And That's Why We Drink - E304 Hand Paws and Wisconsinners

Episode Date: December 4, 2022

In episode 304, Mommy comes back to get you... Em passes on a family tradition in the form of an out of tune song from traveling moms. Then they bring us the story of a Wisconsin werewolf, the Beast of Bray Road, the absolute last dog you want to cuddle. Then Christine brings us the lukewarm, we mean cold case of Athalia Ponsell Lindsley, who's murderer was pretty obvious to everyone except the people set to solve it. Also, keep an eye out for Christine who just might come to find you in your dreams... and that's why we drink!

hi i haven't well we just had a meeting so we're good where i have i have now officially seen you and quite what are we a business i know but as of an hour ago i hadn't seen you in a long time and i felt missed you i we've we've not recorded in a bit it's a holiday it was thanksgiving week so everybody kind of went their own ways for a few days and well also we were on we went on like a huge last final leg of our tour we did our last shows it was very like emotional your mom was there so like you you know you had that i traveled home early we just got we were like in the same place but like not i don't know kind of missing each other we were not mentally in the same place no no

mentally definitely we may have been mentally in the same place but in different universes like oh a little overlap i'm still waiting for you to find the note in this room over here speaking of being in other realms oh my god i'm so glad you said that okay i had a dream okay i had another elisa dream but i was so annoyed because in my dream i said oh my god oh my god it's happening i have to go to m's house so i was like okay i would like to go to m's house and i like turned in a circle and then i appeared in your apartment and I was like oh my god it's working what did it look like was I naked what did you find you were on the potty you were in the kitchen and I was like Em I made it and you were like okay like you were like not impressed and um I was like I gotta find that note but like you know when you're in a dream and you're like trying to either run or trying to you're trying to do something and like dial a number and you just can't do it it felt like that where I was like I have to find

this note and I like couldn't grasp like how to find it it was so strange I like couldn't get it and I think my brain was just not letting me do it I think you're only like one step away from absolutely finding this note and then I said to you I said well um is there anything you want me to tell you tomorrow like when you when I wake up like, is there anything you want me to tell you tomorrow? Like when you when I wake up? Like, is there anything you'd like me to relay back to waking him? And then you said, no, not really. And I said, anything and you're like, nah, I was like, you found the wrong universe. Because wow, in this world, if like a like a like a see-through version of you which is how this is on my mind if they're like anything you want me to say i'd be like um that i fucking saw a

see-through version of you it'd be crazy and then i found eva and then i said eva what do you want to say and she kept going let me think wait was eva in my house no i went and like found her because i was like well maybe Eva will have something and then I couldn't get either of you I mean it was my own brain I'm I recognize that but I could not get either of you to say anything like noteworthy to bring back the next day to you except for I don't know is what you both kept saying so I think any note you would have given me though would have been ominous like anything yeah i felt like a lot of pressure like i feel like poor evo in the dream was like oh wow that's a good question let me think and i was like i don't have time to think i'm gonna wake up any second now and then you know

i woke up but uh i forgot i totally forgot until you mentioned the note that that had happened last week i feel like you're really so close like now that you've been able to like find us now you just have to like channel in like the right us that will lead you to into the right places i just love that i like find you in my dreams like how creepy like i'm the biggest weirdo that sounds like the mommy comes back song to get me we just learned that because i was saying how i'm traveling next week and i was like you know it's hard to leave Leona. And so I've been trying to fill in while, you know, Blaze wasn't feeling too well and make up for when I'm gone. And Emma said, well, you know, my mom was a working woman, you know, while with a child.

So like you could talk to her and she even wrote a song about it. And of course, even I were like, do tell. And Emma sang it for us. And it was just as delightful as I expected. Well, it is weird to be friends with you. It's so weird how I feel like the universe kind of brings, obviously, certain people in your world and all that. That's how I see things. But to be friends with someone who is going through what my mom went through,

where she was a 30, 31-year-old with a brand new first-time baby. She was a first-time mom, and she traveled all the time for work. And so it's weird to be friends with, to watch you do what my mom was probably doing. And look, you turned out fine. So Leona is in great hands. I twitch, and I have a couple of attention disorders. Only a few mental illnesses between the two of us. It's fine.

But no, in case anyone's wondering, my mom used to sing this song out of tune and off beat and out of key and all that horrible stuff, though. But she tried her best. She bounced me to the beat, but really she was just shaking me and shaking at the same time. Yeah, I mean, it was delightful to listen to uh my mom hopefully i know she's listening so i hope you enjoy this rendition of the the main core memory i have uh take it away mommy comes back mommy comes back mommy comes back to get me and that just sing it over and over and over for eternity it's like the song that never ends yeah it's like the song that never ends um but the goal was so that i would remember when she was gone the words

of the song that she'd come back so i love it i'm gonna start singing it eric on mom the torch has been passed yes i feel like the tradition continues it's just it's very exciting um so thank you for that i i oh i wanted god i feel like there's so many things to tell you and this is one that i meant to tell you last episode but i left it downstairs and i have a feeling since we haven't gotten to open a fan mail together recently we haven't received this together but one came to my po box here in kentucky and uh it said your long-awaited birthday gift and i was like okay and it said christine we all love you so much. So I'm assuming there are some for you in the –

Maybe not. No, no, they are. I promise. Okay. We all love you so much. Happy belated birthday. This project involved 50-plus fans who donated and will receive a gift of their own. All proceeds from this project will be donated to Missing murdered indigenous women usa in honor of your birthday and i don't know what your card says but um i'm gonna show

this to you it says and that's why we tarot shut the fuck up so you're gonna lose your mind ready here are the cards they were all designed by different people. It's like a full deck. Oh, they all were assigned a card. That's so nice. And it has like a guidebook in it. What? I know. Oh, my God.

And it has like, here, look. Okay, of course, here's the King of Pentacles. It's, of course, a lemon. Oh, my God. Here's the Queen of Pentacles. It's me surrounded by, a lemon. Oh, my God. Here's the queen of pentacles. It's me surrounded by lemons. Shut up. It's literally just you with lemons.

Judgment is geo. Am I the devil? Please make me. Who am I? I'm trying to remember which one you were. Who is the devil? This is great. The stars, but they did like a Starbucks thing where it says M, just the letter M, and Christine spelled with like a K. So it's like the stars. I was like a starbucks thing where it says m just the letter m and christine

spelled with like a k uh so it's like the stars like they misspelled it wrong like yeah yeah yeah that's so funny oh my gosh i'm not kidding you uh this the tower has noodles all the way to the top on the top i mean like the creativity here is just next fucking level shut up oh temperance is me with a box of wine because you know it's the opposite of that oh my god oh so even i usually we do fan mail the la fan mail together and then you do your own po box but even i we we gotta film another one now i i just gotta i gotta find that thing oh my gosh um there are some just like great the chariot is geo being pulled by mooney and junie um i gotta find the one of you it's great uh unfortunately the lovers are you me lemon and geo so that's wrong whoever made that was that was historically what do you call it

revisionist history um the hierophant is walt i Oh, Walt looks not like how I imagined him. But okay, whatever. He looks pretty much exactly how I imagined him. Eva is the empress in watercolor. I mean, come on. I love it. I got to find the one of you. Oh, here you are.

You would think I'd be the- You're, of course, the fucking magician. Now that is something I'm going to frame that. I'm officially not going to have a full deck because- I know. You know how people take- Well, maybe you don't. But a lot of people who are card collectors i only know like pokemon card collectors but a lot of them will put like the original hundred or so like framed in one big

frame right i might just have like all the tarot cards like what a fun idea and i wouldn't be able to play with them but i sure would be able to stare no but i got two decks you see because i think we each got two because it's sort of like, oh, it said one for a friend and one for you. And so I'm like, well, friend is also me. So, yeah, I'm my own friend. I'm a Gemini. Can I also tell you? Yeah, there's two of each of us.

Can I tell you, you're also the fool. And it's you and Gio. This is ridiculously hilarious. It's you and Gio walking out of a door at the Winchester Mystery House that leads to nothing. And you're about to like step out. And I'm in my clown uniform. And you're about to just step out the door to nowhere. Now, that's hysterical.

I mean, like, it's just amazing. I haven't even gotten to look at all of them. They're just so beautiful. The Five of Wands is five plungers holding up the plunger for it like they just worked so wonderfully hard on these and i i was so taken aback like i mean i haven't even looked at half of them yet so i i just was so excited and i didn't want to go through them yet until um i told you about it but so oh my gosh yeah i got it okay so i'll head over to the PO box today.

My God. Like these are just incredible. All the artwork is different. Oh my God. Leona is the queen of cups. Stop it. The fact that she looks so lanky but has no neck in that picture. Yes. I love it.

She's just like a little chunker. And then the king of cups is, of course, Zach Bagans. Hello. I thought he might be the devil. That's what I thought. Oh be the devil that's what i thought oh the devil's actually the devil i do appreciate that they were like let's just let's just uh we'll call them fools and i thought the devil would at least be the hersing shifter yeah that oh i bet the her i think the hersing shifter is in here somewhere i'm sure she's gotta be she's gotta be

um oh my god the ten of swords is the fucking lumberjack cake that i tried to make you it's a big fail. Oh, I can't even keep looking at it because I'm just going to keep distracting us. Oh, that's so touching. Is this the same group of 50 who seem to just absolutely deliver it every year on our birthdays? I feel like it must be. It's got to be. There's some little crew.

I don't know if they have a name for themselves. It's the ATWWD fam. And I was like, oh my God, of course I didn't have the box on me. At this point, I feel like they just have a birthday organization. Oh, sorry. Thank you to Eva is the acknowledgement, so she clearly already knows about this. We appreciate all you do. Thank you, Sadie.

Oh my god. Sadie Ray for not only designing the gorgeous backs of these cards, but also working the card assignments and artwork. Abby Lutz for managing the emails, collecting the cards, organizing fundraising, and making the booklet. Oh my god. Thank you, Tat tatiana for helping pack and ship and spell checking posts and emails thank you shuffled ink for printing our cards and booklets especially gabe who dealt with way too many emails from us and finally thank you to make playing cards.com for producing our beautiful boxes how my god is this and thank you by the way to all the artists who put so much

beautiful time and energy into this. Oh, and all the artists are in the booklet. See, it's things like this where I'm like, not trying to throw any particular shade to ourselves here, but like they could do this. Like I feel so silly when like a T-shirt doesn't work out. Yeah. We can't even figure out how to like. Yeah, exactly. I was like, wow, what a team.

To organize all these different. Do you know who Betsy is? It says their hometown is Fredericksburg, Virginia. I was like, wow, what a team. Especially to organize all these different... Do you know who Betsy is? It says their hometown is Fredericksburg, Virginia. Betsy? No. Betsy? Betsy Rosnick. Betsy.

I know a Betty. I just happened to open it to that. I don't know. Well, hey, Fredericksburger. What's up? Hey. Anyway, this is just so cool. And I can't wait for you to get yours.

Well, yeah, a thousand percent. You've now given me an errand for later but i'm excited about it oh my gosh well that's why i drink by the way sure yeah i guess that's why i drink too i nothing's gonna beat that do you drink because you're the fool which cracks me up i drink because we've all known i'm the fool. What are you drinking? Do you have a liquid in front of you today? I just got my cool textured Starbucks cup. A sensory water. Is it water?

How come it's purple at the bottom? Is it color changing? Nope. It's just a cool design. Oh, I didn't know if that was all the water you had. I was like, girl, pour some more. We're here for a while. It's filled up.

So what are you drinking? I'm drinking Snapple. Mmm. the water you had i was like girl pour some more we're here for a while it's filled up um so i'm drinking um snapple wow a classic you know have you do you have a this is gonna sound weird and maybe maybe it's another indicator of my neurodivergence you tell me um but i feel like there are certain things that i when i taste them i go not just immediately to a memory but like a whole genre of memories oh sure yeah and so um when i taste snapple i think of every childhood memory of my mom because oh this are like the old like from the like early 80s or late 80s early 90s like crystal light because she had like them bulk and i think she was still trying to finish them when by the time i was here but they oh no but it was it was like this like green flavor they don't make anymore and then snapple where like wow every time i drink them i immediately remember like a whole like flashback of my childhood comes back but they're all scenes of my mom so it's singing

mommy comes back maybe probably at least in some of them um but yeah that's uh also i also taste um those like snack well cookies the green box boy the diet cookies that all their diet cookies yeah those three things are the flavors of my my mother memories there was definitely a slim fast uh era in my home which is just disturbing that was ours oh not good not good stuff my mom was one of those people which uh by the way we are very body positive here i'm not trying to hell yeah throw not trying to throw any particular shade but just to rip on my mom for a second great her one of my favorite pastimes of her is every week being on a different diet and then wondering why she's not losing weight and i'm like girl the consistency is not there uh but yeah it needs it it's overrated it

became a quote where she's like i'm on a new diet i'm on a new diet and i was like okay well i feel like you i mean it's just going with whatever you want to eat that's kind of i think what the diet industry hopes for all of us is that we just keep coming back to the same ones over and over different ones every week or well whatever you wantichi was. They don't want us to succeed, you know? That's how it goes. Whatever Daiichi was on, it always consisted of Snackwell cookies and Snapple and Crystal Light from the 80s. Yum!

Yummy! Okay, anyway, that's what I'm drinking today. Well, I'm drinking water, so that's about as healthy as one can get, I guess. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. But it's only because it's two o'clock here. In a few hours, I'll be back on that wine train. So don't worry. Well, okay, I've got a little story for you. And I thought this was something I'd covered in the

past, but our episode list says no. So I love when this happens, because there's just like a tinge of anxiety through the first 10 minutes of your story where both of us are trying to grasp onto like any memory of this. So what I so I'll tell you the topic. The topic is the Beast of Bray Road. Why do I know that? I don't know. I definitely know that. I feel like it's one that maybe we covered on another show, maybe like when we did a guest swap.

Could be. I feel like that happens. But Beast of Bray Road, I swore. So I thought that we have covered the Beast of Jovedan. Okay, yes. I do remember that. But I do remember the sound of Bray Road, Beast of Bray Road. Wait, did you cover it at a live show? Oh, maybe that's what it was.

Because it's Wisconsin, it says. Maybe that's where you did it. Maybe that's what happened. I don't know Wisconsin let me know um I really couldn't tell you it's I'm telling you I feel like people are always shocked when we don't know our own topics but like you know what you cover 300 topics yeah it is

embarrassing and we do recognize that but like also I am embarrassed truly we have no control over it well that's why that's why I made the episode guide because I was like at least then I'll feel confident but then i'm like i still don't feel confident it just adds even more anxiety because we're like where did we mess up somewhere along the line yeah like something what topic did i just throw in there that is not true uh yeah so apparently we have covered this i actually between live shows and guest swaps and you know maybe we did cover it somewhere but we've never covered it on

the show so great let's start there um at least according to the episode guide so that you that we made that we made i made it at the time feeling so confident so i really need to just trust in myself i trust in you so okay well for what it's worth just the two of us it's nice over here nobody else i hear crickets okay so the beast of ray. It's nice over here. Nobody else. I hear crickets. Okay. So the Beast of Bray Road is also known as the Wisconsin Werewolf. So we've got two little nicknames for this guy. And he's known to haunt the rural roads of Wisconsin at night, specifically on a certain road. Can you guess which one? Is it called Bray Road? That just might be the one, Christine. So smart. Thank you. The first sighting, I'm just

gonna, I don't expect you to know this, but just for fun, how long ago do you think was the very first sighting of the Beast of Bray Road? Oh, 1962. No. You wouldn't have known. My psychic practice is not working today. Maybe that should have been the question you like asked me in your sleep. Like when did the Beast of Bray Road get seen? As if you would remember since apparently you did or did not cover this maybe at some point or maybe never. Right. Exactly. Yeah.

If you get to talk to an alternate reality me again in the future, ask if I've ever covered this somewhere else because maybe I'll know over there. Okay. So the first sighting was actually in 1836 long time got it it was oh jesus yeah i was way off 186 years ago and it was near jefferson wisconsin which i guess is where bray road is so there was a guy named mark shackleman and he was a night guard at a school uh the school was called the saint coletta school for exceptional children it sounds like it's like some weird shit was going on there i feel like yeah it sounds like the x-men went there i feel like there's a superhero training yeah i feel

like schools back then either sounded so fancy or were those one-room schoolhouses i'm so obsessed with like there's no in between there. There's no in-between. It's like either you were an exceptional child or you were eating dry noodles for lunch or something. I don't know why that's the opposite. Yeah, like the 1830s. The 1830s, I don't think of PS118. There was no middle ground high school. No, just like classic public school.

It's like you either, I don't know. Yeah, either you were exceptional or you absolutely were not yeah it sounds like the castle you went to school at so oh no so the school uh again was called the saint coletta school for exceptional children and it was an old franciscan convent so it was home for nuns spooky uh the school was in a rural area with a bunch of fields and orchards and at the time there were also several indigenous statues and burial mounds out there which are now either gone or defaced i assume excellent wonderful uh but mark was walking the grounds and spotted out there in the field a huge canine looking figure and it was digging in the fields

near one of the mounds oh no he thought it might be a wolf until it stood on its hind legs and was around six feet tall oh no i hate that a bunch of geos stood up on its hind legs and he was six feet tall that's gonna be in my next horrible dream nightmare dream. Like you just implanted that into my mind. He's going to stretch out like the neck of a like Brontosaurus or something. I hate it. So this wolf stands on his hind legs, this creature, and it runs off into the trees. The next night, Mark sees the creature again.

First of all, Mark, the next night you should have called in sick. I would have not come back. I don't know. I think at the school for exceptional children, one does not call in sick. I don't think that's acceptable. Yeah. I wonder if for exceptional children, you have to be an exceptional night guard. I'm saying.

Or an exceptional what? An exceptional night guard. That's what he was. Oh, he's a night guard. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I missed that. I thought this was like a student. That's what he was. Oh, he's a night guard. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I missed that. I thought this was like a student.

No, no, no. He was on watch at night. Oh, I thought this was just a student. Okay, I'm sorry. No, either way, as an adult who is old enough to be a night guard, if I saw that, I wouldn't come back. Oh, hell no. Hell no.

I've seen what I needed to see, as the TikTok kids say. I've seen what i needed to see as the tiktok kids say and so the next night he sees the this is the second night he sees the creature again digging in the same spot stands up and runs away he's so he did say when all on all fours it did look like a big dog um but on a tiny legs it looked like a muscular man with arm with arms instead of front legs and hands instead of paws but it still had the face of a dog and fur all over its body ew i hate that it has human hands that's so creepy i especially don't like that that's the only part morphing into a human like not even the face not even like the hair coming off of you it's like you either have paws or hands and that's the only thing separating you apparently. So gross.

The second night, not only was he able to describe this creature, but he also said that he heard it snarl at him as if it recognized that Mark was looking at it. Oh, no. The snarl was otherworldly and he could see that the creature had huge fangs in its mouth. And Mark could also smell, despite the distance away from him, he could smell rotten meat coming off of the creature. Oh no. Mark also said that the snarl sounded animal-like, but almost like garbled words. And he was nearly convinced it was talking to him. This is way

creepier than a lot of the uh whatchamacallit cryptid stories i don't know why i feel like because like the most we know about bigfoot is him walking like this right you know like that's sometimes like he throws little rocks yeah i feel like one of the reasons we love but i feel like most people are either like a big bigfoot fan or a big Mothman fan. Right. At the very least, like they have, as far as I know, have yet to harm anybody. They're just loved from a distance. Yeah.

This one seems especially menacing. And also, like, I think the fact that it's like trying to communicate, it just makes me feel icked out. I don't like that well i think it's because at least with bigfoot or mothman we can almost we can pretend more that uh it doesn't have like the emotional intelligence to communicate with us but this one feels like it's almost like when um this feels like the cryptid equivalent to when there is an intelligent haunting i was about to say when a ghost sees you yeah you know it sees yeah well to be right to be acknowledged by it is yes you're 100 right which is so weird because i crave acknowledgement everywhere else but like now that this thing's looking at me mark what's that what if that's what mark felt he's like well

i guess i did always want someone to pay attention to me he's like i just have recognition and if it's coming from him then that's fine by me i'll just plug my nose it's okay yeah and so uh after those two events though i hope mark didn't need any more recognition because he never saw the creature again oh too bad um but i guess he did have at least a loud enough mouth that the locals heard him talk about it for quite some time to a point where the beast became local legend oh and uh it would be years before another sighting but after this moment the and when i say years by the way it seems more like uh at least a century oh but the but the local legend of the beast did stay with the town. And people were like, oh, allegedly there's a monster here. Allegedly there's a monster.

But we now travel from 1836 all the way to your birth year of 1991. Hey. And we are in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, which is relatively rural. But I do want to say is only about an hour from Milwaukee or around two hours from Chicago. So not that rural. Right. It's like outside of town, but not like way in the sticks. I think like the perfect amount of rural because like you get your private space, but also if you want like a weekend in the city, it's not that hard.

You can go to Costco on the weekend if you need to. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. It's really the perfect blend. Pandering to Elkhorn currently. Yeah, I guess. I'm like you It's really the perfect blend. Pandering to Elkhorn currently. Yeah, I guess. For someone who lives in Los Angeles. I know. Well, no, it sounds like my dad's town where it's like very away from everything. But also if you need fun, you got fun. Yeah, it's accessible to the good stuff. Yeah. So in 1991, there was a local newspaper

in Elkhorn called The Week. And would you believe it? It was a local newspaper in elkhorn called the week and would you believe it it was a weekly newspaper i barely believe it but i'm convinced what do you mean it's not daily so uh there was a writer at the week called linda godfrey and i feel like linda godfrey has been on the case i could be totally mistaken but i feel like linda godfrey is a name i've heard for other cryptids let me look it up actually on the fly familiar but i don't know if i'm just now playing into what you're saying you know god freed crypt i kind of believe you for no good reason i it feels like a name i've heard before um it just says that uh an author of i know what i saw modern day encounters with monsters of new urban legend and ancient lore that sounds like more than the beast

of prey road to me yeah i feel like it sounds like she's done more i i did i did while i'm looking her up though it just says that she's a journalist that investigates present-day encounters with mysterious creatures of old oh but the beast of prey road does seem to be like one of the main things coming up so okay maybe she's just been like um asked to comment on other monsters right like this is her specialty i also for like the first half of these notes thought linda godfrey was the same as linda ellerby from nickelodeon um who would have been on the goddamn case i was gonna say also on the case so like you're not that far off linda ellerby i would trust her with my life if she came at me with a report like this okay so may she rest in peace um she's she did die i think didn't she i have no

idea passed away i'm pretty sure. I remember there was a bunch of Nickelodeon people posting about it. Oh, wait, I do remember that. Right. Didn't she? I feel like I do remember that. But now I might be doing the thing again where I'm saying, yeah, I totally agree with you. Oh, no.

Apparently she's not dead. Now there's a whole third person I'm thinking of. My mistake. My mistake. I just agreed with them for no good reason. This is the worst. I'm sorry. Why are we so bad at podcasting? Someone Nickelodeon.

I remember a bunch of Nickelodeon writers. Whatever. Who cares? Okay. I should know. Linda Ellerby, if you're listening, this is not your level of reporting, obviously. Sorry. And sorry we called you dead.

Oh, you know, I hope you're doing great. I hope you're doing super good. We can only hope. Sorry. And sorry we called you dead. Oh, you know, I hope you're doing great. I hope you're doing super great. We can only hope. Okay. So moving on quickly before I sweat through my shirt because Linda Ellerbee has, it may be her enemy number one now. So embarrassing. Okay. So Linda Godfrey, she was a writer for the week and she got a tip about a supposed werewolf sighting in the area and this was now like over a hundred years after um the beast of bray road has been seen wow so she gets a she gets a tip about the supposed werewolf sighting she got the tip from another writer who actually knew the witnesses but thought it was like a conflict of interest to report on it oh i love that it's very like mature you know yeah yeah and also now i bet that person is kicking themselves because linda godfrey

this really blew her up she blew up the spot for sure yeah yeah um i think the the other writer also was kind of afraid of some there being maybe some occult involvement with this werewolf sighting because this was during Satanic Panic. So I see. I see. So I think they were like, you take this, Linda Godfrey slash Linda Ellerby slash whoever in the Nickelodeon world is no longer with us. Somebody who might still be alive. So she ends up saying, OK, I'm going to do this. And the original tip that this freelance writer got was uh from high school students who allegedly saw

the monster near bray road so bray road is i guess this random three mile stretch that runs through the woods and the fields um i don't think there's anything particularly assuming about this road um just happens to be the one that the monster lives on and which i understand if you're if you're a cryptid you would want kind of your own peace and quiet. You don't want the hustle and bustle road. You don't want Main Street USA. You don't want Main Street USA, but you do want our way Costco accessibility. So I feel like this really is like he gets it.

He gets the priorities. In terms of location, location, location, he gets it. He gets it. Yeah. In terms of location, location, location, he gets it. He gets it. Yeah. So after Linda learned that there was this tip from some high schoolers, she found out that a bunch of high schoolers openly swore that they had been seeing a werewolf. And then even some adults were also chiming in being like, I've seen it, too.

Oh, man. An example of this is that Linda spoke to a school bus driver whose daughter claimed to see a wolf-like creature near the road a few years ago. And when the bus driver ended up telling one of the students on her bus, the bus driver, the student also claimed to have seen it, just like the bus driver's daughter. So they also claimed to hear howling at night and before people say, well those are just probably actual wolves um these days in wisconsin there are several thousand wolves thanks to a bunch of conservation efforts and things like that but in 1991 there was less than a hundred wolves oh wow so if you did hear howling i guess there was a hundred opportunities for that but nowhere near where you what you would get today um and after talking to even more witnesses linda learned that the local animal control actually

had a whole report like a whole file um of reports and uh alleged sightings and the file was called werewolf no i love the idea that in some office there was like an actual manila a folder that just said werewolf scribbled in handwriting i like to imagine like on um like a bring your kid to work day someone on on the force brought their kid in and was like don't show anyone at your school this yeah and then made him the coolest kid just like the coolest my dad showed me a werewolf file yeah exactly so cool so uh animal control also thought that like when questioned on it like do you really think this is a werewolf animal control said it's probably an unusually large coyote that was leaping in the air and that

must that had people mistaking it for its height sometimes i just i'm like isn't that weirder than an actual uh like why is like why is it leaping through the air like like yeah why is it leaping where it looks like it's on its hind legs and long enough for it to like stare you down and speak in tongues you know like isn't that weirder than an actual cryptid just showing up no i feel like they're both equally realistic to me so like I might as well just believe the other one. You might as well believe the magical one. Yeah. Yes. They just think it's a large coyote that's somehow being mistaken as standing up when it's just jumping.

Right. Okay. So Linda saw so many testimonies through this. And when she ended up publishing her article, she thought it was just going to be like a fun story that would blow over quickly. And instead it blew up and many more witnesses came forward um one person said that they saw it on bray road at like one in the 1 a.m and it had long pointed ears it was hunched over and it was holding roadkill in its hands and that its hands had very large claws. Ew. But did it have hands?

I guess it had hands. It had paws. Got it. You know what? I wasn't there. I don't know. But they said hands, right? They said hands and claws, which feels like an attribute of paws.

Yeah, great point. Maybe it was mid-morph, the hands. Oh, I see. But also holding roadkill. I feel like if it had human hands and it was holding roadkill, that would scare me almost more. Terrifying. Because then I'd be like, why is there a human hunched over holding roadkill? Just bad. All bad.

I almost want it to be a werewolf. Yeah. She also, this witness also said that the creature was 5'7 and around 150 pounds. I've never been able to look at someone and just gauge their weight i think that's such a such a talent um and it stared apparently with eyes that reflect in the car lights so you know how like deer like their eyes will glow when the your headlights are on them i think that's called taped them or something um but it's it's the the quality in your eyes that reflect back on a light right um which also i guess is just another indicator

that this thing is not human or at least wasn't in a human form yuck witnesses even said that they thought this creature might be demonic or satanic the woman who uh saw this thing holding roadkill said that she was not a believer in werewolves but she did believe that this thing could have been quote conjured up okay absolutely not another witness which this was conveniently uh coincidentally on halloween night uh felt her tire run something over when she was driving out on the road and so she got out to make sure that it wasn't an animal or something and when she got out of her car she saw a massive dog-like creature charging at her oh super and she said it had a huge hairy chest and it was much bigger than her so i don't know a grown woman you know much bigger than her yikes um

she said it ran for her car and she could feel it grab onto the back of her vehicle with its hand paws. Just creepy little fingers. Which like that feels very like almost like Hulk hands to me if you can grab a car. I can barely grab a car. Yeah, paw seems like it wouldn't be very successful at that. You've got to have the opposable thumbs. Exactly.

Get a good grip. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's either half human or half raccoon. So we don't know. But it could be either. Both are scary and i don't like it both are scary um anyway she ended up driving off before it could do any more damage but she did feel a grab onto her car which i can't imagine being a safe feeling um she saw it after she was driving off she saw it chasing her oh no on two legs and could hear its feet hitting the pavement while it was running after her car.

Ew. And she said no human could run like that. Ew. I simply hate it. She said it also had a huge, she said earlier, I said that she saw a huge hairy chest on it and she knew it was walking on two legs because she could see its chest the whole time. There's also a 13-year-old witness who said a few years ago she was playing outside with friends near a cornfield. And they all saw a wolf in the field staring at them, then stand up on two legs, still staring at them. So very similar to what Mark had seen.

stand up on two legs still staring at them so very similar to what mark had seen they tried to run away but it tried to chase them and to chase them on all fours doing impossibly large leaps and then because i guess i hope it at least saw like oh these kids like don't stand a chance with me so maybe it had some sort of empathy for a moment because then for seemingly no reason it halts u-turns and runs back into the woods oh so that's creepy that almost feels like it's like oh well i can't go further than this point or something like that oh yeah like it could be like a like a limitation thing i thought it was maybe more like it maybe it has its own kids out there and it like felt bad for like a baby i doubt that i don't know i i really i can't think of a reason but yours is a good one like maybe it can't get further than a certain

border yeah i don't know um so after the article came out with all these testimonies in it thank you linda godfrey uh it caused a media storm and keep in mind the article that was written it was not like on the front page of this paper it was also like a local free newspaper so it's not like they needed it for a business reason like this wasn't a money scheme um so there there was no reason for it to blow up the way it did but it did and now tv stations radio shows and newspapers across the country are coming to elkhorn for their own reports on the beast of bray Road. Linda's like, this is my story. Back off. It's like nobody else wanted this. Like, this is all me. Well, I guess it made Linda look pretty darn good. So these outlets, by the way,

were so hungry for information that they were able to track down all of the locals and witnesses that Linda had used fake names for in the paper. That's not very nice. That's not moral or ethical. It's not ethical for sure. I feel like I would, even if I wouldn't have thought, I don't know, I feel like if I'm going off of sources that clearly either asked to have fake names or the reporter thought for their safety needed fake names, I would just keep riding that vibe.

I'd be like, OK, obviously we think fake names are important because you're an ethical person. But yeah, I guess these people are not. So, I mean, whatever. Well, so much chaos ensued because like the media storm had hit Elkhorn, that people were starting to now accuse the paper and even locals of creating this elaborate hoax, I guess to like to boost tourism in the town or something. But they were just like, this has to be fake. This has to be a hoax.

And it was conjured up by other people. So meanwhile, there are some locals who are totally owning that. Oh, now we're a town with a cryptid. So they lean into this frenzy and they start selling like werewolf themed souvenirs and snacks and things like that. If you happen to live in Elkhorn, could you please let us know if there are still werewolf themed things? Because that's so fun. That certainly ups my chances of going to Elkhorn by like a significant portion. Like, yeah, I want to know.

I mean, hopefully you're invited back. I know you did say some, you did say some kind things earlier. So hopefully you're still on their good side, you know? I did say some kind things. If you are Linda Ellerbe, you do not agree with that. But yeah, I did. I'm so sorry.

I'm so embarrassed. Someone I looked up to as a child. I hope that their grandkid isn't. RIP. I really, I swear to God, I must've been a listicle of like people oh you know what it was i know there was a listicle um of nickelodeon it was people from nickelodeon that like through the mandala mandala effect you think are dead but aren't oh my god so

now you're just it's now just perpetuating this oh boy it. It was like Kel from Kenan and Kel. And like it was Linda Ellerbee was on the list. I'm so sorry. Why do we think Kel was? See, I didn't think any of these people were dead. You didn't hear the theory growing up that Kel died? No. Oh, that one I was convinced of. That one blew me away.

I know, but I know that it's like me being me, but I just I don't believe in the Mandela effect. You know, I just, that's fine. But no, I really, as like a kid, I just, I, I, I went to a school where everyone thought Kel died. Oh, that's so sad. No, I did not. It's so sad.

But anyway, he's alive and well. I'm glad he's alive. That's good news. But no, that was like, that was like a huge thing. I was like, oh my God, I can't believe like so young. We lost him so young. RIP, man. Anyway.

Okay. Linda Ellerbee and cal are doing just fine i hope they're in a room somewhere taking a shot of something super safe let's hope they're super safe um okay so uh yes l corn get back to me on uh if there is whether you're invited back werewolf themed snacks and if i'm not welcome back please send them my way yeah yeah yeah we'll accept that too so uh as the so now there's like locals who are owning this at the same time there are locals who think that this is all a hoax and now there's they're just like kind of in the spotlight so as the lore becomes more popular um more sightings both past and current are rolling in where people are coming

and saying i did see this thing or i just saw this thing of the stories one woman saw it and said that it had brown fur and that it was able to run on two legs across the road um and another a man said that they saw it running down the road but he said that it was alternating between running on four legs or two legs and when it was on four legs it looked like a bear because it was all hunched over another sighting said that it tried to break into her barn and killed her horses with its claws which this is now the first uh report of it being violent violent yeah that was the only report i i saw even with the roadkill like you oh if it was

roadkill then it was already dead right right uh also we said earlier that it felt more menacing than other cryptids so the fact that now we've got a report of it trying to do harm and also holding roadkill which implies it had done harm yeah scary stuff and most sightings actually put the beast now at six to seven feet tall with claws fangs and dark hair some people even said that the dark hair looked silver in the moonlight oh that sounds a little werewolfy to me i don't know why but it feels um it feels like uh like one of those like adult romance stories, like supernatural romance stories. I mean, it sounds like Twilight. Yeah, it sounds like Twilight.

He was a werewolf, but his hair shined in the moonlight. Well, to be fair, Edward literally glistened. You remember? Okay, see, that's where I'm picking it up. His skin literally was glittery. So with all these alleged sightings police were asked to comment and they still say it was either a large coyote or wolf hybrid sort of thing um and that's pretty much all they have about it although unfortunately like this got really serious at some point where

people thought they didn't know they didn't think that the beast was a real true cryptid but it was some sort of weird canine animal that people were just not able to define. And it led to animal control having to euthanize an unusually large and aggressive dog that they thought was the culprit. No, baby. So it's not just like a fun legend anymore. That's terrible. It's like leaking into real life. legend anymore like there was a terrible it's like leaking into real life and i guess he was just really aggressive and big and so they assumed this must be the thing charging at people and

breaking barns and makes me mad so that's the only story like that i i've i've seen but you know it does exist um and after the 90s the sightings started to dwindle. But the beast became a popular local lore and even draws encrypted hunters. And many think that the beast is related to Bigfoot. Some cryptozoologists actually classify it as an alternate Bigfoot. Really? Mm-hmm. And they say that if you see the beast, it's an alternate Bigfoot sighting. Oh, good.

Cool. This is because a lot of people in the cryptozoology world they believe in bigfoot but for some reason they don't believe in werewolves which i guess maybe the bigfoot is more believable that it's just like a large humanoid furry creature versus like a shapeshifter and i feel like with the werewolves that has like a very specific past that you can like point to the stories developing and yeah all that like the lore behind it yeah so i guess a lot of people in that and that worlds don't believe in werewolves but they believe in bigfoot and they believe enough in the beast of bray road that they needed

to categorize it so they kind of put it with bigfoot interesting okay um another theory about the beast which is less realistic i don't know how very realistic the last thing i said was but um a lot of people think that this could also be a hellhound uh going after wisconsin sinners which i would like to now what call a wisconsiner wisconsin wisconsin wait that did it mean sinners or did it mean wisconsiner wisconsiner wisconsin sinners because it's hellhound sinners oh i see going after sinners of wisconsin and sin happens to be in the name if they haven't made a minor league baseball team called the wisconsin sinners they really better get on it because that's pretty damn good. This is just like your thing earlier where I said something and then you got so excited.

Okay, so they don't have a baseball team called the Wisconsiners, but they absolutely should. They should. But there is a baseball team that was apparently, it's in Oakland. This is from forever ago. This is like far before we were ever born. But there was an old minor league team that used to be sponsored by a casket company. And so they're called the Oakland Caskets. No.

And Christine, when I tell you, I simply lost my mind. I'm sorry. That sounds like something we would invent. And then like our merch company would be like, i don't think anyone wants to buy that i'm so surprised at this point we haven't come up with our own um minor league like list like roster of weird fucking teams and they're all just cryptids i love that actually there is a team uh called the eugene emeralds oh no yeah the eugene emeralds but their logo is like bigfoot oh because of Oregon. I like that. But no, there absolutely should be. So the Oakland Caskets should come back and they should be on our end. That's why we drink roster. And so should the Wisconsin Sinners.

Wisconsin Sinners. I like it. Okay. So we've got our first two teams. Got it. Okay. I think the Shifters, obviously the Hurston Shifters. That's got to be one of them. We'll just make a roster and then we'll you know it's gonna be like more teams than ever existed it's gonna be like 400 teams because we cannot it'll be we'll have to we'll have to wrangle all of our tarot card makers and have them make a baseball card like list of all what a fun idea okay now you have another project folks i know you just finished this one okay step one the wisconsin sinners um then bring then call 1938 get the oakland casket company back in tow we can love it what about the oak the sorry the loveland frogmen oh my god like there's so many options here i am gonna try to

breathe through this because i'm fully i hope. The dopamine rush that just hit my brain was out of control. I officially will be hyper fixating on this later. I can't wait. It will be unnecessary. But in the middle of the night, I'm going to send you a list of like all the teams I've come up with. I'm going to need. We're going to have designs, drops. It's going to be great.

It's going to be so good. We're going to have merch. Oh, man. Oh, my God. OK, I really can't. I think that's our next project for and that's why we drink we just come up with a minor league baseball team okay but we i feel like we need to come up with a different word because minor league baseball is going to be like

this is no you can't sell merch that says it's minor league baseball minor we'll figure it out we'll shop we'll work on it okay um wow i'm thank you for giving me a task later okay you're so welcome it was not intentional but here we are anyway uh fun fact of the day uh the hellhound theory is that these things are in the field going after sinners of wisconsin aka our baseball team the wisconsin sinners but the hellhound theory is obviously not very realistic especially since the beast has never attacked anybody. Oh, right. It's attacked a horse.

So maybe that was like the biggest center of them all. Right. And also there's no evidence of it ever dragging anyone to help. So I don't totally know how much the hellhound theory tracks. Plus there's... It's a fun idea, though. It's a very... The hellhounds, that could be its own team.

I mean, oh, it's good. Okay, Satan will sponsor that one its own team i mean oh it's good okay satan will sponsor that one for sure okay great think of the merch for that i can't even think they would literally run onto the field in a ring of fire or something i'm okay okay okay okay calm the fuck down now okay plus there were reports that the beast uh even though he was seen with road kill and then it then became like implied that he was attacking like deer in the woods. Neither of those things are linked to hellhounds. Oh, sure.

But it is still sometimes considered demonic just based on the way that it stares at witnesses as if it had human intelligence. Plus Mark, back in the day, he swore it had garbled speech talking to him give me a goose cam it still feels paranormal in some way yeah and religious people in the area have even feared that it has been summoned uh and is now here to stay but it came here in some sort of occult ritual which again this was during satanic panic so very easy for that to become

part of the lore yeah blame the teenagers blame the teens especially since they're the ones who claimed the first sightings they were the tip remember oh yep but um others have held firm that it had to be an unusually large coyote or a rare wolf and sightings have since nearly completely faded out and uh that's that's all i got for you on the Beast of Bray Road. To be fair, that happened in the 1800s and 100 years later. Came back. So, you know, keep your eye out, folks. Maybe it's like Jeepers Creepers.

So in Jeepers Creepers, it's like every 28 years or something, it comes back. So maybe every 100 days, maybe we'll find out in 100 in 100 years or something that uh the beasabay road has returned yeah let us know folks if he's back the end i'll be in my oakland casket by that point oh wow so cool stupid so stupid oh boy m what a tale that wouldn't creep me out a bit i gotta say i don't know why but i feel like the dog ones scare me like the dog cryptids which i think makes sense i don't know i feel like there's something about dogs because to me i immediately assume a dog is so sweet and cuddly and now all of a sudden it's like oh the last thing you shouldn for my tail yeah i love your tail oh thank you tails not your like tailbone my humanoid tail that uh we never did get any um any clarity on whether or not the

beast of bray roan had a tail yeah great point we don't know wolves have tails maybe it had a butt curtain it could have had a butt curtain and that we don't know wolves have tails maybe it had a butt curtain it could have had a butt curtain and that would have uh honestly been dangerous because i think then we would have approached it and you would have heard it in the night swishing in the through the fields it would have gotten all those like leaves stuck in it like geos does oh my gosh all the little stickers so annoying um okay i have a cold case for you today speaking of tales so a mystery it is a mystery sort of not really but uh sort of you'll see um let's just say it's kind of a it's a hmm uh well i don't want to give it away it's a cold case it's a cold case. So this is the cold case of Athalia Poncel Lindsley.

Okay. She was born July 25th in 1917. So this starts a little earlier than most of my stories. 1917? Yes. Wow. Okay. and she was born as athalia fetter to charles and margarita fetter she was born into generational wealth and she spent her early childhood on the isle of pines which is a caribbean island in the west indies where roughly 2 000 u.s citizens made their homes at the time so the reason she was there is because her parents were active in politics and And when Cuba moved to claim the Isle of Pines, Athalia's mother traveled to D.C. to try to defend a U.S. claim to the island.

Yikes. The U.S. settlers on the island controlled nearly 95% of the land there. Gross. And had lobbied for years to annex the island into the United States but were unsuccessful. And so this was kind of her parents' mission at the time. To quote one author on the history of the Isle, in the early part of the century, U.S. nationals arrived on the Isle as colonizers.

By mid-century, they were humbled economically and politically. So they tried to make this theirs, basically, and failed pretty spectacularly. And so the Isle of Pines ended up going to Cuban sovereignty and ultimately became the Isle of Youth, which is what it is called now. Okay. And so after this kind of colossal failure at trying to annex this island for

themselves, Athalia's family became disillusioned with the island and they moved to Jacksonville, Florida, which classic America. So you know what? If you want to be American, go live in America. So that's what they did. They moved to Jacksonville, Florida. And for a couple of years, she and her sister, whose name was Geraldine, went to school in St. Augustine as well. But their main base, like their home base was Jacksonville. So they were kind of going in between Jacksonville and St. Augustine. At 18, at a youthful 18, Athalia married her first husband, but it was a short marriage. The relationship ended. And after

that, she moved to New York City with her sister, Geraldine. And there they lived together and began to climb the social ladder together. Athalia was considered a great beauty of her time. She kickstarted her career as a model, an actress, a Broadway chorus line dancer, and a socialite. So, you know. Wow. All the top hot spots. I know.

What a resume. Geez. Well, there's more because she also is a published author. She wrote a book about gardening oh that's a that okay good for her good for her and in one in one uh source it said that she had patented a household device and i was like that's not enough i gotta figure out what i gotta figure out what it is that's like when i heard about the history of celery i was like well i certainly have to stop there yeah exactly so i, I was like, well, I certainly have to know. Don't stop there. Yeah, exactly. So I, of course, was like reading this paper and I was like, where the F is the information about this household device?

So, of course, I went on just like the stupidest goose chase ever. I found the patent application online. Of course, it's been scanned in. I feel like you didn't have to tell me it was Scandon. I feel like even if it was like locked away in a vault on the other side of the country, you would have been like, anyway, I found it. Like, here it is. Don't tell anyone. So I found the patent application. It was from 1951. Basically what it was, was like a handle grip for steel wool to help you clean pots and pans. Oh, smart. Yeah yeah it is smart i mean picture

like those you know those toilet scrubbers where it's like a handle and you click it into the clorox thing yeah it's sort of like that but you click it into steel wool and you can clean your pots and then it said you press a button and like the steel you like eject the cleaning before her time brick or whatever yeah it was pretty impressive there were like all these drawings and stuff and um so you know kind of random because she was you know doing a lot of other stuff but you know why not um and meanwhile she was mingling with high society uh she kept company with the wealthy elite aka politicians and celebrities she even dated a kennedy you know the kennedys have been in on the steel wool handle for quite some time now. Yeah. What an HBO drama that would have made the story of Athalia and her, the Kennedys stealing her patent.

So she, it's so stupid. I said that out loud and I was like, I just got kicked out of the pitch meeting. It seemed cool for a minute and then I started to explain it. It just lost any sort of narrative cohesion. Okay. So anyway, she dated Kennedy was even rumored to be engaged to him. But unfortunately, he died in World War Two. And like her mother, who we remember wasn't exactly on the right side of history, so to speak, as far as trying to annex, you know, someone else's land for her own. She also got involved in politics. So she grew up to be a pretty politically active conservative.

She was very outgoing. She was the kind of woman who spoke her mind and her confidence, I imagine, especially for the time, rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. I imagine, especially for the time, rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. She was considered to be abrasive, much like her patented steel wool contraption, I imagine. Oh, nice wording there. Okay. The journalism degree is popping out right now. What are you, Linda Ellerby?

May she rest in peace. At least I'm ethical. I'm not going to go finding all those. Well, I probably will go finding all those secret sources but i'm not gonna publish them i just want to know for my own personal information um so her confidence uh rubbed a lot of people the wrong way she was considered to be abrasive overly confident even rude sometimes but again we have to look at that in the light of like you know this was the 50s and 60s right even earlier the loveliest person and yeah and i don't i will say i don't think she was the loveliest person but uh i think uh i think it probably got even more flack then than it would now to be outgoing and rude and whatever as a woman. Sure. I feel like we've all been triggered in some way to like, oh, well, she's a bitch.

It's like or she was just talking like anyone else. Or she's bossy and it's like, oh, OK. Sorry. I said something out loud. Exactly. Yeah. Like a woman who stood up for herself is all of a sudden evil. Yeah.

OK. So it could be that. I think I think she did make some enemies being, you know, politically active and that kind of thing. Sure. And you will definitely see she was, she had a lot of enemies. Okay.

Let's just, let's just leave it at that. Okay. Got it. So Athalia's friend, Nancy Powell, described her saying a lot of people disliked her she was obnoxious I didn't find her that way but other people did and I love the thought there that it's like other people found or no it's like she was obnoxious well no don't tell her I said that other people say that not me I didn't say that like that other people saw I don't think she's obnoxious wow everyone's

like so nervous but yeah so I guess she was considered obnoxious and kind of rude. And she enjoyed her time, which, by the way, is anybody's prerogative. Like if you're rude or abrasive, you know, it's not like illegal to be rude or abrasive. And it's not. I don't know. Yeah, you're totally right. Like, I just feel like it doesn't necessarily give us the most insight into who she actually was because you could be called rude and maybe you were just she could have just had resting bitch

face you know yeah something like that exactly she could have just been like having a great fucking time in her head but she just looked mean so yeah who knows yeah you never know she's having a great fucking time in her head yeah i mean for her sake i hope she was is that not like the plight of many introverts like oh yeah having a blast but everyone's like oh my god you're so intimidating it's like my high school boyfriend was like i never talked to you because i thought i thought you were just like mad all the time i was like what it's like but i'm having a party up here we're having a good time having an excellent time up in this noggin so anyway a, Athalia enjoyed her time as a New York social

aide, but she eventually moved back to Florida because her mother was a widow and was ailing health-wise. So she wanted to take care of her. And sometime during this kind of span of years, she married her second husband, who was a Florida realtor, and they also got divorced. And then in 1972, we're fast forwarding to 1972 athalia bought a mansion in saint augustine florida on 124 marine street and she moved in there with her mother and like i said her mother was kind of sickly and so she spent her time caring for her elderly mother and caring for a number of animals that she kept at the house as well. In early 1973, her mother passed away and she married a guy named James Jinks Linsley that fall. That's so weird. I literally yesterday read an obituary about someone who went by Jinks.

No way. Is that so weird? That is weird because i was just thinking like is that not the most like rich dude i just feel like it's such a rich white dude thing to have like or or rich white person thing to have like an a nickname that's like bunny or like jinx or like oh yeah well no it was jinx was like married to someone named Till. Yeah. It's always short for Tillman. I was like, bizarro names. Like, uh, I knew a pants,

pants, a pants. Yeah. And, oh, and pants was married to jock. Like they just all had these wild names. What is going on?

I don't know. I knew a meatball in college. That's what I do. I don't know about elite. Talk about elite names. Pants. That's the, that's just about the most like non-binary bullshit I've ever heard in my life.

Her name was Pants. She was something else. Cool. Yeah, I just feel like that's such a, at least maybe in my experience, such a cliche that, I don't know, country club people have stupid nicknames like jock or jinx or pants. jock or uh jinx or pants i like how you go to you go to uh wealthy people and i go to like oh like trans people who are changing their name but it's always like the most obscure oh yeah i mean in that case sure but in 1973 in wealthy elite florida i don't think that was the case but fair enough i'm glad that we're we're taking that taking that habit and changing it for the better. We're taking it back. I matched with someone on Bumble BFF the other day whose name was Shoe.

And I was like, oh my god. I feel like Shoe and Pants would have a great time together. No, because no. Not the Pants I know, anyway. Unless Shoe is also a capitalist or something. I'm not sure. Yeah, Pants definitely was not the kind who was going to be, you know. On our team.

No, certainly not. R.I.P., by the way. She did die. Oh, okay. Oops. So anyway, let's get back to this. Most chaotic episode we've ever done. Pants said something rude to me once, and I will never forget it.

Was it about your pants? No, it was about she didn't think i was cute enough to date to date somebody you know it's like she's not very nice so i've just i would have looked at her and been like your name is fucking i think i did and i think that's why we never got along um but like i wish she had a rival or an evil twin named blouse you know or something like shorts skort skort skort is really good i'm skort that's good um because that almost sounds like a name like court like skort i don't know that's pretty well everyone who was listening has been like you've said pants way too many fucking times i can't take this anymore so moving on you heard like the preppy nicknames like no i went to private

school but apparently not bunny and shit like that i've heard of bunny i've heard of bunny but i really am having a hard time the clothing where what's it short for oh that i don't know that one was a weird one like i don't think that that's um i don't think that that's a normal one but i do bunny i i feel like i don't know what a life you led i don't know clearly it's not very exciting but they do sound like country club people they have to be right like to have these just off off the wall names um did everyone like that tangent anyway back to jinx anyway like gg i don't know i'm just trying to think of like examples muffie yeah i feel like i knew a muffie a sissy i'm just now i'm just reading this fascinating oh what what did you google uh town and country

mag.com um i googled the preppiest nicknames. Oh, Muffy is certainly one. Chip was like words that are like not real names. No offense. I mean, Chip is a name, but, you know, ones where it's like, oh, Topper. I knew a Topper. It's like, what are you doing? Where the fuck are these names?

I'm telling you. OK. It doesn't matter. OK, so they're truly, truly confusing. So unnecessary conversation, but she did marry a guy named Jinx, which I just was like, of course she did.

And of course Jinx was a humongous asshole. So again, I'm probably biased towards people with these nicknames, but just so you know, she married this guy named Jinx and they were both realtors. He was also a realtor. So they kind of combined their romantic life and career lives. Unfortunately, Jinx, like I said, was a shitty person.

He had apparently physically abused his first wife, Lillian, who ultimately, this is just horrifically tragic, died when she broke her neck in a car crash on New Year's Eve. Holy shit. And Jinx was driving the car at the time. And so I don't know, you know, anything more than that. Well, I don't know. I mean, I don't know. Again, he was like a very abusive man. So I don't know what if there was alcohol.

I don't know. Was it New Year's Eve? I don't know the details. But we do know that he was physically abusive toward her. And then she unfortunately died in a horrible car, car wreck, uh, very tragic. Um, but Athalia considered Jinx, uh, a sort of a strategic ally. Uh, she was having a really hard time fitting into the social classes of St. Augustine. had money and grew up in Jacksonville. For some reason, she was still an outsider because she was not from St. Augustine. And people just were not having it with her. They were like, you're not really welcome here into our elite circles. Okay. So the in crowd of St. Augustine was mostly was pretty much all people born there, especially if their parents were also born there. So it was sort of like a legacy thing. People disapproved of her years having lived in New York City, and she was called

a Yankee to accuse her of her crime of living in the North, I guess. How dare she? I know, I know. And so she'd only been there for, you know, a few years and she grew up in the South. But still, it just was her time in New York. People were like, no. To give you a taste of old Fredericksburg, which is not a place I like to be. But we have a hot dog bar that has lasted a long time in Fredericksburg. And they are very proud of the old way of doing things, if you know what I mean. in Fredericksburg and they are very proud of the old way of doing things if you know what I mean and they have one bartender there who they've accepted into the family despite them having to nickname her Yankee Sue because she's from New York and I which by the way like

Florida and New York's one thing but like Virginia it's not that far is it I mean it's far but it's like also I've gone into that bar and like they have like i've heard them be like oh i remember back when the pool hall like didn't allow women and i'm like you say that like you miss it so i'm gonna backwards step out of this place please probably isn't the place for me yeah yeah anyway i feel for uh your your poor sweet yankee character in the story so yeah yeah she. She's struggling. She's really struggling. But when she married Jinx, she was happy because Jinx had been born and raised in St. Augustine. And his family owned prominent historical real estate. And so she saw her marriage to him as kind of a foot in the door to this new social life that she was trying to get

into. She really wanted to run for county and state political offices. And so she was like, really pushing to get into the in crowd, which I almost feel like makes you less likely to get into the in crowd. Do you know what I mean? Like, yeah, like you're like, you're trying too hard. She's trying really hard. And I feel like people who already don't like you are probably not going to like you more if you're trying to get into their circle especially if like they come from circles of privilege where like they probably never had to try hard and so I feel like their their way of putting in effort would look a lot different than her way of putting in well no she came from

massive amounts of wealth like she was didn't she come from not from the area? Oh, just from a different town. Yeah. But she like from Jacksonville. But she did come from, you know, wealthy white political folks. But I feel like if she's I guess so. Yeah. I guess if she's still already an outcast by not having grown up in a spot where everyone has like a legacy of being born and raised there. I feel like to even put yourself in an organization or to join

a group as like more than most people have had to do than like just being welcomed oh to just like people know you to be automatically in yeah that's that's a good so i feel like for them they're like oh you're trying so hard by just asking to join when like we're wanting to be part of our exactly right no that makes that does make a lot of sense. And so she thought like, oh, well, I'm going to marry Jinkson. Like he's my, you know, he's my foot in the door or whatever. And he actually had a house on Anastasia Island, which sounds fancy. And while they were married, he spent most of his time on Anastasia Island in his house and she spent most of her time in her mansion on Marine Street. his house and she spent most of her time in her mansion on marine street and there she had six at least it's six plus dogs uh the queen she me uh an injured bird that she was rehabilitating and other pets and to friends and family during this time she she seemed, quote, run down, exhausted and worryingly thin. She struck some neighbors as anxious, always worried. Some even speculated she may have been suffering from

undiagnosed cervical or uterine cancer based on just some of the reports that her sister later gave, which about her symptoms and the way she was feeling. And before her mother had passed, she was caring for her pretty much 24-7. And that meant she rarely left their house on Marine Street. And I'm just going to rewind a little bit to tell you just how ridiculously hard it was for her to try and fit in into this area. So she moved in in the 70s. But back in the 1950s, years before her arrival, there was this woman who comes back into the story in the worst way. So just keep her in mind. Her name is Frances Bemis. And she tried, which is the wildest thing

ever, to run a committee dedicated to making the neighborhood more neighborly. Okay. She basically was like, people here are not friendly. So I'm'm gonna start a committee to make people get along okay so far i'm on board with the sentiment yeah and she was actually a civil rights activist as well and she believed in the value of community so she just really wanted this place to be warmer friendlier more hospitable um and she said too many people go elsewhere after trying us out so she's like we're like rejecting people from being part of this awesome community was like her i feel like she's one of those people okay i don't know i just watched gilmore girls for the first time so i'm way

behind but you know how um uh what's his name taylor dosey is always like stars hollow is the best we have the best community and just like kind of trying to i feel like that was that was uh this woman she's like yeah everyone loves it here and i was like calm down you know okay francis okay francis yeah we get it and so she people were literally like chasing new residents away with their unfriendliness like that's how hard this was for people to fit in and so francis tried what a valiant effort because of course it was another colossal failure and uh she had to give up that was her origin story into her villain origin story yeah no she's not she's not a villain okay I wish she were a villain maybe it would have been a happier ending but unfortunately um she gave up the ghost on this endeavor she was like

you know what nobody else wants to be friendly except me so i guess i'll keep to myself and so then when athalia and her mother margarita moved in no one welcomed them because francis's plans had not worked out for this committee that she started so pretty much immediately everybody hated athalia so they didn't like her mother either they said her dogs barked too So they didn't like her mother either. They said her dogs barked too much. They didn't like her bird, which is like, ouch. Why would you not like her bird? Yeah, exactly.

It's like an injured bird. We'll leave it out of it, you know? What a particular twist of the knife of like, you suck. You're too friendly. Also, your bird is stupid. Also, I hate your bird. It's too low. It's like a low blow.

Yeah, it's too far. And so they didn't like the dogs. They didn't like the birds. In 1972, some neighbors even filed a public complaint about the noisy dogs, and she was fined $50 for disturbing the peace, which today is about $350. She apparently cut back a pecan tree on her property, and her neighbors freaked the F out. She planted a bamboo fence and her neighbors

had it removed by the city, which is like the most passive aggressive thing I've ever heard. I mean, they just like nothing she did was was good enough or was right, you know. And yes, it is possible that like her pets were barking nonstop and they were annoying, whatever. But the street where they lived, this Marine Street, it wasn't like it was some quiet docile street like this was already a very bustling loud neighborhood there was traffic there was a hospital nearby so there were sirens all the time it's not like it was a very peaceful place until she moved in they just didn't like her and they said your dogs are too loud basically at the end of the, her only like flaw was that she was an outsider, and they just did not fucking like her. So unfortunately, this didn't die down over time,

there was sort of this quiet resentment between her and her neighbors that just began to simmer under the surface and then pretty soon boil over into an outright feud. So, yeah, it gets out of control very quickly. So Athalia relented to her neighbors. She put several of her dogs into boarding. But of course, this was not enough for the neighbors because days before her mother's death in April of 1973, Athalia's neighbor, Rosemary McCormick, lobbied to have Athalia arrested. And like, keep in mind, she's caring for her mother 24-7, who's very sick and is days away from death.

And her neighbor's like, I'm going to get you arrested. Yeah, for what? For the dogs or for some bullshit. Oh, shut the fuck up. For the fence or, you know, it wasn't even anything like real. It was just like some bullshit. And so another neighbor around this time, Patty Stanford, who also comes back to play. Patty wrote a long letter to the local judge complaining about the failure and wrote, I feel like I'm in the middle of a nightmare. And it's like, calm down, Patty.

God. Get a hobby. So she was a Karen. Oh, yeah. They were all Karens. Yeah. Yeah. It just seems like a neighborhood of Karens.

Exactly. That's the best way to put it. And meanwhile, like I said, Athalia's mother passed away. And of course, nobody gave a shit. Nobody expressed any sympathies toward her. Nobody cared. Rosemary and Patty, the ones who wrote the letter to the judge and tried to get her arrested, took issue with literally everything about Athalia down to keeping her porch light on at night which they said shined obtrusively into their bedroom windows

close your damn curtains um like like what torture for this poor girl but also like what a nightmare person what a nightmare that this all is it's just like oh god it sounds like hell no wonder people moved out yeah like you can't even like the sun is in your eyes and that's someone else's problem you can't even you can't even like live peacefully by yourself because people are like trying to get you arrested for owning a bird with a broken wing okay i can I can't imagine. What a terrible, terrible town. Yeah, it is. It sounds like a nightmare. And so once her mother passed away, and this was no longer like her 24 7 responsibility, Athalia, who by the way, remember, was considered abrasive and rude, etc. in New York, decided it was time. What? Oh, I thought she was gonna get like arrested for

being abrasive. Oh, no, she was like, Okay, I've done caring for my mother. She's passed away. So I guess my new hobby is that I'm going to fight back against all my neighbors. Oh, I know. So basically, she the only reason that she was like not doing anything before was that she her mother was such a huge responsibility for her with all the dogs and the pets. And she was like, you know, overworked. And so once her mother passed away, she was like, okay, I've got some time on my hands. I'm going to fight back. I love it. I know. So the first thing she did was remember Patty, who wrote the letter to the judge. Okay. So Patty was Patty Stanford was married to a man named Alan Stanford. And the first thing that Athelia did was to start digging up dirt on Patty's husband, Alan Stanford. Oh, I hope she had Christine skills.

Unfortunately, she did. I sort of wish for her to say she didn't. But anyway, she alleged that Alan Stanford was using county funds and resources for his own personal projects. He either fired pretty much all of his employees or they quit. In fact, the turnover rate under his supervision was 155 percent turnover rate. That's how many people were either quitting or getting fired. Jesus. Some employees even organized to complain about working seven days a week without any overtime compensation.

And Athalia questioned his management of county roads, criticized the conditions of county projects he was responsible for. And it turns out she did some digging and found out that he was lacking the personal, I'm sorry, the professional certifications required for his job as county engineer. for his job as county engineer um so one of the requirements demanded that anyone in alan's role be a certified engineer but alan had failed his engineer certification but was given the job anyway so honestly fucking good for her like yeah you're gonna poke a bear long enough and now that she's like not like she was just sitting there in wait and wait had other things going on yeah and now that she's got free time how dare anyone try to have the nerve that karma is gonna kick your ass yeah like what do you think's gonna happen exactly you're trying to get this woman arrested like well game time's over like yeah it's over time oh you wanna you

wanna play exactly and so she fucking stepped up and she finds all this shit out and she finds out also that he made thousands more in his two years on the job than anyone else in the county. He had like these friends in high places who were defending his employment and his salary. But because she had unearthed all of this, there was an investigation into Allen's competence and spending. And there were a few people who were not against Athalia. For example, her husband, Jinx, he held local power on the city commission. He held local power on the city commission. And so some people did support her in this endeavor and said, OK, yeah, you're pointing out some pretty decent, you know, things here. We should we should do an investigation.

Nothing really came of the complaints, much like any time somebody in power has enough people to swing for them. You know, they get called out and he still maintained his job and salary um unfortunately alan could not let it go he fucking hated her like you thought patty and rosemary hated her well alan is now in first place because i was like prime suspect number one for the end of the story ding ding ding one day athalia was waving goodbye to friends visiting from Jacksonville when Alan pulled over in his car and said to Athalia, you're a vicious, evil woman. And one day I'm going to fix you. Oh, shit. That's so scary.

Is that not the scariest sentence? Fix you. I'm going to kill you is one thing. For some reason, saying I'm going to fix you is like so much. It implies a breaking. Like harm. Yeah. Like harm. saying i'm going to fix you is like it implies it implies a breaking like harm yeah if like like harm which like obviously killing also implies that like this is but this is like a i'm gonna make you hurt and you're gonna live to see through it yeah something like that it

just sounds so much more ominous than i'm gonna kill you you know it's like a it's like i'm gonna fix to me also has the same implication of like i'm you're going i'm going to correct you or i'm going to oh i hate it wow i hate it so much what i also feel like speaking to a woman it's like i'm gonna fix you and like put you in your place it sounds like i also think of like fixing an animal which is like yikes i don't know it just all sounds there's just so many bad connotations with that word it can't be good it can't no no definitely not and so athalia told her sister geraldine that she thought alan might actually try to kill her and i don't think this was a woman again who's like easily scared you know

she's been through a lot of hell with these people but she told geraldine like i don't know this guy it's rings true to me that he might actually kill me or haunt me he found a new way to say it that is sticking with me that somehow also through also to say fix and there's like more of a mystery because like with killing it's like there's only so many ways i can think of yeah yeah yeah like when you know the end result yeah yeah fixing is like what is your plan i'm so scared it's so dark so in a city chamber meeting where a Athalia made complaints about Alan's professional performance, the board chairman, of course, his name was Herbie Wiles. Am I like, hello? I told you.

Fully loaded. Herbie, fully loaded Wiles said, I want to remind you that I am aware that you are a neighbor of the Stanfords and that y'all have had neighbor problems. And he accused her of bringing her personal problems into a professional forum. Because because she's the abrasive one. Yeah, she's the problem here. He can threaten her, but she's the abrasive one. Exactly. Exactly. So she said, I sure am. That's true. My life has been threatened, too. I'll tell you. You mentioned personal things. He threatened my life. And Alan was outraged and said, I would never do that. I never said anything to this woman. So he denies all of it. And she goes on to accuse him of sabotaging her car by pouring sugar in the gas tank. What?

I know. And her husband, Jinx, thought that Alan agreed with her and said, I believe her and I think Alan did do this. But we don't know because Alan got away with it either way if he did do it. If not, I don't know. Maybe she was just having car trouble. We're not sure. But she was convinced he had messed with her car. Wouldn't surprise me. And he denied, denied, denied.

But Athalia kept at it. So Wednesday, January 23rd, 1974, two investigators from the Florida State Board representing the Department of Professional and Occupational Regulations showed up to Allen's office and they said, you know what, we're pretty sure you're violating more than one state statute. And in their interview with him, Allen seemed cool and collected, allegedly. He told them that Athalia was just trying to sabotage him over these silly neighborly disputes. And they assured him they were just investigating according to code. And don't worry, we're going to interview Athalia tomorrow and get her side of things.

And then we will kind of make our decision as to what happens next. What? Let's call that the tipping point. what let's call that the tipping point because that evening investigators drove past athalia's home on marine street just to uh confirm her residence because she they had this interview with her tomorrow so they drove past her house they reported the street was quiet and only hours later athalia would be brutally murdered at her marine street home so my god it was about 5 50 p.m one of athalia's neighbors was sitting on his porch when a man in a white volkswagen pulled over and said call an ambulance and the police department a woman has fallen out of a window there's blood all over the

place okay moments later patty stanford heard rosemary outside screaming athalia was lying in front of her house with one shoe missing her pearl necklace scattered everywhere wearing a blue dress and someone had nearly decapitated her holy shit yeah i was i'm glad i bit my tongue but when you said fell out of a window i was like no, no, that was not a fall. I feel like that girl got pushed and nearly decapitated is quite graphic. It is. It's horrible. Her head was barely attached at the neck and there was an unbelievable amount of blood. She had defensive wounds on her hands and arms. Clearly has been violently murdered.

Neighbors gathered in horror and shock. Several people called the police and an ambulance, which arrived in minutes from the nearby hospital. And, of course, this turned into a total circus. Sure. Dozens of people gathered to see what had happened. And many reported regretting looking because of the gruesome nature of it. I mean, I can't imagine, like, you can't unsee something, you know. No.

Once you look like you looked. Have you ever seen a dead body? I have. Yes. I feel like it stays with you. I just watched someone die in the airport. Was I telling you that? Oh, I was telling Eva that.

It was horrible. What? I don't know. I hadn't slept. I didn't sleep for like days. It was horrible. I think you saw someone actually. yeah did you watch it happen yeah it was horrible i like didn't know what to do i mean they were doing cpr and stuff and got the defibrillator out but it was like right in front of my gate and i was like just standing there like in shock

and i just i didn't know what to do i just like i just i don't know i couldn't like go anywhere because my plane was about to board um and i guess the defibrillator thing like talks like to tell you when to like do it was horrible and then they had to like take him out yeah it was one of those things sorry i couldn't sleep for like day this was a few weeks ago it was in the atlanta airport during like a layover and i couldn't sleep for days and i kept being like why can't i sleep and then every time i closed my eyes i would like see the fucking because i'd take his shirt off to like do the defibrillator and it was just horrible anyway um you're like why can't i sleep and you literally watched a man die hi i and then i kept being like blaze was like why can't you sleep i

was like every time i close my eyes i see that dude in the airport. And he's like, well, duh. Hello. I was like, oh. Oh, my God. Anyway. I mean, I did not know that. Didn't you see somebody die on the way to my house once? Yeah.

Horrible. Oof. Yeah. That's what I was referring to because that was the time I saw something. But I remember thinking like, Oh, they're dead. And like not knowing what to do. I remember like, what do you do? You know, it's like, I'm like, I just kept, I just felt like I was in the way. I was like, you know,

I felt like I was in the way I was like, okay, the police are, are here and I should probably move away. Horrible. Ooh. Yeah. I don't, I, you don't know what to do when, especially when it's, I mean, thank God. mean thank god i i you know it wasn't someone i personally have an attachment to so i was i was able to step away but like either it's someone you know and you're absolutely fucking traumatized or it's someone you don't know and you're like well as a human being what's my next sure i have no clue it's not like uh something that that goes lightly across your subconscious like i imagine i imagine this especially being so violent and barbaric is like must just be yeah especially i mean there were like families there you don't know if kids saw it i mean it's just horrible it's

horrible yeah um yeah so these people were gathering and like it got even worse than that because a newspaper reporter said people were walking through the yard and climbing over the hedges. Like people were just like invading the whole space. And also like also destroying the crime scene. And also destroying the crime scene precisely. And he even said, which I love that the newspaper reporter said this. He said the whole thing was a screwed up mess from beginning to end. They were destroying the crime scene. And yeah lo and behold of course uh of course they did so strangely a police officer ordered an ambulance attendant to start hosing away the

blood uh before they collected any evidence um oh wow come on that's such i don't even want to call that a rookie mistake that's just like pure idiocy pure idiocy and like yes it was a decade before the birth of dna evidence but police had not even mapped out a crime scene they hadn't even like checked where the window was taken foot like nothing nothing had happened yet and they were like hose it off and so there was that's like that's literally the john mulaney bit of blood. Mop it up. Mop it up. Mop it up. Exactly.

That's basically holds it down. Yeah. And there was gossip of like theories that police wanted to protect Jinx, like that their inclination was like, oh, gosh, of course, the husband's going to be accused right away. So we want to protect him. Also, if he's like that wealthy, maybe he owns the police. Right. And so that was the theory is like they were already acting to keep to keep him out of it or like protect him in some way um again this is all

just speculation um but it was pretty weird that they immediately cleaned up the crime scene um jinx was a popular and prominent community member uh it was not hard to believe that he would have an in with law enforcement and have some sort of connection there. And police did soon question Jinx. The couple had always had some issues and Athalia had said some unkind things about her husband. But again, he was an abusive man to his former wife. So I don't know. I don't know, you know, what what unkind means. But the other thing is that Jinx carried a machete in his trunk and he

was known to have this machete in his trunk uh it was soon determined that the murder weapon was a machete so of course my first reaction and like the the usual reaction would be like oh god that's very incriminating but he is a uh realtor in southern florida and apparently people just had machetes all the time to like i mean you say florida you say machete i go it's a monday you know man why are you always saying you always say that this is the first time it's actually applied to the situation i know now i get i finally get it i finally works i'm so glad you know i i was waiting for the day finally you had its moment, that saying, you know. You know, the Florida machetes, that would be on another team for us.

Okay. Okay. We're in. The Florida men. That Florida men. Oh, Florida men. Yeah, that's funny. That's funny.

That would be it. However, as a realtor in Florida, he often used a machete to cut back thick brush at the houses he was showing. used a machete to cut back thick brush at the houses he was showing. And in fact, when police started to question anybody who was known to own or carry a machete, it became challenging because so many people owned machetes that it just was like, okay, this isn't really narrowing it down. And Jinx, for what it's worth, surrendered his machete immediately. There was nothing on it to indicate that it had been used in a brutal murder. But he had been with Athalia only an hour earlier. He had errands to run and she had some chores to do. So they parted ways and planned to meet up later in the evening. Now, he had several alibi or like several people back up his alibi because several locals

testified they saw him running errands during the hour before she was killed. And even pharmacy employees confirmed he was in their shop at that time some people even spoke to him while he was picking up milk and some of his neighbors talked to him when he was getting out of the car so he was pretty much immediately ruled out however i think we both know who's uh actually suspect number one uh-huh yeah what were you gonna say well i well before i was gonna say that i feel like even if he was seen out doing things, that doesn't mean he couldn't have paid someone to do it. Oh, that's a great point.

Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, that was just like a sidebar of like, I guess that's not that. I feel like if we're talking in a world of like rich people, I feel like you having an alibi doesn't really do much doesn't mean yeah no and you're gonna you're gonna definitely see that theory carried out here soon with alan um but yeah that's a good point i wonder though if like it would have been such a brutal like i don't know maybe it would have been i'm just trying to think of like if a hitman had

tried to kill her i don't know if it would have been such a spectacle yeah i feel like it would have known how to would have at least also gotten rid of the body maybe or maybe they wanted it to look like oh she fell and therefore there are no there's no need for a suspect but her head fell off i know i feel like that was i feel like it was one of those things where like i feel like it had to directly be the person who didn't who acted on impulse and like didn't actually have a full strategy it seemed yes it seemed like such a brutal and like personal personal thing like somebody just went at her and she had like the defensive wounds i mean yeah so he was ruled out for better for worse um but you know of course now everyone's looking at alan because first off a

young man named lock who was another one of athalia's neighbors was the most important witness in the case and he had seen a man raising and lowering his arm against athalia as if beating her so he ran inside and told his own mother that it was alan stanford and alan stanford was beating up athalia this was like right before the murder. And he said, Alan Stanford is outside attacking Athalia, killing her. And he told a newspaper the same thing.

So pretty immediately people are like, okay, well, Alan definitely has a fucking motive here. Uh, he's been like after her for, he even told her he was going to fix her, you know?

And so people questioned alan's family especially his wife patty and of course her stories like did not line up she said that at the time of athalia's murder alan had come home changed clothes had two gin and tonics while standing at the kitchen sink looking out the window toward athalia's house and he saw athalia peacefully watering her garden but that didn't add up because she was at Jinx's house during that time. And so she couldn't have been in her garden. And at that same time, more importantly, remember when I said those state investigators who had the interview with her

drove by her house to confirm the address? Yeah. And they were like, she was not outside in her garden. Like we went to the house to mark the location and the address and she was not in the garden so he's making that up so that part was not true no one was outside and she had been confirmed to have been at jinx's house on anastasia island alan also said well i was driving home from work at 505 but the state board investigators said their meeting went until 5 15 so he couldn't have been

driving before that okay he also said after his drinks he left back to his office to do some evening work i love that like have a couple several gin and tonics and then go back to work that's like to like realtor shit like yeah like solid paperwork and contracts no alan's the county engineer he does even that's even more more important, like more crucial to the infrastructure of the city and people's safety. And he failed his engineering degree. I feel like now when we look back on architecture from back then and it seems unstable, I'm like, now I know you were probably just. It was your evening night work. Yes, this was your evening project in the study, like drinking your G&Ts.

I totally agree. It's like it makes me hesitant to go on a bridge you know what i mean yeah exactly many things do but that's certainly on the list i was gonna say it's been added to the list i haven't quite placed it with like top 10 reasons but i think it's on there somewhere yeah so he went back to do some evening work he said um And he said he didn't return until after the crime had happened. And in three interviews, Patty changed her story four different times. Once she said she was just serving dinner when her family heard the screams. Then she said they had just finished eating dinner. And then when she was questioned again, she said they were all standing in the hallway after dinner when they heard the screams.

And then in that same third interview, she said she was at her kitchen sink doing dishes when she heard the screaming. And they were like, you're really just changing this every time you tell it. Yeah. Like, girl, you're not even trying to hide this. You're not even coming up with like a good story, you know. Investigators found the Stanford family's behavior strange in general, like all of them. As far as anyone knew, there was a murderer with a machete decapitating people in their neighborhood right and uh in their very safe neighborhood in their very rich safe exactly

rich safe peaceful neighborhood yet alan's daughter patricia took her baby sister annette outside to play while everybody was processing the crime scene across the street so they were just like la la la you know, the Stanford house, nobody locked the doors that night or seemed particularly concerned about a, you know, machete wielding maniac attacking neighbors. Ding, ding, ding. Red flag. Come on. Yeah. And so that night, Patricia wasn't even the daughter wasn't even scared of a murder. She was only anxious that her dad might be a suspect. And so he came into a room to comfort her and said don't worry i had nothing to do with it go to sleep darling yikes night night kiss kiss

yeah kiss i'll have the i'll have the nanny give you a kiss for me gross so alan took a polygraph test this is so weird but not for law enforcement in fact law enforcement asked him to take a polygraph test and he said no so instead he got a test taken by a private investigator who actually worked uh testing doing lie detector tests for zales jewelers sorry this is such a convoluted sentence so sometimes jewelers like that i don't know if they still do it but they had people give like lie detectors to be like are you going to steal the product are you trustworthy huh okay so there was this guy whose job was like to give lie detect to administer lie detector tests to potential employees who were going to work at zales jewelers so this is the guy that uh he took a polygraph

test from and so investigators heard this and were like, well, we're going to just keep calling them and ask for the results. And when they finally got them, the company said the test administrator was absolutely not authorized to perform polygraph tests outside of company hiring procedures. So it wasn't like even that admissible, you know, test result result so in the following weeks this kind of goes back to your theory because people came forward to give alan alibis um they claimed they'd seen his car parked at the office at the time of the murder but weirdly enough what a coincidence every witness either worked for alan or owed him a favor right and also the i'm imagining

a place that the polygraph examiner that happened to work at a jewelry store. Maybe this guy had already bought a lot of products from this jeweler or something. Yeah, who knows? Like why on earth would he pick this guy? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. So bizarre. And so every witness just happened to like either work for him or owed him something. And one witness was not only Alan's employee but actually living on property that Alan, like rent free that Alan had given him.

So like strings attached, folks, strings attached to everything, especially if you're living on Alan's property, it sounds like. He's like, just a small favor since I let you live here for free. Go lie to the police. BFD, yeah. BFD. Okay. So it came out that Alan even specifically approached these people to ask them to be

his alibis. Like, not only did they go do it, like, they admitted, like, yeah, he told me to say it. This is not a good look. How is this a cold case? I know. That's why when he said it's a mystery, I was like, unfortunately, like, it's not. It just, like, is infuriating, you know? Yeah, this just sounds like a big lesson for Eat the Rich.

Yeah, no, for real. Like, it just ends up being, like, the most eye-rolly, like, of course, you know. Alan had also, so weird, borrowed a large machete from work a month ago, a month earlier. That's crazy and so unexpected. So quirky that he did that. And, like, again, wouldn't be super weird. Like, maybe he needed it for foliage. But the problem is that he never returned the machete. And when they asked for it, he said, uh, I don't know where it is.

And they were like, well, that's not a good look either friend. Yeah. So investigators obtained a warrant to Alan's home. They found a bloody napkin in the garage, two concrete blocks, like the kind that they had used for fencing in their yard with blood on them uh they impounded alan's car which he owned through his county job and they found blood stains on the seats and the steering wheel there was a trail of blood leading from the murder scene to alan's yard shut the fuck up like hello there i mean there's just i i can't think of a more obvious suspect it makes me want to scream

like it makes me want to scream it's so stupid and to think by the way let's just talk about like the crooked corrupt system of today where like so much less evidence is needed to put someone away yes this is like a literal blood trail like it's embarrassingly easy to track yeah and and they didn't even need dna evidence to track it you know and nowadays it's like oh we have like one tenth of a hair follicle like we can catch the guy you know and so it's just so infuriating i know that's not true whatever i just said so please don't yell at me folks i know that you don't but even also i mean just to like you know poc like like they like i mean there have been people who have been sleeping in bed

or holding skittles and like that was enough to be like oh this person's guilty wearing something on their head god forbid you know it's like oh well we have absolutely no evidence but this person was warranted in my mind to die but also this person has a literal blood trail and is a true actual murderer but you know what we just can't figure it out. Can't crack the case. It's just really rough to listen to. And, you know, I will say in the end, this does go through the quote unquote proper channels of court and everything. And this guy still fucking gets away.

So it's not even like, oh, the police like let him go. It's like, well, you'll see. But it's like the it's it's that same thing of like the big, the bigger systems are the problems, you know? And I don't want to get into a big rant, but it's like, if you're looking just like anecdotally, sure, you know, maybe it wasn't necessarily like, oh, this person's fault or that person's fault. But like the whole fucking system is screwed up here.

Like why else would this guy be another eye rollingrolling situation of of course he's walking free oh anyway okay so um let's see he says he can't find the machete and there's a blood trail to his yard and then remember herbie oh fully loaded of course i remember him i'm sorry to you he's fully loaded yeah Of course I remember him. I'm sorry. To you, he's fully loaded. Yeah. HFL, yeah. Yeah, HFL, the commissioner, he started to get scared because he's friends with this guy and he's like, oh, shit. Like he might have genuinely had something to do with it. Yeah, well, ding, ding, ding. Yeah, might, maybe. So he insisted for, you know, to his benefit, he insisted the car be thoroughly searched for this missing machete.

And Alan started saying all of a sudden he changed his story. And he said, no, I did return it. And the county crew chief, whose name was Freddie Hudnall, said, excuse me. This is not verbatim. Excuse me, but I keep an extremely meticulous inventory of county property. And that machete has not been returned, according to my records. Basically, this poor Freddie guy is so insulted because he worked so hard to keep all these meticulous records. And then this guy's like, no, I definitely returned it.

And he's like, how dare you? I know you didn't return that fucking machete. I also know I like how you had to let me know that verbatim. He didn't say, girl, please. Girl, step aside. Sit down. Because nice try putting me into your bullshit mix. Because it's like he had his moment finally.

He's like, I knew I kept meticulous records for a reason. Everyone made fun of me. I mean, anyone who's organized is just waiting for the day to be able to tell everyone that they're organized. Honestly, every time someone tells me they're organized, I just am like, I'm so in awe of you. I'm impressed. I'm in awe. You brag about that all you want. You deserve it you do deserve it i wish i were organized so you and freddie both you're heroes in my eyes um so apparently alan was like freddie freddie

freddie he approached freddie twice and said freddie it's quote unquote hurting me that you're insisting the machete never came back you're hurting me freddie and gross like gross and smarmy and gaslighty and like manipulative um and freddie of course is like this guy's coming up to me being like hey say the machete's here freddie's like he's talking to a type a person like i don't know what the fuck my collection looks like. He's talking to a meticulously organized Freddie. Exactly. And so Alan's daughter, Patricia, remembered seeing the machete and she described it in detail because she just is trying to, you know, be upfront. And she said she overheard her dad telling her mom that he had found it somewhere and planned to give it to his work crews to kill snakes. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Found it somewhere, like from Freddy's arsenal. Yeah, from Freddy's very meticulously organized arsenal. So Alan ended up doing an interview with a local newspaper shortly after the killing because he wanted to clear his name. He told the interviewer that it was not fair that he was a suspect. That's a quote. Oh, okay.

Wow, I feel so bad for you. Yeah. Playing the smallest violin ever here. Yeah. Yeah. He also requested that the newspaper please dispel suspicions about him. And if they did that, it would be a real public service. Like who? The smarmiest mofo I've ever heard. But also like it's like the entire system is enabling him because he gets away with it yes he does you know you're totally right and so not once in the interview did he but i love that we know that he told the reporter like please just dispel my please just it's hurting my rumors yeah and they're like then he told us to please dispel the rumors about him like it just backfired

right so he this is cringe not once in the interview did he acknowledge that his neighbor had been murdered or like that you know any of this had happened it just was about how frustrated he was that he was a suspect so clearing his name wasn't very successful um still the blood and motives aside uh police were like we need this fucking murder weapon so in mid february they offered a reward hmm wouldn't you know it the next day a local man showed up with the machete okay it's wild so there is a story as to how this happened but it was weirdly convenient they were like huh okay we just posted this but uh now you just show up the next day that there's a reward. So people also took issue with him because he had been arrested for public intoxication a few times. And people were like, I don't know if he's like legit.

But investigators pointed out that this man, whose name was Dewey Lee, had spent much of his time in junkyards looking for items with resale value. And he was a mechanic. So he would basically be out in the junkyard searching for auto parts so it wasn't like out of the question that he would be searching a junkyard and find this machete and be like oh boy um but again the timing was suspicious but turns out this guy dewey didn't just happen on the weapon by sheer dumb luck because he actually had a friend in the police department who said hey while you're out in the junkyards looking for auto parts can you keep an eye out for anything suspicious so he went looking for it so he spent two weeks searching for this machete it wasn't

like oh he just stumbled upon it it was like he was searching for it and he said he found the machete in a marsh a few miles from marine street on the banks at low tide along with the machete was a towel rolled up and wrapped in a belt uh i don't envy the person who had to unroll this towel sure me either me either they unrolled the blood-stained towel and inside they found pants not the person to be clear sorry i feel like i should clarify that i find shoe i have? I have to DM them later. Oh, no. Yeah. To be clear, not the person, thankfully. They found pants, a white shirt, a tie, a wristwatch, a baby's diaper, and a black belt.

What? A baby's diaper? I know. That's a real red herring. That's bizarre, right? Yeah. And so all of these items were soaked with blood, and there were blonde hairs in the bundle as well. Now, the watch, of course, had a serial number on it.

Oh, God, okay. And the jeweler who once repaired the watch said, Oh, yeah, that's Alan's. Is it the same guy that worked at Zales? Oh, my God, you might be right. That would be so weird. What's even worse for Alan is that a local clothes store and tailor and a separate dry cleaning service identified the pants and shirt as Allen's with sales receipts.

Like these belong to him for sure. So finally, police are like, yes, we're able to arrest this mofo. And on February 2nd, nearly a month after Athalia's slaying, they arrested him. Of course, there is immediate public outcry. People remember young women just sobbing that he's been arrested. Oh, not about Athalia's murder, but like that he's been arrested and taken in people spoke out in alan's defense um not only did most people think he was innocent um some people confided that even if he wasn't athalia got what she deserved yikes because she was abrasive. Yeah. Okay. Because everyone fucking hated her,

which she had a dog because she had a bird. She had six plus dogs and a bird. Yeah, horrible. So Alan was released on $20,000 bail, which somebody else paid. Of course, Alan was granted a leave of absence from his job. How thoughtful. And the Trinity Episcopal Church raised money to support Alan's family for the year. Some of the congregation protested against this. Jinx, her husband, accused the church of thinking it more proper to pray for the wolf than the slaughtered lamb, which, yeah, it sounds like that's exactly what's happening. out to a lawyer friend who was of course from a prestigious family and that friend recommended a criminal lawyer named walter arnold jr who was known to only take cases he found interesting okay okay that sounds what a privilege what a privilege indeed what a privilege and uh he was also known for winning almost every single case he tried well sure he the ones that he thought

were interesting were the ones he thought he could win. Yeah, that's a great point. And it was probably like if you're hand selecting them, then yeah, sure. Yeah. Alan's father-in-law paid the lawyer's expensive fee and they started working together. So the prosecution tried to move the trial to another county because they knew Alan was so well-loved in this county and was an employee. But of course, they denied the motion. And so on top of that, Allen's lawyer successfully filed to suppress the evidence they found in Allen's home. So the bloody napkin, the concrete blocks with blood on them, all of that was out, could not be brought up in court. Oh, what? Okay. The lawyer also claimed that the warrant to search Allen's house didn't describe the room by room

search they were conducting, and, it was an unlawful violation of the Fourth Amendment, blah, blah, blah. He won the motion. So they threw out all that evidence. And incredibly, Locke, the young man who first went to the reporter and his mom and said, I just saw Alan killing Athalia, took the stand and recanted his statement. Of course. I wonder why. And he said, actually actually he wasn't sure who had been seen attacking athalia but it wasn't alan i couldn't see them but i do know that i saw their face enough to know it wasn't i know it wasn't alan yeah yeah so alan's lawyer brought up the tragic

death of jinx's first wife to try and like cast jinx in a bad light and say like maybe he did it um he brought up dewey's drunkenness and lack of education the guy who found the machete he even suggested perhaps Dewey had killed Athalia himself or why else would he have the machete and people were like that doesn't make any fucking sense okay um the defense worked hard to smear Athalia's name they called her erratic vindive. They painted Alan as a calm, reasonable person. And ultimately, Alan's lawyer, having successfully thrown out the in-house evidence, argued that investigators paid Dewey to plant the machete in the clothes in the marsh. And Alan was framed by police all along. That was his new argument.

Okay. That was his new argument. Okay. So they presented him as a sympathetic man who was living everyone's worst nightmare, being accused of murder, losing his income, you know, losing his reputation. And the jury fucking ate it up and acquitted him, said he was not guilty. The whole thing is just a nightmare. I don't have anything to say about it. I just like, just so frustrating.

It gets worse. so frustrating it gets worse how does it get how you say let me tell you okay athalia the murder of athalia happened okay this trial happens he's acquitted remember francis francis bemis the one who just wanted a friend she She just wanted everyone to be friends, you know? So she tried to create a friendlier atmosphere on Marine Street. So she, she was certain Alan was guilty. Sure. And one of her neighbors said. She's the only one with emotional intelligence, by the way.

Yeah, with the fucking head on her shoulders. So one of her neighbors said one night Francis had stopped by for just like a chit chat on one of her walks through the neighborhood and she told this neighbor I know someone who can incriminate Alan in Athalia's killing and she's like I know someone who who can like incriminate him and I'm trying I'm trying to get this this neighbor to go to the police and she's like he knows something I'm trying to get him to go to the police so what happened is november 4th 1974 the the neighbor that she was referring to had heard a car door slam after dark and claimed to see alan stanford hastily heading down the street in a dark suit and this was the night of the murder um so it was very weird because the neighbor had actually donated to the church's fundraiser supporting Alan. So it's not

like this neighbor was like had a vendetta against Alan. It was just I saw Alan running down the street in a suit looking frenzied and I heard a car door slam. And so Frances is like, yeah, I'm trying to get this neighbor to go to the police and like tell them what they know. So fast forward, Frances is telling her neighbor neighbor about this and like oh i have somebody who has some intel well later that day around 7 p.m uh a woman nearby heard someone screaming near her house so she called the police they drove through the area saw nothing didn't even check in with the person who called and left the next morning a woman walking her dog south of Marine Street found the body of Frances Bemis, who had been murdered in an empty lot. No.

I know. And Frances, who was 76 years old. And was just trying for everyone to get along. She had not been robbed. She had not been raped. But she had been beaten mercilessly and had died of blunt force trauma to the head. Nearly all of her bones were broken and she had been partially strangled. There were rumors that Alan was the murderer, but there was no evidence. And it was so violent that investigators figured it was personal, but they kept hitting dead ends And There really was never an answer to that

So the Stanford family moved away Good riddance I say And Patty Stanford Eventually died of cancer and strangely Enough she left her inherited family Fortune only to her daughters None to her husband Alan And he ended up fighting the will

And taking his daughter's money And he even spent their college funds so they had to sue their own father to recover what was left of their late mother's finances like just a disaster of a situation um alan himself died of cancer in 2006 and in the end nobody was ever charged with the brutal killing of francis or athalia and uh the case you know in saint augustine is still kind of uh whispered about talked about um the the it was just such a shocking incident and the fact that this was such like a wealthy and elite and um you know peaceful neighborhood uh just made it that much more shocking. And so

in online forums, you can find locals, even people who like knew the families themselves, arguing about who they believe did it, who might have done it. And so people are still, you know, debating that to this day. But either way, the cases remain unsolved. And quite frankly, it doesn't seem very promising that they will get solved anytime soon. Wow. The end. I feel like that's not really, yay. I feel like that's not really that cold of a case.

That's a warm, lukewarm case. So frustrating because it's like it shouldn't be a cold case. It shouldn't at all. I mean, that just goes to show you if you've got a good lawyer, I guess you can just get out of about anything. Money, money, money. Yeah, very tragic and just like so horrifically violent and brutal. And I mean, in cold blood like that, it's just disturbing. So, wow.

What a bummer. Well, at least I can go to bed not wondering who did it yeah there you go at least you have an answer for once it's like not totally you know it's unsolved but like at least we have some answers it's solved it's pretty solved well unfortunately it's not because otherwise i would mark it so but yes it's solved in our hearts yeah yeah boy wow very uh very frustrating case so you know sometimes the old ones are still just as like rough angering yeah and angering even if there's time between now and when they happen so boy well thanks um it was a good story it was definitely a lot of um we definitely found a way to insert a lot of tangents in there which i feel like we never really get to do in your stories you know

what that's true we did have a lot of a lot of things to say about people's nicknames and so on and so forth i'm i'm usually in constant fear of yeah i still find a way to over interrupt despite my efforts but i i am always really nervous during your stories because I don't want to insult victims or anything like that. Or make a call before we know. Yeah. Yeah. But there were definitely branches to play off of today, I guess. Yes.

We at least got to joke about people's hilarious nicknames. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know what to say i thank you for the story christine thank you for the knowledge i did it for you you're welcome knowledge is power yes thank you for doing it for me power and also i can't wait to do an after chat where we talk about something less dire do you have a topic in mind nope okay me either let's see where our chaos takes us uh if you are part of patreon then uh you can head on over to our after chat after this episode and i don't know watch us bumble even longer through things just fumble and bumble

around and that's why we drink