shore security, I suppose. Exactly, exactly. So people could access the houses technically by boat if they really wanted to. This had not been an issue before, but it seems like that might have been what happened. So the Dermons house was right on the lake. It had immediate dock access. And in 2014, security was pretty lax. So, you know, it's not like they had some, like, really intense high security. Again, there was never any crime here. Basically, residents just needed a sticker on their car, and that would get them waved through.

So contractors, handymen, and cleaning services often had their own stickers for just to get in and out. Sure. So, you know, I mean, that does open it up to more people, like a handyman or a cleaning service. Or maybe even like people could make fake stickers. Yeah, or take a sticker, I guess, from somebody and just put it on their car. That's a good point. Yeah, I hadn't even thought of that. Or, yeah, borrow someone's car who has a sticker. Right, true, somebody and just put it on their car. That's a good point. Yeah, I hadn't even thought of that. Or borrow someone's car who has a sticker.

Right, true, true. All they needed was that sticker, so they didn't need to show ID or anything like that. So it was essentially not super hard to get past security or just skip security entirely by accessing through the lake. Now we get to the horrible part. So on Friday, May 2nd, 2014nd 2014 the dermans ran some errands as usual uh there's security footage at a nearby grocery store showing russell and he's smiling and in a good mood he's leaving with a loaf of bread and some cucumbers that's it why is that precious i don't know i don't know but it touches my heart it just feels like he was like not even like

wasn't a big haul just had a had a fucking vibe for a cucumber sandwich that's all i wanted thinking right just like a little butter a little salt little cuke make yourself a friday sandwich and to be clear this has nothing to do with his age since he's a little elderly i just i think anyone walking absolutely i notice any time someone goes to the grocery store and just has like one thing in their hand i'm like what are you what are you here for? What are you up to? Like, I've never, I've just, it's so against, I've never been someone who can just run out real quick and pick one thing up.

It's just unheard of. So the second I hear like this, this man is just having a pleasant day in a sleepy town. He's just got his cucumber sandwich ingredients. That's it. It's very hard. And sandwich ingredients. That's it. And the fact that he's smiling on camera, like he's probably seeing people he knows, like saying hi, you know, his usual errands. It's just very quaint and makes it that much worse. So he has his loaf of bread at his Kukes and he leaves the grocery store.

And earlier, Russell had visited the bank to transfer money into a nursing home insurance plan. As usual, he had an annual premium that was due. So he went to the bank to fill that. Nothing out of the ordinary. So later on, investigators found the weekend edition of USA Today, which was delivered on Fridays inside the home. So the Germans must have brought it inside at some point on Friday. So this is us building a timeline, basically. Russell had also opened an email from one of his children the same day. So basically, we do know the Dermans were still alive on Friday, but unfortunately, they would not be seen alive again after this. Okay.

On Saturday, May 3rd, the Dermans' neighbors hosted a Kentucky Derby party that the Dermans always attended, but Shirley and Russell didn't show. And it was odd because they weren't the type to not show up without a phone call and let them know they weren't coming. But the neighbors weren't immediately worried. They waited about three days without hearing from the Dermans before they finally said, like, we should should go check on them and they stopped by the house and found the door unlocked and as somebody who tells these true crime stories um i just have to say the second i'm worried about someone have a bad feeling and i show up and the door is unlocked i'm not going in there somebody else has to go in there you know what i mean i'm not i'm not interested seeing what's on the other side fair enough if i call out and nobody answers like sorry i feel like if i even have a gut feeling about something i wouldn't even have checked to see if the door was i wouldn't have even gone to

the house i would have just been like oh okay so there's a problem there's a problem somebody needs to check it out and i don't think i'm um psychologically prepared for this mission you know it's it's one of the sick blessings of having so much anxiety and paranoia. It's like, I don't think, I don't think you would be able to not survive 24 hours and me not know about it. I think I would have,

I would have such a, I would be paranoid. I'd be like, she hasn't talked to me in 24 hours. I'm like, we're in a fight. I'm either something's either something's wrong or she's seen a ghost and is too afraid. She's going to tell me and needs to wait till we record on the podcast.

Okay. But I would have a hunch that something was up. Definitely. You would know something is up. I hope you wouldn't immediately call the police because again, it's probably that I saw a ghost, but you never know. I'll wait 48 hours.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So they go. And of course they go in the house because they're good neighbors who are probably well adjusted psychologically, unlike me. And they don't think anything horrific can happen on the other side of the store. So they show up and nothing seems out of the ordinary until they enter the garage. and nothing seems out of the ordinary until they enter the garage. And this is where they find Russell lying dead between his and Shirley's cars. And as you already know, he had been decapitated.

With no head in sight. Right. I mean, what the fuck? What the fuck? So the shocked neighbor called 911 while her husband observed the scene. She told the emergency operator that Shirley didn't seem to be in the house but someone was definitely dead and keep in mind like he doesn't have a head so it's like at this point they can't even confirm that it's him but they know someone is dead uh the killer this is gross just warning. The killer had wrapped towels around Russell's exposed neck so that the blood didn't seep under the garage to alert passersby. Yeah. Which is like, what a sick thing to have to think about.

And I feel like a decapitating, like, that's, I mean, that's not an accident. No, exactly. that's not an accident no exactly so someone someone got there with an intention and like had a plan of like oh and i'll also have to have a bunch of towels nearby yeah that's a great point like someone knew like okay well i don't want like i want to decapitate this person but i know that it adds multiple steps like i don't want this to you know leak out of the garage and now maybe to stop the blood maybe the towels were theirs and maybe he really didn't see that coming and there was a lot of blood and he was like oh shit now shit that's true it could have been a backup yeah it could

have been like a plan b or something um so yeah either way pretty gross and pretty like thought out if like you thought oh i don't want this to alert anybody so i'm just gonna put these towels here interestingly the garage was air conditioned so decomposition hadn't really set in like it would have if he were outside um and so again without his head being there investigators had to identify him via fingerprints um and they did confirm yes this was russell dermond uh the sheriff immediately involved the fbi and this i just want to make a point that it wasn't because of like his wealth or his location or status but because of the decapitation because this is such a next level gruesome crime especially

in a town like that especially in the context of this town and so so exactly. So they brought the FBI in and investigators said the violence required a certain level of depravity. That's rare. And I would say, yeah, I would argue you're probably right. It's rare, at least in this context of this small town. So meanwhile,

they still don't know where Shirley is. And so now people are like, well, did Shirley have something to do with this? Is that why she's gone? Which is obviously a disturbing thought for her family. But then her family's also worried, like maybe she's injured or she's been taken hostage. So they put her face and information on nearly every electronic billboard in Georgia. Her son and her other family were desperate and like clinging to hope that maybe they would find her alive and well uh but investigators at this point are at a loss so this is where oh i already

have creep i already have a goose cam yeah freaks me out so the the crime scene they responded to was pristine they said the house looked barely lived in uh laptops shirley's purse their cars the rolex watches jewelry cash nothing was missing nothing was out of place nothing had been robbed there was no sign of forced entry this is gross the only thing that was moved was a lamp which they had put in the garage for lighting, which I presume is like for lighting when they were doing this gruesome decapitation. I don't know. I don't know. But the light had just been moved from the house to the garage and then nothing else was taken. Like no cash, nothing.

Is there a chance that for some weird reason the couple had actually moved the lamp out there and like this person hadn't been inside at all. Um, you know, it could be, uh, I think the kids, so they did have the Dermans children walk through the house and they seemed to think something happened.

Lamp had been moved. Um, okay. So, I mean, you know, it's possible. I just didn't know.

Cause like, what if like the light went out in the garage and so they're just using that as like a backup for the moment yeah i'm trying to think no no that's a good point i don't actually have any confirmation that like it it was for sure also the the woman is missing but maybe may i i feel like everything technically could have happened in the garage maybe like she got kidnapped from the garage and then he got knocked down so he wouldn't help. And then they cut his head. But then why the cut the head off?

I know. It's, again, confounding. Oh, my gosh. And it gets even more confusing. So this lamp had been moved, according to the kids. The children walked through the house to confirm everything else was in place. According to the kids, the children walked through the house to confirm everything else was in place. And most astounding of all is that there was no sign of a struggle, which didn't line up with the extreme violence of this crime.

So Russell's autopsy found only a single laceration on an index finger. He had no bruises. He had no signs of strangulation. And blood forensics suggested that the decapitation actually isn't what killed him. He must have died from what they think is head trauma. And now that that evidence was missing, basically, now the person took the head with them of Russell, and that would have shown, you know, how he actually died, presumably from blunt force trauma, something like that. actually died, presumably from blunt force trauma, something like that. Wow. So forensics experts think he was likely decapitated using a machete, of all things. What a specific weapon.

I know. And it says they would have had to bring that with them. And the reason they think it's a machete is because the tool had to be extremely sharp and precise, and it matched up with how a machete would have left the mark on his neck. So disturbing. You know, I'm thinking, too, when we were talking about the towels, I assume he would have had to go inside to get the towels, unless there were towels in the garage. I mean, I don't have a garage, but if I did, I'd have towels in there. Yeah, there'd probably be towels in there. If there was, like, an art project, I don't know a garage but if i did i'd have towels in there just like towels in there if there was like an art project i don't know like if i just think of like well i need to spray

paint something they're at the lake so they probably do have plenty of towels oh my god they totally have towels they totally have towels in the garage okay didn't even occur to me so yeah so yeah i so now i'm thinking my first my gut instinct is that this person did not bring towels. I think they didn't realize how much blood there'd be and just grabbed at whatever he could find. Grabbed what was there, which makes sense. But also remember the front door was unlocked, too. So if they wanted to, they could have gone in the front door. But also if it's such a sleepy town with no crime and these are like a beloved couple,

they might have just always had their door unlocked. That's true, too. But then why wouldn't the person go in the house to like take shit like from the garage at least or you know what i mean like i'm i don't know why but i'm my priority my i'm i'm operating um jesus christ i'm currently operating under the, like... I have yet to see a reason why they'd go inside. If the towels were already outside... The lamp is a weird one, but currently, like, all of my guesses are that nothing has even happened in the house. So, your theory is, like, they weren't trying to rob them. No.

I feel like it was, like, they just got attacked getting out of their car in the garage or something. But, like, why? I don't know. I have no idea. It's just... like they just got attacked getting out of their car in the garage or something but like why i don't know i have no idea it's just i'm just trying to think of anything yeah the garage i guess makes the most sense like maybe they were hiding out in the garage because if it was i mean i don't understand why there would be someone with such a violent vendetta against them but i also don't understand why they would go into the house and then not rob them so like it had to be an intentional violent act no you're right you're right and i wonder if they like waited in the garage and then when the door closed they attacked maybe they planned on robbing them and they were hiding in the garage

and didn't expect them to come into the garage and like it just had to happen in there instead of before the guy ever got into the house and you'd think that they would have robbed them once they were dead that's true i don't know maybe he fled jeez okay well i'll give you more information and then maybe you can yeah yeah piece more together um so this machete is what they think happened you know was used to kill him or not not to kill him but to decapitate him uh there was no blood spatter inside the garage or otherwise there was no sign of a fight nothing it seemed like russell was murdered by an experienced and intelligent killer who either killed him elsewhere and moved him or did such a precise job that he

was able to clean up after himself and leave the place like completely clean so that feels impossible so odd i feel like if you like now that i'm operating under the assumption that they he didn't plan for there to be so much blood in the garage and then was like using towels to clean it up i feel like this guy like it would have not been yeah it doesn't fit my first choice at a perfectly clean home after something yeah it doesn't totally fit uh especially if there was no no blood spatter anywhere else um right it's just odd it doesn't really fit um it but also it seemed like out of place in general that somebody would like assassinate them like this no it makes no sense it's so odd and if if it had been like an assassination then they would

have expected to find both bodies in the house like they would have also both of them also like why like why take the head if he was going to get identified anyway like what are you trying to hide the head and the body or take neither exactly like why are you trying to what are you trying to hide with that it's so so odd. It's so odd. And so that part definitely doesn't make sense. And if it had been like a plotted assassination, they would have expected both of the bodies. If it had been an abduction, then why? A, why did they go through the trouble of, you know, beheading this guy, Russell?

Or but also now that they're looking for Shirley, why hadn't anyone reached out for ransom? Because they were a wealthy couple. You'd think like maybe they wanted ransom money for Shirley, but they heard absolutely nothing. So they were just so confused. Um, 125 deputies from around the state searched the woods for Russell's head. They found nothing. And then finally on May 16th, which was 10 days after Russell's body was found, a boater found Shirley's body floating five to six miles from her home in Lake Oconee. She was floating in the water upright with her face and shoulders in the water. And so tragically, she had also been killed. face and shoulders in the water and so tragically she had also been killed um and the man who found her was actually haunted by how carelessly she had been like discarded almost in the lake um and he

here's a quote from him he said i've seen more people show respect to a garbage bag and a coke can in the lake than what that was oh my god which is so upsetting. And it's 2014 and they were grandparents, right? Yep. So they had they have children who are currently out there having to live knowing that that's a quote about their mom. Exactly. Exactly. Oh, my God. I know.

Oh, my God. It's it's very it's just it's just very tragic. There's really no better word for it. tragic there's really no better word for it um and so as soon as police and fbi responded and pulled her from the water of course media swarmed in because you know they had known about this developing story a news camera crowded the sheriff and he said to the camera this this is where this sheriff this fucking guy is a character okay so he says to the camera i'm gonna tell you a little bit at the office okay if you want the stench of death, I will rub it on you. So he just wanted them away.

So basically, I think what he was saying is like, I'll tell you when I get back to my office. Like, leave me alone or I'll, you know, rub this on you because I'm busy right now trying to deal with this. I think is what he's trying to say. The decomposition on Shirleyirley was extreme so they had lost quite a bit of evidence um she was still fully clothed she even had her shoes still on and the autopsy found that she had been struck in the head three or four times and had died of blunt force trauma and the most likely weapon was a hammer holy shit i know it's so gruesome oh my god oh my god that poor fucking woman i know it's so gruesome and like just to add to it one investigator said it was possibly the worst

open skull fracture that i've ever seen i really i mean if there's if there's a a hair of hope that i hope she was just not even consciously aware. I just so hope she didn't know what's going on. It's fucking terrible and so gruesome and brutal and violent. So this is where things are adding new. This is where new elements come in that are that are even more confusing that create more confusion because the killers or killer had then tied 60 pounds of concrete blocks in a mesh bag to her ankles to sink her and this was like it doesn't sound like it but it was a wild turn in the investigation because apparently any experienced killer would know that it takes way more weight than 60 pounds of concrete

to hold a body underwater and from what they could tell shirley's death seemed messy and rushed and they clearly didn't quite know how to dispose of a body so it was that again makes me think that like he was never in the house because like if this guy is this messy and like by the way like i'm still confused like why are you leaving if he were to clean up after himself to show no sign that he was ever there but he left a literal man's body in the garage like i feel like i feel like he was never in the house i don't know what to tell you about that i so weird i have no idea i i obviously don't fucking know i'm not a detective but i just feel like with how messy he's been everywhere else and

like i again i'm really leaning into this like he didn't realize how much blood there'd be in the garage and so he scrambled for towels he's a complete mess with this woman and like not knowing like how to properly sink a body i think he would there's no way he would have perfectly cleaned that house there's no way he's saying i don't think it no it's a really fair point I mean I also don't know I fucking know sure of course no this is all conjecture but like it's it's interesting to think about because like nobody really knows and like the way that they saw it was you know with the first one being so precise and like clearly this person knew how to wield a machete strong enough to like

behead a person and had cleaned up the area so well that they thought this has to be a different killer yeah i was maybe it's like it was like a duo yeah so then they thought there was maybe this was multiple people at least two yeah oh i mean i mean just it just keeps coming doesn't it just keeps coming and so yeah their thought was maybe this was more than one killer with varying levels of experience. And, you know, they're showing their weaknesses, so to speak, in these different acts they're doing. And again, Shirley's death was so violent, but there was no sign of the attack anywhere in or near the house or garage like they just couldn't find any sign of this i mean if somebody had attacked her with a hammer you'd think there would be like blood or evidence or something left behind well i would imagine it happened maybe in i feel like they were going to take her and like get her on the boat but maybe she struggled so much they just gave up maybe maybe they abducted her and then killed her in the process yeah maybe

they were just like it's it's too messy to bring her with us and i i mean i can't even i i don't know but it's so bizarre i feel like a lot of it was it feels like a lot of it was rushed even though they may have originally had a plan like yeah where where the fuck is this guy's head and like why did they only take that but like they didn't have time to drag a body out or like if they're gonna take one of the bodies why not take both and yeah or why was one separate like i feel like they were trying to why would they bring one down to the water and keep one in the garage maybe they were going to bring both of them down to the water and didn't have enough time so he got left in the garage maybe they were going to bring both of them down to the water and didn't have enough time so he got left in the garage sure i don't know that could be maybe they were planning on taking him too and they didn't get to if the only evidence at their property was his body lying

there and everything else was perfectly clean they were i imagine maybe they were trying to get them both on the boat to make it look like they just left town right and they just like maybe they maybe someone saw something by the water and was like hey who's out there and so they ended up having to leave before they could get his body yeah that could very well be but then i wonder because it took like the the neighbors waited three days without hearing from them which basically means like they had probably been killed on saturday when they didn't go to the derby party. So like three days had passed. So I feel like if it was that, like they had time to go back, but maybe they didn't want to go back to get him. I have no idea.

I have no idea. It's just disturbing. So anyway, the sheriff combed the neighborhood, interviewed hundreds of neighbors, landscapers, etc. They could not find any leads. Everything was a dead end. They didn't have door cameras at this point yet. Like people didn't really have ring doorbells. Security cameras at the docks were all pointed at people's boats for obvious reasons, not the lake. A storm had actually knocked out the camera at the security checkpoint. So there was no footage of who came and went by car, which is very frustrating.

And a neighbor did say they had seen a person in the Dermans yard on Saturday, but they couldn't describe anything about them. They didn't remember. And it could have been a killer or it could have just been somebody walking through and cutting through their lawn. Like, who knows? So there was no sign of forced entry, no sign of robbery. And because of the extreme violence of the killings investigators began to believe that this was personal and like maybe the family knew more than they were letting on so everyone became a suspect and the sheriff this fucking guy this is a quote from him he said the only person who's not a suspect is me because i know where i was okay okay okay dude okay sheriff

so like according to you right yeah according to you yeah how am i supposed to believe that so the dermans children all passed polygraph tests they had and this is where kind of this like you were saying earlier modern technology comes into play because they were able to ping where their cell phones were and place them far away from their parents house on Saturday so none of them were in the area so they were pretty quickly like excluded as suspects um and moreover which which also like imagine being the child of somebody of one of these people who was brutally murdered and then like now being under suspicion just because you are a family member. It must be so devastating. To go to like you don't even get to properly mourn.

You're just so busy. Not only are you now having to deal with like someone else's logistics and someone else's job because like now you're getting interrogated. But also like you don't even get to properly. I mean, I'm talking like this has ever happened to me. you don't even get to properly i mean i'm talking like this has ever happened to me but i in my mind i imagine like you're trying to grieve while also like having to like someone else thinks that you're the one who caused this yeah you're defending yourself like you have to prove that you weren't there and that suddenly takes precedence over like mourning and like yeah instead of getting to grieve you have to wonder am i going to fucking jail yeah exactly or or they're interviewing all my siblings like did somebody

in my family have to do with this have anything to do with this like there must be just so many layers of like trauma there i just i just pity i just pity that whole family it's it's just feels extremely traumatic the whole thing um and so i mean thankfully all the children you know were proven to be in different places um and moreover the killers had attempted to hide shirley's body and her financial assets would have remained frozen while she was missing so it didn't really track like if if it were the kids with a motive of like getting their parents money it didn't really make sense that they would have tried to hide her body because they wouldn't have gotten the money unless they were proven to both be dead. Does that make sense?

Yes. So like they wouldn't have gotten any money until both parents were proven dead. So why try to hide one of the bodies? It didn't track if that was the motive they were thinking of. So her children wouldn't have inherited it anyway so investigators basically exhausted every route like they were really trying to find any sort of path in to figure out who did this the fbi remember the fbi is even involved and they said the killer was likely to hunt and use knives and the sheriff said that's 95 of the people in georgia so uh that didn't get them very far i suppose i guess yeah if you're gonna try to do something you

might as well pick a weapon that's gonna be hard to track down hard to track and to say like oh they hunt probably it's like well that doesn't narrow it down very much yeah in georgia anyway so 14 years earlier um there was this other uh family you know trauma that had happened where the eldest derman son was actually killed in a drug deal gone bad oh my god this family just has to keep dealing with this shit yes it's just uh one thing after another but the killer was convicted and was in prison at the time of this uh this murder and the son hadn't been like a high-profile user hadn't been a high-profile dealer he was just someone who had a drug addiction he was pretty quiet like wasn't you know causing any big trouble or anything so it didn't really make sense that like 14 years later there would be this revenge

killing right on his parents it just they couldn't find any sort of connection there and so that was maybe one lead but didn't really go anywhere and so the media speculated uh you know the dermans were from new jersey maybe there's some mafia tie there that like they couldn't track down and maybe cia or something like some crazy story and like since it was new jersey they were like maybe there was some yeah mafia connection stuff but uh investigators said that was baseless nonsense so you know it was just rumors so there was no proof of this but you know it's it's a thought um their son brad said it couldn't be an old enemy because quote obviously mom and dad at that point were in their mid to late 80s if there were if there was an enemy out there it would have taken place a lot sooner than

that and i tend to agree like i agree too why wait till they're 88 years old like it doesn't really track unless they did something recently to really piss someone off. But it didn't seem like there was any connection there either. Like nobody could find any enemies. Then Lois Cawley, a New York socialite. I had actually not heard about this, but she had been found dead in her garage laundry room in New York. And she was in her 80s, wealthy from her husband's McDonald's franchise, which is very interesting, the franchise connection there. And she was killed by blunt force trauma. And so

at first, authorities thought like, maybe there's a connection here. But they did find her killer, he was convicted. And when they had this killer convicted, they were like, we cannot find any connection, not only to the Dermans, but to Georgia at all. And so this just seemed to be a total coincidence. Yeah. Yeah. So investigators considered Russell's death again and again. They thought maybe he had been shot. And so that's why the killer took the head to hide the evidence of what bullet was used, which I guess makes sense. But then why did they use a hammer to kill shirley yeah so they thought maybe they were taking it to hide evidence um which to me is really the

only thing that makes sense unless it was like that they were trying to get a trophy or something but taking the head seems like a pretty wild trophy to take that's yeah that's not just a trophy that's that's uh a lot i can't think of anything more personal like that that almost feels like it's like an intentional emotional robbing of the children yeah it feels extra like it feels unnecessary and extra gruesome and so my thought is it's either that like something trying to be really someone trying to be very emotionally cruel or it's like there was evidence they were trying to hide and so they took the head i mean i feel like that does make some sense with the bullet like

maybe they shot him and they couldn't get the bullets they took the head i'm not sure um oh okay do you know so i i guess that could be it um that's the only other thing that makes sense to me be it um that's the only other thing that makes sense to me um perhaps the killers like you mentioned planned to move his body like they had shirley's uh but they couldn't move it for some reason so they had to take his head instead which is odd like he still had you left his fingers for like for what like yeah like for what purpose i don't know and also like if you let him keep his head like it was still him in his own house like people would know what body that was in the house like it's not like they were hiding unless they were hiding their own identity by taking the head then i don't see why take it i guess so yeah i would i would just think at that point like

i think it would be easier to drag some someone away than take their head though yeah yeah if if you're trying to like hide evidence just hide just take him yeah it doesn't it does not it does not add up so at this point investigators are thinking the murders probably aren't professional but they were intelligent enough to be able to cover their tracks um in that they had left no fingerprints they had left no foreign dna they had left nothing else at the scene besides some slight evidence of a cleanup but nothing drastic um like disturbingly enough some of shirley's hair was actually found in Russell's hand. Oh, no. What does that mean? They think they were possibly together at the time of the attack and killed simultaneously.

And so their son thinks he was trying to protect her and maybe, like, cover her with his own body and, like, grab her. Oh, my God. Yeah. It's, of course, just getting worse, worse and worse. Oh, my God. Yeah. It's, of course, just getting worse, worse and worse. Theories ranged from serial killers to a depraved local cult.

But there really was no evidence of anything. It was like a ghost just came in, came and went and left zero clues. And, like, imagine being the family just wondering, like, am I next? Right. Good point. The fact that these people just fucking got away with it. Like, they're just sitting at a bar somewhere and maybe bragging about it. Yeah. Are you kidding me?

Like, yeah. Like, am I next? Or, like, is it someone I know? You know, you don't even know if, like, maybe this is somebody your family knows. Which is also disturbing. Like, are you confiding in the right people? Like, what if they come to the funeral? Oh, my God.

Ooh, there's so much creepiness there in, like, the unanswered questions. Oh, my God. There's so much creepiness there in like the unanswered questions. Oh, my God. The poor. The therapy that they need. I just like it's it's of all of all, you know, losing, I imagine parents is a very traumatic thing, but losing them in like such a way where you don't have answers must just be. I mean, there's there's no there's no death quite like violent death, and especially when it's unsolved violent death, and you don't even know if the people around you are safe. Absolutely. And, you know, they had their own kids to worry about, too. It's all very scary.

And so I really am hoping they figure out what the fuck happened. Yeah. Well, time, you know, went on the community's fear faded, people started to move on as they do. But of course, not the Dermans family and not the sheriff on the case. In a documentary, he said he still thinks about the case every single day. He said it's actually the only homicide in his 48 career that he hasn't solved i mean again this just isn't a very violent group you know town and so yeah he doesn't have that many like big mysteries like this to i mean also the survivor's guilt of like this this was like the only one big case i've ever had to really hunker down on and still probably feel like you didn't succeed and yeah and still and so to that to that point he has the file still open on his desk every day and he refuses to put it away and is like hoping for

answers so now we fast forward and this is where there's a slight glimmer of hope because in may of 2022 so like a couple months ago um new evidence has surfaced and they are able to now use new technology that wasn't available in 2014, which is very interesting because at the beginning you mentioned like, oh, it seems recent enough that. But, you know, this is what I'm always hoping for is that technology is advancing and we don't even know yet what we'll be able to solve in the future. And so there is this new technology where they are able to evaluate phone records involved in the case. So the FBI is looking into that right now. However, we don't really have more information than that. They have not made it public what the evidence is or what this may mean. But we can only hope that, you know, the fact that there is new evidence being looked at is a good sign and

might bring some answers. Jeez, I hope so. This one really got me particularly intensely. So Brad and the rest of the family hold out hope that the case will still be solved one day, as does the sheriff leading it, as do we, obviously. You know, all hope is not lost. It looks like there is a chance that maybe more information will come to light here. So we'll keep an eye on that for sure.

And Brad said recently that he hoped that person with that little sliver of knowledge would come forward and that would be very much appreciated with our family. Yeah. So if you are at a bar and you hear some dude bragging about macheting an old man you know something like that definitely uh see something say something hear something say something sense something say something absolutely yeah absolutely so that's the story of russell and shirley dermond and i i really do hope hope that we get some answers soon because just the brutality and like, that's why it's so confounding

is like, it doesn't make sense. You know? It does not make sense. There's not even like a motive of like, oh, it might've been this guy. There's nothing, nothing like that. No leads whatsoever. There's gotta be something.

It's gotta say something about me where I always think when you say there's an unsolved mystery, I'm like, like oh i'm the fresh eyes that were neat i was what was needed like what the fuck do i think i am but like i really i just i wanted i just so badly want those poor people to not suffer anymore but i'm obviously they think about it every day oh my god i just i know i if you ever get an update on this one i really gotta think about it every day. Oh, my God. I know. If you ever get an update on this one, I really got to know about it. We're going to keep – I might put a Google alert out, you know. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, geez, Louise. At least technology is getting better. You really did surprise me there because in my mind, the newest technology is still like a decade old. Exactly. It doesn't feel like it would be you know because 2014 seems recent but then you think about it's like eight years ago it's almost a decade ago you know so eight years ago now um so maybe uh maybe things are i don't know gonna get answered i i

really hope so i'm excited for whatever the next big like dna testing kind of technology is where it's like oh we never had this of technology is where it's like, Oh, we never had this technology before and now it's just going to change the guy. You know, I think that a lot because some cases seem like, so,

you know, they've just like lost all hope. But then, yeah, you realize like, well, maybe there's something we can test that like at this point we don't even consider.

Like maybe there's some way we can test something like we haven't even thought of. What's been sitting in a box in storage for 50 years that's going to be the thing that like figures it out for you that would be that would be amazing like i really hope um and i know this is a bummer but i'm sending a picture of them and their grandkids and uh we'll put this on instagram and i i'd like to blur out the kids' faces just because, you know, that's not. Yeah, for obvious reasons. Yeah, but. Oh, my God.

Wow, they just look so cute. I know. Like, children are cute. They look so happy. Just like the sweetest elderly couple, you know. And really, I know we talk about this all the time, but because it's 2014 and it feels so much more recent, I mean, that's a picture that could have been taken yesterday. Yep, exactly, exactly. And it looks like someone could who could be your neighbor you know

yeah oh my god why that's that's the story um very tragic and uh those poor little grandkids they look so cute i know they are actually very very cute um wow yeah sorry well i hope everyone enjoyed their weekly uh downer yeah weekly bummer exactly my bad my bad um we're gonna do a little uh we're gonna discuss our favorite uh star wipe our favorite custom animation uh in an after chat oh okay hey let's do that that'll definitely brighten some lift some spirits for patreon so yeah we'll we'll try to lift each other's spirits and hopefully some of yours in the process so we'll see you there we'll catch you catch you on on the flip side cool cats all right that's right that's right and that's why we drink