And That's Why We Drink - E303 A Pumpkin Head and a Biased Bisexual

Episode Date: November 27, 2022

In episode 303, the floor of Christine's lucid dream is covered in mouse traps set by Em! And what are your intentions for our daughter, we mean, aircraft because Em is covering a UFO sighting this week in the story of the disappearance of Fred Valentich, a gemini through and through. Then Christine covers the case of Mandy Stavik and the power of women and their instincts. And stay tuned to see if Christine's next lucid dream can reveal the note Em wrote for her that's hidden in their apartment somewhere... and that's why we drink!Don't forget to check out our Black Friday merch sale as well as new holiday merch line! atwwdmerch.com

good morning oh see god damn it we can never do it we finally committed to both just both starting off the conversation we came in hot i just said good morning good morning it's past noon here but i i took a nap so I do feel like it's still morning. What were you going to say about Eva? Oh, I just felt like we said, okay, let's go record. And then she hid herself on Zoom and then she always records the video. And so we all said, okay, bye, let's start recording. And then I said, actually, I need to eat this sandwich.

And I think she just sat there and watched me eat a sandwich and hovering over the record button I don't know about Eva but as uh you know the connoisseur of sandwiches I understand I'm sure I have done it and I'm sure I will do it so I uh I just had to get that in my system and I have my coffee I'm good to go um um I like your little your Bucky's sweatshirt oh thank you I do too it's it's a nice tie-dye number i know but the the color palette is very you yeah i guess i uh it's like a teal tie-dye i bought it when we were in uh where were we dallas and houston recently i was gonna say in bucky's i don't know where were we i have no idea i don't know where i am most times but um

m hi why do you drink this week oh man well i drink right now because i'm sleepy because yeah i'm a very lucky person where 9 a.m is early for me um yeah yeah uh i'm also a very unlucky person that my my bedtime i can't control it i i would love to go to bed earlier so that way nine doesn't feel so scary to me but you know but no but no so i'm just sleepy today also um i got to see black panther last night which was oh how was it uh it was really good by the time this comes out um it will have already opened for everybody else but um it was weird it was a like it was a good movie but it was just we everyone there was a lot of pressure obviously from the people who made it to like figure out how chadwick was going to be written out of the movie and they really handled it and

they um gave you multiple opportunities to cry and because because I went to a pre-screening with a bunch of Marvel fans and I was very, very lucky. I'm aware of how grateful I should be that I got to be in an audience that was primarily people of color getting to see someone who represents them on the big screen. And it was, you could feel the pride in the room and you could feel their sorrow during the really sad parts of people saying goodbye to Chadwick. And obviously I, you know, can't relate entirely, but to be in a room full of people where you could, you knew what they were feeling and you were just so happy for them.

It was, I hope that doesn't come off as performative, but I was just sitting in the theater and I was just like so, I was like, wow. I get to see this basically before opening night with all the people who care the most about this. That's so powerful. I love that. It was really, really, really touching. And I made friends.

Good. Which I was not expecting to do. Who was actually, and by made friends. Good. Which is, I was not expecting to do. Who was actually and by made friends, that sounds like I actively sought out people and knew how to network? No. Someone there recognized me. No. And then

they said that they felt really awkward to approach me all night, so they didn't. They waited until after the movie and we were in the parking lot. Okay, so that happens a lot. Not a lot. said that uh they felt really awkward to approach me all night so they didn't they waited until like after the movie and we were in the parking lot okay so that happens a lot like not a lot but like when that does happen where people are like oh i saw you and i was too nervous to approach you so i waited that always like throws me off because it's like oh so you've been watching like oh they admitted that they had no i know but then to me i'm like oh my god what was i doing did i pick my

nose like oh i oh my god i outed myself doing? Did I pick my nose? Like, oh, I, oh my God. I outed myself about every horrible thing I did while I was there because I was afraid that they were watching and they were. So I'm glad that I said something because I was very awkward there. I didn't know. I was just, I was so intimidated because there were a lot of famous people in the room um especially like tiktokers like i saw at least 10 tiktokers that i follow pretty actively cool and uh they were up people were like asking people for pictures and stuff and i like just felt weird i know i need to get

over it but like to to go up and shake someone's hand to like i don't want to bother them but obviously they're there to be bothered but like do they really want to be bothered so like i it was a weird dynamic and so i ended up just because allison wasn't there either i didn't have a plus one with me so i just kind of like walked around alone and you lurked i lurked and i felt really creepy about it and so eventually i just like went and sat on um i sat on a couch for a while because i didn't know how to react they had really good food they had really good chicken wings. I had a lot of chicken wings. But then also that's not like a very classy food to eat if you're trying to network.

Especially by yourself because you're just like hyper aware of yourself eating. Yeah. And then the other thing that I did that was really awkward was, so they have a photo op. They had one at the thor thing too but um for the the black panther one everyone was being instructed that like it was like a like a 10 second video that like would loop and you could put it on your socials and stuff but they were being instructed like how to move with the the props and everything and the and the set that they had built and they were just telling everyone like oh and at the end you're gonna do the wanda forever sign and I just didn't personally feel super comfy as a white

person doing it not that not that I would feel like I'd be appropriating anything but I just I felt like this was a moment for like the black community and I just didn't want to you know I don't know I felt awkward and so I was like I'm not gonna do that so there were a few times where I got in line and then I got too uncomfortable and I was like, I'm going to leave. So apparently they watched me every time I got in line and then like awkwardly snaked out. Oh my God.

And then they watched me apparently eat chicken wings and they saw me sitting on the couch by myself. So that's how good friendship is born, you know? Well, they said that they, it made me feel better when they're like, oh, we felt really scared to approach you. What's their name? Amber and James. Oh, there's two. Yeah, I think there are a couple. And but they felt they said they felt really uncomfortable to approach me. And then I listed all the things I had done that were horribly obvious social anxieties. listed all the things I had done that were horribly obvious social anxieties and uh but then we all said like okay so we're all anxious and apparently they also get invited to these

events a lot and so I was like okay well next time you see me please approach me so I don't look alone and uh so now we've agreed that at the next one we will um all sit together so oh look anyway I had a great time. And thank you. Shout out to Straw Hat Goofy, who's one of my favorite Marvel TikTokers for inviting me. And I'll end on this last thing. I know I'm taking up so much time, but no,

you're good. I came back from a Marvel screening people like, come on. What do you expect? So have I told you about this before that I like somehow on Instagram became friends with one of the cast members from Black Panther? What? No.

Okay. So there's in Black Panther there, the Wakandan army. It's like this, this very elite army. Yes. I've watched Black Panther. Yes. Okay. Okay.

So I'm friends with one of the women in the Dora Milaje. And she was very, very kind. I did not expect this, but she DM'd me after they wrapped and said, like, can I send you a shirt from set? And I went, oh, that's so nice. And so I got to wear the Black Panther shirt at the Black Panther screening. And it was just a it was a great, great time. So anyway, I love love that that's so sweet i had a lot of fun so anyway the end uh wow what a time to be alive for m schultz yes i was just

in bed texting you um that i was hoped you were having a great time but i was not doing anything nearly as fun or exciting what were you doing and why do you drink? Okay, I have a real reason. And this one is, I meant to bring it up last week, but we talked so much about my ghosty stuff that it just didn't fit. But I wanted to bring up something else that happened recently that I was so proud of

and excited about, which is that I had like six lucid dreams and I'm like getting so much better at it. And I'm just so excited about it because I'm like really trying. You haven't told me any of this. Oh my gosh. I know. That's why I, that's why it's like killing me that, um, tell me everything. Okay. Let me see me see where I wrote a note somewhere. Hold on. Oh, God. Okay. I don't know.

Half this stuff doesn't really make any sense on my... Oh, here it is. I found it. I was going to say your note taking has not been nailed. My note taking has not improved. No. My notes app on my phone is probably almost as messy as my Gmail inbox. It's just like, it's just chaos. Um, so I took, so this is pro tip.

If anyone's trying to lucid dream, um, always write down your dreams is, is a big one. And then go to bed with the intention of lucid dreaming is a big one. And then number three, you're most likely to have a lucid dream in like during a nap because you're, you're in that hypnagogic state. Um, and so you're much more likely to, to have a lucid dream. And so I, we had done an interview like fricking early in the morning. Um, it was early for you. It was like five 30 in the morning, your time, or maybe that's late for you because you're still awake. I don't really know.

Honestly, me either. That day in particular, I did stay up until 5.30. You did? Oh, God. Well, because I go to bed at like 4.00. And I was like, I'm not going to go to bed for an hour just to absolutely miss this interview. So, yeah. Well, we did the interview. It's like 10 minutes i was very annoyed and then

i went back to sleep and during that dream or during that nap i had six different lucid dreams because i kept waking up and then being like oh my god and then i would fall back asleep and re-enter the lucid dream and i was like this is so fun oh that's so cool so it was cool because i could wake up and think like well now what do i want to do in my lucid dream and then I would like re-enter my lucid dream so a lot of it was like I kept waking up and falling back asleep so I forgot like I didn't write it down because I was just trying to like stay asleep but the one that I remember the most vividly is that I flew out my window in my bedroom and I flew down the street and I was like looking at my neighborhood and we have in Newport there's like a main street called Monmouth and it has all these

like antique shops and diners and just like little boutiques and old-timey butcher shops and stuff and I was flying over and I was like oh my god I have the coolest idea I'm gonna say I'm gonna set an intention like you basically say, I want to do this or I want to see this and it happens. So I said in my dream, I want to see Monmouth Street in the 1880s. And it was like this. You can do that?

Yes. It was the coolest thing ever. It was. How does your brain even tap into that? I don't know. And that's the thing. It's like my mind must have just been like, okay, let's invent this, you know?

Yeah, like, do you think it was actually time accurate or was it your version of what old looks like? No, I think it was my mind creating it. Okay. Did you actually time travel? No, like, I assume. And I mean, there are definitely people who believe, like, lucid dreaming,

you can, like, ask dreaming you can like ask you know travel like um uh astral project astral travel that kind of thing and so like maybe but i mean i'm assuming this is just my subconscious like inventing what i was looking at sure um but it was i literally just said i want to see newport kentucky in the 1880s and it was like this like, like everything just like transformed. And there were like horses and... Oh, not horses. That's what you take away, not horses? What's wrong with horses?

My goose cam is like crazy right now. Oh, it was so cool. And then I was flying around, right? And then I was like, oh, I'm going to walk around and just like pretend like I'm part of this neighborhood in the 1880s and so i'm walking around and i was like i touched a building and i was like shut up this is so freaky because i was touching the brick and i was like this just feels like i'm touching a brick yeah i was like this is tripping me out so then i went into a pub and i was like hi can I have a beer I didn't know what to do

and they were like um sure but then I felt like they were all looking at me kind of funny and so I walked out and um then across the street they had like a um like a little brothel and I was like I'm gonna go in there so then I walked in there and I think that's when I woke up um because my brain was like I don't know 1880sel. That's a lot to conjure right now. I would have been like, well, when in Rome, I would have been like. No, I tried. I walked in and then like I woke up and I was like, damn it. But it was so cool.

I was walking through cobblestone like alleys and stuff. Can you imagine if Astral you snapped your fucking ankle on cobblestone? I woke up like, why does my leg hurt so much? My sole leg is broken. Anyway, so I just wanted to tell you about that because I was so excited. And I had taken to sleeping with my selenite crystal on my nightstand. And I think it was probably just, you know, again, like my placebo. But I was like, you know, because selenite is meant to help you dream and that kind of thing.

So I don't know. It's just, listen, it's a good time. It's so magical. It feels like magic because you're fully conscious. You're just like, I'm inventing the world. My idea of magic was being in an audience for Black Panther last night. Oh, sorry. Not everyone can go to cool Hollywood premieres, okay?

No, I feel like that would really... I'm very excited for you, but I don't think I could get into that. I think I would be so overwhelmed. Well, it's very overwhelming. I think I'd... Honestly, I think I'd be more tired. I think I'd be more tired

and I'd have to keep going back to bed afterwards. That's probably what I did. That's why I probably fell asleep six more times. I think I'd be more tired. I have to keep going back to bed afterwards. That's probably what I did. That's why I probably fell asleep six more times, but it was just really cool. It's so, it's almost unbelievable. It does. It seems ridiculous,

doesn't it? I, yeah. Like if I, if I were a skeptic who was not open to this stuff, I'd be hearing you talk and I'd be like, we need to put her somewhere. But it's not even, but it's not like, it's not even like anything supernatural it's just like you're you're awake in your own dream so you can just do what you want

like it's not anything like paranormal or supernatural it's just i know it's just it's so so hard to wrap my head around that like you could actually touch the brick and like choose i'm gonna walk on the cobblestone that i'm i'm gonna walk like when you were walking down the street where people looking at you like did you feel like i would have it would have very quickly turned into a nightmare where everyone was staring at me a little too hard i think it's like you since you know you're dreaming you're sort of like well i can just vanish if i want or i can wake up if i want like you you're very much like in control of the situation. It's not like,

um, that movie, one of my favorite movies, um, not Shutter Island. What's the other one? Leo's in. Is Leo in that?

Catch me if you can. No, that's my favorite one. Hold on. I'm obsessed with Leonardo DiCaprio. Insidious? No, not insidious.

Inception? Inception. Thank you. Uh, so it's not quite like that where like you're in a dream and you can't escape and everyone who notices you like it's not sinister like that i mean maybe it can be but um it's more like you have full control over your surroundings so you could be like well i don't want anybody to be in you can be like vanish and everyone can vanish

you know what i mean like you can i think that's the part that's unbelievable for me because i'm so i'm not as um uh i don't know what the right word is but i haven't been practicing as long as you have i really haven't been practicing at all i think when i lucid dream it's accidental and so i don't know how to control it and most of the dreaming that i have is once i'm aware that i'm dreaming instantly becomes a nightmare because i'm i have all these fears of like oh no i'm like oh well what if this happened that would suck and then it happens older incoming all of a sudden i'm in a horror movie every time what you're well i've read books that teach you how to like pull out of that cycle and stuff so

so there's definitely ways out of it if you ever want to approach it but or re-re-consider it yeah or read or read if you ever want to read i thought you were like i thought you were roasting me no you did that yourself thank you for doing that for me um those my insecurities showing i think i read it on audible okay so you could even do that i think okay um anyway i know this is long i just want to say it's really cool and if you're interested in lucid dreaming um you definitely should try it out it's it's it's it's fun it's hard to get to but like i feel like once you start doing it it's kind of easier for your brain to like pick up on it um anyway that's all and uh oh i know the last thing what i realized when i woke up i was so mad at myself i was like kicking myself i was

like i wanted to visit em's apartment because on rituals we had talked about lucid dreaming and you said you wrote a note for me did you actually write a note where is it you you you would find it if you were here is it there right now okay so i wasn't sure if it was there so i was like okay next time i have a lucid dream i'm gonna go to your apartment look for the note and just see what my brain decides your note says because it'll be my own invention in my head it would be real freaking freaky i yeah yeah i'm actively not saying anything so we can test your esp or whatever it is it's gonna be something that my brain thinks that you wrote to me and i'm very curious what my subconscious thinks that you wrote to me

on a post-it is it on a post-it no okay all right i'll just maybe i don't know i'll just try no i'll try and find it okay cool i also now i going to be changing the message on it because. No. Well, because I definitely don't want to do something that you could guess, you know? It has to be completely random, right? Well, no. Well, I mean, I'm just, I believe it'll just be my own invention in my head. I don't think I'll actually be showing up at your apartment.

I think this is. I don't know. I think it'd be real fucking freaky, so we might as well try. Okay, let's just leave it what it is. Yeah, okay. Unless you want to write a different one, but let's just leave it as what it is and I'll try to visit you. Do some snooping?

Yeah. It won't be hard. It's not... It didn't make a fucking escape room for you. It's not hidden. Okay. Not again. It's going to be booby trapped. So the room's going to be booby trapped.

If I knew how to booby trap spirits or souls, we would all be in trouble. I'm going to break my ankle again. My other ankle. There's actually the floor is just covered in mouse traps. And I have to very daintily get in here to sit down. Okay. Sorry. That was so long, but that's all. No, you're good.

We both had great experiences. What a time. I can't believe. I feel like we've really been hitting it lately. We're like, we're just coming in. We're on a roll. I got to go to a fucking Marvel screening. And I had the theater reaction that you always see on TikTok and stuff, where people are

freaking out in their seats. I got to have that. That fine it was very fun and because it was such a dark movie to navigate because they were everyone was grieving um they had uh there were parts where people were like jumping out of their seats but then there were also parts were like not a dry eye in the house it was so so sad um and the worst part is like all of the the grieving scenes you knew they were actually crying for him it was like that's terrible it was a whole other level because it wasn't like oh that's great acting it was like no they're literally thinking about their dead friend it was i want to agree with you but every time you put your hand over your face

your hand his eyebrows again and i'm like um okay fool okay moving on moving on moving on okay this is uh i don't know what i would categorize this um i guess a mystery um it could be aliens it's this is one where you get to throw your ideas your theories you're my way if you'd like to i you you know i would like to okay well this is the disappearance of fred valentick oh oh the valentich mystery valentich okay well thank you i think well you already know more than no i don't think so. I've definitely heard about this on, of course, Astonishing Legends, but I don't really remember. Okay, well, Astonishing Legends always nails it with several hours long info, and I know nobody wants to hear me talk that long.

I'm quite sure it's Valentich. Good to know, going into this. There's an H at the end, right? Uh-huh. Oh, yeah, Valentich. I didn't know Going into this. All right. There's an H at the end, right? Uh-huh. Oh, yeah. Valentich. I didn't know if it was like a hard. No, I don't think so.

I don't know. All right. I'm going to rock with what you're saying. So starting out hot, Fred Valentich was born in 1959. He is a Gemini. We love to see it. June 9th. See, this is the stuff Astonishing Legends doesn't cover.

Right. You know what I mean? This is the hard-hitting news. This is the stuff we need to really dig deep to get. I don't know what research you wanted, but you could find, if it's not here, go to Astonishing Legends. So Fred Valentich is born in 1958, and he grows up to be an australian pilot um he also grows up to be a flying saucer enthusiast and firm believer in ufos love that that's part of the resume that's it's really his whole resume and that's about it so fred has a dad his name is guido which oh yeah

as someone who just finished watching all of jersey shore in like five days loving that um and guido said that fred uh fred quote studied ufos as a hobby using information he got from the air force which like damn that's pretty bananas uh and he apparently took his research very seriously um his father even said that this is another, he was not the kind of person who would make up stories. Everything had to be very correct and positive. So he's, for a Gemini, he's giving Capricorn. Like he's giving like-

Yeah, it must be his moon or rising signs, must be earth signs, you know? Because I feel like that doesn't track for me, a triple airhead. Yeah, no, I don't know what's going on in Fred's star chart, but I will tell you. I feel like that doesn't track for me, a triple airhead. Yeah. No, I don't know what's going on in Fred's star chart, but I will tell you, he is not messing around when it comes to UFOs. He takes very fascinated by evidence and research and facts. Right. And his love for UFOs is possibly responsible for Fred's dream of being a pilot. Always wanting to be in the sky. Nice.

Here's the thing. You're going to learn to, I don't know if love Fred is the right word, but certainly sympathize with Fred. Fred was not very good at being a pilot. No. Fred just, he tried his best and he just wasn't having it um so starting right off the bat in his teen years he tried to enlist in the royal australian air force but they denied him for not being educated enough um which somehow becomes a theme um oh no not being not educated as in like he didn't go to the right

school it's like he really somehow it wasn't clicking for him like he just wasn't passing probably the tests he was not passing um got it so since he couldn't get it i mean he tried to enlist twice and both times they were like get out of here fred then he joins their training core to help quote air to help air-minded youth which i love that wow i feel like air-minded youth though is very close to airheaded i was gonna say airheaded youth i understand i think i would walk into the wrong classroom and be like this is not what i thought it was gonna be maybe fred was an airhead but trying to be an air mind you know what i'm saying yeah good for him um so he joined their training corps so he could get involved into in the uh air into their air force and in 1977 which she's now 19 um he gets his private pilot

license um and he is now very quickly moving on to setting for his commercial pilot license. Good for him. I mean, also not very Gemini to be so committed to this path and being like, so what's the word? What's the word, Em? Girl, I don't even know. Dedicated? I don't know. Last time I tried to help, I called myself out for not reading.

Yeah, that's true. What's the word when you're, oh my God. Actionate? Committed? Committed, maybe, is what I'm trying to think. That he just keeps trying. You know what I mean? He has chutzpah.

Yeah, he sure does. He's determined. Determined. Thank you. That's the word. You were determined to figure out the word. He's diligent diligent which also diligent but maybe not diligent enough to pass the test but definitely determined like he's like

he's trying over and over again he's got the moxie for it yeah yeah uh so okay but so now he's got his private pilot license he's on his way to his commercial or he's trying for his commercial but he's still not very good at being a pilot just because he got his license. Oh, no. I feel like we should question who gave him the license, who said like, OK, fine, you can be a private pilot. Determined, see? Yeah.

So he just to give you an example of how. So before you can get your commercial license, you have to fly for 1500 hours okay at only 150 hours he had already been in three pretty big incidents oh no which if you do the math if that means every 50 flying hours he is putting himself in a really stupid situation um and so he said the incidents one was that he flew into restricted airspace which uh but you know not good because i imagine that's a big no-no yeah so in restricted airspace there are planes that are already already have their flight plans and already flying around and now he is just flying in and could it's like it's like just going full speed ahead into like a very busy parking lot and like sounding more airheaded youth every time you tell

me another story like he you're right that i'm connecting on some some deep level there is a weird like it's one of those underdog gloves where you're like you really hope he he doesn't fuck it up this time yeah i just like i so understand how he's feeling i just want him to figure it out you know yeah so he flies into restricted airspace and risks crashing into another aircraft the other two times that were incidents within the first hundred hours of his flying um he flew into clouds and he couldn't see. Is that bad? Yeah. So especially when you're that new.

Like it's not bad once you're actually. I was like, I've definitely flown through a cloud. Not me personally, but like on an airplane. No. Like this is a cloud that I'm inside. Once you know what you're doing and if you're in the right plane. Got you. Then it's fine to fly through a cloud.

But he was in a plane that didn't have the instruments you need to fly blind uh-huh and so because if you're in a cloud you can't see and you have to rely on the computers instruments right yeah and if the plane didn't have it and so he truly was very dangerous coasting through and like I think that's sort of how John Denver died. Oh, is it? His instrumentation, he either didn't trust his instrumentation and trusted his gut, which you're not supposed to do because you can get really mixed up. And I think he just kept, if I remember correctly, kept flying higher and higher in his own plane. And yeah, that's at least that's what i remember i hope i'm saying that right but yeah um so yeah it's very very dangerous to not be able to trust your

instruments to guide you yeah so apparently i think the phrase is flying blind and he uh which i'm sure is now outdated yeah yeah not the best phrase but but uh but yeah in another way he could have hit an aircraft that was not prepared for him to be there um he actually officials were considering prosecuting him for that so um but all three times fred just got warnings wow and fred is somehow still eligible to get his commercial license or to at least try for it um even after all that like near prosecution and three incidents in the first tenth of your flying time also he failed there was one time where he failed three of his courses all at once and then there were another two times where he failed all five of his classes at once oh buddy, buddy. I'm just like, my guy, it's, you take a nap.

You're a Gemini. You're allowed to pick a different hobby, you know? Yeah, or at least move a little slower. Maybe you're overwhelming yourself. Great point. It seems like he's putting a lot of pressure on himself. Yeah, and it's just not working. So a year later, it is October 21st and it's 1978.

He's 20 years old um this is when he has about 150 hours aka three incidents under his belt and he decides he's going to do a 90 minute flight to king island um not king's island by the way i was like oh i've been there um which actually i did fly this is not a lie and not a joke i flew an airplane over king's island one time i'm serious i mean are you talking about like is it one of the rides where you sit in a plane no i literally flew an airplane no you did not were you four and the pilot said you were flying i don't think the pilot lets you in the cockpit during the flight as a child um was it a real flight or do you mean like a remote control

airplane no a real airplane my stepdad in high school for my graduation or something for my 18th birthday got me uh flight lessons and i did you not know this and And I like flew a plane. I think I, I think I, how much of the flying the plane did you do? Well, I mean, obviously there was like an instructor in the plane with me, but I was like flying the plane. Did part of you want to be a pilot for a while? Not even, not even remotely. And I, I'll be honest, he was just being a dad. And I was like, I'm going to, I'm going to try my best to enjoy this.

Did not really enjoy a second of it. Was like, this is terrifying is terrifying I have no interest and I love John Denver at the time I was like I know how I know what happened to that guy I'm not I'm not sure about this not my favorite I also went skydiving not something I want to do again um also I'd be so distracted if I flew over my hometown amusement park I would be like oh my god look at all these things and then the whole plane would just start spinning yeah yeah yeah that's why I think it was like a driver's ed car where he also had the controls and made me feel like I was in control when really I was just like pressing one button that probably didn't do anything. Um, but we did get to see King's Island from up there. So anyway, did King's Island also have an Eiffel tower? Yes. Yes.

Yes. I would be, it would be, if I were in a plane flying over Kings Dominion slash Kings Island, it would be Tina Belcher driving in that parking lot where there's only one. Driving directly to the pool or whatever. Was it a car or a pool? I forget. I think it was a car, but there's no, there's nothing you could hit. It's all empty space space except that one car and that would be me with the fucking eiffel tower i would just be like look at oh my gosh

crash and then she's going uh lying directly toward it yeah he i feel like i probably told the guy i want well anyway so i took um i took i have a photo and i have a framed like certificate of flight uh you know so anyway that i just when you said that i was like this is too good of an opportunity i have to tell em that i actually literally flew a plane over king's island one time that actually is you could that's a weird fact the sentence alone without all the information i was like that is truly like a lie yeah i was like if we were playing like like two truths and a lie i'd be like well obviously that's the lie right i also got a certificate for um being an aeronaut in training which is

the phrase for someone who operates air balloons hot air balloons whoa but i think it was like it was literally like like it might as well have had a teddy bear in the corner well i was gonna say especially if they say in training like what does that really mean like everyone is an erudite in training i guess technically yeah uh that's cool my mom and i did a hot air balloon i've never done a hot air balloon i don't think i want to after all these honestly i don't recommend it yeah i'm into it. I will tell you, if you've ever seen it on television and you think it's romantic, that's because there's music playing over it

and you can't hear the sound. And it's so loud. It's so loud. You're not enjoying talking to each other. There's a big fire next to your head. Every 10 seconds it goes like the worst like wah! Yeah, that's what I've heard. And there's a random person in the basket with you. Like you're not getting as romantic as you think you are in a hot air balloon.

You and your mom were not getting as romantic as you hoped. I know. I know. And the way that you stop in a hot air balloon is literally, it just comes crashing down. You kind of just have to, like, angle it. Right. Like, we half fell out of the basket on the way down. Oh, my gosh.

It just hit the ground the wrong way, and we just tipped out. I just see Em rolling across the grass and the guy like trying to hand you your arrow not in training certificate and you're just like rolling out of it it was in a field of cactuses like you tell me like there is nothing scarier than being the only thing protecting you is wicker at 60 miles an hour what in the world world? What in the world? Okay. It was a weird time. I'm glad we both had these ridiculous air experiences. So this is why when I'm hearing about Fred, I'm like, Fred, this is not the hobby for you. It wasn't the hobby for me. It wasn't the hobby for Em. It wasn't the career path for you, I think. Maybe he could have gotten into hot air

ballooning or working at an amusement park. And way he would have maybe had some more success there's a lot of danger in all of those fields i feel like maybe he needed to just do something ground-based where you don't go way high in the sky you know he should have been i don't know a librarian i'm trying to think of someone who just sits somebody who by the way i know librarians don't just say yes before we get i was trying to think of trying to think of a trope that he could successfully do a podcaster we just said oh my god we just said a friend librarians have too much work on their hands they i know have to put books places we just said amen amen uh okay so anyway he has three he's gotten three warnings he's failed all of his classes and now

he's taking this 90 minute flight to a place that sounds a lot like king's island king island got it um and he is again he only recently hit his 150 hours he's super new probably nervous um especially considering how poorly he's been doing he's probably like i don't want to fuck this up but i also need my hours um and the whole flight even though it's a 90 minute flight if you're doing round trip it's three hours sure okay um and the fuel endurance for his plane which is basically the gas tank um he had five hours worth of fuel so five hours of fuel for a three hour trip so he could have been in theory he was able to do the trip with plenty of fuel to get back right um so he rents this little uh single engine plane for those in the plane world it's

called a cesna 182l all right and uh he files a flight report with I don't know how to pronounce this but the Moorabbin airport and his he gives them the registration uh his registration name and everything and relevant for later part of his registration uh was uh delta sierra juliet which is what he was referring to himself on on the transmission he was calling himself he was like i'm a delta pilot and they're like no you're not actually then you can't say that like you should call yourself spirit um but so he identifies himself sorry that took me a second good one uh he he identifies himself to air traffic control as delta sierra juliet and it's based off of his registration okay um so fred seems to have told different people about different reasons

for why he was going to king island um he apparently told some people that he was picking up friends uh which he i don't know if you can do that as a private pilot with that little hours i don't know if there's rules to that but i don't either i mean he was openly saying it to people so i guess you could um and he did actually take four um life jackets with him so maybe he was actually picking up friends and then for other people I'm sorry we have a visitor is this little Gio no well yes come here is it everyone climb all the stairs oh my goodness can you pass her to me i want to see the baby hi hi pumpkin can you say hi smile hi she looks she's like i truly was so happy until this moment there's a smile good girl look at her little pushy oh she's so sweet hang on i want to show you her um i want

to show you her outfit it says wicked cute and also she just went and got a bunch of shots so i think blaze wanted her to come say hi and get a little get a little hug a little snug did she do okay hi cutie how many shots four? Four. Oh, my goodness. One for each limb. Oh, no. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. You go see daddy now. Bye-bye. I love you. Pumpkin head. She's so sweet. She is a little pumpkin. She's a big pumpkin head.

I know. I love you. Bye-bye. I know, honey. You go play with daddy. What's it going to be like when she can speak and then she's and can walk and she's running up every second that honestly we're recording I um I'd not thought about it until this very moment because she's learning to climb stairs and of course we stand

behind her you know as she does it but um she just went from the first floor all the way up here to the third uh so that shows some determination, speaking of determination, and some chutzpah. I hope she's appreciative of that perfectly beating heart because me climbing through five of the stairs? It's a lot. Absolutely not. Yeah, but if she's dedicated enough to crawl up those stairs by the time she can run up them, I think we're all screwed. So anyway. Time for some gates, I think.

Some baby gates. Oh, yeah. we've got them uh it's no match for for a leona okay well good luck to you well to be fair they're at the top of the stairs so that she doesn't tumble downward they're not really made to keep her from going up this you know what i mean anyway oh i know i didn't know that i just thought i probably should install them at the bottom as well. I'll work on it. Maybe like a doggy gate or something. Yeah.

Doggy gate downstairs, baby gate upstairs. Oh, Lord. Where are we anymore? Oh, whoa, whoa. Okay, so he files a flight report and he's telling people different reasons why he even went. He told some people he was going pick up friends he told other people he was just gonna go get crayfish oh which like wait maybe those were his friends oh he's going to bikini bottom he's gonna go pick up some friends that's what i call chicken wings like you know you're like oh i'm gonna go pick up some friends oh i meant my kfc order but you know interchangeable I'm going to go pick up some. Oh, I meant my KFC order. But, you know, interchangeable.

I'm going to Starbucks to see my buddies and my buddies are cake pops. So whatever the reason, even though Fred filed a flight report, apparently he did it wrong or it didn't go through or something. Wow, I'm shocked. I know. And so King Island had no idea he was coming. I know. And so King Island had no idea he was coming. Since they weren't expecting him, there were no lights on at the airport to guide his landing.

Oh, no. Oh, no. I will say, luckily, this doesn't end in a crash. Okay. I know. Where are we going with this? What the hell? So we do know that King Island did not know he was coming.

Also, I will say, fun fact, in King Island, it's between mainland Australia and Tasmania, and it's in an area called the Bass Strait or the Bass Strait Triangle. And it's called the Bass Strait Triangle sometimes because it is often compared to the Bermuda Triangle. No way. Okay. Uh-oh. so there are several disappearances several shipwrecks and a lot of times people just kind of blame like

like weather conditions um for the vanishings but king island alone had 60 shipwrecks you've got to cover the bermuda triangle someday i know but it's so overwhelming yeah i bet it's that's that Yeah, I bet. That might be a two-parter with the amount of information out there. But yes, you're right. I do need to cover it. It'll be fun. And King Island has at least 60 shipwrecks with over 2,000 people missing or around 2,000 people missing.

Holy Lord. So he's flying right over this area. Great. And nobody knows he's coming. Perfect. Right. So at 6.19 p.m., Fred takes off, and he has only very recently been approved for night flying, like within the last four months. And probably begrudgingly.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Everyone's like, oh, I guess Fred can do it. And the airport, I guess they understood that he they said he was seemed nervous before takeoff but that was understandable because he was so new to night flying um and fun fact i will say that at different times before this incident fred's dad tells us that um fred often worried about what would happen because remember he's a UFO enthusiast he often worried about what would happen if a UFO

attacked him mid-flight which like I feel like if you're going to be a pilot and you keep failing the tests maybe worry about something different I feel like it is a thought I'd have but it wouldn't be a thought I was voicing

often. Exactly i feel like if i keep failing the test and i'm like just trying to be cut like maybe put that on the back burner for now you know like first you have to get in the air exactly exactly first you have to have a successful learn how to take off before you worry about how you're going to get abducted okay got it but i will say it's interesting that that was like always one of his biggest fears and interesting because i feel like that's where this is maybe going uh so 40 minutes into his flight at 7 p.m he reports being over cape ottaway which is exactly what was planned so so far his his flight plan is is going accordingly okay um and that's 40 minutes into the flight and it also

says that he's at 5 000 feet altitude which as we know planes can go well over 30 000 feet so he's not too high in the air or anything he's pretty pretty low um and six minutes later he calls about the about there being a problem only six minutes later. So it was going super smoothly. And then six minutes later, he reaches out. This is part of the accident report by the Australian Department of Transport. Fred says, Melbourne, this is Delta Sierra Juliet. Is there any known traffic below 5,000? And they say, no known traffic.

And then Fred says, well, there's an aircraft flying below him and they ask what type of aircraft and he says he can't identify it but he saw four bright landing lights on it and within seconds it had climbed over him over a thousand feet whoa whoa so now he's he's still reaching out to them and they ask him again to identify the aircraft, but Fred says it was traveling so fast he couldn't see anything, and asks again if there are any military aircraft nearby, and they say no. Oh, my gosh. Apparently, the aircraft is coming up to Fred from the east, and it's now approaching him, and Fred says, it seems to me that he's playing some sort of game. He's flying over me three times at speeds I cannot identify. And then Fred restates that he's at only 4,500 feet and he still couldn't see what this object actually was.

He's told to stand by, but then Fred calls in soon after. It's not an aircraft. Ooh, goose cam he does try to describe it and says it was a long shape so maybe like the tic-tac incident like like how it's like a blong but other than that fred says that it was moving too fast for him to see anything else but he did notice a green light um that was coming from it and that it seemed metallic on all sides okay oh boy then it vanishes and fred asks if it could possibly be military even though they've already said no um after it's vanished he's like are you sure it couldn't have been military then it

reappears and then traffic control reaches out to him i think they're all of a sudden like worried that he might be up to no good or something or either pulling a prank or maybe if it isn't or if it is military and they're not allowed to say anything about that maybe the military aircraft is after him right they don't know what's going on so traffic control reaches out and asks fred what are your intentions oh they're like are like i like, I guess asking, like, are you a threat? Like, I don't, what are your intentions with my daughter?

I mean, aircraft with, with our shiny Tic Tac. Um, and Fred says my intentions, uh, to go to King Island, uh,

Melbourne, that aircraft is hovering on top of me again. It's hovering. It's not an aircraft. Then I guess it's silent for too long. And so traffic traffic control reaches out again and says Delta Sierra Juliet. And Fred says Delta Sierra Juliet Melbourne. And then 17 seconds of silence with his mic on.

They call for him again, but Fred doesn't answer and they can only hear loud metallic noise and then radio silence i remember the metallic scraping scraping uh it's almost as if it collided into him well have you heard it it's not it's like this it's the creepiest sound you need to play it they played it on astonishing legends you need to play it maybe we can play it on here too yeah let me look it up it's it's it's so unsettling it's very tinny yeah it sounds to me like something's rubbing against it or like or like pulsing or some people think that you can hear like a talking quality within it like he's trying to talk through it um but that like what some people think that it's like electromagnetic interference that's like

distorting it so you you can't really hear the radio signal but like there's this kind of background noise like he's trying to but it's all scrambled um just very spooky um because it's not like a crash sound it's just like this long drawn out like metallic tinny noise it does sound almost like um like a broken phone and you're trying to talk through it, but you just hear like feedback or something. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's what it is, too. That's definitely.

That's a good theory. I hadn't thought about that. Well, someone on Reddit said it, so. Oh, no, it definitely does sound like you're talking. It's like your phone fell underwater. Yeah, it's distorted. Yeah, like your phone fell underwater. Yeah, it's like distorted. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

But anyway, so the whole interaction is about six minutes long. And that was, and six minutes ago, it was totally fine. His like flight plan was going right. And then this happens. Wow. So at 7.12, traffic control sends out an alert. And by 7.33, when Fred has not actually landed at King Island yet, like he should have, they declare a distress phase and officials begin air, sea, and land searches. Wow. The search lasted four days, but they never found Fred.

And despite being a bad pilot, they did take it seriously. They looked into the weather conditions of what was going on around him. And everything was totally fine. And the accident report even called the weather conditions excellent visibility and light winds. And the sun hadn't even set yet.

So it wasn't like it was super duper dark. So the next few days days which is super interesting is that uh as people were talking about where the fuck fred went 11 different people called in and reported ufo sightings the same night fred vanished oh i just got goose cam um the australian department of transport there's a spokesman named ken williams and he says it's funny all these people ringing up with ufo reports well after his disappearance it seems often people decide after the event that they too had seen strange lights but although we can't take them too seriously we can never discourage such reports while investigating a plane's disappearance

so he's saying like oh that's convenient but also i guess we'll take it into account yeah i would think you should i mean whether you believe in it or not like if people are saying i saw something really weird like yeah worth writing down i don't know i think so and another news report they also stated that a couple saw strange green lights hovering high above them at the same night when they were on the highway near Melbourne. So they saw green lights hovering above them. You know, the lights also for them, this couple that reported it, they said that the lights were out there for an hour and King Island residents allegedly experienced strange lights for at least six weeks leading up to that night see i'm listen i believe it 100 oh fred too probably also can you imagine if your biggest fear is aliens and that's yeah how you go missing and you know this is one of those things

where i get into like my own head and i start thinking about it to probably way too much but you know it makes me wonder like is that be like is that just a precursor like is that a coincidence or is there some part of him that like knew he would have some sort of encounter you know how some people are some families just seem to have like um repeated encounters and it's almost like like they know that this is going to happen again and again. I don't know, maybe he had some incident when he was younger and that's why he was so fascinated. Maybe he knew there was going to be another encounter. Like who knows? That's actually a really good point that like maybe something had already happened. Maybe even subconsciously was just always thinking about it.

And he clearly had an insistence upon getting into the sky, which, listen, we've tried to talk about a bit over and over again, but you wouldn't listen. Ruthless. No, relentless. Relentless. Determined. Diligent. Chutzpah. Moxie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of it. So the newspaper there called The Australian actually used an anonymous tip as their source when writing about Fred's disappearance that night. And the anonymous source allegedly comes from the Department of Transport saying that Fred's transmission actually went longer than we think. Oh, my.

But they cut it off early and then released that to the public i want to i want the whole thing well according to the source fred just described the ufo in great detail but they cut the transmission early so that it wouldn't get released oh my goodness i need to know what it says the The Department of Transport officially publicly denies that the source is accurate on, oh, they only released part of the transmission, which I'm just impressed that they've released any of the transmission. I feel like I've I feel like that doesn't happen too often. Yeah, but I feel like that's a great way to just be like, see, we released it. Oh, yep. And not for it like that.

Because it's like, oh, well, yep and not for it like that because it's like oh well they're not hiding anything you know but if they're like we won't release the transcript it's like well why you know uh-huh okay yeah totally right i would have been bamboozled immediately so uh one of the theories as to what happened to fred is that they think this is so sad i think it's because because he was not that great of a pilot he which like now it feels a little victim blaming no it does i yeah i want to clarify i was not joking about how funny this would be if something went wrong you know but they a lot of people think because he was uh not that great at being a pilot he might have gotten confused and inverted his plane aka flown upside down oh my god which i feel like that seems like something you'd notice

yeah uh but if he were flying upside down he could have mistaken his own lights in the water's reflection okay that's i mean i know that happens but i feel like it's a stretch for somebody maybe for somebody who's literally never touched a plane before but like you literally flew a plane over king island oh no i know i'm saying for somebody to do that who's never touched a plane maybe possible but i feel like if you've been like me very experienced on with flying an aircraft um i feel like you'd notice if you were especially especially if it weren't dark yet let me point that out also like i don't know if anyone's ever been upside down but after 30 seconds like you know you're hanging upside down you know something's wrong i would think

what is rushing to your face you can't even see right like you're i don't know but anyway so that's like the the running theory is that he was just so confused. That seems like a stretch to me. I know. I know. In 2013, the Skeptical Inquirer, they had astronomer and retired Air Force pilot James McGaha and a senior researcher, Joe Nickel, who Joe Nickel, I think, is actually pretty big in UFO debunking. But they also agree that he was probably confused. They think that

even though the flying conditions were clear skies, when it comes to the stars and the planets, Venus, Mars, Mercury, and the star called Antares were in a long diamond shape that night. And maybe Fred mistook those bright lights for an aircraft. And the green lights could have been this this i feel like is most likely the green lights were his wing navigation light just reflecting in the windshields which like listen i've done that people oh wait where you see a light and it's just a reflection yeah but listen listen to the you don't have to but whoever just listen to the, you don't have to, but whoever, just listen to the astonishing legends because they really do dive into every single theory and like pick it apart. And I feel like with this, especially with the planets and stuff, they're like, no, I mean, again, it wasn't dark yet. That's true.

Right? No, I agree with you. And he said there's a metallic object. with you he said there's a metallic object i think the the best thing that the only one i'm agreeing with so far is the that it was in the reflection of his own windshield because the whole time he keeps calling and saying there's still this aircraft below me like it seems like such a bizarre oh yeah yep he sees an aircraft below and then he says now it's above me like what's going on i don't know it just seems weird to me that it would be like oops i saw a reflection for several minutes and like it was moving and i don't know maybe maybe i don't know i guess i could see if you're flying a plane and like you turn a certain way and then like

the light reflection is below you and then you turn and then it's above you i'm sure yeah yeah maybe i don't know i'm only saying it because i know i would be so stupid as to walk into that problem so same uh but no you're totally right so i've seen something metallic to be also like here's another big thing it's moving so fast he can't describe it but like yeah if it were a reflection it'd be sitting in the exact same spot the entire time it would be yeah it would be like relational to you the whole time yeah yeah um plus in the in the weather conditions he was in i didn't know this but apparently it's a thing where the sunset can actually cause an illusion for pilots that the horizon is tilted so people will try to correct by adjusting their wings to straighten the plane out with the horizon but if the horizon is tilted then they become tilted and then they accidentally um cause their plane to go into a downward spiral cause it call it called a graveyard

spiral because yeah that's i have no idea and that's why you have to trust your instrumentation because your gut or your eyes will like miss mislead you so they think that maybe he it was something as simple as oh the horizon made him want to adjust his wings because he you know he was just trying to keep with the horizon and then he ended up spiraling and crashing in the water which that seems most likely currently i guess but wouldn't have found him i guess so yeah i don't know um there's one pilot who doesn't buy any of those and says like the pilot would have absolutely known if he was upside down like yeah i'm glad somebody who's a pilot said that because i feel like i don't have the authority to say that but i feel like that's for sure true his name is arthur shut he even says like the

carpet comes out of the floor and butts fall out of the ashtray. Like, yeah, there you go. Oh, but the ashtray. They said the ashtray. Also, your butt falls out of the seat. Like, yeah, you said your butt falls out of the ashtray. Like, maybe I did. But no, but like, no, but like what I'm saying is I thought you were calling the seat the ashtray.

And I was like, oh, hysterical. Your butt's falling out of the ashtray. And then I was like, oh, the butt but it is still true i liked it but that's a great point like if you're upside down like shit is like stuff is falling from the floor i also like that in a plane at that time there was an ashtray and you could just smoke in your own little plane i love that on some planes there are still ashtrays you just can can't smoke anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh,

anyway, that, um, so yeah, this, there's a pilot out there being like, that's fucking bullshit. Um,

also Fred's dad really does believe there was a UFO there at night, but I do understand there, there's also a level of grieving there and maybe it's denial and maybe he just wants to believe it's something else besides, you know, a crash. Um, but his dad saysred was a firm believer in ufos and now i think he was right what else can explain this mystery i have a very strong feeling that my son is still alive and is being held by someone from another world they might want to they might want to hold him for a week or so

before returning him but i have no idea why they would want to take my son. But strange things do happen. And then believing that Fred was abducted, he even worried that if they were to drop him off, they would just drop him off anywhere on Earth. Like, not back to the exact point where they took him. They're like, it's all the same. Yeah, they're like, I don't know what a, I don't know if any place is a place. yeah they're like i don't know what i don't know any place is a place and uh he started asking people all over the world to start looking out for fred in case he came back to the wrong spot um that's so sad fred also had a girlfriend ronda who believed that fred uh she actually

was like i think he crashed she was wait really yeah she said fred turned she thinks fred turned back after experiencing engine trouble and crashed in the water oh no um and uh apparently this is a quote from ronda he always told me that's what he'd do if he got into trouble over the sea is he would just crash the plane into the water okay oh no i think she's like that's why i i mean i guess yeah like if he was having engine trouble he just crashed into the water and that's what he said he'd do if he ever got in trouble why would he do that i don't know but it's at least she's like she's like he told me that's what he would do okay or maybe or maybe that he was turning back at all and then just happened to crash into the water. Right, right, right.

She also said that this is just like a weird, I guess they've talked about it in conversation as like, like as a joke in relationships that if a UFO ever came to Earth, he would go with them, but he would take her with him. And so I feel like no thanks. Yeah. So I guess she was like, hey, if a ufo did go it did show up at least he always told me he'd go with them anyway so i know but she's like he left me behind yeah well i don't know if how much of a say he gets with the ufo to be like can we halt all this real quick we got to get back and pick someone else we got to swing we got to make pit stop real quick yeah uh fred's friends went out um and they started looking for him in the plane but they

found nothing and rumors began that this was all a hoax and he faked his own disappearance um like i said his father truly thinks that there are aliens at play yeah and a month after fred vanished another pilot thought that he actually saw a submerged aircraft in the same area but couldn't actually confirm what he saw but then nothing ever came from it wow um and later a guy who was at the bass straight that that area um the same day of the abduction potential abduction uh he took several photos around the time that fred vanished and one of the photos he got actually there is like a blur in the sky that looks like it could be a flying object at sunset.

Oh my. Um, it could also be like a bird or a bug or dirt. Um, but I have, um, sure. Yeah.

It could be anything, but it is interesting that he got this right around the same time that Fred was said to be abducted. Ooh. Um, and then one looks like a parachute to me i don't know what it looks like to me it's weird i think it could just be like a like a spot on the photo like just like i guess i don't know big spot i don't know what it is it doesn't look like anything i've seen yeah um years later another person came forward and they actually said they were driving home the same night and saw fred's plane flying which is oh

they were able to tell which plane it was because they identified the plane by its registration number oh and they confirmed they also saw strange green lights that flew just above fred's plane but they never made an official report because they got ridiculed by their friends when they were talking about it see so if this story is true then that guy actually witnessed fred's abduction and can confirm it was a ufo that took holy lord anyway that is fred valentich that is quite a that is the abridged version which uh i would i would love to do more research and be like astonishing legends quality but also i don't know if people want um six days of me talking they go they go to that for that and this for this you know yeah yeah but yeah they did um

they did it was at least a three-parter so i feel like if you uh see a topic on astonishing legends come here first and hear the the sample yeah yeah exactly exactly and then if you like what you hear go and get and then hear me in depth investigation like butchering what they're saying and then go listen to them and be like oh that's what christine meant she's trying to quote them it's not really what they said so yeah they did a three-part episode um which all are marked as played on my podcast player um but yeah they're and they they interview people like they go through but they also have like an entire uh it's called the arc the astonishing research core so they have like a whole group of people who are oftentimes like

professional researchers who who do all this research and stuff for a living and help them help them prepare for episodes. So we, we don't have an arc, you know, but if you do want to listen to the whole thing, they did a, I mean,

it's creepy, so creepy. And then they go through all the theories and stuff. So good job. And that was fun. Thank you. What a tale. That was fun. Um. Thank you. What a tale.

What a tale. I mean, it's very sad, you know, no matter what. Yeah. I mean, it's either, it's a crash or a vanishing or a wreck somewhere. And because it's, I mean, it's known as like a Bermuda triangle. Like maybe he really just got lost. And then there's the fear of like, oh, maybe he's just suffering somewhere and we don't know where he is. Yeah.

I mean, it's just too bad because people lost him, you know. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And don't know where he went. Well, I have a true crime tale for you today, Em, believe it or not. I do believe it a little bit, yeah. Great. This is the story of Amanda Stavik or Mandyy stavik okay so i don't know her

we're starting where we always start amanda theresa stavik who went by mandy was born in april of 1971 she lived in alaska until the seventh grade with her mom mary and her three siblings she had a sister named molly a brother named lee and a brother named brent okay so brent who was 17 years old had permission to hunt in the woods on a nearby military base but horribly in 1975 he was found dead with 17 bullet wounds to his head and chest holy shit yeah from a 22 rifle you weren't you didn't waste any time didn't i just jump right in you know you know how i do yeah um there was an investigation but no one was ever named or brought to justice so this was just this unsolved horrific murder of of uh mandy's brother mary the mom uh who was

divorced moved her three surviving children to a small town in rural Whatcom County, Washington, called Acme, which doesn't that sound like a Looney Tunes like anvil, you know, like an Acme anvil. Like they moved to a small town called Acme. Like it doesn't even sound like a real place, but it is. So they moved to Acme. So it's in northern Rose County in Washington, and it borders Canada and the Pacific Ocean. So they lived on seven and a half acres of quiet land on a road called Strand Road, and it was a dead end off Highway 9. They didn't have many neighbors. And again, this being a small town, they knew all their neighbors. Mary Stavik herself

was a school bus driver, was very well known in the community. And Mandy was a popular, much-loved student. She went to Mount Baker High School. She did marching band. She did several sports. Her family and friends said she loved anything athletic, all things athletic. She rode horses, bareback. She played softball, track, and basketball. Her mom told her she couldn't do so many hobbies at the same time. And Mandy said, you want to bet? Okay. Hey, talk about Moxie.

I know. I know. And her mom said, you never bet with Mandy. She always wins. So clearly she was a force to be reckoned with. So the Staviks used to borrow cows from a nearby farmer in the summer to mow their properties, to like eat the grass, which is... I love that they're doing old school mowing.

That's right. Pretty genius. And feeding the cattle at the same time. Love it. Mowing and mooing. That's what I always say. And when man... This is just an example of like her moxie. and uh when man this is just an example of like her moxie uh when she was two years old she ran under a fence to try to play with a bull in their yard and mandy's mom said it was her favorite memory of her adventurous daughter because she was like oh my god these bulls are going to kill my child and instead she marched on in there and the bulls were like afraid of her and stood down i feel like that's some leona shit yeah i know i read that and i was like oh no oh no now i have to avoid cows

too like this child just bulls just just angry bulls okay great um and her mom said she was not afraid to do anything that she set out to do so she had a boyfriend uh his name was rick zender and he described mandy as his first first great love he felt way below her league and couldn't believe she loved him back and they had that kind of classic high school relationship where they broke up a couple times got back together but it was all pretty light-hearted high school stuff and they actually got together before Mandy graduated and headed to college at Central Washington University where she made really good friends with her roommate, Yoko, who was studying abroad from Japan, was having a great time as a freshman in college. And in 1989, she was a college freshman and she came home for Thanksgiving break and brought her friend Yoko with her to her hometown, which is kind of fun because the roommate's from Japan,

you know? So she's like, oh, Thanksgiving, you can come to my house. I just think that's really sweet. Yeah, that is sweet. So the day after Thanksgiving, Mandy and Yoko had plans to meet up with friends in Bellingham, Washington. But in all the holiday craziness, Mandy was like, I want to go for a jog. I want to squeeze it in before we have all our holiday craziness, Mandy was like, I want to go for a jog. I want to fit it, squeeze it in

before we have all our holiday plans. And for years she had the same route in their neighborhood. She would drive, not drive, I would drive. She would run from her house several miles down Strand Road to Nooksack River and back. And she would always bring along her German shepherd, Kyra. Normally her mom would follow along on a bicycle and just kind of like follow behind and do her exercise via bike. But because there was so much holiday craziness going on, they had family visiting. Her mom decided to stay home and sent Mandy and Kyra on their way. Okay. Of course, tragically, Mary to this day, says she still kicks herself for letting Mandy go on this run alone that day. Of course, not

Mary's fault. But I imagine it must be one of those moments, those pivotal moments of like, I should have agreed to go, you even though i was busy um mandy was known to listen to music on a walkman as she jogged uh neighbor saw her going one way saw her going the other way and her own brother lee who was visiting a neighbor even saw his sister jog by while he was at his friend's house oh okay And this was only a quarter mile from their house, and they believe he might be the last person to have seen her. Oh, shit. Yeah.

Enter trauma. Enter trauma. Mandy, of course, did not make it home on time, and Mary began to get nervous, especially when Kyra, the dog, showed up on the front porch alone. Forget it. My stomach would have dropped. Stomach. Yeah.

100%. And, of course of course kyra the dog is nervous she's pacing she's freaked out and it's just so scary and sad um mary of course knew something was wrong right away called mandy's boyfriend rick to see if like he knew where she was um pretty immediately people in the neighborhood jumped into action because this was just so unusual and they they knew her. They knew Mandy. They knew she went on these daily jogs. It just was so bizarre that she wouldn't have made it home.

They thought maybe she had twisted her ankle in the woods and so couldn't make it home and sent the dog home to, you know, send for help, basically. So they searched the area hoping they would find her either along the roads or stuck somewhere. But a search produced pretty much nothing. Just nothing. Just vanished. So Mandy's family called the police and detectives jumped on the case immediately. Remember, this is also a small town. So this is like unheard of, something like this.

Investigators remember that the anxiety increased and increased as the search continued with nothing to show mary called her other daughter molly who said this can't be happening to us again because if you remember yeah their son slash brother already died guess what so did the other one what the other brother also died yeah so she the sister was haunted by the death of their brother brent in alaska and their stepbrother who'd also died in alaska in a boating accident only the year before oh so this is like the third child tragedy to happen in this family. What? I know.

How can that keep happening? I know. I know. It's horrific. It's like some people just get beat down and beat down and beat down. Jesus. Oh, my God. And so Mary said to her daughter, of course it can't happen.

We're going to find her and it'll be okay. But she didn't believe it. I wouldn't. Yeah. I would be like just trying to calm everyone around me. Exactly. That's basically what she was doing. we're gonna find her and it'll be okay but she didn't believe it uh she had already yeah i would be like just trying to calm everyone around exactly that's basically what she was doing yeah she was basically just trying to give molly hope even though she had already lost a child mysteriously the murder with no answers and knew what it was like to live without answers so it was already kind of preparing for the worst yeah so reporters quickly jumped on the case. Mandy's face was everywhere. You know, it's high school girl gone missing. It's just, you know, one of those stories that catch like wildfire. ruled as a suspect. They ruled him out pretty quickly. A full-blown search went into effect and investigators used every resource they could get their hands on. They had border patrol

helicopters, boats, bloodhounds, specialized trackers. They searched the woods, the fields, ditches. Essentially the entire community got involved in this search. So one tracker found Mandy's tracks and a spot where her tracks and her dog's tracks seemed to stop randomly. He thought maybe somebody at this point had pulled her into a vehicle, which is why her tracks stopped. That's what I would think. Yeah. And so the thought kind of branching off of that was perhaps this would have taken several abductors, but because there was no sign of a struggle, there was also no sign of multiple people being around her tracks um he tried to walk the german shepherd kyra back down the route but poor baby poor kyra was so stressed about walking down this route even though she went daily on this

jog every single day she refused yeah she's traumatized she refused to walk down the path um and investigators uh believed that the abductor had probably either kicked or hurt her during the during the struggle while she was trying to, of course, protect Mandy, which breaks my heart. her, like I said, right before her disappearance. So they knew like pretty much the exact time she must have been taken because they saw her like a quarter mile from her house. But they were coming up empty handed on everything else. And like I said, Acme was a super classic small town. The peace in the town was completely shattered by this disappearance. And Mandy's stepsister, Bridget said, it could have been been anyone and everywhere we went could be the person who did this to Mandy everywhere I looked there was danger so it's just like you don't know who to trust I've heard that from a few victims that were like they just don't get answers like

every single person it's like were you involved were you involved you know speaking of like the Fred Valentich and and all that too it's sort of that feeling as a family member i imagine it's that feeling of like you can if you don't know whether they're they've passed or not you could probably like see them and people as you walk past like you know i imagine you're still looking for that person um so that must be just oh constant hyper vigilance so you never really get to grieve you're just yeah you never have that rest uh it's just tragic so three days after she had gone missing it was monday firefighters unfortunately found mandy's body uh while searching the nooksack river by boat she was in the water yes yes her body was about six miles from home it had been caught in some debris in a south fork of the river.

She only had shoes and socks on. And they initially ID'd her based on the sneakers that her mom described that she had been wearing on the day she went missing. The water was knee deep and it was so cold that her body was really well preserved. And to the point where one investigator on the scene said it looked like if you shook her she would wake up like she was only sleeping oh just horrible horrible also okay so that that gives me a bit of a note though that like the person who did this didn't think about how well preserved her body would be in that kind of water like i feel like does that help for autopsies and things like that to be able to or like crime scene?

Maybe. I think perhaps I think just being in the water also makes it hard. Oh, right. Whether it's preserved or not. Okay. Just because like the water does so much damage. But they were I mean, they were able to get some intel. So maybe it was because it was well preserved.

Like they were able to see that her body didn't really have much trauma to it at all. There were scratches from the blackberry bushes. Like she'd run straight through some really like sharp branches. And that's pretty much all they could tell. And so there really wasn't much to to glean from this but mandy's boyfriend rick was at mandy's house at the stavik house when investigators knocked on the door to tell mary that they that they found her daughter's body and she said she knew all along that mandy would be found dead even though she didn't want to admit it to herself

there's this 2020 episode episode that I watched that interviews her and her boyfriend, Rick, as well. Not Mary's, I'm sorry, Mandy's boyfriend, Rick, and interviews Mary. And Mary said, I knew, I knew she was gone. I don't know why. I think mothers know. I've talked to other mothers who felt the same thing. I knew she was dead. I didn't want to say it even to myself but i knew which is interesting in contrast to fred's dad who said i just know he's alive somewhere which is an interesting like twist on that you know that's actually a great point i don't know makes me wonder maybe i don't know maybe i don't know what that means or what that doesn't mean

yep me neither that's the moral of this podcast i don't know what that means or doesn't mean me neither the end go find astonishing legend episode on it they know more about everything it seems so she also said um in this she also said in an interview there's nothing worse than losing a child and i already knew that because she had already lost a child and then a stepchild. I mean, it's just like nonstop grief. So Molly, the sister, remembers running out of the house and screaming in a field just at life, at God for being so unfair to her family. I can't imagine. No. I can't imagine.

So in the autopsy, they were actually able to gather a little more evidence of what happened. They ruled drowning as the cause of death at first, but it didn't seem to make much sense because Mandy, remember how sporty she was? She was a very strong swimmer and she was found in pretty shallow water. So it didn't really make sense that she would have died by drowning. Beyond that, it was December and she was out for a run. Why would she go swimming? Like, it just didn't make much sense. The only clue that really added to this was a hematoma, which was bleeding under her scalp that wasn't visible until the autopsy.

And it was about three by two inches, this bruise. And the injury wasn't enough to kill her but it might have knocked her out and then being unconscious and thrown into the water could have been the cause of death she could have drowned obviously um you know being unconscious wouldn't have been able to make her way out the examiner also determined that she had been raped, so they were able to determine that. There was DNA inside of her, which some investigators in 1989 might not have considered because DNA evidence was still in its infancy, science-wise. But because the FBI was involved in this case, they made sure to collect. They knew this was kind of an up-and-coming thing. They knew to collect the DNA, thank God. Meanwhile, at Mount Baker High School,

they hosted a memorial service in the auditorium, and more than 1,000 people attended. It was standing room only, and the Stavik family then separately held a private graveside funeral uh at the burial the community was just like i mean rocked by this uh they felt like their innocence had been stolen um because you know being in this memorial it's like there's a thousand people here and once again like any of these people could have had something to do with it could know something like who we know everybody and like in the small towns like we know everybody but somebody's hiding something you know it's just very scary thought i i feel like my first thought i mean i would have i can't imagine the the violating feeling of a whole town because it's so small everyone knew each other or at least in the neighborhood everyone knew each other or at least in the neighborhood, everyone knew each other. But I wonder if, um, uh, I think my first thought would have been like, oh, it must have been

someone just like driving through town. Cause like I would still be, I wouldn't be able to process that someone in our town could do it, you know? Right. Right. It's almost like a protection thing. Like, well, I'm sure nobody I know did it. You know, you don't want to believe that. well i'm sure nobody i know did it you know you don't want to believe that um which is interesting that you say that because people were at a loss no obvious suspects and then it kind of came to everyone's attention that further south in seattle the green river serial killer was at large oh and his victims were all white women from their teens to their 30s whom he buried near the Green River. And Mandy fit the victim profile, but weirdly enough was just too far north to really match the killer's M.O. But didn't you say it was the holidays?

It was Thanksgiving break, yes. So maybe it was someone who was out there for school and came home for the holidays or something? Could be. Could be. Could be. Some people definitely believe that was who had done it. There was actually like a whole task force looking into this. And they compared Mandy's death with the Green River Killer MO. And they just decided this is just too unlikely to fit the bill.

Just doesn't make sense. And so they kind of left that lead behind uh for what it's worth mary mandy's mother worked with the media she was i mean it sounds exhausting and difficult but she kept doing interviews kept doing talk shows like she just wanted the story to remain at the top of people's minds she wanted anybody with information to come forward and meanwhile detectives established a tip line which was getting a huge amount of calls every people's minds. She wanted anybody with information to come forward. And meanwhile, detectives established a tip line, which was getting a huge amount of calls every day. And even though investigators followed up on hundreds of leads, they just went nowhere.

So it was like the most frustrating thing for investigators and for Mandy's family. It felt like they just kept hitting dead ends no matter how many leads they would come across. Felt like they just kept hitting dead ends no matter how many leads they would come across. So the FBI profilers who we love, well, especially as a fan of the show Mindhunter, the profilers did a little profile with their little magic and they determined the killer would be someone in Mandy's community. Oh, no. Not a stranger. That makes it so much worse. I know.

An early suspect was a man named Paul, who was a nearby neighbor, and he was actually one of the last people to see Mandy alive. He described seeing a dark pickup truck drive past just after Mandy jogged by, and police felt like it was a red flag that he didn't notice the make and model of the car. I wouldn't. i wouldn't either i mean again not to like constantly be comparing this to the fred story but like the guy the person driving around who saw the airplane was like i recognize the registration number and the make and model of the airplane i'm like yeah i wouldn't even know what kind of truck that was i would i'd be like you're gonna get a lot out of me if i can know the color and if there was like a dent or something how many wheel how many wheels it had any funny bumper stickers i might notice that too yeah i would notice the bumper stickers for sure yeah yeah

so essentially they felt like it was a red flag he didn't notice the make and model so they asked for his dna and he refused to give a sample. And so police, police again, we're like, I don't like this. Yeah. Red flag. So Paul held his ground until investigators obtained his DNA by court order.

And it was not a match. So this just proves sometimes people with nothing to hide don't want to give their DNA to police. So, you know what I mean? It's not the only, that's true. It doesn't necessarily mean anything. Um, again and again, suspects were ruled out when their DNA, and I imagine also back then this was such a new concept to be collecting DNA.

And I'm sure people, some people were like, what are you doing? Like, I'm sure if you didn't know what that was for. Yeah. Oh no. I can certainly understand people being like, what are you doing? Like, I'm sure if you didn't know what that was for. Yeah. Oh, no, I can certainly understand people being like, well, I don't know what they're doing with my DNA. Like, why would I want to give that to them? Like, I'm not going to voluntarily give that to you. Yeah, I can absolutely understand that. There could even be people out there being like, oh, well, they're going to plant it

somewhere. And then all of a sudden I look guilty. You never know. I mean, or it could just be some fluke. Like, we've had people try to help in a case and then get locked up. It's just like, you know, I do understand there's no they can't force you to do it unless they have a court order. And they did. And he was not a match. So he was let go and ruled out. and new sheriffs inherited the case. Over the years, suspects just kept getting ruled out because their DNA did not match what was on Mandy's body. Then in 2009, a new detective took on the 4,000 pages of files

on this case, which was now 20 years old. And shortly after that, a detective got inspired by a case in England where police did a DNA sweep to solve a murder case similar to Mandy's. And this is basically where they go door to door. And this case in England, they went door to door from and received samples from 5000 men who volunteered to give their samples. And they had to be within a specific age and geographic range. And they were able to solve the case that way. And so, you know, this investigator saw that and said, what a good idea.

So they got in contact with hundreds of men who fit the profile in 1989 and lived near Strand Road at the time of Mandy's killing. And they went through all of these hundreds of samples that people volunteered, kept coming up empty handed, like no freaking answers. And how many people did they get? Several hundred. Okay. And again, this is a small town. I know I keep saying it, but like in context. There aren't that many people.

Yeah, you'd hope that somebody would have matched, you know, but they were not able to figure it out so detectives continuously assured mary uh mandy's mother that their that her daughter's case would never go cold but mary just was not convinced uh she said she feared finding a new suspect would make her relive her daughter's death all over again sure and so she wasn't even sure what to think about this investigation going on after decades because she described it in 2020 sort of as like it's not going to bring her back. It's not going to, you know, she almost felt like defeated. What's the point? Yeah, exactly. Defeated.

And so it was another set of years later before an unlikely unlikely lead popped up okay dun dun dun so now we're in june of 2013 and this is 25 i'm sorry 24 years after mandy's death their two friends their names are heather backstrom and mary lee anderson and they took their kids to Birch Bay Waterslides, which is a water park in Blaine, Washington. They had actually grown up in Acme. And while they just chit chatted with each other about their hometown, Mandy's murder came up. I imagine it probably came up with a lot of people who were discussing their childhoods here during that time. Yeah. during that time yeah this was sort of like a casual almost like gossipy conversation um just to say like wow can you believe you know uh what do you remember from the case can you believe the

killer got away with it um but according to cbs news backstrom oh i already have a goose cam why heather backstrom suddenly blurted out i know who killed her. And Mary Lee Anderson stunned at the statement, then replied, I do too. What? I know. I know. Okay, here we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It turned out both women had had seriously weird encounters with the same local ACME man named Tim Bass, who was another Mount Baker High School alum.

Okay. And let me just tell you their different experiences. So one night in the 90s, a few years after Mandy's murder, Tim Bass showed up at Heather's house while she was home alone with her kids. He, yeah, already bad news. And by the way, it gets so much worse. So he tells her he's been out hunting and he needs to use her phone so she lets him in but she hears the deadline beeping on the other

end of his call like he's not actually calling anyone it's just like faking a phone call yes exactly and so she's like what the hell you know she's obviously so uneasy and on edge and then tim walked into her bedroom and he told heather he'd always been in love with her and asked her to sleep with him oh okay yeah and at this point she's fucking terrified she's home alone with her children this man who who clearly lied to get in her front door is now invading her bedroom and is asking her to sleep with him. Clearly says he's been out hunting. I don't know if he has a gun on him or in the car. I don't know. But this it's just like a very dangerous situation. So he said he used to drive by her house all the time and he loved her and he begged her to get in bed

with him. And Heather told him she was going to call the police if he didn't go. And she later described, somehow, I don't even remember exactly how I got him out of my house. Thank the Lord. But just one weird encounter. And this was just a couple of years after Mandy's death. So she tells Mary Lee the story. And Mary Lee goes, So she tells Mary Lee the story and Mary Lee goes, OK, I have my own story about Tim. Months before Mandy's death in 1989, when Mary Lee was only 15, she was riding in the front seat of a truck sitting between Tim Bass on one side and her boyfriend slash future husband on the other side. And Tim was 21. Again, she was 15.

And he kept hitting on her, even though she was with you know her boyfriend and uh he bizarrely took a pen out of the truck's cup holder and started running it along the edges of her eyes and telling yeah which by the way i hope they don't go over a fucking speed bump this like oh my god dangerous what happened next he kept telling her how beautiful her eyes were and just like running the pen around her face and like just fucking grade a creepy just cringe creepy like do you think it's like first of all if there were no murderous intentions or evil intentions still not as romantic and suave as you think it is. Still bad. Wow. Just so dangerous and gross.

And like invasive. Like don't touch people. Yeah. Especially with like the lightness, the gentleness of a pen. I couldn't tolerate it. Simply couldn't. Horrible. And of course, being in an enclosed space like that, you know, what are you going to do?

And so he's running this pen around her eyes and saying how beautiful they are and she felt that she believed that the only reason this didn't escalate is because she had another male presence in the car with her and sure nothing could happen but she was like i think it could have escalated into something worse if i if i were alone with him so for years heather and mary Lee had these stories to themselves and they privately thought Tim is just this weird predator who probably freaked other girls in the community out. And, you know, it wasn't hard to believe he could have hurt Mandy given the opportunity, especially because he's like pushing all these boundaries and like lying his way into women's homes and like trying to push physical contact on them and he lived on strand road mandy's street so this was all very eerie and stuff but they were afraid to come forward and accuse someone in their small community especially with just like

a story of how weird he was that is until they heard each other's stories and then they said we both need to come forward with this like it's almost like they didn't realize other people had these same suspicions which i feel like that's like a lot of predators out there one of their skills is making you feel alone in it absolutely it's almost that gaslighting feeling of like maybe i'm exaggerating it you know maybe i was young and uncomfortable but and and i'm i'm gonna touch on that at the end as well but um that's exactly the point it's it's sort of like you know once they bolstered each other into saying no no he's just as creepy as you remember

and i always had the same suspicion and that moment of like i know who killed her so do i and it happened to be the same guy i mean that's when they said we got to call the police yeah so thankfully they they reached out and um called the police and said we think tim bass is somebody to look into yeah so tim lived across the other side of highway 9 on strand road in 1989 and mandy used to jog past his house every single day. He graduated in 1986, which was three years before Mandy, and he actually had a brother named Tom Bass who was friends with Mandy. So his younger brother was in the same social circles. His name was Tom. So it's a little confusing, Tim and Tom.

So Tom ran in the same social circles as Mandy, and Tim was always just kind of like the older brother that was in the background. Like he wasn't somebody that they really socialized with. Tim was also a bit of a loner and Mandy just wasn't known to really hang out with him. She's very sociable. He was several years older. Mandy's friends just remembered Tim as Tom's older brother, a guy in the background. Tim as Tom's older brother, a guy in the background. And in 1989, when the murder took place, he was living with his parents and his brother, Tom, and he was dating a high schooler

named Gina Malone. Gina is also interviewed in the 2020 episode. So Gina was not friends with Mandy, but she knew of her and saw her every day at school because they went to school together. Tim planned to marry Gina once she graduated high school. But when Mandy died, he suddenly seemed very anxious to get married and he rushed the wedding and they quickly got hitched. The two of them had three children together. And as Gina describes it, it's definitely very harrowing. Like you can just tell this still affects her to this day. She remembers as a controlling abusive husband he dictated what she wore whom she talked to and he instead of using her name called her bitch and whore holy shit if she ever said i don't like when you call me that he would basically say oh get a sense of humor you know and it's like you get a sense of humor that's right get a brain get a fucking read a

book yeah take a hike take a hike wake up and smell the coffee you know smell a rose while you're at it you know as if yeah as if whatever loser so he sometimes mimed like he was about to hit her just to scare her i mean this guy is just a fucking great a abusive asshole so it just sounds like it runs in the family then that they uh that these are creepy folks oh this is just the same guy tim oh i thought we were talking about tom for a second no sorry tom was just a younger brother of course as you said tim and tom it gets confusing i know i know i'm sorry so tim is the creepy one. Tom is his younger brother who was just friends with this friend group. Got it. Okay. Sorry, Tom. Yeah.

Poor Tom. So Tim is the one who's abusive and controlling and he marries this high school girl named Gina. He's very abusive toward her, pretends to hit her. He shoved her into a wall where she injured her back. And they used to watch shows like Cold Case Files, and he would always brag that he'd never get caught for murder. Oh, shit. Yeah, he told her the killers on the show were stupid and bad at covering their tracks, so they deserved to get caught. But for him, getting away would be easy. And, hey, to be fair, it's been decades and nobody's caught him. So, you know, he's on to something, I got to say. In 2010, Gina filed for a protective order for herself and her children against Tim, but eventually she dropped it and stayed with him. Tim actually in 2013 when investigators showed up at their house and asked Tim for a DNA sample after Heather and Marilee had called in. So they brought up Mandy and Tim acted like he didn't know

who Mandy was, which this is a red flag because everyone in the community knows Mandy. Like this was such a big story. Um, and he was trying to play a super blase and cool. And he said, Oh, is that the girl who was missing? Oh, I remember she was found in a river. And then when they asked for a DNA sample, he absolutely refused. Of course. Of course. And there wasn't enough probable cause for a warrant.

So four freaking years went by. Nothing. They just didn't have a warrant to get his DNA. and and so i imagine being the family it's so hard you're just like on the on the edge of getting an answer or a suspect and then it's like years just go by you know it's just sounds so as a very impatient person exhausting sounds frustrating and exhausting so four freaking years go by and it's not until 2017 that police approached Tim's co-worker, Kim. Now we got a rhyme. Oh, for fuck's sake. Okay's the same age as Mandy and it often haunted her to think about Mandy's mother specifically and the way she never got closure about her daughter's death, especially because she was on all the news programs, talk shows. on all the news programs talk shows um but at this point kim has no idea why the police are approaching her because they didn't mention mandy when they came and approached her they only brought up tim right so when investigators asked her about tim bass and his dna she said which i love that it

was above her pay grade and referred them to hr like, thank you. Honestly, good for her. Same, same. No, yeah. What the fuck? No. You know, it's like, I understand why they asked, but like, no. She's a nice try. I'm not getting mixed up in this bullshit unless you give me more information. So, of course, HR refused to work with police without a warrant.

Also good for them. I mean, they shouldn't just be handing over people's DNA without any sort of warrant or understanding of why. So, you know, this is just like starting to, you know, I give them credit for that. But one day while Kim was chatting with a friend about Mandy's death, she found out that Tim used to live on Strand Road right by Mandy's house. And all of a sudden it clicked. And she's like, oh, my my god that's why the police came to my work to talk about Tim there they must be investigating him for the crime so at work like her little detective self she started observing Tim just from a distance I know I love I love her I love aren't they the best i'm not biased i just want to say that okay well you are bi i i'm not biased uh there's a shirt in there somewhere but oh yeah yeah you've already done okay so at work she

starts observing tim he never uh left his uniform to be washed like everyone else did so that was a thought bless you geo because i'm tight oh little baby geo is there sneezed he's just staring at me because he wants his lunch or his dinner and it's 1 50 in the afternoon it's not dinner time yet he just waits all day very food motivated me too me three so he never left his uniform behind like everyone else did to be washed he always took his trash home with him like he didn't throw it away he took it with him he even wore gloves on his delivery route and this is when she realized oh this man is guarding his dna like clearly he knows that

somebody is looking for it so when detectives visited the bakery a second time kim asked outright are you investigating mandy's murder and they were like how did you figure that out like they just didn't they didn't realize she would have put that together um she don't know honey i know i gave him attention now he's like dinner um again i understand as someone who craves food and attention at all moments also it's his birthday this week it was his birthday saturday he turned seven he's a 56 year old man wait 49 49 yeah seven times seven 49 oh you're about to have your half-life crisis somebody commented on his photo yeah your midlife crisis someone commented on his photo like oh he's a senior dog now i was like don't tell me that oh no no

oh when i met you he was just a little chair he was turning one he was turning one that was first time i ever met him crazy that is bananas oh little geo so sleepy okay puppy anyway sorry that was i hope everyone enjoyed their intermission how are you how are you doing everyone let's get back to the water yeah did everyone uh take a moment to feel at ease well let's get back into this uh so she realizes he's guarding his dna they come to the bakery she's like are you investigating mandy's murder tell me and they're like oh shit um kim was a mother and she kept thinking about mandy's mom with this heartache. And she told police she would get a DNA sample.

But police told her they couldn't officially ask for that. She would have to volunteer the evidence on her own accord. Now, this is a little sketchy to me. Like, I understand. Like, I don't I'm glad that they were able to get Tim's DNA, but I don't necessarily love this like police work of, well, wink, wink. You have to volunteer it or not. You know what I mean? It's like it just feels really shady to me.

I don't love that. But, you know, thankfully, at least in this case, it was for a good cause, so to speak. in this case it was for a good cause so to speak uh so kim watched him non-stop until one day she saw him throw away a plastic water cup done so she grabbed it and delivered it to investigators the odds of this being a match were one in 11 quadrillion what because if if it weren't him so to speak so like oh just a random match would be one in 11 quadrillion which is 15 zeros and guess what it was a fucking match so like this is their guy no question wow so investigators took him into custody and you can watch the interview with him online he's like acting kind of skittish but also like super casual like he's gonna like bluff his way out of it it's really unsettling um and once he realized they definitely had his dna he

said quote i trust you guys if this comes back to bite me ah hell i slept with her oh fucking asshole liar he told police that one day while he was mountain biking with his dad, he ran into Mandy on her usual jog and got to chatting with her. And then they began a secret affair that only his dad knew about. This is the most incel experience. I know. Horrifying. All the way down to, oh,

we were talking. No, you weren't. She probably was nice to you for five seconds. Yeah. And, and none of this even really happened. I don't know.

The secret love affair I think was all in his head. Oh for sure. It was all made up. So they slept together. This is according to him. They didn't actually. But he said they slept together several times before she moved away for college and once over Thanksgiving break which was why his DNA was inside of her when searchers found her body. He said they were friends at first who just talked a lot and then the relationship turned physical. But when investigators asked about Mandy's life, he didn't remember anything. They were like, well, what college did she go to?

I don't know. What'd she major in? I don't know. Who were her friends? I don't know. Like he didn't know anything about her. So it's like you were friends and it turned, like obviously you weren't because you would know the basics.

But even if you were just a hookup, you would know like how far away she lived from you or something. Yeah, or what school she went to or the name of her boyfriend that she's cheating on, you know, something. So investigators were obviously not convinced by this. And on December 12th of 2017, finally, he was arrested and charged with murder in the first degree. Now, the detectives drove to Mary's house and said, we've got him. It was Mary's 81st birthday. I know. And she opened the door.

They said, we've got him. And she said, who? Like, it literally didn't even occur to her. She was also like straight up see police. You think you're at least prompted to know what the situation's about. And she was just so taken aback that this could have happened. And it didn't even occur to her that they after 30 years that they could have found Mandy's killer. She had just resigned herself to the belief that like just like her other son or her other child.

She just wouldn't have answers. Yeah. So at a press press conference they announced the news and of course the community once again is like whiplash holy shit um kim said she planned to stay anonymous the the woman at the bakery but uh mary uh mandy's mom said she wanted to meet the person who helped catch Mandy's killer so Kim agreed to meet with her and they have it on camera and tearfully this makes me cry Kim embraced Mary and said I did it for you oh because it was always just such so hard for her to imagine um Mandy's mom living without answers for so long. It's just, ooh, it gives me goose cam. So Tim's defense team couldn't deny that Tim's DNA was found inside Mandy. So they had to try and convince the court that Mandy was in a consensual affair with Tim

and only happened to sleep with him right before death. And it's just all such a big coinkydink, you know? How silly and convenient. How silly is that? Basically, their argument was just because tim's dna was on mandy didn't mean he raped or killed her um so they also relied heavily on gina who's tim's wife um who gave tim an alibi and she said that she saw mandy jogging before her disappearance while she was driving to tim's house and then spent the rest of the day inside with tim so there's no way Tim could have killed Mandy. Meanwhile, on the other hand, the Stavik family is adamant that Mandy would not

have slept with Tim. Her sister said, to put it bluntly, he was miles below her league. I was like, holy shit. Everyone knew this guy is a creep, you know, like he's like, he's like touching people's faces and like, no, no, just the phrasing. Oh, yeah. Miles below her league. Yeah. I was like, wow, I've never heard such a sick burn. Indeed. And I hope she said it on the stand because what a powerful moment.

Yeah. Mandy's friends testified that never once in their lives had they seen Mandy so much as talk to Tim. She had nothing to do with him. The idea that she'd run into him in the woods and then start cheating on her boyfriend with him seemed absolutely ridiculous. Like, on what planet? It just didn't make any sense. Can we bring back? On what planet? On what planet?

I say that a lot and I feel like I'm learning I'm the only one who still says that. I'm happy to bring it back. That's a good one. I think I'm just, like, channeling Xenon. I'm like, on what planet, you know? Mine? On mine? I don't think so. It's a mess. I haven't cleaned up for visitors. Okay, so anyway, her garbage pile like mine is getting way too big. So it's just Frappuccino cups left and right. Okay. I'm sorry. I don't know. I'm picking moments when I was drinking. I know you can drink picking moments. I was done. It's never done. Mary Stavik, who had celebrated her 81st birthday,

finding out that, you know, they had caught the guy was 82 when she took the stand. She was very afraid of reliving her trauma all over again. So she basically just answered all the questions very briefly, very straightforward. Her testimony about losing her daughter was just absolutely gut-wrenching. But the ultimate testimony came from Tim's own younger brother. Tom! Tom's back, baby. Oh, man.

Tom came in swinging. He came in hot. He said after the investigator first asked for Tim's DNA, Tim came to Tom scared and said detectives were after him. He told Tom, the reason I'm so worried is because I slept with Mandy. And Tom was like, what? In fact, he said he couldn't believe Mandy would sleep with his brother. He's like, isn't she miles below your league? Right.

That's what she told me i mean i'm not on this planet but on what planet sir so tim was like oh well only dad knew about this but now dad's dead so he can't defend me so he says tom i need you to defend me and say that i slept with mandy and i want you to help make her look quote unquote loose. Yeah. What a bastard. He said that that way would look more believable that Mandy slept with him in the first place. I want you to victim blame. Yeah. Until they believe she's not a victim. Until they believe. Yeah, exactly. Yep. So heartbroken, Tom had to make the decision whether to lie for his brother or testify against him. And he deeply believed his brother was guilty. So he went ahead and testified against him.

And I'm, you know, I'm not doubting how hard this must have been for for him to do. He said in court it was difficult to be there, but he had to do it. I imagine that was very sleepless time for him yeah yeah um worse for tim guess who else came back miss gina okay she came forward and she said when she originally provided an alibi for him that day she was terrified of tim she thought i could be next so everything he said to her she disagreed and said she did it out of fear he might kill her or hurt their children and now that he was in custody she filed for divorce and she testified that the alibi was

all a lie all along he was an abusive bastard etc etc so the jury ultimately declared tim bass guilty of first degree murder they sentenced him to 320 months in prison which is 26 years and he maintained his innocence during sentencing and said he had no ill will for anyone in the courtroom that day okay well it's not not saying back at you right he's still in prison so there's that and um according to heavy.com mandy's sister molly said the trial felt like her sister died twice which is just horrific um and i'm just gonna read this little paragraph here which just shows like the family's heartbreak she said it's like a wound that just won't heal it's starting to heal and it's got all the scar tissue you can

see it every day and then all of a sudden they literally rip the scar tissue off the wound and reopen it. And so it's this raw pain that we had to deal with all over again. But I think now we can slowly start healing growing. So as like a final, oh gosh, this story is just like, gives me chills. As a final kind of side note, I just want to touch on one thing that you had mentioned earlier, which is like this, the fact that these two women who shared their stories

suddenly felt emboldened enough to step forward. And apparently a lot of the articles about this case sort of describe it as like gossip led to the arrest of a killer but it feels a little bit like dismissive um and i feel like the bigger takeaway is that you know women like we talked about like that gaslighting feeling of like women girls um are people who identify that way are so often like not only the victims of these incidents, whether they're like murder or just like creepy, invasive touching or rape or whatever it may be.

But then on the flip side, like somehow convinced that they need to keep that to themselves or that they're the only one or they must be confused or, you know, it's just this like constant cycle. And even like the subtle power dynamic of like, oh, I felt like something was wrong, but maybe I shouldn't say something just to be safe. I was trying to be polite or yeah, yeah. Or, or just to protect my safety. It's just this constant cycle of like being made to doubt your experience. And, you know, I mean, I think a lot of us have been there for sure. And this is where I bring up yet again, Gavin DeBecker's book, The Gift of Fear. And you can listen on Audible. And

I actually recommend it because he has like a new, the book was written in the 90s. So some of it's kind of outdated, but the Audible version, he does like a post COVID forward where he discusses like how things have changed, how they've stayed the same. And so it's just such a great book. And it really the whole his whole career is meant to help teach primarily women to trust their instincts and to trust their guts. And that if something feels off, a lot of times that's because it is. And your subconscious is trying to tell you your your innate like sense of fear. Survival mode is trying to tell you and we override it. And so just an important note I wanted to mention.

And, you know, if it were safer or easier for women to come forward, I think, you know, it could have happened sooner that this Tim guy was arrested. So, you know, and there's more Tims in the world, unfortunately. So this is just like a sign to, you know and there's more tims in the world unfortunately so this is just like a a sign to you know trust your gut trust your gut everyone speak see something say something trust your gut be safe out there be safe out there on what planet not this one no wait yeah great point uh wow that was a good one that was i mean i always hate when i say that was a good one and like what that sounds like but i i enjoyed learning about it i'm so glad because i think it's a really powerful story and um you know it's one of the few where at least

a cold case finally gets some justice you know yeah and the family i know it sounded like they it felt more like an opening wound opening a wound than closure but i am glad that they at least got an answer yeah and it sounds like they they even recognize at least her sister that like maybe this will finally lead to more healing so yeah let's hope let's hope um wow you know and running with a german shepherd like yeah you'd think a lot of people think oh well I'm safe because I have a dog but I mean I don't want to scare anybody but you know it just goes to show you that you can't because I would be as safe as possible I would have thought the

same thing you know like you're running with a dog you're running with another who knows like who what precautions but something can always happen so yeah be alert you can do everything you can and sometimes people just fucking suck sometimes people just want to fuck it up anyway yep um boy well thank you for that you're educating me i thank you for that horrible experience but thank you for the education oh you're so welcome am i am i seeing you uh tomorrow to record what's the situation oh we're doing rituals tomorrow baby okay if you guys don't listen to rituals we're really proud of it it's um only on spotify we never talk about it no we never do we're we're

having a great time over there and they do such i mean not that anyone could do more better awesome research than we do but they lol the podcast team does amazing research and it's all about like the occult and um we did one on astral projection which got me back into my lucid dreaming so you know if you're interested in this the kind of more spooky or paranormal um occasionally sprinkle of like true crimey stuff um go check out rituals we have a great time yeah it's very fun it's got i think a little bit of a different feel it's definitely our our banter is more restricted is limited other people are watching us and they're probably as we talk just like scratching out the time codes but we do they do give us a lot of room to like banter

and joke and you know tell stories of like i think we even in some ways get more room because there are like questions that we are prompted with like hey have you ever done a hex on someone and i went on a 10 minute rant about how yes i have done a hex on someone? And I went on a 10-minute rant about how, yes, I have done a hex on someone. Or what's your experience with astral projection? And so we do get to kind of dive into more of those topics. It's controlled chaos. Controlled chaos. TM, TM, TM.

If you like it, that's why we drink. I mean, rituals is very similar. I would say. I would say. So for anyone who's out there being like, oh, I'm all caught up. Like, what do I do? Go listen to rituals. Check it out. We think you might like it yeah we should probably talk about

it more yeah yeah i'm like we think it's okay we love it but hopefully you do too all right well i guess i'll see you tomorrow to record then too and also if you are on our patreon please go check our after chat after oh yeah we're gonna chat more if you can't get enough of us talking non-stop right all right uh and that's why we drink