And That's Why We Drink - E291 Router Hauntings and Our Weekly World News Broadcasting Voices

Episode Date: September 4, 2022

It's episode 291 and we love the theatrics! This week Em brings us the wild tale of Batsquatch, who may just come with their own cryptid poetry. Then Christine closes out her two-part series on the Children of Thunder. And how did we get to tectonic plates from here? Tune in to find out... and that's why we drink!Don't miss out on our spooky fall tour! Get tickets at andthatswhywedrink.com/live

vanish bye no i was hoping that uh the i'm quoting jeff the mongoose before anyone accuses me of plagiarism that's an original jeff Mongoose quote. Vanish. Which I believe he yelled at other people before he himself vanished. He yelled at the family he was living with. Like, to vanish? No, no, I think he said it as like he was vanishing. And he just wanted to, remember he is a Gemini. I think he just wanted to announce his departure. He loves the theatrics. I appreciate that.

Loves the theatrics, as do I. Hi. So, welcome to And That's Why We Drink, everybody. We're getting close to 300 episodes, and it's giving me some troubling feelings about, am I supposed to be doing something to prepare? Probably. I feel like I definitely haven't figured out my topic yet, which is... I haven't even thought about it a little bit. Hmm. The butterflies in my belly are also angry.

Sorry. Ay yi yi. But hey, 300 episodes. Talk about something I never saw coming. Certainly not. What are you drinking today, Em? and certainly not uh what are you drinking today em uh when i when my belly feels better i'm gonna drink um i have a little arnie p next to me from starbucks oh i love it i was going through a phase where i was like i think it's time to change my drink order up but you know what i'm not going to well what was it before it it wasn't i decided against it i'm not going to change it it was either i thought rdp or it was always a green tea yeah okay i see i never knew you to order an rdp so i thought maybe this is like a new development or something nah nah i'm afraid

of change but i wanted i wanted a cooler sounding thing and now i just i don't want to never hear about the london fogs anymore so i thought you know that changed you know that's true the the ice london fog is so touch and go man i every time i go either they forgot the milk or they forgot the vanilla or like it's not hot i i feel like there's definitely a shortcut way and they like to take advantage of that whenever they can and it just doesn't taste the same and i understand why you to take the shortcut like i also don't want to work but like it's as as the uh receiver of the drink i'm not having fun with it unless it's perfectly done and i don't want to be a karen about. So I just stopped asking. Are you there? I understand. I mean, that makes

yeah, it's frozen for some reason on your end. And I don't know if it's my internet. Obviously, the world and the internet don't want me to talk. So your turn. Why do you drink? And what are you drinking? Oh, I'm so glad you asked. Today I'm drinking this. It's a canned bubble tea that I found at the grocery store. Canned? Yeah. You're fine with that? You can be such a Karen sometimes. I know you're like, oh, I don't want to be a Karen, but wow, that just cut me to my fucking core. Oh, my God. It did have the same energy of like, you're going to wear that outside?

No, it literally physically hurt my body. I don't know how you did that. Here's my reasoning. I just fucking hate boba. That's the only reason it came out that way. I'm aware of that. But yeah, I mean, I'm fine with it, I guess. I got this at the grocery store.

It's a Taiwanese brand. uh brand and i don't know what it says um but it looks delicious here's my issue with it it was not directed at you it was directed at the can of boba tea it was i know you took it personally and i apologize you had every right to because i did sound like my mother there but uh i already all our mothers you sounded like every mother it was i think everyone had a chill go down their spine which reminds you as much as you can find it things might just come out of your mouth sometimes yikes wow but um i really don't like boba tea and i really the idea of it being canned which is so stupid because like it's already jacked with preservatives.

Like there's no way it's like fresh and canned is, you know, any different. No. Also, it probably comes in a can to be dumped out at like a frozen yogurt place. But like in my mind, it being canned, I like associated it with like tuna fish or something. I don't know what my deal was. Oh, my. Well, I can confirm I just had some. It's pretty delicious.

Well, I can confirm I just had some. It's pretty delicious. It is not quite as fresh as a, you know, boba tea from a boba tea shop, which I do believe a lot of times they make those fresh. You are insulting every beverage worker in the industry today, Em. You're like, Starbucks takes shortcuts. Boba's out of a can. I mean, wow. Em is just. At least if you work at a place that offers boba and beverages know that you don't

have to deal with me anyway because i'm not coming into the store well lucky then i do are you like a boba on your fro-yo situation kind of person um no i like um like a granola on my and well i like every topping on my fro-yo but i like boba on it's like boba tea separately what's your go-to what's your go-to um fro-yo situation you're you're going into a place you don't you never been to this this brand before and you're nervous but at least you know you can get this what i do is i put some flavor usually something that's not like normal like not vanilla just but just like this much like just a little bit and then I put like 85 toppings on it I kind of do the same thing I don't do a like a variety

of toppings I'll just like 80 of the cup will be the same topping you know I put I just because I can't decide and I'm terrible at decision making so I'm like well a little gummy bear a little oreo a little granola a little different fruits but what fruit mango raspberry strawberry all of them really does it taste good as a combo in your mouth though no okay you just get you get overwhelmed i just like can't decide i don't want to be like oh i just want like the the bane of my existence are those ones where it's like pick two toppings and i'm like how like and then they do it for you and i'm like well that's not gonna work for me probably because of people like you that that yeah no legitimately I'm sure they're like we don't want

you to put an entire packet of oreos on top of your ice cream today um but you know that's what I do and I gotta say uh it's it's not highly it doesn't come highly recommended on my end I wonder how well it would do if there was like a froroyo place or like a Chipotle place, but behind the counter, all it was was just a topping store. And like, you're just like, I just want a cup of Oreos as I'm walking down the street. I want to throw a bunch of crap in one cup and see how it goes while I'm walking down the street. Like I'm a big on Froyo. Every time I get Froyo, the like at least 50% of the cup is fresh strawberries. Because I just want to eat a bowl of strawberries and I can't get that anywhere else.

Yeah, but that's so expensive. I feel like then you could just go get strawberries for like a quarter of the price at the store. You'd think. But also I find ways to be inconvenienced at all moments. Sure. Yeah, it's already cut up for you. I don't have to wash it. I don't have to dry it. I don't have to cut it up. Yeah moments and like sure yeah that's already cut up for you i don't have to wash it i don't have to dry it i don't have to cut it up yeah that's fair that's

and it's also it's on my walking path anyway like i never drive out of my way to go get fro you it's always a spontaneous oh i'm walking by thing well you know that makes me wonder well first of all i often go out of my way to get fro-yo but that's a me problem but um it makes me wonder at the fro-yo serve yourself places if anybody ever just goes in and doesn't get fro-yo and just gets toppings because that's the same concept yeah someone has to and i wonder someone does i i wonder if it's annoying to the employees and it probably is because you imagine you just spent all this time prepping a whole thing of strawberries and then i just ask for like the canister of it.

You know, just get the whole thing. Oh, that would be annoying. Yes, that would be. But yeah, so I don't know. It's a great it's a great philosophical question. You know, I'm a little nervous because my neighbor, my next door neighbor told me she listens to the show and she just started listening. listens to the show and she just started listening and she's like yeah i i listened to an episode and i just heard about your friend's cardiac problems for about 25 minutes and i went yeah well welcome to the show i'm glad there's another person in the world who's nervous about me thank you for

bringing it back up uh thank you for making me the star once more shout out to ann and she was like i mean i hope they're okay but she's like you know i did say like oh it's a paranormal show and then i was like oh maybe i was wrong and i was like no no it is technically just wait a little bit the first the first uh 20 to 30 minutes never is but like we just it's a it's a very slow build up to the experience yeah so I do apologize. But so now I'm all on edge, like, oh my gosh, someone's listening. But she probably gave up already. I don't know.

I don't blame her. She's probably like, unless I'm bringing Froyo to your house, I've learned nothing about you. So yeah, yeah. Or canned boba, you know. You know, try it. You might like it. Okay, here is my silly little story. Oh, wait. Do you have a reason why you drink did you have a reason just that uh my neighbor who's just a lovely person and got the cutest puppy recently um listens to the show and now i feel kind of like oh wow i feel like i'm

disappointing all my neighbors you know that's silly but you're probably not i think there's at least one shittier neighbor on your street. Whether or not you know who they are. Oh, I probably do know who they are. Oh. Shout out. Fun. Well, I still have yet to figure out who my new shitty neighbors are because the original shitty ones have moved.

So I haven't figured out who my new arch nemesis is. Can't wait for that, though. Me too. I really miss complaining. I'll find a different way to fill that hole until future notice okay here is a little story for you and this is supposed to be this is kind of just like a silly little one because um this was supposed to be the one that you and i were going to do together if we found the time when you were last in LA uh remember

we thought like oh well while you're in town oh this episode I thought you meant like this story and I was like I don't remember that okay the episode yes right yeah uh because in last time it ended up being a little bit of a whirlwind with me because we speaking of my heart stuff we had another health scare during our live show our uh cryptids unscripted so it just i think it became kind of a bit of a wild train wreck of a weekend health-wise for me so uh we ended up not recording an episode together instead we decided to we did a gift opening video so that's on patreon we did a gift opening video and great stuff uh you and me and eva all went to see a broadway show together that was lovely did it was a blast anyway so we we had a good time but the times where we maybe would have recorded i i don't

think i was feeling it and i ended up being yeah it was not your fault it was just a tight i ended up not even being near you for like one of the whole days you were in town i felt so bad about it but um yep so this was meant to be kind of like a silly one while you were in town hence the silliness to it i see um this was actually recommended i think So our lovely social media person, Megan, put out a questionnaire on our Instagram page or something like that about cryptids that people would want to hear me talk about. And this one happened to get multiple requests. I don't know how multiple people have ever heard of it because i certainly haven't but i guess i've just been in the dark so here is the

story of bat squash what i know it's a weird one i was hoping i i was hoping first of all that i'd heard of it but i haven't and then second of all I was hoping you were gonna say Batboy do you remember Batboy is he was he the one on the front of National and National Enquirer I don't know why we all have such like that core memory because like I read a lot of National Enquirer as a teenager and Batboy really stuck with all of us I don't think it was even the National Enquirer it was a different one of those but um i was just listening to a podcast called wonderful with griffin mccroy and his wife and um they his like thing of the day was bat boy which i think was on weekly world news

yeah i just i just looked it up weekly world. Yeah, and it was like this. And he went through the whole story of how they created the story. And it was just a very, like, fun story. So when you said bat, I was like, no, bat boy. Honestly, like, I wonder if people would be interested in me covering that. Because I am going to deep dive it anyway now out of sheer curiosity. You might as well write it down. I might as well because I i really i mean it's cryptid and spooky and i definitely informed a lot of our uh our way of jumping into things at

the word bat but um no this is unfortunately not bad boy today but maybe i'll cover it later maybe i'll go through all those like national enquirer weekly world news things and actually use them as sources for ones how fun would that be to do like just a whole new story where you take those like for at 100 like validity i think honestly really fun got it okay that might be my 300th at this point if i don't have another topic idea oh yeah it's sort of like the onion you know just like what if i use the onion for my like true crime story of the that would be so depressing it would be it would actually be the happiest story you've ever told maybe perhaps actually yeah okay so bat squatches said to have come out of the eruption of mount saint helens oh okay here is a quote from Portland Ghosts about the eruption and thus birth of Batsquatch.

God itching to once more throw his weight around. Kaboom! Everything goes tea kettle up. White becomes black. Black becomes white. Up is down. Down down is sideways mother earth hugs the toilet room of existence like a bachelor post party the whammy of all hangovers something wicked stirred on the fringes of that desolate plane the bat squash spread its wings and roared i'm sorry i thought we already recorded the cryptid poetry slam but this seems like a top-notch entry for our cryptid poetry slam it that i mean whoever wrote that clearly has uh a calling outside of just writing for this website um but yeah definitely a contender for the next cryptids unscripted and also uh a contender for maybe the weekly world news or whatever with that pulitzer prize maybe i would say oh right yes that one also the nobel peace

prize might as well throw that in there sure sure sure so uh that's kind of like a silly entry into this but just to keep it a little more seriously um i listened to the camp monsters podcast take on this and they gave some more um grimmer elements to mount st helens uh so it happened may 18th in 1980 and these are just a few of the quotes from the podcast the force of 50 atomic bombs 230 230 square miles, 150,000 acres of living forest vaporized and devastated. A cubic mile of solid rock, the largest landslide ever recorded, traveling at hundreds of miles an hour, burying everything in its path. A blast cloud 15 miles into the stratosphere, raining mud and ash, blotting out the sun streaked with lightning and rumbling with thunder i'm going to take the pulitzer and give it back give it a wet take it yeah at least cut it in half and give it half of them to this podcast i like to think that between

portland ghosts and the camp monsters podcast they're just going to do a katie heron with the tiara and just like oh my god yes just snap the you get half a pulitzer you get half a pulitzer yeah yeah all well written but uh definitely two different takes powerful yeah so so for all international listeners and not for me just because i'm so kind and thinking about uh all our international listeners where exactly is this again uh hmm good question uh oh it's just it's in um i i do not want to say mount shasta uh mount st helens so i feel it's on the uh i think it's been pretty sure it's washington state but i don't want to say the wrong thing well it's definitely pacific northwest i do know that it is it's washington state okay cool um yeah okay i i was gonna say the county name but i am sure i'm gonna mess it up scamania county scamania scamania

ska and mania which like are two of my like favorite topics but um wait are they i like talking about both but put together it's apparently a county in Washington. Okay. All right. It's 52 miles northeast of Portland and 98 miles south of Seattle. Okay. Okay. That makes sense.

I just, just not for me. I knew exactly where it was. Like I even knew the coordinates. I just wanted to make sure international listeners could figure it out too. I know. And that's why when they break off all the prizes, you're going to part of the nobel because you're just thinking of everyone i just oh i'm so gracious i thought you meant because i knew the coordinates but also because i'm so gracious yeah whatever the geography version of that award is you also win that one um okay so yeah two different

takes on it um and you know one of them obviously more realistic and very brutal just to let people know that there were deaths. I think there was like 50 something people died. But then there was like bridges and buildings and cities that were just, I mean, destroyed. Scary. And because of this eruption, there was something called the dead Zone, which is the leftover area covered in rubble. And the cryptid part of this is that this is where the bat squash is said to reside. Whoa. Okay. Sorry. For all our international listeners, again, I'm just speaking on their behalf. I know it.

They need someone to speak up on their behalf. What year was this, that this eruption took place again? 1980, but I know you knew that. It's just, I did. Yeah. Thank you.

Oh yeah. Thank you so much. I just wanted to like reiterate for everybody else, you know, I know. Thank you. My history is pretty on point. So I know it.

And I wouldn't even ask you to just describe the dead zone. And the reason I wouldn't do that to you, because obviously your answer would just, just make everyone's uh like not worth our time yeah exactly i want to give you with the spotlight for a moment okay i knew it i know i appreciate that and that's why i actually wrote a different quote here because i didn't oh good you would upstage whatever they'd have to say so um so in the dead zone this is in theory where the bat squash resides after the eruption and thus his birth out of this volcano um and when it comes to bat squash this is a quote it seemed the eruption had awakened something that was not content to go

back to sleep oh and to give you an idea of this dead zone, in comes my description I found elsewhere from you because that would have been too much. When describing the dead zone, this was, I think, also the Camp Monsters podcast. Very well written podcast. I don't know if they're like actually, I don't know if they're writing out scripts first or something, but these are not things that would just come out of my head. You know what I'm saying? Just spill out of our mouths.

Yeah. It doesn't feel like they're mouth spillers. So here's their description of the dead zone, just to kind of get you in a spookier mood, I guess. In a sad mood also. Not a bird, not an insect, not a branch or a leaf left to the left for the wind to stir. Even your footsteps smothered by the soft ash.

So deep, so light. The slightest movement brought it up in clouds, clouds of ash that clung to any moving thing following filling choking. It choked the carburetors on the trucks until they wouldn't run. It dulled the chains on the saws until they wouldn't cut. It caked and burned men's throats until their voices died. Until there was that silence again.

That terrible, terrible silence. You'd catch yourself listening, holding your breath, waiting for something. Something horrible. And that was just during the day. Okay, I'm gonna cry cry that is just so heavy remember when i said this is just a silly little story yeah what the hell so that's just to give you an idea of the dead zone and like the vibes of this area the hashtag vibes are pretty dark yeah the vibes are like not what i would want to match, but, um, okay. So that is a little bit about the dead zone and the general area of maybe where people

are spotting Batsquatch or expecting him to be. As for Batsquatch himself, uh, there are reports from, uh, Mount Shasta, which is why I almost said it earlier when you asked yeah where mount st helens was and by the way mount shasta we talked about that episode 168 and then i think we followed it or uh before that episode we covered the lemurians yes you did both i remember so if you want to go check those out those were some pretty good episodes um but so there are reports from mount shasta all the way to butler county pennsylvania so i'm just going to call this a nationwide crisis um and people whenever they do make reports of seeing bat squash it is always at night and it is always when it is too silent too silent oh you know that eerie silence yeah yeah yeah and it seems like uh

the main reports come from hikers in the pacific northwest who say that they see the bat squash itself flying out of the mountain crevices like just taking a stroll i guess just taking a little swoop oh yeah uh it's he's described as a huge primate or wolf like bat he's over nine feet tall with a wingspan with a wingspan of up to 50 feet oh my god what ew yeah it's like a monster expected a monster uh it's said to weigh more than two grizzly bears combined oh sure that's a ratio we all understand yeah a currency that i get i feel like if i could even get near a bear to try to pick it up i wouldn't understand the weight of two of them you know what i mean like how am i supposed to know what this means like someone must have just said it like as like hyperbole or something because when i like there's no way if there's something too heavy for me to pick up i don't know the difference between that and something

else that's too heavy for me to pick up precisely like that just doesn't you could just said the weight of one grizzly bear and i'd be like oh that's equally as heavy in my arms as two yeah nobody's gonna know i don't know the difference yeah well anyway apparently two grizzly bears is the exact number not three no more no less no more no less uh he's also said to have bright yellow teeth eyes for some reason i wrote tears hmm he does not have tears he doesn't cry he's he's not a squonk we're we have tears yeah oh yeah we have all sorts of tears if we approach him he's not the one crying yeah um i think it's that he has bright yellow eyes he also has dark black slash blue fur very sharp teeth very sharp talons and leathery wings like a bat

and because of its appearance some people have thought of it to be a flying monkey straight from hell who broke the earth's crust during this eruption oh oops whoops he just got away uh i like to think there's like those like sirens like a like a like a prison break or something in hell yes oh my gosh and they're like we lost one which also is sad because that means he's trying to get back home oh but where is home because he's still hanging out in those mountains hell he's trying to get back to hell i see he's he just, he plummets and he can't get back in. He can't get back through the plates. Oh, wow.

Okay, so that's another award for you. I don't mean to show off. I'm sorry. I'll step back. You know what's so silly about tectonic plates, which it's not silly at all? What could you possibly say next? It's about my lack of, it's about how bad of a student i was um because i don't know what was going on in my childhood i don't know who to blame this on

probably myself but i don't want to do that okay but like eighth grade was the first year where like we were having like finals i went to private school we didn't have like the sols or anything like that so we didn't have else oh that's in virginia that's like the standardized test all public schools do oh um we as a private school had erbs which was the same we did erbs too okay okay okay so other than that i didn't know anything about like finals. Like I never, we'd never done finals before. And I must've just daydreamed every day for an entire year in my eighth grade science class. Oh no.

And I didn't know that finals were coming or like maybe I heard the word finals and wasn't interpreting it as a test. I was just like, oh, like the final weeks of school. And I just never, didn't even occur to me. And so eventually there was like this huge like it was the final and i didn't fucking even study a little bit and it got such a bad grade that i guess the teacher could tell like oh somehow you completely did not translate that

like a big test was coming and you needed to study and now when i hear tectonic plates which is what that whole thing was on i just get like i get that like wake up in the middle of the night panic embarrassment because i remember the teacher pulling me out of class in front of everybody to like tell me that i basically got a zero and like i would like i the threat in my mind was i'd have to retake eighth grade or something. Anyway, I hear tectonic plates and I get a little, a little jittery. Well, I'm sorry that I pulled out of my very, very pea brain size, limited amount of information about geology. The one phrase I could think of that somehow also was the one phrase that would send you

into eighth grade turmoil. I apologize. A real tizzy. Wow, my bad i remember writing the word like magma and crust a lot and like and like probably for questions that that wasn't even one of the options like i think they were like the only two things i had processed anyway so um well yeah crust and mag. Those are probably the only two I remember either. Mine seemed like cherry pie. It was a bad, bad. It was my awakening into what final exams were.

So trust me, ninth grade, I had quite a panic. I was like, I know what finals are now. Day one, you were like studying, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so So, um, blah, blah, blah.

Tectonic plates. How did we get there? Oh yeah. So he's thought of as being like one of like the hell's minions that broke through the earth's crest during the volcanic eruption. So he's also said to potentially have telekinetic powers and people think that he can manipulate all electrical equipment or anything with a motor. So he's, uh, known to shut off TVs, phones, radios, car engines.

Well, that's probably why my internet isn't working. He's just swooping about. Man. I'm just saying. He knows. If you hear a... I don't know what kind of sound. That's him.

It wasn't me. It wasn't me. Oh, my God. Well, you know, it's like in SpongeBob when they go, no, Sferatu. I don't know what kind of sound. That's him. It wasn't me. It wasn't me. Oh, my God. Well, you know, it's like in SpongeBob when they go, no, Sferatu. I'm going to be like, fap, Squatch. Leave my router alone. I forgot about that.

I think about that at least once every three months just for fun. I remember even back then being like, I had no idea who no Sferatu was. And I remember thinking, that's a funny fucking bit. That's a hilarious joke no idea who nosferatu was and i remember thinking that's a funny fucking bit hilarious joke no sporadu it's like uh the magic school bus and they'd go carlos i knew i should have stayed home today i think about that also every three months anyway uh okay so he's known to have telekinetic powers. He's known to manipulate electrical equipment. And this is just for instance, but the most well-known story we have of Bat Squatch is from April 19th, 1994, when a guy named Brian was driving in Washington.

It was in Pierce County. And his car stopped for no reason. Uh, and then something came swooping down and there's different versions of this story. Not too many different versions, but the, it sounds like something came swooping down and Brian happened to just see a

tall, dark blue furred creature with yellow eyes and wings. The creature stared at him and then just shot back up into the sky and flew away, and the car started again. Whoa. So that's the version. It really was 50-50, so I don't know what the right version is. But of the two, that was one of them

that he just it stopped his car he saw this thing and then it took back up to the skies and his car started the other version is that uh this creature like this creature that's as heavy as two grizzly bears landed on this guy's truck and brian freaked out and he like got out of his car and he tried running but then this thing almost attacked him so then he had to dive under his car and he hid under his car and he could see bat squatches like he could hear his footprint or footsteps walking around the car for like until sunrise and then uh it sounds like he might have gotten scratched up from this encounter and like his shirt was a little ripped so it's just like a more like involved yeah and i don't know which one is

the right one and by the way by right one that implies that bat splat is real um but i don't know which one brian would tell us today i see um so camp monsters podcast did a great great dramatic retelling of this event like i'm giving you a blurb and i usually try to give sometimes more detail than necessary when it comes to our stories but they like did like a storytelling version of it i mean i don't doubt it they're they seem to be they're they're even me talking right now. I'm getting embarrassed just thinking about how good they are with words. I'm barely speaking. Just talking and I have to think of every word before I say it. We're not used to that. retelling of it and like a narrated experience uh camp monsters podcast so that is brian's experience and i guess it was real enough because like tacoma news tribune they tried writing in

or they wrote an article about it um the next week in 1994 so in theory there is a tacoma news tribune article about this b Brian guy and bat squash. You got to get in that newspapers.com game. You know, I know I wasn't it for a long time and then I, I used it mainly for my ancestry stuff. Yeah. And then I never used it for actual research because I just never found anything.

Like, I mean like a use for it or like a, I feel like this is where it's much more useful for true crime sides to this because very rarely am I finding ghost stories in there. Sure. Yeah. But anyway, so they did an article in the Tacoma Tribune and Brian's mother has said that Brian has moved away from the area and does not like talking about the incident. So if anyone has tried writing him or asking for a retelling, he has not offered it.

So there have been since then, I'm sure several other sightings that hikers claim to see something in the sky, or maybe someone's close enough to the dead zone. And they feel like they're hearing something in the woods. But the two most recent sightings are from 2011 and 2014. In 2011, it was one guy who was walking his dog. And he had to pick the dog up because he saw something like circling. Like maybe going to catch his dog. I don't. It could have been like a vulture or a bird or something.

But could have been a bat squatch. I wasn't there. So in 2014, there was apparently a whole Spanish classroom in Ohio that swears that they saw it fly by. There was like children, the teachers, they were all like, this thing exists. How scary. But also, as a skeptic, I'm pretending bat-squatch is real, but the event is not. like as a skeptic i'm pretending bat squash is real but the event is not um where i'm like hmm but it's all the way in ohio and it's a random classroom but no other classroom saw it i don't know but you know what maybe it's just a fun story maybe that day spanish class the teacher was like let's go outside and talk about nature in spanish and they were outside and they were talking about, you know, let me think

of one word I can think of in Spanish. Español. I'm talking about nature. How do you say? Oh. Agua. How do you say tree? What's wrong with me?

I should know that. I can only think of German. Okay. You should have said German class. I could have made this a lot easier uh cielo isn't that sky or did i make that up too it's entirely possible i don't know anyway there was a spanish class who did speak somewhat uh some spanish at the very least and they they all said that they saw it i don't know i took spanish in ohio as well and clearly

i don't have much to prove for it. So I don't think we can confirm they spoke Spanish either. Just saying. Our bowl is true. Our bowl, yes. Thank you. Oh my God. What is wrong with me?

And cielo is sky. Okay. I was correct on that. That makes me feel slightly better. Oh my God. You're trilingual. That's crazy. I know.

And that's why I was giving my prize back, but I'm taking it back again. Yeah, yeah, I understand. You've got language, you've got geography, you've got history. Geology. Does your brain hurt just with all this information in there just racking around all the time? Oh, you know, it's just gotten used to it at this point. Oh, wow. Wow, wow, wow.

It's a heavy brain. You must slouch a lot. It's a heavy burden. It's a heavy brain. You must slouch a lot. It's a heavy burden. Well, anyway, there are some, let's say, amateur Spanish speakers out there who swear that they saw it in Ohio. And then this is another story I hadn't heard from anywhere else, but I found it on the Camp Monster podcast.

So these people are really getting a shout out from me today. But they had a story that I guess maybe as local lore in the Pacific Northwest or something. But there used to be a summer camp in the area called Camp Tishalub. Tishalub. And it would, it was known in the 80s, because it was so close to bat squash territory and hiking territory and camping territory it just became part of the lore of the woods that oh the bat squash could be here and some of the counselors would even take campers on bat squash like investigations or scam like scavenger hunts i guess and uh eventually the stories got so scary that children began getting too terrified to actually go into the woods and they're at summer camp so that was causing problems yeah uh eventually there was

even one night around 2 30 in the morning where one of the cabins closest to the woods heard a groan turned piercing cry and it ended up waking up half the camp. And there was this real rabble rouser counselor named Jessica. And this counselor decided that she wanted to show the kids that there was nothing to be worried about. And she was going to go prove it by spending a couple nights in the woods with two of the other counselors. And then they were going to come back and be like, see, the bat squatch didn't get us. There's no reason to be afraid of the woods. Seems like a really weird plan, but okay.essica was just tired of the kids she was like i need a break i'm glad you said it because i honestly if i were a camp counselor of several

children who were also like fighting me on outdoor activities during summer camp i'd be like uh i quit too um so anyway like i'm just as scared of this bat splatch thing as all you kids i'm not about to go prove it that's a great point actually it's like i'd be just as terrified it's like move over i need to hide yeah exactly so jessica and the two counselors decided to go stay overnight in the woods and uh as they got higher up the mountain they realized that there were less uh animal, which was abnormal. And the only tracks eventually on the mountain were of this large animal that they couldn't identify.

They ended up going to bed, but all of them woke up in the middle of the night to something next to their tent. No. They decided that they were going to leave, but when they grabbed the tent zipper, they could feel something on the other side. Like something cold and bony. Ew! This thing started leaning and pushing into the tent and flapping wildly and scratching the tent fabric. And they were freaking out. And the flashlight goes out for a second.

And that's when they hear heavy breathing and footsteps circling their tent. Forget it. Every now and then then the sounds would stop and then when they would think it was over and they could leave the tent, that's when the sounds would start again and there were these weird gusts of wind on the tent, almost as if there was like heavy flapping of wings.

They even saw teeth marks bite into the tent at one point and they heard shuffling all night and whenever they would turn the light on the breathing would back off eventually the sun rose and they took off and the camp later closed i guess because that was like additional confirmation from adults that the or maybe all the counselors quit and they were like okay nobody wants to be a counselor here anymore yeah or maybe all the children were scared of bat squash there's no context for that it just so happens that the camp ended up closing uh later that year so anyway just another story to bat squash i will always when it comes to camping stories like that my go-to is always bear or serial killer in the woods um but could be bat squash i don't know and

the bat squash has been featured on an episode of monsters across america in season three it is sometimes called washington's official cryptid but i beg to differ because doesn't sasquatch hold that title yeah i wonder if they're just trying to be like more unique sometimes you know maybe it's like sasquatch or bigfoot is like the official one but then like bat squatch is like his little brother unofficial cryptid right right right right right and probably your favorite fun fact out of all this is bat squatch is a uh beer from rogue river brewery it is a hazy ipa and i i guess that area i guess the beer is made in the same area as Batsquatch.

And so it's like a local cryptic name. I love that. Mentioned in the beer. And the caption on it is, in honor of Tales of the Batsquatch that are all a bit hazy on the details. Oh, how fun is that? And that is Batsquatch. That's a great story. I really like that.

And I really would love to try that beer. Oh, you let me know how it goes. I don't want to try it, but I bet it's going to really make your tummy so happy. I bet it's going to make my tummy not happy, but my nice little brain very happy. Well, your brain needs a break. Apparently it's won a bunch of awards for how intelligent it is you're right you're right it needs a little bit of a a little bit of a boost um okay well i have a part two for you today and i i was gonna say i didn't know i forgot and then

halfway through my story i was like i think there's gonna be a part two to this yeah there is and i have a little recap for you for thank you just for all our international listeners because i know you and i know exactly everything that happened last time every word you've ever spoken i've retained memorized exactly yeah and it's pretty impressive for someone with like a smaller brain than mine to do that is pretty it's couldn't be truer yeah yeah so i have you're so welcome and you're so welcome everybody who's international and for some reason therefore does not remember last week's story and their brain is so small your brain is so small i'm so sorry um so i have a a little recap

so previously on and that's why we drink together don d-a-w-n justin and glenn so glenn is the head of this this is oh by the way before i go on i'll tell you what the story is this is this children of thunder yes part two yeah and so there's this guy glenn he's like pretty unstable and by pretty unstable i mean like extremely unstable and he has gotten his younger brother justin involved in his shenanigans and this this woman named dawn and here we go so together the three of them would were planning to raise enough money to travel to brazil and recruit orphaned children as future soldiers for his cause the children would be trained as skilled assassins who would travel to the United States, kidnap the LDS church leaders, and smuggle them back to Brazil. And then...

Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No, no. Go ahead. I was going to say, and just to remind everybody, this is a mental health crisis. Yes. Okay. Yes. This man is definitely... He's very sick and he really devolved. He was, you know, part of the LDS church and then broke off and decided he wanted to be the new leader and had a lot of, you know, troubles. He did have like a dozen rules on being magical or something.

Yeah, yeah, the magic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was, those were fun to read out of context you know what i mean it was like like if that were if that were it i'd be like wow what a fun group of rules but with the context of everything else it's like hmm yeah i wish it could have just been a fun list uh rather than part of this story but yes exactly so from brazil the hostage church leaders that these children assassins had taken back to Brazil, these church leaders would then write letters declaring Glenn as the new true leader of the LDS church. And then the nine million Mormons of the world would gratefully accept him as their savior.

This is his big plan. Got it. He would then develop his own awareness training. So remember that training that he made everybody go to where they like broke you down and like basically like traumatized you and like didn't let you sleep and you know, just these horrible tactics. So he decided to develop his own awareness training called Transform America and he would create a state of peace and joy in the country. This was his big plan. So that was part one. Now this is part two. And I just want to tell you, it gets pretty

grisly. Okay. So this is where a lot of the actual, you know, murder comes in and it becomes pretty dark. So just a little warning before we jump in. So we're now at the year 2000 and Glenn is 30 years old. His brother Justin is 28 and Dawn is 26. The three of them rented a house together in Concord, California, where they decided to enact this big plan where they needed $20 million. big plan where they needed $20 million. They decided to raise these children as assassins. So they had the plan, but they needed $20 million first to, you know, actually get the children and train them as assassins. So they were like, we need 20 million bucks. How are we going to get it? Well, Glenn looked back through, so he worked, I don't know if you remember at all, but he worked as a stock broker for a while. And he was like really good at sales and really good with people. He was just

one of those kind of charming personas. And so he looked back through his client portfolio from when he was working at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter. And in it, he identified his first targets. Basically, he's looking through seeing, you know, all these all of his clients, different financial, you know, situations, and then he's saying, who can we target to access their money? Sure. So their first targets are Bob White, a former client, along with Ivan and Annette Steinman, and Ivan is 85. Annette is 88. They are a wealthy elderly couple in Concord, California. And so recently, Glenn had also started dating a 22-year-old woman named Selena Bishop.

And she actually was not a disciple of the Children of Thunder. She was actually being kind of groomed to be a scapegoat for the Children of Thunder. She was actually being kind of groomed to be a scapegoat for the children of Thunder. Like Glenn basically was like preparing to use her as a scapegoat for their crimes. Okay. So poor Selena Bishop. Yeah. She's just like, Oh, I'm going to go on a date with this charming guy who works at Morgan Stanley. No, not quite. Um, So Glenn decided to position her to take the fall if there was any suspicion about his his big plan. And Glenn even told her his name was Jordan, like made up a fake name, like didn't even tell her his real identity. So from the beginning, wasn't trying to this was this didn't start romantic and then became a thing like he immediately was like this you're from day one you're just a part of it yeah you're like a pawn in this in this uh wild crime got it and she had no idea so glenn also contacted a friend named deborah to act as their alibi but he told deborah

oh oh this crime is is drug related so deborah like till near the end had no idea this was actually like this assassin plot like she had no clue god deborah i know can you imagine if like you thought anything else and then all of a sudden you found out that oh yeah oh my god and she does find out and we will get to her reaction later when she's like oh shit um oh no yeah it's not cute uh so glenn asked deborah to please act as their alibi because they're doing this oh it's just it's nbd it's just this drug related thing so dawn one of the children of thunder gives deborah a hundred dollars and then deborah buys movie tickets and dinner for four people and saves all the receipts to basically say, oh, I was with Glenn, Justin, and Don.

Right. And they were not doing any drug-related crimes. They were with me. So now they have their targets. They have their alibi, which is Deborah. And then they have their scapegoat, Selena, in place. And now they're like, okay, step one, let's go. So it's July 30th, 2000. Glenn and Justin drive

to Bob White's house in one car and Don is in a second car. Luckily for Bob, he wasn't home when they knocked on the door. So the children of Thunder got back in their cars and drove to Ivan and Annette Steinman's house. And again, this is an elderly couple in their mid to late 80s. They see Glenn. They remember him being their like basically their I don't know if he's their wealth advisor, their stockbroker. And they invite him inside because they're like, oh, Glenn, good to see you. And this is your younger brother. Come on in.

And apparently the four of them chit chatted for nearly an hour. That's sick. It's sick. It's so sick. And Glenn and Justin didn't even back off an hour later they revealed their weapons and handcuffed the steinmans at gunpoint forced them into their car and drove them back to their house with dawn in tow i don't like i mean obviously like when i think like oh which situation's worse like there's no worse or better

like there's just some i mean obviously it goes without saying but there's i know what you mean it just adds like an element of like it's so much more sinister of like oh for the last hour of my life you sat here knowing you were going to kill me and let me feel safe pocket yeah yeah exactly and you just chit-chatted what over tea like i mean i don't it's like and then it also gives you like more perspective it's also sinister on the opposite end because now you're looking at the killers and thinking like they're capable of having a conversation with someone for an hour knowing they're going to try to kill them like a for all intents and purposes pleasant conversation

and then not backing off you know still going through with it i think as you said i always just imagine a killer is a someone who is going to act erratically and impulsively and like obviously there's premeditated murder but in my mind like it's at least premeditated murder still has like only violence associated to it there's never a there's never a long con type let's have tea and then i'm going to kill you oh and it's like was it too socially awkward to just kidnap them immediately you had to wait an hour like what is this delay it's so creepy and it's like they never stood a chance even after an hour of chit-chatting which is just so dark yeah um yeah so they they eventually go through with it they kidnap them

bring them back to their house and dawn is following behind so inside the children of thunder's house avon and annette avon i don't know why i'm calling him avon i'm sure it's ivan like not i'm thinking back to my ap euro days studying like avon the terrible where you got another award i you know so many awards just always thinking of my awards you know it never occurred to me until now that maybe the male version of Yvonne is Ivan or vice versa oh yeah it is I just keep saying it I had no idea Yvonne instead of Ivan fun fact so uh yeah fun fact um follow me for more fun facts like that uh so anyway Ivan and Annette are told to clear their schedules so no one would become suspicious

that they were missing so this is disturbing together they called their daughter and uh at gunpoint told her they were going on a spur of the moment vacation right away oh my god what they called they well they had guns held on them like oh my god i know god and annette did the same canceling an upcoming hair appointment uh then glenn demanded a hundred thousand dollars from the steinmans but the only problem it by the way he's looking to raise 20 million dollars this is his fucking brilliant plan he's gonna get a hundred grand at a time from different people i mean what an idiot okay wait 120 million or 20 million so they need 20 million okay um but they're demanding 100,000 from their first targets i see where the math is gonna take a long time to if you're you know

assassinating all these people for money you're gonna be leaving for what like i mean like where like i want to see his budget list you know i did too because i thought 20 million dollars to to adopt quote-unquote orphans from brazil then like who's training them to be assassins where did you get the price like who quoted you like i'll train 40 children to be assassins but only for 18 million dollars and then two million in airfare like i don't like yeah i want to see the budget no sense it's it's a little fishy um and so you know he he demands a hundred thousand dollars from the steinmans but the only problem is the steinman's money was mostly uh assets and so they would have to liquidate their assets to hand over the $100,000.

So Glenn had Dawn call the Steinman's financial team and pretend she was Annette and liquidate the assets. It's unclear why he didn't just at gunpoint have Annette call since she'd already called her own daughter, but he had Dawn do it. they uh pulled an all-nighter and basically did meth all night uh while dawn while dawn prepared for her role as a net on this phone call to get a hundred grand jeez i mean i'm not surprised but it's also like oh wow like on top of everything else there's just another another extremely messy story yeah it's that's right that's right yeah and it's like it's mental illness it's drugs it's uh you know crime it's like convincing people to do horrible things with the influence of drugs it's all layers and layers so so layered exactly so a little after 6 a.m don and glenn called morgan stanley dean witter that's kind of like the old full name of morgan stanley

from a pay phone to liquidate the steinman's assets and the broker was shocked and told annette aka don um like this is going to cost you a lot of money it makes no sense financially but annette aka don. And the broker was like, okay, if you really want to do this, it's your prerogative. So at the house, Justin is watching the Steinmans and the Steinmans are awaiting release because they were told, oh, when we get your money, we'll let you go. Well, this was a lie. So this future leader of the church couldn't afford to be implicated in a felony. So he couldn't have any witnesses at hand, right? So he decided he had to eradicate this couple because they've witnessed the crime that he's committing.

I mean, he also thought an apocalypse was coming and he was going to rule the entire LDS church. So I don't know why he was so worried about having witnesses, but this is just how his mind was working. And so Glenn and Don returned home feeling victorious that he had liquidated these assets. the Steinmans to take six Rohypnol, aka Roofies, each to cause an overdose and then forced each of them to write checks that totaled $100,000. And the checks, of course, were made out to none

other than Glenn's young girlfriend Selena Bishop because they wanted her to be the fall guy, so to speak. This poor girl. Oh my god. Oh, yeah, yeah. And she's bliss, yeah, yeah. And she's blissfully unaware, too. Blissfully unaware of her relationship with Jordan.

She just thinks like, oh, I have such a great boyfriend and my life's great. La-di-da. Yeah. And there's actually even more that makes it just so much more cringe in a few minutes. Oh, God. Okay. It's just a little thing. So, of course Rohypnol did not kill the Steinmans. And so Glenn and Justin went to plan B, which was to move them to the bathroom where Glenn tried to smother them with plastic.

And when that didn't work, they basically slammed their heads into the bathroom's tile floor, which fractured Annette's skull skull but still did not kill them so finally glenn dragged her this is very brutal everybody dragged her into the bathtub and used a hunting knife to slit her throat oh and what ultimately bled to death in the bathtub ivan also died shortly afterward because his heart failed oh my god i know it's like oh wow what a what a quirky story until it's like so horrific yeah but it's it's done now wow yeah yeah oh shit um okay and so dawn was just kind of there she just stood by and watched this all happen uh as glenn and justin like carried through with this plan and then glenn and justin began this terrible work of dismembering steinman's bodies with a reciprocating saw which caused like horrible amounts of blood spatter just like

humongous mess um and then they placed the bodies in black garbage bags and told Dawn to go pick up some firewood to burn any evidence that was left over. And then Dawn wrote a check for $10,000 with Annette's checkbook made out to Ivan. And then she drove 50 miles to a distant bank to deposit it in disguise. Okay, so now she's wearing this disguise. Okay. I can't wait to's wearing this disguise. Okay. I can't wait to tell you what the disguise is. She's wearing a lime green pantsuit, a strawberry, a strawberry.

That's not what it says. I'm sorry. A lime green pantsuit, a straw cowboy hat, and it's in a wheelchair. So very inconspicuous. Extremely inconspicuous. Like, wouldn't remember her, you know, in a crowd. So it worked.

Dawn deposited the check without issue. And even though she had misspelled Steinman, the name on the check, it still went through. Okay. Well, ding, ding, ding on evidence number one yeah so the next day dawn put on her disguise again this time posing as the girlfriend selena bishop's friend the totally uh blissfully unaware girlfriend and she told a banker that selena her friend selena needed an emergency heart surgery. And she's like, I have these checks from Selena's grandparents. They sent the money to cover the cost for this heart surgery. But Selena's in the hospital, so I'm here to deposit it on her behalf.

Because remember, she had the Steinmans write the checks to Selena. So she's like, oh, this is the money from her grandparents. checks to selena so she's like oh this is her money from her grandparents um in reality selena was at home waiting to hear back from glenn who had promised to go camping with her that weekend but forgot because he was busy like cutting up bodies and so she's literally sitting around like huh i wonder where my boyfriend jordan is he said he was going to take me camping this weekend and meanwhile all of this shit is going down. And this woman, Dawn, is pretending like Selena, she's Selena's friend and Selena needs a heart surgery. And oh, my God, it is so chaotic. And this poor girl has just, she's like probably just on Netflix waiting for her boyfriend to get there.

She literally has like her sleeping bag packed because she's waiting for the camping trip like she's ready to go camping and jordan is nowhere to be found she's like i wonder what he's up to oh boy oh boy oh my god i also i can't i mean i i i'm just always baffled by the concept of like someone who can obviously commit murder like i can't imagine being able to do that but on top of it to just have like a normal life every other day and like like oh i'm just gonna go camping later it's like what or like are you just living in constant panic that you're gonna get caught like i don't understand i don't know i don't know and i'm kind of glad we don't know. Yeah, I'm happy to not have the same brain chemistry, but just wow. It's it's baffling. And so Don, you know, tells this bank like I need to deposit this on her

behalf. So the bank contacts the Steinman's brokers to clear the transaction. The brokers are like, well, we need the Steinman Social Security numbers to confirm. Well, guess what? They had the Steinman social security cards because they had ivan's wallet and it was in there so uh they called and said oh here are their social security numbers and like please go ahead and initiate the transfer but the banker felt something wasn't right and spoke to don again and said i actually would like to speak directly with the steinmans themselves before i clear any checks so she tells glenn this and he's frustrated and he decides this might make you even more mad than the whole chat chit-chatting for an hour he decides to call off the whole plan he's like let's find our money another way and just like bail on this entire plan. Like he,

he, what? Obviously their deaths were already horrific and pointless and brutal and senseless, but this feels like almost just as like frustratingly. It feels like, it feels like a super obviously fucked up power move of like, oh,

this, this, I have better things to do with my time. Yeah. it's like ah never mind that was too hard like even though you've already murdered them yeah even though like kill like the killing was so hapless like oh i could do that any other exactly like it almost like a like a hiccup in the plan and it's like oh we'll find another plan so it's just like so it makes it even more senseless and it's hard to say like oh the murder was now more senseless

because like there was like or like at least go through with it so their killings were worth it like no one's gonna say that right exactly but it's like it's just more of a sense of like you can see that they don't give two shits about these people because they don't even it doesn't like they were they were no more significant of a notch in the plan as like going to the storm getting supplies exactly just like swept aside um and so it just feels extra disgusting yeah and so we're back to selena now i guess she's still seeing him even though he forgot about their camping trip because on wednesday august 2nd glenn meets selena for dinner and invites her over to his house he tells selena that his bathroom was had been remodeled and he wanted her to see it okay she didn't realize he was holding a hammer

in his hand yeah but while they're talking he couldn't bring himself to kill her so he decided let's have a wine and game night with justin and don my two best friends so it's just happening again like just like oh yes it's also like i wonder if it's like one of those power moves you know how like a cat and mouse like the cat knows it could kill the mouse but just wants to tease it to play along yeah yeah yeah it feels like a playing on like knowing i could get you knowing that i almost killed you but because of me you're alive and yeah that's a great point especially since he thinks he's like this leader of you know mankind he probably already has a power trip going so they played risk imagine your last

few hours on this earth you're playing playing Risk. That's my nightmare. My nightmare. But also like talk about the irony. Oh, true. Yeah. You're doing like a strategy game and like a warfare game. Yeah, exactly. So they played Risk and the trio snuck Rohypnol into Selina's wine, but she literally saw the crushed pills in her wine and was like what is this and glenn was like oh sorry my glasses are dirty so then did she just go dump it out and they had to do it again she didn't drink it but they moved on to plan c and glenn oh this is really bad what was plan c glenn told selena to lie down on the floor for a back massage. And she laid down on the floor and he started massaging her shoulders. And then Justin used a hammer to beat Selena to death.

Oh, my God. And they wrapped her in a blanket, put her in the kitchen, and then prepared the bathroom to dismember her. This is awful again because it gets worse, of course. Dawn realized Selena was still alive. And Glenn took the hammer and basically made sure that she was dead. Oh, my God. I know. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. sorry i'm so sorry it's so horrible it's so

horrible oh my god so the brothers moved selena to the bathtub which they filled with water then glenn slid her throat in the water beckoned for dawn and declared quote spirit says you get to know this is not a dream what i mean i don't know i'm not even gonna try to understand that the trio then dismembered and disposed of the body then the evidence um now there's only one loose end which was selena's mom uh her mom's name was jenny and jenny had met glenn once but as jordan like sel Selena's new boyfriend so he was like shit she she knows what I look like she might be able to recognize me and like identify me as a suspect so Jenny was staying at Selena's apartment because Selena was like I'm going camping with my

boyfriend Jordan so Jenny is staying at Selena's apartment and around 4 a.m on thursday morning august 3rd glenn went through the garage accessed the apartment and instead of jenny he encountered a 54 year old man named jim uh shocked glenn opened fire striking jim multiple times uh jenny woke up to the commotion and glenn shot her twice in the face and fled uh then he had breakfast with justin and don and they decided they had to remove the teeth from all of their victims to conceal their identities so god another trigger warning for tooth stuff um justin and glenn dismembered all the bodies and Don held the victim's heads as the brothers pulled their teeth out. Holy shit.

Wow. This is just so brutal and disgusting and graphic. Remember during my story when everything you said was just so eloquent. I know. Great storyteller. I'm so sorry. And now every time you talk, I just really want it to stop. I'm just ruining your life. I know. Great storyteller. I'm so sorry. And now every time you talk, I just really want it to stop.

I'm just ruining your life. I'm sorry. I... They rented a trailer and a jet ski, which they used to dump the trash bags full of bodies into a deep section of the Sacramento Delta.

They had nine trash bags. Wait. Oh, I just realized that's all all body parts body parts and how many people have they killed out by now that's five one two three wait one two three four five yeah five well i guess like horrible fun fact it's five people was nine trash bags worth that's so horrible oh my god on the way home children of thunder stopped for celebratory tequila shots and then glenn decided to join some of his friends at a music festival called reggae on the river while justin and dawn were sent to clean up more evidence uh there was clothing there were two saws selena's car needed to be you know disposed of the steinman's cars uh which they ditched randomly and then glenn instructed them to put

ivan's wedding ring in selena's car because then he was like oh this way police will think ivan and selena were having an affair and that's why their killings are linked like he just had some plan genius try and connect them fucking brilliant brilliant so they couldn't get the blood out of their carpets at the house again they had used this you know reciprocating saw this was very brutal very messy um and so they were overwhelmed and you know had been on this like week-long meth bender and they were just so over it so don left to stay with deborah who by the way deborah still thinks oh i just bought like an alibi for their little like drug thing has no idea no idea no oh my god wow so don's like can i stay with

you and deborah's like sure and then um she's like hey deborah i have this like wheelchair and some other and a green a lime green suit and like a lime green sweatsuit and stuff can you just keep these for me and she was like okay sure you can keep them at my house if anyone ever after this being my job if anyone ever stopped by and said oh yeah can you just hold on to this for me i'd be like you betcha and then i would hold it for them at the police department i'd be like i would put on gloves and like carry it myself to the evidence locker exactly i'd be like set it down i will absolutely not touch that with my who have you killed oh oh my god so then justin decided to pay a professional cleaner

700 and to try and get the blood out of the carpets and don had to come home and pay it and when the cleaner came they told her that the blood stains were actually just from kool-aid so don't even worry about it but try to get them out i feel like if you're a professional cleaner you know the difference between kool-Aid and blood. And blood? Are you kidding me? Yeah. Even the smell alone. Sorry to be gross, but like.

Right. Yeah. Well, first of all, one smells delicious. Guess which one it is. Yeah. It's up to you to make that call. Yeah. It's up to you.

If you're a vampire, you might have a different opinion than me. But no, I mean, like i would imagine chemically too like there are things you do for certain for like food calling yeah exactly exactly so police soon found jenny's and jim's bodies those were the parents of selena who were at uh her apartment and were absolutely baffled by the scene. One investigator recalled later, quote, for the first few hours, it was kind of a what the heck possibly happened here? We knew we had at least a missing person. We weren't sure if perhaps Selena was involved with this murder or if she herself had been a victim of foul play. So basically, they knew this was Selena's apartment.

They knew these were her parents, but they were like, we don't know where Selena is and we don't know why her parents have been brutally killed. So police began notifying family members and one family member tried to get a hold of Selena to try and comfort her about her mother's death, but couldn't reach her. And how many days has it been since she's died, by the way? You know, I don't know off the top of my head. I think only a couple days, not very long. I don't know off the top of my head. I think only a couple days, not very long. So it's so sad.

It's so sad to think, oh, there were days where I just thought this person was walking around. Yes. Yeah. And like had no clue. And then all three of them had been killed. So they figured, you know, she was on her camping trip. That's why she wasn't answering the phone. Still, they were like, oh, but she's with this guy, Jordan. So we should at least talk to him.

So he became a person of interest to the police. An investigator found out that this Jordan fellow had a brother named Justin and did some digging and finally put the pieces together and realized Jordan, the boyfriend, was actually this guy, Glenn Taylor Helzer. At this point, though, investigators still hadn't connected this case to the Steinman disappearance because, like, why would they be connected? There was just no rhyme or reason at this point. And so investigators and the Concord SWAT team ultimately burst into the Children of Thunder's house early one morning at 6 a.m. And Glenn tried to escape through the backyard, but he was caught. And Justin and Dawn surrendered peacefully. the backyard but he was caught uh and justin and don surrendered peacefully but once inside the police car glenn pushed his body against the window of the police car popped the window out

of place jumped out of the vehicle and made a break for it in just his boxers what yeah holy shit yeah he ran into a neighborhood house like a random person's house pointed his fingers at the occupant as if pretending to have a gun and demanded their car keys but the homeowner luckily had two big dogs who chased him off uh then glenn glenn entered a another home of a woman who assumed he was her son's friend and invited him in he took a knife from her kitchen demanded her car but her car was in the shop for repairs she was like you can have it but it's not here oh my god so she de-escalated the situation what a champ by offering him some clothes and so he took the clothes and left well he was probably like that's necessary to not be so obvious as I'm on the run.

Exactly. I at least need some khakis to blend into the, or a lime green pantsuit and a straw cowboy hat to blend into the crowd. That's all it'll take. Yeah. So officers surrounded Glenn in another backyard and brought him in for questioning. Meanwhile, investigators found plenty of evidence and drugs to hold the Children of Thunder as they looked for more.

Then the banker who had denied Don the check deposit saw a news report about the Steinman's disappearance and was like, oh, my God, like this person has been coming in trying to cash checks on behalf of the Steinman's and even mentioned Selena Bishop by name. So now so now they're like, wait a second, there's this weird connection. Like the banker's talking about Selena Bishop, who is a totally separate case than the Steinman. So they're trying to figure out what the hell is going on here. On August 7th, a man out jet skiing on Makalumni River in Sacramento County discovered a duffel bag floating in the river. And inside he found concrete, trash bags, and my least favorite thing, a human torso. Throughout the week, investigators recovered more and more bags from the water until finally they confirmed they were the bodies of Ivan, Annette, and Selena. Still, they were like, what the fuck is the connection here between all of these people?

One investigator said of the case, it was just bizarre and every day something worse would surface. So back at the killer's house, they found a note that read, head and teeth, two hours. Wait, what? I don't know. It said head and teeth, period, two hours. Wait, what? I don't know. It said head and teeth, period, two hours. So I don't know. Does it mean like, I mean, I will know. I know they were trying to take the teeth to try and maybe they were scheduling it.

I don't know. Or like, this is how long it'll take to take them all out. Or this is how far away they need to be hidden from the actual body i mean it could be anything it could be anything and they found that note along with the hammer that had been used to kill selena so investigators contacted deborah the alibi and when she found out this crime was about murder and not just murder but like a series of murders not drugs she immediately was like well fuck no i had no idea i was just told like this was a drug thing so i bought movie tickets and dinner for everybody like i didn't know that this was such a heinous

crime that was going on um and she also said oh and by the way that dawn lady left me a wheelchair a gun ammunition a cowboy hat and a lime green pantsuit. So you might want those as well. Oh, my God. So she hands over all the evidence. And there was also Selena's driver's license and social security card, Annette's wallet, Ivan's insulin and both of their checkbooks and bank statements. So they had just like kept all of the shit. So obviously the

police immediately had enough evidence to be like okay well obviously they did it um deborah also had the written script that dawn had practiced with before she went to the bank in disguise oh my god and this was all kept in a safe so deborah hadn't really realized everything that was in the safe she just said like oh dawn is keeping some stuff in my safe and they opened it and were like um yeah that's that's really bad and so finally they're seeing that the script that don went to the bank with and they're finally putting all the pieces together and seeing how these deaths are linked oh my god so don So Don, Justin, and Glenn were all set to face

the death penalty at trial. The boy's mother, Karma, tried to secure a private attorney but couldn't afford it. The defense went to the county attorney office where Don's court-approved lawyer worked to get her out

of the death penalty and her attorney actually contacted a cult deprogrammer who... Oh, interesting. I know. This is so fascinating he actually attended that group awareness training that don had attended yeah that um that glenn had made her attend and he attended it just to understand interesting right i thought that was like so powerful and what a good way of using resources absolutely 100 i was so impressed by that so he went to this group awareness training went through the whole like lack of sleep and all

that just to see like what don had gone through he then used that knowledge um and his previous knowledge of you know cult deprogramming to appeal to don and finally basically had to convince her that deprogram her and convince her that Glenn was not a prophet. Like she had been fully on board with all of this thinking like the ends justify the means he's a religious prophet. You know, I would love to sit in on a workshop like that. Like how do you deprogram a cult member? Like what? I feel like you can't just learn them in like a six hour conference, you know there's probably so much psych behind it you know yeah wow i bet there's some show some netflix or hbo special you could watch about that probably probably probably at least a ted talk you know

at least a ted talk there's always a ted talk um so basically he had to deprogram her and convince her like this guy gl Glenn is not a prophet. And he by the way that also means like you've been used and you've been used to really hurt a lot of people. Which is like I imagine a hard thing to accept. I was going to say did Dawn fully deconstruct this this time in her life. I think so. I think she just had to fully accept like i just killed or at least she didn't actually hands-on kill anyone but she just stood by yeah people were being killed and it's

like that i would want to live in that fantasy of like oh no he was a prophet like well sure like no one wants to think that that's a justified thing yeah yeah. Yeah, exactly. So he was able to, you know, convince her of that. And then a famous forensic psychologist who usually avoided testifying for defense then interviewed Dawn and was like, she's not a violent person. And I believe she had truly fallen victim to psychological torment and had been legally insane at the time of the crimes. Yeah. So Dawn underwent a polygraph test to assure she hadn't personally committed any of the killings. She was only an accessory. And then the court used Dawn as a witness for the other against the other.

Sorry, against the brothers to to secure the death penalty. So she testified against them once she had kind of been like deprogrammed out of being on their side basically she was spared the death penalty but she did plead guilty to 13 felonies and then as a trial approach glenn maintained his innocent plea but justin this is pretty sad it gets sad and actually the more i think about it the more just like it breaks my heart but remember in the last episode when i was talking about how glenn's glenn and justin's mother kind of saw glenn as like this like he had been going through some um mental health stuff and mental illness and she kind of fed into it by saying you know no these are messages from spirit

god is speaking to you you know right and then she told all of glenn's siblings like you have to listen to him and so justin at this point when the trial rolls around he kind of like backs completely off and basically says he has no defense no excuse no reasoning and he said i'm guilty i'm 100 guilty i have no excuse no reason i just did what my brother said um it's really awful but that's just where he stood when when the trial started so in just at least he was honest i guess i know i know it's sort of like he just kind of gave it all up. I wonder if he had a an awakening or if he always knew like this is fucked up. I don't know.

Saying something. I don't know. That's a great point because he was much more hands on with the with the crimes. Yeah. Yeah. Like he physically killed Selena. killed selena um so in just under six weeks of trial on june 16 2004 the jury found both brothers guilty of all counts in less than seven hours of deliberation glenn and justin were both sentenced to death don was sentenced to 38 years to life in prison despite her you know being just

an accessory glenn apologized to his victims families and said he now saw that his killings were unspeakably horrific but he continued trying to preach uh as a prophet but fortunately this time no one was listening so he didn't oh okay gather a new you a set of followers. Justin, unfortunately, just declined. He was so deeply remorseful. And I actually have an example of just how bad things got. So in 2012, Nancy Mullaney was allowed to interview inmates on death row in California. And she found that Justin had severely disabled himself and gone nearly blind in a suicide attempt by trying to gouge his eyes out. Holy shit. And he oh my god he said to Nancy

I apologized it was erroneous it was so misdirected I'm so sorry it's like a past. I'm so sorry. It's like a past life. I'm so not that person anymore. So I don't have a problem admitting what I did. And she actually did a and ask me anything on Q&A on Reddit, like a Q&A. Asked her, hi there, which case slash prisoner was most disturbing to you and why? And then It's Nancy Mullaney wrote, responded, yes, one inmate, Justin Helzer. There was a visually impaired sign hanging outside his cell door next to a wheelchair. When I asked to speak with him, he was open and willing and his story was horrifying. He had tried to kill himself inside his cell by trying to puncture his eyes with bick pens oh my god and i want to be clear that i'm just reading the wording here you know this is not really the way we like to speak about suicide but i'm just quoting this instead of killing himself he was blinded and paralyzed his story said so much about how deeply depressing it is

for the men i met on death row to be locked in their cells 23 to 24 hours a day for the rest of their lives. And then in 2013, he used a sheet to hang himself completing suicide. And so he's since passed. And Glenn himself is still on death row at the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego, California. And that is the just despicable, horrific case of the Children of Thunder cult. Holy crap. The end. The end.

Wow. No. Great storytelling, but a horrible story to tell. It is a horrible, horrible story to tell. It's just terrible it's just terrible you know be careful out there folks it just kept getting worse with like the like the attempt on his life and the oh i mean it's like just every it's like glenn just left awake of tragedy. And you know, the sick part is he would fucking eat it up too.

He'd be like, well, everyone remembers me. Well, I'm a prophet. Yeah. Okay. Have you ever, um, this is a personal request, which you have yet to cover, but, um, speaking of prophets, eventually I'm going to need you to cover Warren Jeffs. Oh yeah. That's one that's been on the list that I think you actually requested a few years ago. And I've, you know, really had.

No, not really avoided it. Just haven't, I don't know, gotten around to yet. But that and I'm, you know, there's so many different docuseries I still need still need to watch that it's a big branch off of warren jeff so i think i'm waiting till i'm like really in the black hole of it before i like it's almost a it's almost like a dommer bundy case it's just there's so much content about him and there's so much that branches off of it you know what i mean yeah yeah i don't know if there's a right or wrong way to cover him but i know really hate the phrase of like, oh, who's your favorite crime? Like that's so icky. But I will say I happen to know a lot about him and I don't know a lot about others. So I just I feel like I'm prepared for that story a little more than usual.

Yeah. Yeah. I'll definitely have to do that. Maybe that'll be maybe that'll be 300. Let me write this down just in case. it might not be because i might not remember but it might be it would be a really wacky episode if i'm covering bat boy at a national inquirer and you're covering warren jeff's how would that be fun i uh yeah also wondering when you will cover the duggars eventually that oh talk about another one branches off into a million that could go a lot of ways

okay well add it to the list you know I love a fucked up story about fundamentalists that I personally follow that's why we're here well okay well to keep things relatively light in the best way possible, look out soon for me covering Batboy because what a

genius idea. Maybe I'll do like a little like two or three part or where I cover like the most famous crazy monsters of the weekly world news or something god that would be fun if we did we should just do a separate podcast on like weekly world news updates you know we just read the paper to people we just pretend that that's like the new york times like that's in in the in that podcast universe the canon is that like oh this is the only newspaper and this is just actually what's happening out in the world you know i could really just pull out my broadcasting voice i used to practice it quite a lot in other news bat boy has been found from his cave you just gotta wait and hear it folks just wait i'm very excited about that one all right well

i will see you over in the after chats if you follow us on patreon uh go hang out with us uh while we chit chat probably more about batboy i don't know probably we'll see and that's why we drink