And That's Why We Drink - E305 An Onion of a Drink and a Real Life Fish Flop

Episode Date: December 11, 2022

Welcome to episode 305, where we're reading the fucking room! This week Em brings us a story we covered on Sinisterhood, the Greenbrier Ghost, the tale of a spirit who helped solve her own murder. Then Christine covers the chilling case of the stalking of Laura Black. If you take away anything from this episode, please let it be that "No" is a full sentence... and that's why we drink!If you or anyone you know is experiencing stalking or would like to learn more, please visit the Stalking Resource Center at victimsofcrime.org

hey boo hi christine two days in a row aren't you lucky i am i woke up in a really good mood because i was going to talk to you yeah you texted me us like 20 minutes before recording and i was like why are you awake you're usually asleep that was me waking up for sure I was I know but you're usually asleep till about five minutes before recording so I was in this time it was 20 it was I was genuinely like why is em awake because when Eva said who wants to start the zoom I was like I'll do it I was probably asleep and then you responded and I thought so someone's chipper and upright and early I don't know that's probably I don't know why i'm chipper that's an outlier but i do think let's not question it too much yeah but i know i've been having this

thing where the last few days now i've been having really vivid dreams and then doing that thing where i wake up because i think i missed something and i panic oh no and then i realize i have exactly 40 minutes left before i have to wake up. So that happened again today. And I just happened to have my panic thing before I almost actually slept through this. So I just like, I should just stay awake. Um, anyway, that's why I appeared stoked to be awake. I mean, listen, I'm going to pretend like it's the real deal and you're just thrilled to see me. I am. I'm not kidding. I woke up and I was like, I'm gonna pretend like it's the real deal and you're just thrilled to see me i am i'm not kidding i woke up and i was like i'm gonna i am definitely chipper because i was like i'm gonna talk to christine today i'm very excited about it why do you drink this week

em boy why do i drink this week um i'm stressed i'm very stressed about uh just a lot of obviously the holiday stuff coming up of just like having to travel to multiple places and this year we're adding allison's family to the mix which is the first time i'm going home to allison's family for the holidays um they do a thing which i so appreciate called fake miss where it's so the whole family can get together before they have to go to the in-laws and so it's it does not actually get in the way of my Christmas plans which I love because I really fake miss what do you like fake Christmas but like what do you mean like what does that mean so they have Christmas before Christmas so that way all the oh on a different day yeah yeah oh got you okay and um works out very well for me because I struggle a lot with routine changes, especially in things like holidays, where I at least have a fixed idea of what's going on.

Especially from a chaotic family, I really like to know exactly what the fuck's going on. It's so funny because I've developed the opposite way, where I'm just like, fucking throw me to the wolves, baby. This is how I thrive. I think I've made such a lovely life for myself out here that then all of a sudden when i go back to like my into it my childhood uh like my my mom's house is fine seeing my friends is fine like i see my dad which is fine it's just it's all of a sudden i feel like i'm at the mercy of other people's schedules or like i have to use their car it becomes a whole thing and so you'd think i would want to run away in the opposite direction and go

be with allison's family but there is something weirdly alluring about going back home yeah there's yeah i get that and to be fair i have a house here so i get to hide that's true like that's different but you have a baby so everyone follows you home that's true that's actually so much scarier that's like your baby is the invitation to vampires sometimes you know but to be fair they come over to be with her and i get to go sleep and so that is it is kind of a great like sometimes we'll all hang out and the baby will just be in the middle of the room and i'll go like what did we talk about before this baby like what did we do because now it's like oh we just look at the baby or like talk about the baby like what else did we even do before now allison's brother this is i think gonna be their first christmas it is with their baby and the baby is

like i was okay as an only child i always grew up thinking when i have a kid at least it has no competition about being the cutest baby in the next generation out on allison's side my baby's gonna be so gross looking compared to this baby. It's a cute baby. It's the cutest little Gerber baby I've ever seen in my entire life. So I'm at a disadvantage immediately on her side. On my side, going to be the cutest baby. Also the ugliest. Honestly, good for you.

I like that you set the parameters now of like, well, there's only one baby. So it'll be cute and ugly at the same time. I like to know what's coming. You just have your... I appreciate that about you i do what uh why other than my holiday stress i'm just stressed about like i feel like i don't have enough time before the holidays to get everything done but i feel like that happens every year why do you drink you know i don't know i'm not even particularly stressed about the holidays um you know you don't have to go you don't have to leave home

i don't know i did leave for thanksgiving um so we got that out of the way i am going actually to florida for new year's though why because my dad has a house down there and it survived the hurricane so he's like come on down and i'm like okay and my brother's going so i was like i want to go i've never heard you celebrating new year's before i don't really ever i don't know i don't think we ever really did much i used to go to chicago every year to like blaze's friend's house and like we would go out but we're too old for that now oh meanwhile i like my friends literally i'm talking like clubbing like i was like you know and we would like walk around with like out any clothes on basically in like negative 18 degrees in Chicago now I'm like let's be inside let's be indoors I don't really want to

go outside for that um so I'm going to Florida where it's nice and warm my friends literally today texted me a list of all the bars we're gonna go to yeah I mean we'll probably do well I don't know we'll see I like to go out for New Year's, but I feel like, like, in L.A., I would always go to the place, the bar down the street. And last year, or the last time my cousin came and we went out. And I don't know. But nothing too wild. Like, we, like, you know, clubbing is not my jam. Where in Florida?

Unless you don't want to triangulate. No, no, yeah. Fort Myers area. They have a minor league team. Do they? What is it called? The called the mighty muscles that's really good yeah and the muscles are like the animal but also like your muscles oh the muscle oh my god that's amazing i didn't even get the the double entendre there oh you know i love when you say that i know that's why i said it uh but yeah so he has just like a small little condo there and, um, we've never been. So I was like, well, all right, you know, I'll bring you

your mail. Uh, it'll require an extra carry on suitcase, but are you abandoning your sweet little baby or are you bringing her with you? We're all coming. And, and Blaze's birthday is January 2nd. So I think we're going to stay down there for that and, you know, do a little birthday celebration down there. I I so I did know Blaze's birthday was the second and my first thought for some reason which is not in your character but my first thought was oh you're gonna go to Florida and leave your husband on his birthday to watch the baby honestly he'd be like okay I guess you know whatever like I feel like at this rate the amount of times I say by the way tomorrow I have to go to California or Canada or somewhere

else. He'd be like, okay. Like nothing surprised him anymore. What a good man. He is very patient and I'm a very patient Capricorn. So I do appreciate that. And he is also very patient speaking of holidays when we are thrown into everybody's different house. And now that my other set of parents are divorced, now we have like three or four houses every i mean it yeah like you get it it's just a lot i totally get it that's that is a lot but um like you said i the vampires can come here but they can't come into well they can come in my room but i'm still gonna be sleeping in there so you're spooky enough that you're into it it's okay yeah they can whatever you know have a good time just be quiet i got a question for you what are you drinking today oh i'm drinking um an iced coffee from sit wells which is the coffee shop that i used to go to when i was younger

in near my mom's house um and while i'm triangulating and uh i just i was like oh my gosh they deliver on DoorDash. So I got a little sandwich. I got a little iced coffee. Eva has me putting half and half in my iced coffee. She didn't do this on purpose. This is just something that she does. And now I copy her.

So, oh, well, trendsetter. Yeah. So I'm going to be kind of a buzz in because this is like my third coffee the day. Oh, for a second. I was like, girl, it's like 10 in the morning. Relax. But it's not for you. Not quite.

It's almost two. So I got to get this down before my caffeine cut off at four. I got to tell you, I have a new drink at Starbucks, which I still love my London Fox. Please don't get me wrong. And I do often, as in today, have a Arnold Palmer. Although I'm trying to find other things that won't give me heartburn anymore. And wow, the Arnold Palmer surely does.

So I still drink my London Fogs, but they don't have it on delivery. So unlike any, like they never have it on Uber Eats or anything. And so I've been like, oh man, well, I just never get Starbucks delivered because I don't know what to get unless i want heartburn and then i get my arnold palmer and uh i'm sure this is like something everyone else knows and i'm so behind but i do want to advocate real quick for the vanilla cream the hot vanilla cream have you heard of this excuse me it sounds gross yes it does anytime someone throws the word cream and i'm like but especially hot cream i think it's a hot that does it to me i'm like i don't know about that well because sometimes if i didn't say hot then i think a lot

of people mistake it for the vanilla cream frappuccino which is obviously cold um but they have a hot drink called the vanilla cream and it's their take on a hot chocolate, but it's basically a hot vanilla. And it's very good. I really don't think it's anything beyond like milk and vanilla syrup. It's but I'm telling you, I drank it and I was like, this is like the nicest. Like it was like it really did taste like a hot chocolate, but vanilla flavored. It was very tasty. really did taste like a hot chocolate but vanilla flavored it was very tasty it was if i would say um i think it's also often meant for as like a caffeine free option for kids because yeah it had

um like kids size like before tall and before grande so i was like really okay so a lot of moms probably uh trenta please i did want to try it um but uh yeah if i apparently a lot of moms are probably already on the vanilla cream train but if you didn't know about it or if you always like scrolled past it on your menu and you're like what is this i haven't even heard of it worth it well i'm always in a coffee but you don't drink coffee so you're you're like the anti-coffee club there's i have such a limited variety of things i can get a starbucks that aren't coffee based so yeah that makes sense oh wow if you're like kind of sick of linen fogs you maybe alternate between that and a vanilla cream

and i'm telling you it's so good it sounds delicious um it sounds like i'll never order it except maybe for my child but it or you but it good. I mean, Leona and I are going to have a good time. Maybe put a couple shots of espresso in there. Take a stab at it. I'm serious. That does sound good, though, now that I say it out loud. I think next time we're together, I get one and you take a little sippy and you tell me what you think. I'm sure it sounds delicious when you describe it.

It's just the wording, hot cream. It sounds like it should be curdled. That it's just the wording hot cream it sounds like it should be curdled you know i'm like that is true i yeah hot cream also there's the gross euphemisms to that as well so oh yeah there's that too there's a layered it's a layered it's a double it's a triple entendre or something it's it's an onion of a onion of a drink yeah that's um that's what we always wanted an onion of a drink um but if you like hot chocolate it's vanilla version so that's all you need the other day real quick i was on the airplane and we were heading home from uh um from connecticut and we flew from boston to cincinnati

and um the guy next to us ordered it was like me blazing the baby and so the guy next to us ordered he's like do you have hot And he was probably like 40 or something. And they were like, no, we don't have hot chocolate. And he's like, and then he said, okay, can I have an apple juice? They were like, sure. Were you just like looking into my future? I, I, I what? A hundred percent.

Cause we ended up talking to him and he has a baby like a couple months younger than Leona. And I was like, dude, cause because then they he was across the aisle they came to us and we were both like beer gin and tonic please and we were holding an infant and I was like dude you're off the clock like your baby's not even here you should be you know partying it out I know but that'll be me without my baby you're partying it up yeah he was like I'll have an apple juice and I was like okay how sweet is that like oh I'm glad someone maybe juice. And I was like, okay, how sweet is that? Oh, I'm glad someone maybe thinks I'm endearing instead of sad. It was endearing. And then Blaze and I were like, beer, please.

Beer. Beer. You know, the world can seem so shameful to people who don't drink alcohol. I understand. I mean, I don't understand the plight of people who are going through sobriety, but I do know what they're talking about when they say like, there's just so few options out there after I stop drinking. It must be really hard and I feel like even for you or my dad or like a lot of

people I know who don't drink it's you know they're not recovering they just never drank like they just never were into it. You just get real comfortable with like a pineapple juice. Yeah exactly and I wonder like you probably get asked I don't know if you get asked but like I've seen my dad get asked like oh do you not drink anymore like i have been asked yeah they're like oh are they recovering and i'm like i also feel really bad because someone will see that and i think assume that i'm also going through recovery because then they'll come up to me and go like oh my god i've been clean for this long or i've been sober for this long they either think you're sober like you're recovering or they think that you are a huge pothead, which cracks me up. I feel like those are the two things people are like,

wow, you must just be smoking all the time. And I'm like, no, I cover both those bases. And Em just kind of drinks pineapple juice. I feel like I appreciate that people think I've got to like get my fun from somewhere because it's just I'm unnaturally fun. What's your vice? from somewhere because it's just, I'm unnaturally fun. What's your vice? I've got a lot. Chocolate milk and like, I don't know, 3am impulse purchases. That's kind of it. That's my vibe. I mean, I get it. It's still a fun life. I'm sure. It's a good time. I mean, I, and I, I usually, I would say milkshakes, but I'm not kidding everybody. Like the older I get this lactose intolerance thing is really keeping me from enjoying my own tea milkshake every time I take one sip all of a sudden I'm like clearing my throat for the next five days so you know I was listening to old episodes uh when we were oh we

stayed at the Driscoll Hotel which we hadn't really talked about yet and I listened to episode was it 18 or it was like 30 something 32 maybe and it was you know back in my old apartment was one of our first like one of our early episodes obviously and it was you know back in my old apartment was one of our first like one of our early episodes obviously and it was so funny because the whole time you were like your throat i was like oh god em has not figured out what is causing this horrible sound to come out of their body all of my my health ailments are really just the foreshadowing on every episode there's fascinating to listen to those old and we were like i wonder what's gonna happen in this episode that one day off will be foreshadowing for something else it's like a time capsule for all our future problems um probably you'll become an alcoholic or something

and we'll be like well wasn't that nice back in the day when i'm like oh remember when i was really advocating for pineapple juice and those were the days yeah well i Well, I will say being fully straight edge has actually probably hurt me more in the heartburn world because if I'm would i would say you're probably only helping yourself and i believe everyone who drinks and probably everyone who doesn't drink would agree with me that you're doing yourself a lot of favors being straight edge i promise so i the irony will be when i go to a doctor one day and they're like your liver is fucked up and i'll be like what your pineapple juice has really corroded your body away it will be the propranolol that that probably takes me out well then it'll take me out right with you okay so we're both going down together it's fine anyway sorry i know that was way long rant but um i told you i had so much coffee i know

well no that does make me feel good that uh someone maybe saw me getting like a capri sun one time and thought it was cute instead of like no I found I found it endearing and I said I wish I could be that person but I need booze right now I know that sounds really bad and people are like you're with your child don't worry we had one beer honestly anytime anytime someone gets a drink and they have their child with them I'm like get to like yeah I know I don't understand but I understand enough I'm like gotta say I was on the plane once. Exactly. You get it to a certain extent. You know enough people who are in that position where you're like, I get it. I was on the plane once and there was a woman next to me and she sat down and she said, I just want to apologize up front.

My son has autism and can be really, have a hard time on planes. And I was like, okay, well, you're sitting next to the right person. Like, let's go. It doesn't phase me. And she's like, you know, if he kind of gets in your space, I apologize. And I said, whatever, you know, let's fucking go. He's watching Mickey Mouse Club.

I'm all over it. Let's party. Did you share a bottle of wine together or anything? So, because we were like way in the back and it took forever for them to get to us. And they finally got to the back and the flight attendant says can i get you anything she goes two margaritas please for herself but like since we were you know

in just the the plebe section of the plane um they were like well that'll be like 16 dollars and i was like please step aside i had these free drink vouchers that I never get to use on my Delta app and I was like I'm using my free drink vouchers on you and the whole time she's like thank you so much I literally had a coupon I didn't actually pay for your beverages but she probably still thinks

about you. It was really sweet I was like I felt like I was doing the smallest thing possible that I could do but they were lovely and I got to watch some Mickey Mouse. So, you know, it was a good flight. And then I was like, fuck it. I would get a margarita, too, man. That's party.

Yeah. Sounds good. Sorry. Go on. No, no, no. All I was going to do was probably keep this circular conversation going. I love it. List drinks that I like.

this circular conversation going. I love it. List drinks that I like. Anyway, if you happen to be also just sidebar on top of not drinking alcohol, I also don't like coffee. So that takes away a whole other category. That I feel like coffee and wine are two like huge parts of most people's lives. Yeah. Or at least mine.

Well, then also a lot of people i've gotten like shade before where people are like why do you wake up so late because i mean 10 o'clock for me is early usually honestly if i wake up my i always try to wake up before 11 i feel really gross about myself if i sleep past 11 but people are like why don't you wake up earlier and then i i've said one time in passing in front of one of them like oh well i don't drink coffee and they went oh that's why earlier you said you don't wake up early and I was like I guess that could be a reason but also I just it is love sleep more than anything else sometimes I go to bed feeling ecstatic about the coffee I will have the next morning like I like I get excited about my cup of coffee that's coming in the morning so maybe maybe that would be an incentive. But also like, I also don't like to get up early and coffee helps, but it doesn't like fix the

problem. So I would say maybe it fixes that person's problem. And they were like, oh, that makes sense. And I was like, okay, guy, like, first of all, good for heartburn. So like, again, you're doing yourself a favor. But no, I'm very, I will say I'm very, very lucky that I'm in a position and very privileged that i'm in a position and very privileged that i'm in a position where i can work on my own hours and maybe i'm just not most people who do 95 maybe i work from seven o'clock at night to 3 a.m and you know what i still get the work done uh but i just wake up a little later than everybody and that's okay and that's okay uh but no i yeah it's it's an, I have to find what I can find.

And sometimes it's that hot vanilla cream, you know? You know, sometimes you just got to imbibe. Oh, well, now that we've talked about different liquids for the last 20 minutes. Jesus. Let's move on. Okay. Okay. let's move on okay okay let's talk about a story that i swear i already can feel the comments coming because uh

i swear we've covered this story oh you did this last time i know but we i swear we've covered the story before we have not we covered it on sinister hood or they covered it with us when we did our guest swap oh okay i think it was sinister hood um uh what is it it's the green briar grossed the green briar grossed yeah that one the green briar ghost um which i also think you maybe mentioned um this is why i think i i feel like we've covered it on the show before is do you remember there was i think a halloween special where we swapped stories and you did like a few little ghost stories or oh i think you oh i did yes it yes i think you mentioned it and you did like a smaller recap of it but this is the long story of it okay this is because i did the um was it ouija board stories or something that must have been it but something like that but it was also

long a long time ago it was but i was like i swear to god i have heard you talk about this before but then i got caught up on like oh maybe it was because when we did our guest swap maybe that's why but anyway we have never covered it personally on this show other than uh your other than when i did and then i said i'll do you one better i'll do it yeah honestly it will be better so it's fine oh i'm sorry anyway i was like i was driving me crazy i was like i know this has been discussed so this does happen to be called the greenbrier ghost because it's in greenbrier county in west virginia have you ever been to greenbrier Ghost because it's in Greenbrier County in West Virginia. Have you ever been to Greenbrier, especially the resorts in Greenbrier?

No, but I lived in the Greenbrier with Allison Goforth, which was the apartment complex that we lived in in Washington, D.C. So I feel like that is more elite than anything you're about to talk about. It was full of cockroaches. Hey, so it was my place. True. Apparently, I live in the green barrier also christine my my dad when my parents were separated the first apartment complex he lived in was called the green barrier no way also to triangulate his self in the 90s uh no it was

in friedersburg oh okay um wow must be just a popular name over there i guess well yeah it does sound somewhat regal and it's always used for Rocheville Department of Commerce. I was going to say, it's one of those like fancy names that kind of just doesn't mean much of anything. No, but the Greenbrier, I'm 99% sure, but now I'm paranoid that I'm talking out of my ass. So hang on.

Greenbrier. Yes. Okay. Okay. So I'm not wrong. Okay. So the Greenbrier Resort. I went there as a a little kid it was one of the first ghost experiences i had oh you've told me about this is this the one with like with a kitchen the pots and pans oh my god yeah so we were the only people on the floor

unbeknownst to us and i was sleeping on the floor because i was like a little kid and they gave us a cot and we were next to the kitchen and you could hear the pots and pans banging all night long. And then the next day I had mentioned it to somebody and they're like, oh, that actually, that's been a closed kitchen for years. Like, oh, people don't use that kitchen. You know, you told that story when Deirdre was on the episode, like way back in the day. Wow was episode 19 wow that was pre me ever meeting allison that's a crazy time listen and now i'm telling you all about allison's in my past at the greenbrier yeah what was your setup in that apartment complex um i lived in i slept in the living room we turned it into it was literally a living room and i just put up like an ikea shelf

and slept behind the shelf that's sad it was sad it was very sad and then our other roommate would watch tv all night and it was like two feet from my head and i was like oh my god this is gonna drive me absolutely nuts oh god uh and also if you want it to be even sadder all of us joined weight watchers at the same time and like wow so it was just catty the most pathetic sad apartment of all time um not due to me because i said hey everyone let's do weight watchers together like wow ouch no never again um anyway let's get back to your thing right well so the greenbrier resort also i have mentioned it before but they have the the old bunkers there and so you can do the bunker tour i think last time i was there they still did the bunker tours but it was where like the president

was supposed to go if there was ever like an actual like bomb threat on the nation or something um like nuclear war and but you could it's it was so trippy to go through because it looked like it was a big like underground town Oh, geez. It was super. There was different rooms. I mean, realistically, they looked like cells for beds because it was not super pretty, but it did keep you alive, I guess. And they showed where all the bulk food was and all the storage space was and the conference meeting rooms where they would have to deliberate if something was going on. But it was definitely worth your time. If you are a tourist in Greenbrier, I'm sure if you are local there,

you've been dragged to the bunker tour a million times. Yeah, probably. But if you're like that person's aunt and you're in town, make them bring you to the Greenbrier bunker tour. If you're the aunt of the person who's been dragged there. Make them go one more time. One more time. That's all it takes.

So anyway, when I hear Greenbrier ghosts, that's all it takes so uh anyway when i hear greenbrier ghosts that's the first thing i think of because they the resort was very open about how haunted they were and they kept mentioning the greenbrier ghost so uh so greenbrier county is in southeast west virginia along the appalachian mountains on the virginia border uh so i feel like we're hugging with west virginia this story. And Greenbrier County in 1900, the population was 20,000. Okay. Oh. And in today's world, there's 35,000. Okay, wow. So it's pretty big back then still. I mean, it was pretty big back then and really hasn't changed in size all that much. Yeah. Although I think there's a fun fact about

like what actually determines if you're a small town or not. And I think like 40,000 is the indicator. So it's technically still a small town because I looked it up and that's about the size of Fredericksburg is just under 35,000. So fun fact. That was the population of cockroaches at the Greenbrier too. So they, I guess they did have their own small town inside. Apparently they all hopped onto Allison's back and rode her to Los Angeles. And now they're all here. That's so thoughtful. Or they hopped on mine.

I came first and brought them over here. So, you know, thank you for your service, cockroaches. You're so welcome. And you. So in 1900, the population was about 20 000 and in 1876 not too far before that uh elva zona heister was born oh yeah she went by her middle name zona and she lived with her mom uh in or near crawley west virginia and crawley in 1900 just to give you an idea of how small it was, was actually considered a holler because it was smaller than a town and it was a small unofficial community. And I guess the,

what determines you being a town or not is if you have at least a population of 300. Oh. Because then you're officially on the census. So if you're under 300, you're a holler. you're officially on the census. Wow. So if you're under 300, you're a hauler. And so it wasn't on the census in 1900, so I'm assuming it had to be less than 300 people living there in Crawley. And by the way, today's population is around 1,100.

So now it is on the census. Good for them. Good for them. They made it. So we don't know much about Zona's early life, but we think she might have had a non-marital kid, which would explain why she was known to be targeted for a lot of gossip and shame by the other people in town. So and I guess we're putting two and two together that that might have been the story there. um so she was born in 1876 and in 1861 so quite an age gap her future husband erasmus stribling shoe was born oh my god i remember this from sinister hood we just came up with all all

the weirdo names i remember weird names we had a lot of comments about his name erasmus i mean i don't know an erasmus these days but i feel like someone would have a comment i don't know maybe it's the comments that it's a great name but yeah i don't think we said that on this i don't think so either okay also he's like a shitty guy so i think we also kind of hated him we were allowed to lean into it i think yeah yeah yeah so as an adult erasmus is uh he moves to greenbrier he lived in the neighboring county which was his name fish you'll we'll get there okay i felt like maybe i made that up in my head so i just wanted to check okay i think that's what we focused on i don't think we focused on erasmus i think we focused on the fish part anyway i think you're right um we'll

get there for sure so as an adult he moved to Greenbrier from the neighboring county, which is called Pocahontas County. OK. And he moved to Greenbrier because he was also targeted by a lot of guilt and I guess bullying or gossip from his town. So he moved to Greenbrier to start over. But here's the thing. I guess, bullying or gossip from his town. So he moved to Greenbrier to start over. Okay. But here's the thing. He was getting kind of a lot of shit in his county because he was a shitty person.

Right. So he only wanted a new life to get away from his current reputation, which was that he was an asshole. Yeah, right. Okay. Meanwhile, we don't know why Zona was getting bullied around, but she happened to live in Greenbrier when he moved there, and that's how they found each other.

Okay. So here's why he was shitty. He was married two times before. First of all, he was known to be like a just raging asshole. Let's just start there. But in his two marriages before he ever even met Zona, he had one wife named ally they had a kid together and she uh did report that he was very abusive to her and she only divorced him when he

was in jail um which should tell you something too yeah but though he happened to be in jail fun fact because he tried to steal a horse oh sure um so i mean maybe that was common back then but to me that sounds funky that sounds weird sounds a little off to me like you couldn't steal anything else why a horse um to be fair that's like stealing a car oh yeah he was yeah okay that's you know what thank you for the perspective you know what that's what i'm here for that's right he was trying he's probably his getaway he was like i'm gonna steal it and then get out of the way uh his second wife named lucy ann she uh died after being struck in the head by a falling brick oh i remember that oh no and

i don't know any more information on that i don't know how the brick fell or what the situation was but she it could have just been bad luck that it just happened um and weirdly enough that only happened a year before shu not just met zona but married zona so he very quickly moved on from his wife, who very suddenly died. There is one report from the 1960s that claims that Allie, the first wife, also died suspiciously. This one was that she fell from a hayloft. Oh. But so the point is that there are rumors that both of his wives mysteriously died.

And then he left town. And then he left town after being claimed to be abusive. But there are several other records besides that one that says his first wife outlives him. So, oh, OK. So I don't really know. But maybe for the lore, it's supposed to, you know, make it sound like he's worse than he is. But anyway, so Shu moves to greenbrier he's working as a blacksmith and he's working not even 15 miles away from crawley which is

where zona lives um and at at this job is where he gets his nickname trout oh i kept saying fish i was like you're almost there. I was like, good for me. Like patting myself on the back. You have such a good memory. What is wrong with me? I actually was impressed because I had to read the notes to be like, oh, yeah, trout. I forgot about that.

It's a fish. His name was fish. Well, you said shoe. And remember pants from last week. I just said, God in my head, you know. You know, I forgot about pants. I didn't. I'm embarrassed. I forgot about pants.

Well, I'm here to remind you. i'm that's what i'm here for well yeah we did make fun of the fact that his full name then was trout shoe so which is by the way that's a fish flop i feel like that's i'm just saying and there is the chance that we said that on sinisterhood and so if you've listened to that and you're like you literally made that joke last time sorry but like it's so good i don't i don't think i made it last time because i would have been like i'll have to explain i think maybe i said it i feel like i feel like i feel like we talked about it, but maybe not. Well, just know in hindsight, maybe I should have named my shoes Erasmus something. Erasmus and Zona. Oh, my God. Anyway, it's Trout Shoe.

It's good stuff. That's probably the most creative thing I'm ever going to say for the next week. Genuinely excellent stuff. Let me just ride that high for a second go for it uh okay i'll report the rest of this with a big goofy stupid smile on my face because i'm so proud of myself so uh trout and zona in 1896 they meet and then they get married that october so very quick i also don't know enough about 1896 to tell you what like the etiquette was for courtships at the time, but I guess you would get married pretty quickly.

Well, yeah. And like, um, it doesn't sound like they were in any like elite circles, social circles where you, you know, right. They were, I bet they really, when they first met bonded over the fact that they were outcasts and well, sure. Yeah. And I mean, they both had kids, right. Or did, do we not know if she had kids i don't know if she had a kid like confidently i don't know if she had a kid but i do know that he had a kid with his first wife but it also sounds like he probably left that kid it doesn't sound like he's really concerned about taking care so okay all right sorry so it's just the two of them also if nobody likes them that's a easy that's an easy wedding to plan you know

that's how you and i met we were like hey nobody likes us let's's an easy wedding to plan. Yeah, that's how you and I met. We were like, hey, nobody likes us. Let's talk all day. Nobody knows us. There's a difference. Oh, sorry. I get that confused because for me, it's pretty similar. Well, so they meet that year and they get married in October. And there is one person who is not for this wedding. And it is Zona's mom.

Mother knows best. Mother knows best. Hates this man. Oh, that's not a good sign. I mean, it depends on your mother, I guess, because she probably could have just been like, girl, his name is Fish Flop. You know, like, get the hint. Take the universe's red flag and run so she was super against it her name was mary and only a few months later like after by christmas or after christmas and they married in october so two months into their marriage zona gets really sick and she couldn't even get a diagnosis from the doctor she basically just kind of was on bed rest um and some of the neighbors thought that she was maybe pregnant um and remember they remember trout as being a doting husband at this time but then again i am aware that people can make themselves look different

appearances yeah um but zona only got worse and it got to a point where she couldn't even get up and do normal household chores while trout was at work she just like couldn't couldn't keep it together um the last week of january so now this is only like a full three months into their marriage trout leaves for work and on his way he stopped by the neighbors and the neighbor's name was martha jones apparently she was very well loved in town, very respected. They called her Aunt Martha. I was going to say they called her Miss Martha, but Aunt Martha is good too. Aunt Martha is good too.

She just, this does come into play later. So please bear with me, fellow anti-racists. But Aunt Martha was a black woman. And she has a, I'm just saying bear with me before you think i sound like my parents or something where i'm just addressing random facts about people's like race right or like like oh well so and so is gay okay and like what does that have to do with the story yeah exactly i got you i got you okay so aunt martha was a black woman and she had a tween i don't know his exact age but let's say woman, and she had a tween. I don't know his exact age, but let's say 11 or 12.

She had a tween, okay. When was the last time you heard someone use that? Two seconds ago, and that might have been the first and last. When I was a tween. Yeah. So, okay, his name was Andrew or Anderson, but a lot of sources were just rocking with Andy. So let's do that. Okay, his name was Andrew or Anderson, but a lot of sources were just rocking with Andy. So let's do that.

And Trout told Aunt Martha and Andy that Zona was way too sick to work in their house today, and she was probably just going to be in bed all day. So he asked Aunt Martha if her son Andy would head over to the house eventually and help Zona collect eggs from their chicken coop. And then also then also said while you're there if there's anything else she needs help with can you do the chores um and andy said that he had his own stuff that he had to do that day but he would get over there eventually that day before um trout came home from work trout did not like this what a responsible tween though like i've actually got a lot of errands to run today but i will get over there to help your wife with her why is this little kid responsible for the other neighbor's house genuinely like it doesn't seem yeah maybe someone else beat trout to it he's like i've got like four other houses i'm apparently responsible for today so i'll get to you later trout a long list yeah exactly so apparently i I don't know, he was just like, I've got something else going on. I'll catch you later, said the 12-year-old. And so Trout really had a problem with this.

It got, like, he was like, you need to go check on Zoe. Oh, shit. Okay. And later that day, he even stopped by the Jones's house multiple times that day, And later that day, he even stopped by the Jones's house multiple times that day, four times that day to be exact. To check if Andy has left yet to go check on Zona. Okay, you are just a fucking terrible liar. It's exactly. It's like one of those like the murderer can't stay away from his own crime scene or something.

Yeah, or like he's just being so fucking obvious. Like, have you gone to check? Because I can't do it. It's like, well, you've been here four times. Don't you have the time to go get eggs out of the fucking chicken coop? Exactly. Like, what are you telling your boss that you're able to leave your blacksmith job four times? It's just, you know, it's like you're clearly you could be more useful than to just bother this tween every 10 minutes. But also, like, yeah, I'm sure this very responsible tween was able to think of like

the time management skills and he was like um the four times you've come here you could have collected your own fucking eggs all the eggs that you needed yeah yeah or like you could have gotten them later who cares so um anyway there he's freaking out he's like having a check on sonar and some say because we all know where the story is heading to be clear you are in the right head space if you're assuming what the rest of us are assuming um some say that trout just wanted andy to get over there before he did so that way trout could have some sort of alibi of being at work even though he was apparently with andy the whole time um But he, this is the, this is where I also mentioned that he could have wanted

to put Andy at the scene of the crime and it would have been way easy to point fingers at a young black boy. I see. Especially in rural West Virginia.

I see. I see. I see. And so anyway, that's kind of the main idea of what was going on here. Especially because he was a kid,

he probably wouldn't be able to defend himself well and all this stuff. So eventually Andy does go check on Zona. He's like, for fuck's sake, Trout. I guess that's not what the tween said, but in his mind, he thought it. Yeah. Yeah. We know he thought it. We all thought it.

Jesus Christ, Trout. You stupid fish flop. And so he heads over there. He goes to check on Zona and he's knocking on the door, but no one answers. And so eventually concerned, he walks on inside and on the floor, he finds Zona dead with her.

This is a weird sighting. Her feet are pressed together. She has one arm at her side, one arm across her stomach and her head tilted at a very odd angle. Oh God. Um, Andy runs home and aunt Martha runs home to his mom, aunt Martha and aunt Martha runs to Zona.

Well, uh, and she tells Andy, go find trout at work and tell him what's happened. So Trout comes back home from work and he shows up just around the same time that Martha actually gets to the house too. So Dr. George Knapp shows up at the house. He's also the one who had been doing Zona's house calls when they said she was sick. Oh, yeah. who had been doing zona's house calls when they said she was sick oh yeah and so he was probably

the most experienced in you know her her medical history and their her recent medical history uh he gets there an hour after everybody else and he tries to resuscitate zona and he ends up saying the quote it is an everlasting faint her heart has failed well that's fucking dramatic very dramatic an everlasting faint that's what i call my naps when i feel like i went to another realm i'm like oh my god i had one yesterday and i was like i know i wasn't on earth you escaped your body you left your behind i truly my i was finally successful uh it was like the beginning of one of those horror movies where the soul can't get back to its body. I was gonzo. I was so.

Anyway, it was an everlasting faint. So he did, however, this doctor, he did note that Trout had already moved Zona's body by the time he got there. How nice. Great. And he had changed her clothes. Ew. He had changed her into a dress with a stiff high collar around the neck. Mysterious.

Interesting. A high collar around the weird head tilts that she's got going on. It was particularly weird because I guess the etiquette or the tradition or the custom of the time is that the women in the community would have prepared her body for funeral. Yeah. Or for a burial. It's kind of weird that. Yeah, it is weird. I feel like that would be something that her mother would have done or.

Or wanted to be involved in. Yeah. Wanted to help with. It just seems odd that before the doctor arrived, you'd be like, let me get her dressed in a different outfit. Well, like also like the outfit for her funeral and within an hour of her being oh yeah yeah that's true that's gross you know i mean nothing good and i guess that was one of his excuses for the doctor when he was like we have to perform an autopsy he probably was just like oh well she's already dressed she's already dressed i'm sorry it's like

it took me a lot to put this dress on this i know deceased person sick uh also trout uh oh the doctor sorry i wrote the wrong name there so the doctor he wanted a closer look at her because he was like this is already funky this whole situation something's going on at least he's got like the wherewithal to to sense that you know yeah he was like i want to take a closer look at her but not only had trout moved the body and dressed her but as the doctor came in and until he left held zona's head in his lap and refused to let it go and refuse anyone to get near her face trout did trout did yeah okay well so he's very protective of the part of her that might be suspicious um interesting even when the doctor

at least tried to move the collar to get a look at her neck, he was like, absolutely not. You're not going to get close enough to look at her. Knapp did notice discoloration on her cheek. I would argue that once you're dead, though, maybe that's already beginning or something like that. So I don't know how much information that gave him. But before anything else Trout could notice or anything the doctor could notice um trout insisted that the doctor leave the body alone and to never perform an autopsy and the doctor was like that tracks i guess and didn't do it with autopsy he didn't have the he probably didn't have the um jurisdiction to be like yeah maybe he was

like do one i mean maybe it's a consent thing i think it probably is even maybe even now because i know that now when someone passes you know there's like a chain of command as far as are they cremated you know that kind of thing so i wonder if it's like well no it's my wife and i don't want an autopsy i bet he there's probably not much he could do yeah i don't know so it's my wife and I don't want an autopsy. I bet there's probably not much he could do. Yeah. I don't know. So it's, um,

anyway, I guess he said no autopsy and the doctor went, okay, goodbye. Yikes. Um, here's an odd thing though, that I feel like we should focus more on this.

And I don't, I'm, my guess is that the doctor got paid off to be, to leave the body alone oh because and there's no proof of that this is totally my thought on this because we never get an explanation for it but the doctor says that her cause of death is listed as childbirth even even though there is no evidence of a pregnancy, labor, or baby. What?

Even in his own words, he said it was heart failure. An everlasting faint. Her heart has failed. Hell. So I think that's weird. Or maybe he gave a different cause of death. That's sketchy. And the files were written up differently somehow.

I don't know who. That's sketchy. And we never get an answer about that i just think it's so weird it is weird it's very weird so at zona's wake it was hosted in their home and trout never leaves her side and by her side i mean his literal spot next to her head not only was he guarding it but he had put cloth on either side of her head so that it wouldn't move. And it actually kept her head tilted in that weird way. Oh God.

I, in hindsight, I'm wondering if it's because he couldn't move it back, but, um, Jesus Christ, that's sick. And his reasoning,

if anyone asked him about it was because it made her more comfortable. Ew. Why is, fuck more comfortable. Ew. Why is, fuck this guy. Seriously. Keep in mind, not only was he being fishy about her head, but even Andy,

the little kid reported her head being tilted at the crime scene in a very weird way. So people know that her head looks weird. And some people knew something was up, including Zona's mother who never liked trout and her mother actually uh somehow got trout to agree that she could have a sheet from the casket um to take home with her and she noticed a few days later that it smelled really bad and i still don't understand what science could have caused this i don't know that

information but she said the sheet smelled really bad so she went to wash it or put it in like a bath with water and it turned blood red all of a sudden that part feels paranormal and also maybe like a dramatic flare yeah i was gonna say maybe a little bit leading into m's favorite word lore but okay pretend we're around a campfire and i'm gonna say it again oh okay i'll let me hold on crackle crackle crackle crackle pop pop you know sometimes it pops okay she puts the sheet in about in a bin of water and it turned blood red i don't know what to tell you about that better yeah okay and this sheet uh not only turned blood red but it slowly faded to pink and no cleaning could ever make it white again cool i hate that that's the scary part for like the person who does the laundry in the house who's like no i can't bleach it not even bleach i mean that's not good so uh because of this i mean this is a crucial part of

the story i don't i really don't know what the actual thing must have been maybe she saw some blood on it when she got a closer look at it and couldn't get the stain out who knows yeah can't get the stamp so she went to bed praying for an answer about what the fuck was going on what happened to her daughter it was so random that she you know that something happened um and she woke up to the ghost of her daughter zona pacing her room and she went to even touch her and to be like are you real and zona faded away and this is so convenient because then all of a sudden her mom started praying again being like no no no come back and zona came back she's like fine what a convenient ghost so um so she asked zona she's like tell me what happened to your body and i guess zona at

first struggled with figuring out how to speak as a ghost but was able to finally tell her and not only that but came back uh three more nights after that to debrief further just a long story it's a four-day conversation that'd be exhausted this is like when i try to have a sleepover you try to have a sleepover with me and i'm like i'm going to sleep and you're like actually just one more thing i'm like but it's it's finally my it's only 5 a.m and i'm like oh my god i know i do feel bad for people that like have like adult sleep times. And I'm like, oh, it's 3 a.m. Time to like really party now. And they're like, OK, well, seriously, one time I remember you being like, now that you have a baby, you'll never have a sleepover with me again.

And I'm like, I would go to bed at like midnight during our sleepovers anyway. So I don't think that I know. But I had a better I had a better chance with that without another factor crying in the other room who you will prioritize over me you know hey you know that thing which is 12 hours a night and i i feel like uh i feel like this is prime sleepover time because uh i feel like she's that's true that's a good point before she wants to get in on the sleepovers and now we've got a third crashing the party and what i'm saying honestly she'll probably be the one having parties with you i'll just go to sleep i will say i like that she sleeps during the night and i sleep during the day so you always get a one

you always get someone you know you know what aren't i lucky and we're just gonna leave it at that you're so lucky good for me also you Also, you really should count your lucky stars because when all of a sudden she is of sleepover age, her and me are going to have so much fun after you go to bed and be like, we're going to drink chocolate milk. It's going to be crazy. She and I. So just correct your grammar before you start a sleepover. Before I start influencing your child in the wrong ways. You're like, we're going to have fun without you.

And then I'm like, well, let me correct your grammar first. And you're like, yeah, I told you. We're going to have so much fun without you. First it's grammar, and then I just influence her all the way to drugs or something. Who knows? Yeah, warm cream or whatever the fuck. Hot cream. Yeah, thank you for proving to me, Ravenclaw,

that you don't need to be at the sleepover after midnight i'm gonna i'm gonna use that next time i have a sleepover with her and she's she can comprehend what i'm saying and be like you know your mom tried to fucking tell me just to keep herself invited this fucking lady okay anyway uh oh yeah they four four nights of debriefing about what happened to her. And with this intel, her mom then began letting everyone know around town what happened. And it was kind of easy to spread the information. First of all, it was a small town.

It was, like, less than 300 people. And West Virginia. I'm sorry, it was a holler. Oh, it was a holler. You're right, you're right, you're right. Ravenclaw. And so she. I'm the worst. You and I went to the holler okay i mean well and you get to stay there while i that's correct thank you um so one it was a holler it was a very small

area like 300 people or less and west virginia even then was notoriously superstitious so as soon as the mom started saying i'm seeing this ghost who's telling me what really happened to Trout, it wasn't that hard to convince people or to at least get the word out there. So she even convinces her brother-in-law to go with her to talk to an attorney named John A. Preston. And he agreed that he wanted to take on the case. and he agreed that he wanted to take on the case and when he talked to dr knapp um dr knapp said the cause of death was potentially inaccurate and that trout forbade an autopsy but it's like why are you saying that the cause of death is potentially inaccurate you're the one that gave the cause of death with no information as child well i guess he's saying he couldn't confirm i guess i mean maybe maybe maybe this has been lost to history but maybe trout said something like oh she was there was

you know a complicated childbirth or something prior and this is she's right right right because there i feel like you know i don't remember uh that well but i wasn't there a part where he was seeing her for like a potential pregnancy the doctor didn't she think she might be pregnant or something there was a rumor for when people start wondering why she was talked about around town we don't know why but for some reason we think she might have had a child that we don't know about and it was but i mean like right before she died wasn't the doctor seeing her for the doctor was seeing her just because she was so sick she couldn't get out of bed and the town thought maybe sorry i for some reason thought that he had said she was pregnant

or something but i guess not he just made that her rumors were circulating that she might have been pregnant because she couldn't get out of bed got but we never heard anything else about that honestly i wonder that would have been a good out for trout though because he could have been like oh well you know she might have been pregnant or it could have been anything but we really don't know she was just just sick. People thought it was pregnancy. And I'm sure he could have used that as an excuse and maybe convince the doctor that childbirth complications were or pregnancy complications were what caused it. Right, right, right. So anyway, even the doctor was like, the cause of death is, you know, not unclear.

Yeah, it's not it's not a certainty. you know not unclear yeah it's not it's not a certainty so after he tells that to the lawyer um the lawyer then questioned others and ultimately ordered that zona's body be exhumed which was totally unheard of in the area and a bunch of locals even freaked out and like threatened like to try to get this guy arrested for doing something like that jeez i also wonder if it's because west virginia is superstitious and they thought maybe like messing with a body after death was just like not okay it's it's it's hard to get that through legislation even now not through legislation it's hard to get that through even now when you're if you're trying to exhume a body like it takes a lot yeah and so uh they officially exhumed her body february 22nd uh 1897

which was only a month out of her dying okay um and luckily it was february so the ground was preserved very well and her body was preserved very well so the doctor plus two other doctors and a five-man jury all autopsied the body at a nearby schoolhouse oh you know you love a good schoolhouse now that's the schoolhouse i would be doubly interested in seeing yes you're like oh there's additional history here this is quite a lot of this this building has seen a lot i wonder if it's even if it even exists anymore so many of them have gotten knocked down if it is open i gotta get myself to west virginia if you're the aunt of somebody who's gone to this schoolhouse many times let us know uh so the autopsy showed what we all pretty much expected a dislocated neck torn ligaments and a crushed windpipe oh this poor

woman this put trout squarely in jail at the greenbrier county jail for first degree murder although the evidence was circumstantial it was just kind of oh well she obviously broke her neck and he was acting weird about it it wasn't as obvious as your story last week of a literal blood trail so yeah right and the guy and the guy never went to jail so right exactly so trout um another thing though is that trout reportedly bragged throughout the community that he would never get convicted of this and he didn't even try to flee because he was so confident that he wouldn't be put to jail for this that's gross i know like not even this guy i don't know what other conversations were being had but it sounds like he was not even remorseful and he wasn't even

nervous that this was now the third wife of his to potentially mysteriously die and he fled town before so it's not like it would be the first time but he's like nah i'll say this was he married her like three or four months ago like this is a fresh a brand new love like he should be so distraught so distraught yeah no so there's now four months later june 22nd 1897 uh the case is the state of west virginia versus es shrew or yes shu sorry i was like again another one State of West Virginia versus E.S. Shrew. Or E.S. Shue. Sorry. I was like, again? Another one? Here's a fun fact that Trout had two state-assigned defense attorneys.

And one of them was Jane Gardner. Jane Gardner, who was the first Black attorney to practice in a West Virginia circuit court. Oh, well, you said Jane at first. I was like, oh, a woman. And but it's not a woman, right? I think it's Jane with an M, Jane, Jane. Oh, James. Maybe I say just James. It's my own stupid typo. I'm probably sorry. But no, I certainly think it would have also mentioned a woman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But still, that's that's cool though yeah first black attorney to practice and i feel bad that he got the yeah of all fucking people a murderer yeah um but during the trial preston kept zona's mother from testifying preston was the lawyer um the original

lawyer that was helping her um he kept zona's mother from testifying because if she mentioned the ghost story it would discredit the trial and just be thrown out as hearsay yeah but the defense uh called her to the stand anyway and she immediately told him the ghost story right away she's like finally someone wants to hear it yeah so according to the mom she said that zona's ghost told her this but the night before she was found she was still very very sick and had cooked trout dinner anyway but when trout came home for work he saw the dinner and he was mad that she didn't make him any meat with his meal what a fucking asshole i'm sorry and strangled her to death jesus i got nothing it's just like so stupid like it's so cliche like it sounds like made up you know oh yeah it sounds it's like oh he's mad that he he assaulted you because you didn't make him dinner

or you didn't make it the right way you did make dinner just not good enough like oh yeah and also you were already like bedridden sick but you still found a way to cook and then it goes that underappreciated and then he fucking kills you like what motherfucker i tell you i know so i love that i know the story a little bit beforehand because like you said it is really hard to bite my tongue like if i didn't know what the story was i just love that i can be like this fucking asshole it is it is nice when we know if we're allowed to like, to just like cast judgment. Yeah, exactly.

Because I feel like you have to really bite your tongue a lot during my stories. Cause I sometimes like plot twist and you're like, Oh, oops. I know. I'm always like, Oh,

am I allowed to feel bad for this person? Yeah. It's hard. It's hard. I know. And this is also very, very, very like a like a perfectly shared story for us because it's very true crime but it is also paranormal so yes yes i feel like i'm stealing

your thunder but you already did it so i guess i did do it yeah i don't i clearly stole your thunder first so no you're fine uh so anyway he strangles her death because she didn't make him any meat fantastic um and mary did the mom did not budge on her story despite the defense trying to make her look basically delusional like oh you saw a ghost okay and this there's a paper called the greenbrier independent who uh the next week wrote some of the um dialogue that had been happening in the courtroom. And the defense asked, this is a quote from the defense. I've heard you've had some dreams or visions that led to this postmortem examination. And then her mom said, it was no dream.

She came back and told me he was mad that she didn't have no meat cooked for supper. She told me something about that meat every other night that she came she came four times but the second night she told me that her neck was squeezed off at the first joint and it was and it was just as she told me so mary told the defense uh that one of the nights she asked zona's ghost about the dress she was killed in and zona allegedly turned her head completely around and looked at mary like she wanted mary to know all about it i love that in like in a different world this would be like just mentioning someone's dress and they turn around just to be like oh my

god i can't wait to say everything i've been waiting for you to ask me it does have pockets it does have pockets uh so mary said uh i just wanted the particulars about her death and i got them and then she even claimed that at one point she was able to reach out and actually touch zona without her fading away wow um mary even said that despite having never been to the shoe house which by the way that feels like a red flag to me that you've never been to your own daughter's home but i guess they've only been living together for like three months so right right um even though she'd never been to the house zona was able to direct her through the house and she did actually i guess know the path to zona's body and even found blood on the doorframe just where it

was in real life uh where the ghost said that it would be. And this is where the defense realized that her story was actually making sense and was not a good look for them. Yeah. And that they had messed up because if she had told the ghost story during with the prosecution, it would have been hearsay, but with the defense, it couldn't get thrown out and the judge had to include it in his

considerations. So when Trout took the stand, his demeanor was really weird and he denied everything. And the Greenbrier Independent, the same paper, they ended up writing a quote about this case saying, There is no middle ground for the jury to take. The verdict inevitably and logically must be for murder in the first degree or for an acquittal. Wow. It's like, basically, do you believe in a ghost or not? Yeah.

And yeah, either this is a murder by this guy or. Or not. Or not. Well, OK. Yeah, I guess. Oh, so, OK. Wait. Hang on.

Wouldn't that always be the two options? I guess so, but it's either you believe in a ghost story that is confirming that he's responsible, or you don't believe in a ghost story where there's no proof that he did it. Right. Okay, okay, okay. I follow. The only differing thing is if you believe in ghosts or not. It's whether this ghost story is true, right?

Yeah. So, deliberation took only just over an hour like 10 minutes over an hour and the jury declared that trout was guilty and recommended mercy which was life in prison versus the death sentence wow wow and trout said uh a quote from him was the prosecution was all spite work aka like the town was against him the holler was against him and so he had no chance even if it was a fake ghost story that got him in jail like they were biased sort of yeah which makes sense everyone hated this guy so yeah um and the public was outraged that they even suggested mercy and they all wanted him to die so two years later when he was on his way to prison, a mob tried to kill him. Oh, boy.

And then it ended up being de-escalated, luckily. That's probably good. But they definitely were upset that he was going to get life in prison. They thought that wasn't enough. But so Trout ends up getting life in prison and goes to jail. He goes to Moundsville, a.k.a. the West Virginia State Penitentiary aka episode 290 um and he died there in 1900 during the flu epidemic and no one claimed his body so he is buried in an unmarked grave probably at that prison and wow so in 1916 mary um zona's mom died but she always stuck with

her ghost story that it was true and some believed believed that the story was true and some people believed that it was not true, but they all hated Trout enough and knew he was probably guilty that she just found a weird loophole to get him in jail. Yeah, you know, I remember vaguely from the Sinister Head episode two, we were talking about the possibility that she the ghost story part was made up but she she knew that he had killed her and was like i'm just gonna find a way to get people to do what i have to like i saw the dress i saw the her neck i said like i know he did it but like i need to find like some fanciful way to to convince people which is also interesting theory well here's more to that theory so in 1999 um katie letcher lyle she wrote a book

about the case called the man who wanted seven wives the greenbrier ghost and the famous murder mystery of 1897 katie long title gotta be honest katie i fucking love it don't listen katie that title looks like it covered the whole book but you know what i'm i'm glad i know what i'm getting into before i crack it open um fun fact about the book uh is that when it came out a newspaper editor named fred long called her and the editor called her to say that oh hey did you know that the same paper the greenbrier independent the same paper that reported on the trial they had also months before the trial published an obituary for zona and did you know that in that issue that that day's paper that had zona's obituary in it there was also an article about a ghost story solving a

murder in australia oh my and so it took over a hundred years but now the theory is that zona's mother was probably reading her daughter's obituary and saw that article gosh and it inspired this whole plan she hatched of a ghost told me how i died wow or a ghost told me how she died um so good memory christine that is like so startling wow here is um an excerpt from the article one of the most famous murders in Australia was discovered by the ghost of the murdered man sitting on the rail of a dam into which his body had been thrown. Numberless people or countless people. I've never heard numberless before. I like that, though. Numberless people saw it and the crime was duly brought home.

Years after, a dying man making his confession said that he invented the ghost he witnessed the crime but was threatened with death if he divulged it as he wished to and the only way he saw out of the impasse was to see the ghost where the body would be found as soon as he started the story such as the power of nervousness that numerous other people began to see it until its fame reached such dimensions that a search was made and the body found and the murderers brought to justice. So he accidentally created like a group psychosis. Like they're all like, oh, I saw the ghost, too. I saw the ghost, too.

Oh, my gosh. And it was all because he was threatened to not say something. So he just made up a story that helped people find it anyway. So this is shocking. Wow. So she probably read that and went, oh, if he could do it, I could do it. Fuck yeah.

And guess what she did? And she did. And so the case has gone down in history. It's also inspired plays and books. Lyle, the author of the very long titled book, has even asked Greenbrier residents about the case when she was doing research for her book and she learned additional folklore has kind of grown out of the story so one person said that

when Zona died the town heard wolves howling another person said that when Trout tried to wash the bedding the sheets turned to blood um so all this, yeah, there's been little things that have been added over the years. Um, also in 1991, a historical marker was erected in Greenbrier declaring Zona Heaster Shue, quote, the only known case in which testimony from a ghost helps convict a murderer. Wow. It happened to be her murderer. Um, and as, and as for the mother mother she's buried in soul chapel methodist cemetery

in greenbrier so anyway that is uh the greenbrier ghost i gotta say i just got goose cam that is quite a tale quite a tale oh my god i just like gives me the shivers this poor woman i mean at the heart of it it's just really fucking sad i know especially the man but like hey a mother's love you're willing to do anything you know what fuck yeah get it mary i mean i i absolutely believe he killed her and remember the seven wives thing because that was in her title do you remember that i do and i i don't know if he had seven he must have no no no he was like on a quest to get seven wives or something, he said. Like he was like on his third or fourth and then he went to jail and he like he never reached his seventh wife or whatever.

It was like some weird thing he had where he wanted to get seven wives, which is so gross. Well, that would make sense then why he married her in so quickly. So rapidly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And also just that piece of information lets you know that the other two that were that maybe mysteriously died it doesn't sound so mysterious anymore so no a brick falling on your head um hmm yeah odd and then he fled town i'm

just saying it's fishy fishy fishy fishy i it's trouty trouty that's what it is oh um that's a great story uh it's fucking sad but it's it's a great story so good job sorry i kept interrupting i just like no i i'm glad that you could give input usually maybe it's because it was a true crime story and all of a sudden there was maybe that's why i remembered some stuff but like yeah that was a fun sinister hood episode we did too. It was. Everyone go listen to them. They are lovely, lovely people.

All right. I have a doozy for you today. Okay. This is a story that was featured in The Gift of Fear, one of my favorite books that I talk about all the time. Oh, my God. You've even, I don't even read books and you've been making me talk about it lately. I've been- This one only has four words in the title. That's true.

That's why it's easier for me to remember. If I had to start shouting out Katie's book everywhere, I'd be like, I don't know, man. Poor Katie. Sorry, Katie. I do appreciate that you wrote the book and also your title alone gave us a new fun fact that I was not aware of.

But I wouldn't be able to recite the title to people but gift of fear I do know that one also because you scream it every five seconds I talk about it a lot but even I've started using it now I'm like oh it's just like that book Christine always talks about oh it's just like that book Christine always talks about see uh yeah I've had a few people tag me and say you know they got a copy or they I I personally I have a copy and I listened to it this year again on audible I like the audible version um just because I know I said this already but he does like it because the book was written in the 90s so some of it is a bit outdated um as far as just not the information but maybe some of the like terms and stuff sure but he does uh give like a

kind of a foreword uh in the audible book or the audiobook where he discusses you know covid and the pandemic and how that has kind of escalated domestic violence and stuff so it's kind of interesting to hear his like current take um and he reads the book which i always appreciate when the authors do that so and it is interesting to have that just to know that he's even addressed it because i remember one of the very first things people thought about when it came to being locked inside was like there are people who are locked inside with their abusers with their abusers it's terrifying it's really really it was really scary and um oh god i keep getting

goose cam today uh so the story that i'm going to tell you is the stalking of laura black and um stalking is one of those uh concepts that just really pisses me off because it's just so not taken seriously uh by law enforcement there's really not much in place uh especially when this story took place which was the 80s and so the whole concept of of Gavin DeBecker's book is that he works on cases like this, like high, very high intensity, high profile, like stalking cases. And he aims the book mostly at women. And he explains that in the beginning, because typically that is the victim of most stalking cases and describes, you know, certain instincts you might have that we've been taught to ignore and how you can kind of take those and actually act on them and listen

to them. And so that's something I know for a lot of people is hard, including myself, which is why I just really love this book. But so The Stalking ofura black is featured in this book and you're gonna see why because it's just talk about a doozy talk about a fucking doozy i'm already mad i agree with i mean obviously i agree with you but just to back you that it really is so so so scary how little stalking is taken seriously and i'm i've somehow fallen into stalking t. So my world has been kind of extra consumed with seeing how unfair so many people's stories are. It's so unfair. And of course, any of these true crime stories are unfair. But, you know, it's just one of those things. It's just so frustrating that it's so clear to.

It's just one of those things where I feel like it's so rooted in masculinity, toxic masculinity. It's like so many people in the world can see how clearly dangerous this is and the other half the world just goes well what's the big deal yeah or like there's nothing we can do you know yeah there's nothing we can do and then guess what oftentimes it's too fucking late and then they go where we couldn't have seen this coming it's like yep are you fucking kidding me man that you hey look we only had four words in the title you summed up the whole fucking book. Okay. So we could have seen this coming. Oh, no, no. I didn't know. Not quite. I don't know if I

said the title by accident or something. So let's get into the story. In April 1984, Laura Black, who was only 22 years old, had just finished her master's degree in computer science and was heading to Silicon Valley. She had gotten a kick-ass job as a freaking engineer. Okay. And again, this is the 80s and, you know, women in STEM. Get it, girl. So she's 22. She moves from Virginia all the way to Sunny Vale, California. She was starting her career at Electromagnetic System Laboratory, aka ESL Incorporated, or just ESL. Okay. So this company, ESL, is a defense contractor that supplied services to NASA, the US military, and even NATO sometimes. So this is like very high profile job. Laura had only had about a year of professional experience in the field, but she

was so skilled that she beat a number of other candidates to get this job and was able to land basically her dream job as an electrical engineer in Silicon Valley. So just like making moves, making waves at 22 years old. The company, ESL, had roughly 2,500 full-time employees, The company, ESL, had roughly 2,500 full-time employees, and they had a lot of big contracts and large amounts of funds just being constantly moved through, especially because they had these government contracts. And therefore, there was a lot of security. So they worked with defense, and so classified information was a big part of the job. And so many employees needed to have high level security clearances. And this became, you know, a big part of what's going to

happen here. Sure. So, you know, working at a company like this, having a criminal record doesn't totally disqualify you necessarily, but it does make it harder to get into the job and also to get higher level security clearance. So that to say, most of the people who are working here had a pretty squeaky clean record and were like, you know, they had been fully vetted for this kind of a job. Sure. So when Laura arrived, her co-workers took to her immediately. She was young, friendly, engaging. I will say I watched a TV movie about this last night called Stalking Laura, a.k.a. and that was a U.K. title. The U.S. title was I Can Make You Love Me.

Yikes. Oh, OK. Creepy. And it was a 1993 made-for-TV movie starring Brooke Shields as Laura Black. I know. She showed up. I was like huh wow hey Brooke is that you? Get off the screen what are you doing here? What are you doing? But it was the movie it's really it's pretty good it has like great reviews and it's known as like one of the

better made for TV movies. Okay. It does definitely have its like cheesiness. Like when she's driving through the countryside, it has like this like gentle saxophone music that's just like very nineties and you know, just as natural as it's ever been. Yes, exactly. It's just like a little bit cringy, but, um, they, you know, I thought they did a pretty good job. It's, it's, it's a good, a good flick. So anyway, she's young, friendly. She's beautiful. She smiled at everyone she met. She's just like one of those very outgoing people. She dove right into her new life in California. She joined an aerobics class. She signed up for the company's softball team. She started a biking club at the company. She was just all over it. She said, I i'm gonna make friends and no one's gonna tell

me otherwise and i'm gonna be so fit that they won't be able to catch up with me yeah i'd be like i'll be your friend but i'm not attending the aerobics class or the softball game literally biking club my bumble bff profile literally ends with please don't make me hike so like it's like here's all the things i'm willing to do but i swear to god i'm like so open minded just don't make me move please and also now that you're mentioned i should also add aerobics classes and in my account as well anything that anything that's gonna make me sweat i just don't want to do it no one time renee made me go to a soul cycle class in beverly hills and i was like i've never even been on a spin bike before like it was the most it was scary embarrassing

horrific it was just so bad it was so many levels of bad like never again never no i i've been there and i've i've gotten up and left in the middle of the class i went this was a mistake i like walked up to the bike and this woman came up and was like this is my bike and i was like, this is my bike. And I was like, I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm here. Girl, like, be nice. Like, no, they won't. Anyway, so she's very, very outgoing, very enthusiastic, very active. She was even attending college courses outside of work to further her education. Keep in mind, she has a master's already has a job, all while working full time so just energy for days super social hustle hustle hustle hustle and just an easy to get along with person this of course caught the interest of one of her male co-workers pretty immediately when she started at the company uh while one of laura's new co-workers was walking her around the office to introduce her to everybody, she met a man named Richard Farley.

Okay. Rich had been born in 1948, and he was 35, so he was 13 years older than Laura. He spent 10 years in the Navy before he retired and joined the ESL team as a computer technician in 1977. He was considered a pretty low-key guy. He didn't have a wife or kids at home. He wasn't very social. He had five siblings, but he didn't have a wife or kids at home he wasn't very social he had five siblings but he hadn't spoken to most of them in years and some co-workers kind of thought he was arrogant or had a big ego but he had top security clearance no criminal record

although one co-worker had reported that he had in some way harassed two co-workers in the past but there were no real specifics about that. And nothing had ever been done about it. So life just kind of moved on and they were left alone. When Laura met Richard on her first day in the office, she couldn't imagine how absolutely horrific he would make her life and essentially put her through hell. Richard, on the other hand, had fallen in love from the moment he laid eyes. That's what he said. Fallen in love the moment he laid eyes on her. Of course, this was a twisted, obsessive and pretty sick love that would become Laura's living nightmare.

Again, Laura had no idea, because how would you? And shortly after she started at ESL, she went out to eat with Richard and another coworker. They just all three of them went out to lunch. It was very professional, just a friendly lunch with coworkers. Everyone paid for their own meals, and they talked about neutral topics. And after that, Laura never spent time with Richard outside of work again. But by this point, Richard was obsessed. And let me guess, he saw it as like their first date or some bullshit. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Abso-fucking-lutely. You nailed it. So Laura's problem started really quickly. Richard asked her out on a date and she politely turned him down because one,

he was 13 years older than her. She wasn't interested in such a wide age gap. And two, she wanted to maintain professional boundaries with her coworkers. And three, she just wasn't fucking interested. So like, you know, guy, you don't need multiple reasons. Just no means no. No is a full sentence. Correct. So this, you know, she's 22.

She already knows that the odds are stacked against her because she is a woman in this like very male dominated field a young woman it's already like she's already climbing an uphill battle being you know taken seriously in a professional environment like that i know i was gonna say she's probably already prepared like to come in swinging like to prove that she's worth anyone's time. Exactly. And, you know, I don't know how much of this is true or just kind of like, um, creative, uh, creative input from the team who made this made for TV film, but they, uh, they, they talked, you know, they had a line in there where someone said like, you need to talk to HR.

And she said something like, you know, I'm the only woman in my office like in my you know team and there are people there waiting for me to go home and play with my dolls you know like I can't give them a reason to be like oh she's causing drama or causing problems and so you know she's kind of stuck in like a tough place um which is why it pisses me off when people like blame women for this kind of thing you know i mean oh yeah well also like yeah you're right she had the odds completely stacked against her because we haven't even gotten far into the story and i already know that there were probably people at this office who thought she asked for it in some way yeah oh

yeah 100 remember she smiles at people she meets so oh. But it's either that or like last week, you don't smile and you're abusive. Exactly. You don't smile enough. Oh, boy. You can't win. You can't win. So Laura didn't want to snub Richard because they work together, but she also didn't want to encourage him. So in an interview, she said, I tried not to ignore him, but to be cordial. So Richard was not discouraged. He launched a full-scale pursuit that turned into daily harassment for poor Laura. He wrote her love letters, which he left on her desk. He stopped by her office a dozen times a day to nonchalantly ask what she was up to as if, you know, an hour ago, anything had changed between the last time he showed up. What's going on is you wrote me a love letter and I'm still trying to avoid that. And it's in the trash and I'm trying to work and you keep bothering me.

Yeah. And so he called her desk every couple hours throughout the day, every single day. He started leaving gifts on her desk, even homemade bread. And Laura turned down Richard's advances every time, but kindly. He was making her nervous, but she did her best to maintain a professional work environment. But of course, Richard escalated. He started leaving letters on her car in the ESL parking lot. One night he showed up at Laura's aerobics class and Laura had never mentioned where she did aerobics and realized, oh, he must have followed me here. Yeah. This is where I'm

starting to get goose cam again. Wow. He really wasted no fucking time. No time. Not a minute. And, you know, it's so shocking because you think like, well, somebody like this, obviously there's like a background, but like no criminal background, squeaky clean. Well, also, you know, again, toxic masculinity. So many guys are taught that if she says no, then you just haven't pursued her the right way.

Yeah. So, by the way, this is a psa to any uh anybody anybody but especially if you happen to run in circles with people who identify as men uh please if you see this behavior check them because it's not cute and no means no and people don't need to be pursued take the hint. Yeah. Yeah. They'll let you know if they change their mind. Yeah. So she realized he's following her and learning her schedule. And in fact, Richard apparently told a coworker he did aerobics with Laura. Then he literally said, well, actually, I'm not going with her. I follow her there. Oh, so just straight up saying it. Yeah. And the coworker did nothing so richard started

inserting himself into every corner of laura's life and even worse her co-workers knew something was up and was like we're like oh that guy's such a creep he's you know harassing you but like nobody really did anything it was just like oh i roll you know he's such a weirdo yep and richard showed up to company softball games he talked non nonstop about Laura to their coworkers and people were like, he's just an oddball, you know. And Richard went as far as to befriend the custodial staff at ESL and snag a copy of Laura's keys to her desk. And he was able to go through her desk drawers at his leisure. Yay, of course. Of course.

With all of her personal files personal information he even used his security clearance to access laura's personnel files at work where he found out her home address and phone number um and this is just another like psa and i don't want to come off like i'm just like bossing everyone around because like i learn right along with everybody as we go through these stories that, you know, that certain things are red flags. But and I don't want to I'm not just trying to like act holier than thou when I say this, but there was a scene in the movie, for example, and I don't know if this is real or not, but it's a good example where he went to the HR person said, oh, you know, we heard it's Laura's birthday coming up. Do you mind? And we want to do like a little party. Do you mind pulling up her files and giving me the exact date so we can prepare? And the HR person's like, oh, that's so nice, you know, and pulls it up and he's looking over shoulder and like sees her address and sees, you know, and I don't know how much of that was

like fictionalized, but it is very. It's a common thing, though, or could be a common thing. It's just, you know, invasive and scary. And I'd i'd like to think nowadays you know you might not be able to walk up to hr and be like give me their information but you know i feel like some people just have a way with words to say to sneak around and and get access to stuff well also everyone thinks that everyone in their circle is harmless so you you just hope that there's no way that they would like they're just trying to do something kind or if it's something as, you know, subtle as just like a birthday date. You know, it's it really it's so unassuming. And that's that's part of the creepiness of this. And I don't think you're holier than thou with any of that. I think it's just like there is certainly this is a case that allows us to give a lot of PSAs because I feel like a lot of times we talk about true crime and it's murderers and it's people that we.

It's just big, big stuff. Big, big, big. But stalking cases are sometimes very gradual and very insidious. Yes, they build. And it could happen to anyone. And it could also happen by anyone because, again, with toxic masculinity, people are taught to pursue. And if you're not getting the energy you want back, then you just haven't done anything grand or creative enough yet. And people can get in their heads thinking, oh, I just have, you know, everyone has their own perceptions.

I mean, it's the classic rom-com of, you know, oh, just go after the girl until she says yes. And she will eventually, you know, sort of like the lesson a lot of us learned, including women. Like, I feel like a lot of us also learned, well, you know, if he's really trying, that means he really likes you. Exactly. Exactly. maybe we feel like as someone with a platform, as people with a platform, stalking is maybe not more likely than murder, but it feels like it's maybe more common or maybe more misunderstood. And so I don't think you're, I don't know what the right word is,

but I don't think you're holier than thou at all. Oh, okay, good. Yeah. I think we're just like this, it could very easily happen and the signs could happen so gradually no one will notice. So especially in workforces where it's male dominated. And I think we also feel responsible to advocate for people. And if you are someone in male centric spaces and you are someone that men listen to, it is also your duty to stand up for women who

could be going through this. So please keep your eyes open and make sure nothing creepy is going on. Trust no one. See something, say something, trust your gut. And if you're hearing people say, oh, that guy's creepy, but he's harmless. You don't know that. Yeah, nobody knows exactly until until it's too late. Then what? You know what I i mean and i think that's what's so scary about it is that you're right it's so insidious that like you know it's easy to brush off if it's especially if it's not happening to you and if you're being called creepy by the way listen to that person they it's not like a flirt it's not it's like yeah please please back off they are trying to set a boundary and don't know how to do it safely.

Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, that's a great point, too, if you're in that position. And like, I mean, you know, I've learned a lot, too. I feel like like through doing the show and like one thing that's an example I'm trying to think of that I learned was, you know, when, for example, I'm walking into an apartment complex and someone's like, can you hold the door? And it's like, I don't want to be an asshole, you know. But, you know, that's what this book, The Gift of Fear is about, too, is like sometimes if you're like, this doesn't feel right. Like just what the worst that happens is you look fucking rude. And so what, you know?

And honestly, if you're about to turn them down anyway, they're going to think you're rude anyway. So who cares? Yeah. Well, I just mean like even if you're letting someone into the apartment complex and you don't sure like you don't even know you're just like something seems off I don't recognize this person or you know what I mean and you're like well I don't want to be rude you know I'll get on the elevator with them or like you know trust your gut and the worst that happens is you're like sorry I'm not comfortable with that and they're like what exactly or whatever you know big whoops exactly and you're

safe so yeah it's like such a hard thing and so I feel like that's why and there's so many red flags throughout this that just get ignored that it's like just so infuriating yeah sorry everyone for so many PSAs but also not really because we still live in a world where like unfortunately the law is not on our side for things like this a lot of the time. And we really have to look out for each other. So if you feel that you or someone you know is in a creepy position or if you or someone you know are being told that they are being creepy, then please listen to that. Yes. That's it. And also at the end of the episode, I'll give you some guidelines and stuff.

Oh, good. Okay, good. Thank you. So anyway, he's being you some guidelines and stuff. Oh, good. Okay, good. Thank you. So anyway, he's being a total creep. He gets her personnel file. He starts calling her landline. He drives by her house. He parks across the street to just watch her at home. And Laura remembers he was ever present. If I looked out my blinds at home, I would see him driving by. If I looked in my rearview mirror, I would see him. And bizarrely looked in my rearview mirror i would see him and bizarrely richard started leaving messages attempting reverse psychology so he would say something like i'm

going to pick you up for a date at 8 p.m tonight if you don't want to go on a date call me back otherwise i'll assume you do want to go and i'll see you tonight oh that's so slimy it's so catch 22 you know fucking call me so it's like don't want to go out otherwise i'll be at your fucking house so either i get a date with you where i get a phone call from you either way exactly either way i get something from you that you don't want to do exactly and the only way this is one thing i do remember from the gift of fear is fucking don't feed into it don't respond don't call back and i know that's easier said than done obviously but even saying no over and over again and calling them back and yelling at them like that's just going to continue this their behavior yeah you went on a a seamless work lunch and he saw it

as a first date so if you call him to say don't talk to me exactly it still got him to talk to you like oh well that's all i wanted the attention the the conversation yep so if you know if she called him back she'd be acknowledged to talk to him uh acknowledge the harassment but then when she didn't call him back he would always show up uh ready for their date waiting outside her house uh he would leave notes on her car when it was parked at home he sat in her driveway for hours uh laura once saw him in her driveway trying different codes on the garage door ew please please please please trying to get inside and uh bear in mind he's a skilled computer technician so it's like if anyone can break into your fucking garage it's this guy oh my god that's oh my i wouldn't even know what to do like next

level terror i mean and that's that becomes the part where like, I would love to give a PSA, but I don't even know what you do in that situation. No, you don't. That's exactly it. It's like, there is just not enough put in place, you know, and there's more than the eighties, but not that much more. So at this point, obviously Laura is done being fucking polite. She sees him outside.

Every time she sees him, she yells at him to chase him away and says, get off my property. The problem is, or the problem was, stalking at the time was not illegal anywhere in the United States. And even now, it's extremely difficult to get police to do anything about a stalker. And here's a little fun fact for you. According to the National Violence Against Women Survey, men commit most stalking. Four out of every five stalking victims are women. While high-profile celebrity stalking cases generate considerable media attention, they are relatively rare. Most stalking occurs between people who know each other. Less than one-fourth of women and about one-third of men

are stalked by strangers. So typically it is somebody you know. Women are most likely to be stalked by a current or former intimate partner during the relationship after it ends or at both points in time. And so, you know, it reminds me also of like sexual assault where it's like you can be raped by somebody you're married to. You can be stalked by someone you're in a relationship with. It does not mean you're asking for it or you're like consenting to it, you know. mean you're asking for it or you're like consenting to it you know and so according to the u.s department of justice only about 12 of all stalking cases result in criminal prosecution and about a quarter yeah and about a quarter of female stalking victims and about a tenth of male stalking victims obtain restraining orders against their stalkers and of all victims with restraining

orders 69 of the women and 81 of the men said their stalkers violated the order so at the end of the day it's just a piece of fucking paper and a lot of times that'll just piss them off enough to escalate yep yep so wow basically even if you can prove you're being stalked and get you're still fucked to take action they get you a restraining order it's poorly enforced it's hard to enforce and you may have just angered them or you know convince them that you're still in or they still think it's part of the chase yeah exactly it's like another challenge exactly so back in 1984 there wasn't a single anti-stalking law in the united states anyway so by legal definition richard was breaking

zero fucking laws he could follow laura everywhere he wanted he could sit outside her house all night leave letters at her doorstep and she had nothing like nothing she could do and like the best she could do was call the police and be like this guy's creeping me out and they'd be like we'll relax well what they would say which they do say now too is like okay but if he is technically not breaking a law like there's our hands are tied if if he harms you then we'll do something and it's like well then it's too late you know it's just such a hard like weird gray area and it still is that way so eventually this is fucking wild laura finds out richard is applying to rent the apartment next door to hers. So she moves because, of course, the onus is on her to avoid this.

But it was no use because, of course, Richard immediately found her new home. And this went on for four years. And Laura moved four different times trying to get away from him. Shut up. I truly wouldn't even know what to do or where to go or who to talk to about it. You're just not safe, you know? So he wrote Laura hundreds of letters over this time period, which he handed, handed to her at work, left on her desk, her car, her mailbox, at her front door. In late 1985, this was about a year into the stalking behavior, a little bit

after a year, actually. Laura finally went to HR after a lot of people were like, you got to talk to your job. But again, you know, people criticize her for waiting so long. But it's like, until you're in this position, you can't say, oh, well, it, you know, she should have said something. Well, and what? Like, what of it? Like, she already tried moving four different times. And also, like, keep in mind, this is a woman in STEM at a time where women were not in this workforce like she probably didn't want to risk her job she didn't want they want to risk her title in the office who's causing who shows up and immediately starts causing you know an uproar and you know it's it just pisses

me off that when people like victim blame in this scenario it it's like, no, that fucking guy needs to stop. Not her. She didn't do anything. She didn't do anything wrong. Like, yeah, you'd be in her position and see what how you feel. People are telling you that's your fault. You need to stop. You need to.

You should have said something earlier. It's like, well, and what what would have happened? Because guess what? She says something a year in and it goes on for three more years. So it doesn't even it doesn't even fucking do anything, you know? Oh, God. OK, so it's just it just pisses me off also this guy's an older senior co-worker and like you said it's like she's in a disadvantaged position here being a woman here being new to the company power dynamic power dynamic for sure the age everything and worse her co-workers already knew what was

happening and they didn't report it either so it's's like, you know, if they're critiquing her, well, maybe you should have said something. Yeah, obviously it would have done nothing. Exactly. She felt like there was no point. And so a year in, she's like, fine, I will talk to HR. So she tells the HR department everything, and I will say, hey, if this is happening to you, go to HR. I'm not saying don't go talk to HR. That's not what I'm saying. I think at the time, go to HR. I'm not saying don't go talk to HR. That's not what I'm saying. I think at the time, especially when this wasn't considered a big deal, she felt like this was a worthless pursuit to go to HR. I would say now I believe there are improved protocol in place for this kind of thing. I would hope so at least, and maybe slightly more fair and balanced. So, you know, if you do, I'm not

saying don't talk to HR, but I'm also saying I can understand why she didn't at the time. Especially because like best case scenario, they would have like fired him and gotten him away from her. And then he would have been pissed off and really come at her, you know, like no matter what, you don't win. It's like a lose-lose thing. Exactly. So Laura told the HR department everything, the letters, the gifts, the way he followed her to her aerobics class, sat outside her house. And did they fire him? Absolutely not.

They sent Richard to counseling and they he promised to leave Laura alone. And then he literally just continued to stalk her while in this therapy that he was mandated to do. So HR saw that the problem was persisting. And did they fire him? No, of course not. This time, Gene Tuffley of HR approached Richard and told him, like, seriously, you got to knock it off. that the problem was persisting and did they fire him no of course not uh this time gene toughly of hr approached richard and told him like seriously you gotta knock it off stop it leave her alone and he's like okay and he waits two months and then goes right back at it after those two months

of waiting he he writes laura an especially threatening letter telling her that she and her roommate could expect a visit from him. Fucking yikes. And to make it clear that she couldn't do anything about it, and he had complete access to her, he left a package on her car, and inside of it was a key to her new apartment. That he had somehow obtained, and presumably had multiple copies of.

Wow. Wow. Terrifying. multiple copies of so wow wow terrifying so laura went to hr again and they issued richard an official letter of warning that he may be fired if his behavior continued and of course this company is utterly failing laura even basically helping richard at this point and laura couldn't even go to the police because this is not illegal. So she had nowhere to turn. Once Laura was back in Virginia visiting her parents for the holidays and they received a letter at the house from him to just prove that he knew where she was and he knew where her family lived, no matter how far away she went. Oh, my God. Yeah. yeah and now even if she tried to like fight out and like even or even not just even hide out in virginia if she decided to like go straight up undercover and like move to like wyoming her parents are still now in danger right well great point like even if she's out of the picture

like her or her roommate who probably doesn't want to fucking leave you know when she had siblings and she had yeah exactly it's like suddenly your whole life is at risk here everyone you love yeah even even the final option of at least like changing your name and fleeing the country it's like okay well now i would now they know where your mom at risk yeah exactly and at this point richard had already sunk into absolute delusion he suggested laura go with him to see a marriage counselor for their problems what yeah sorry that's just beyond it's just like seriously guy he told a co-worker he planned to buy a house with laura uh and he named laura as the sole beneficiary in both of his life insurance policies and so he was just like riding on this wave of we're in love so in january of 1986 richard confronted laura outside

of her newest apartment and threatened her he told her he owned guns he said he was done asking her to do what he wanted and he was going to start telling her what to do he said i do own guns and i'm good with them forget it one of the things that uh that i another thing i remember from the book uh that gavin becker says is when someone tells you their intentions, believe them. When someone tells you who they are and what you know what they're capable of, fucking believe them. Yeah. They've clearly been able to think it through. So there's a reason to absolutely act on it.

They're saying it. And it's it's it's it behooves you to trust them. And not I'm saying I'm not saying she didn't, but I'm just saying in general, like he's literally laying out a plan right here, you know? Yeah. And so in after this, he tells Laura, once I'm fired, you won't ever be able to control me ever again. Pretty soon I'll crack under the pressure and run amok and destroy everything in my path. So basically now he's threatening her that like she's the reason he's going to harm other people. Yeah. So a month later in February of 1986, Richard confronted Jean, the woman from HR, and told her she had no right to interfere in his personal relationships.

And Jean basically said, what you're doing is illegal. And if you don't stop, you'll be fired. And Richard said if they fired him, he would have nothing left to live for. He said he had guns. He wasn't afraid to use them. And Jean later testified that she asked him during this meeting, Rich, are you saying you would kill me? And Richard said, yes, but I would take others with me. So he would like he could easily just come into the office and just like hurt everybody. Yep. He's like, I'll kill you. He just outright said it. So Jean went to her supervisor about this threat to her fucking life. And they simply told her that she no longer had to communicate with Richard and that a male HR employee would handle it from now on.

And Richard still wasn't fucking fired. He just told the woman in HR he would kill her if they fired him. And he's not fired. So nobody reported this to the police. and he's not fired. So nobody reported this to the police. Finally, a male co-worker brought up Laura to Richard, said, if you don't cut it out, you're going to get fired. And of course, Richard did not cut it out. So it wasn't until May 1986, after two years of this nightmare, that ESL finally fired Richard. And it wasn't even just over the stalking it was actually over his declining work performance oh for fuck's sake I know I know it's just horrifying and and honestly like I was gonna say this later but I'll say it now this is also extra bad because they ended up writing him a

glowing review and he got to work at a competing company so it's like it didn't even harm him you know well of course here say it with me kel surprise surprise jesus fuck so it was uh far too late for this man to be fired it didn't make any fucking difference for laura in fact richard had gotten away with his habits and now had all the time in the world to pursue her he started parking his car in the esl parking lot all day waiting to see laura come and go from work. Security didn't make him leave. Eventually, he got a new job as a software development engineer, like I said, at a competing firm. And ESL had written him this glowing recommendation.

In the meantime, Richard actually began seeing a woman named Mei Chang. And she, as far as she knew, she knew Richard used to have a thing for Laura, but Laura never reciprocated. And she had no idea how absolutely deep this obsession and sickness went. Girl run. Yeah. I know. I know. And in 1987, which was the year after he was fired, Richard was still dating his girlfriend, still working at this new job and still full time stalking Laura.

Wow. and still full-time stalking Laura. Wow. He, around this time, wrote Laura a letter that said, it might not really occur to you how far I'm willing to go to upset you. I have nothing else to lose now but my life, so don't try pushing me any further. God damn it. That's so scary. It's terrifying.

That's so ominous. Like pure terror. And you're trapped. There's nothing you can do. Nothing you can do. And at this point, he's just laying it all out on the line. He would meet with his former ESL coworkers, and he said things that, once again, should have been reported to someone, but everybody just let it go. For example, when one ESL employee criticized the company, they said, what's it going to take to wake them up?

Some madman to come in there to shoot the computers and shoot the place up? And Richard, at that point, muttered that he might be the one to do it and they were like okay and he then asked if the glass on the front doors was bulletproof and everyone laughed uh they i guess thought this joke was about destroying company property and they were like whatever you know which is slide so silly considering like so long ago now he's also said he will hurt everyone in his path. He will kill people, yeah. Like he was giving us signs a while ago, folks. Why are we still laughing?

It's not even a sign. It's like he's literally saying what he's going to do. Like he just is able to say it to everyone's face. So another time Richard brought up a former mass shooting in a California McDonald's that happened in 84. And he said, I wonder what ESL would do or what they would think if I did something like that. Again, nobody reported anything, not even to ESL, who might want to know that this guy was had it out for them. And part of me wants to go like, what the fuck is wrong with these other people for not reporting it?

But then I also don't want to, like, shame them. But also, I think they should have been aware also i think like back back then i mean especially with you know all of the shootings these days shootings i think we're all slightly more aware i would hope yeah i think maybe there just wasn't like the psychological education or the awareness that everyone just kind of had by simply living in in the world so i i i 2022 me wants to scream at them like how are you not seeing these fucking signs and if you are why on earth aren't you saying something i have to keep reminding myself like gross but it was a different time and maybe they didn't yeah and it's hard it's like even if you're friends with someone

they say something off the wall and then they're like, I'm just kidding. It's like I can understand why someone would be like, oh, God, that guy's so weird. But yeah, not but not know what to do. You know, it's like, yeah, I do get it. And I you know, this is why I feel like we all need to take a lesson and be like, see something, say something. Yep. So again, again, again. So again, again, again. This whole time, he keeps driving to the ESL parking lot, sitting there, just waiting for her, harassing her when she leaves work.

One of Laura's coworkers, Robert, confronted Richard, said he was going to wind up in jail if he kept this up. And at this point, Richard wrote a letter to Laura telling her that Robert better back off. This is the guy who confronted him. Or there would be consequences. And he said, I better never see any police around me. In February of 1988, Laura's life was falling apart. She, outside of work, was just facing Richard day in, day out. At work, her security clearance was threatened because Richard's interference in her life was making it hard for her to get security clearance and her job was at stake, which is like the one thing she was trying to salvage this whole time. And this had gone on now for four fucking years that she's living this

pure nightmare. And she had long considered trying to file a restraining order, but was terrified about the consequences, which again is like another big thing, because I feel like the automatic, the knee jerk response is get a restraining order. And it's like, that's not, it's a piece of paper, you know, it doesn't necessarily do anything. And so she was so terrified that like a restraining order would trigger him to retaliate against her. And he had actually told coworkers he would not, quote, react well if Laura ever filed a restraining order against him. But her job's at stake. She needs a security clearance. She has no other choice.

She files for a temporary restraining order. And the judge scheduled a court date for Wednesday, February 17th, where Laura would have to submit evidence to request a long-term or permanent restraining order. Oh, my gosh. Some people were like, wow, that you let this get way out of hand, which is like, fuck off. Okay. Um, but at the same time, most of her coworkers did back her up and confirm, like she never encouraged him. This is not her fault, you know? And she never strung him along. She always turned him down. So this temporary restraining order was served to Richard on February 8th of 1988. And it said Richard couldn't come within 300 yards of Laura, call her or contact her in any way.

So Richard sent Laura's lawyers in response to this, a package full of letters defending himself. He included receipts for alleged dates they'd been on. He said he and Laura were in a long-term romantic relationship and she was lying about the stalking. Thankfully, none of them believed him, obviously. Right, right, right. Two days after the police searched Richard the Order, he went to a sporting goods store and asked the manager for something with power. Forget it. So he bought a shotgun and a ton of ammunition and he paid with a faulty check because at this point he was broke. He owed the IRS tens of thousands of dollars. He basically felt like he had nothing to lose, like he was breaking at this point. That same day, he went to a shooting range and requested six, quote, man shaped targets to practice.

They're like, OK. Again, why wouldn't a shooting range be like, no, why? Because they are that shape, you know? Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I see what you're talking about. I thought that I don't know what my brain was thinking, but. No, but it sounds alarming when you think about it. But I guess that's kind of especially in like self-defense training.

That's how you, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Learn to shoot a gun. No, that doesn't make sense. but it is very ominous in this scenario you know yeah what a way to phrase that yeah man-shaped targets so richard also bought a mobile home and on february 16th which was one day before the court date the court hearing about uh making this a permanent restraining order he drove his mobile home to the ESL parking lot and waited for Laura to come outside. With his shotgun in tow, I'm sure. Oh, and all his ammo.

Yep. And his defense attorneys later claimed he had no plans to kill Laura or anyone else. And apparently he claimed that he actually wanted to go outside, talk to Laura, and if she rejected him again, he was going to, quote, kill himself in front of her to show her like what she had done so that was what he claimed unfortunately that's not what he did instead at about 3 p.m richard got out of his mobile home and began his fucking rampage on his way into the building he encountered a former co-worker that he'd been on friendly terms with and just shot him right there in the parking lot. His name was Larry Kane and he was the first victim of Richard's killing spree. So Richard walked through the building, making his way to Laura's second story office and shooting

at anyone in his path. Some employees escaped emergency exits and windows. Others barricaded their office doors with bookshelves. People hid under desks, in closets, and even in the ceiling. One co-worker said to another that even without seeing the shooter, they knew it must be Richard coming after Laura. That's how obvious this was. Like, they just heard gunshots. There was even another building nearby, and one witness said, oh, the older employees seemed to know who it was and why they were shooting. Like, a different building. They just knew who it was. That's how obvious it was that this guy was going to snap. So when Richard finally got to Laura's office, she tried to slam the door, but he shot through the door and shot her in the shoulder, badly wounding her and then walked away.

He discovered one woman hiding under a desk and he saw it was a woman he was on friendly terms with, his former landlady in fact and he said oh there's someone in here you can come out oh it's linda and he said you can get up and leave and she thought it was a trick and he was like no no get up and leave you're okay and she got up and left unscathed and what i know another woman hiding nearby got up and said can i go too he said yes and let them both leave unharmed jesus also that was like i i can't imagine a more mentally torturous traumatizing i mean the whole thing the whole thing but even like to wonder like if in this moment that's it because yeah to get to the door like in that moment like is he tricking me then richard contacted esl security and they connected his call to the police and for hours

hostage hostage negotiators tried to get richard to stand down he eventually let authorities enter the first floor and retrieve the people who were wounded laura meanwhile realized that her office had two exits and the next door office Richard was in only had one. So she actually made a break for it with her, you know, shoulder bleeding out, basically. And she ran into a few other coworkers who were hiding and all of them escaped the building together. By now, the parking lot was filled with ambulances and media. And there's actual footage of on the news of Laura making it outside the building and getting pulled into an ambulance. And she was taken to the hospital. She underwent multiple surgeries to treat her broken arm,

collapsed lungs. She had spinal damage and severe blood loss. She ended up being in the hospital recovering for 19 days. Jesus. Oh my God. But thankfully survived. So Richard stayed in the building until 8.30 PMm at which time he told negotiators that he was hungry and he would come out if they brought him a specific sandwich and a diet pepsi from his favorite restaurant and they were like okay so they fucking got him a sandwich and he walked right out with his hands up and police took him weird it's like i keep thinking everything's a trick with him, but he's really like... No.

Did he get what he wanted? Like, I don't understand. Well, he got his sandwich because they delivered it to him in jail. So, you know what? At least they kept up with that fucking promise. Okay. I hope they spit in it, but whatever.

I know, yeah. Ultimately, fucking tragically, Richard killed seven people and injured four, including Laura. So, his victims were lawrence kane 46 wayne buddy williams jr 23 ronald g doni 36 joseph laurence silva 43 glenda moritz 27 ronald stephen reed 26 helen lamparder 49 and the following weeks and they were just in the wrong place the wrong time you know yeah the following weeks of course were a media frenzy with laura at the center of the attention

this nightmare for her is just continuing and in an interview a news anchor asked one of the victims family members if they felt bad for laura black and one of them said no as a woman i cannot imagine tolerating unwanted attention for four years. So basically saying, well, she let it go on for this long. Like, what did she expect? Wow. That is beyond. And of course, you said it was a woman who said that. Yes, it was. So against your own fucking kind. Great. But to be fair, they did have somebody killed in the shooting. So, you know, it's a family

member of one of the victims. So I imagine it was a very hard position to be in to be like okay ask do you feel sorry for her i imagine i i would hope that maybe in the years following they kind of grew to understand but i don't know i don't know but i would hope it was just a heated moment yes okay understood but i'm not sure so it just goes to show you that people will still blame the victim in that case um and also like what a what a tricky space for like the survivors guilts of the people who who made it out of that building that day of like oh there were so many signs should have could have would have yeah yeah oh god terrible so an esl employee spoke out against richard saying he's a hideous human being who was on

a power trip it had nothing to do with unrequited love it was all about power all about control that's that's the thing it's not about love in these abusive situations it's never about love it's about if you love someone you wouldn't treat them this way you wouldn't harm them it's not fucking love so like throw that out the fucking window so he said it had nothing to do with unrequited love it was all about power all about control and he set himself above everyone else in society and he should pay the ultimate price so laura said if stalking had been a crime she would have taken action right away but she had no power no recourse she did have a restraining order against him during the shooting after all and look how much exactly that

did you know she even expected richard to attack her for the restraining order but she said she never imagined he would you know take it to such an extreme laura says the blame is not on her and esl should have terminated richard far earlier amen and action should have been taken to protect her and her co-workers against him after his firing especially when he was just outright threatening hr he was saying, I'm going to shoot the place up. And the day after the shooting, while Richard was in custody, the court finally granted Laura the permanent restraining order against Richard. And through tears, San Jose Family Court Commissioner Lois Kittle said, pieces of paper do not stop bullets.

Exactly. Thank you for the permanent piece of paper. Yeah, exactly. So Richard's mother was shocked by what Richard did. She said she wanted to send sympathy cards to the victim's families, but didn't know if it was her place to do so. She never knew about Laura Black. Richard never spoke to her about Laura. Weird. And I know because he spoke to like everyone else about her. After what Richard did, even his few family members who still spoke to him cut him off completely. Richard's girlfriend, May, was equally shocked by Richard's rampage and his obsession with Laura. It seemed that although everyone knew about the behavior and did almost nothing to stop it, he would like hide it from the women in his life.

Like he almost like he was able to maintain a relationship with a woman and keep his mother out of the loop even though yeah maybe because he knew that they would sense something was up yeah maybe he knew they were not safe people to hold this information so richard wrote laura a final letter from jail uh the last word of his 200 plus letters he'd written he said when i go to the gas chamber i'll smile at the cameras and you'll know you have won in the end so see again it's about winning it's about a power dynamic it's about a game or like competition or a it's not about love that's you know that's not how that works so on march 11th of 1989 he wrote to a friend about Laura saying, I'm glad she's okay. I hope she understands if I'd really want to hurt her, she wouldn't be here today.

So he insists he let her live. Because he wanted her to know what she had done and to see the wreckage she had caused, basically. I feel like that's pretty common, though, of like, I want you to be here to watch. To witness. To see all the suffering you've caused aka what i'm causing but blaming on you yeah oh yeah of course but i think that's their mentality of like if i if i killed you you wouldn't be here to suffer like i have and also like he wouldn't be able to continue his delusional nonsense if she were gone you know now he still has this he thinks

he still has this hold over her or i'm sure he still feels like there's this power dynamics and she's still around so richard insists he didn't plan to kill anyone he planned to kill himself nobody else but he did so i don't know what and then you got hungry for a sandwich and then you forgot and that changed it yeah okay okay richard's lawyers insisted that before Laura, Richard was never violent. He was unlikely to ever kill again. They insisted his actions were not premeditated, but the prosecution used every letter, every gift, every phone call from Richard against him as evidence. They proved that he was calculated, premeditated, a stalker, a killer. And Laura herself took the stand to testify about the depth of Richard's depravity

and behavior toward her for four years which must have been a very tough thing to do. In 1990 California passed the first anti-stalking law in the United States in response to this case and Laura's nightmare called national attention to stalking and the lack of legislation about it and this became an infamous case featured in several film adaptations, including the Brooke Shields one, and studies of criminal behavior and is notably featured in the book, The Gift of Fear, one of my faves.

In October of 1991, about seven years after Richard first laid eyes on Laura, he was convicted of seven counts of first degree murder, one count of second degree burglary, and one vandalism charge for shooting office equipment. He was sentenced to death and denied a later appeal, and as of 2022, he is still on death row. And that is the story of the stalking.

And is Laura still here? You know what? Laura still works. Last I've heard, I think she's pretty darn well scrubbed off the internet. Sure. For good reason. Yeah, you would never want to ever have scrubbed off the internet. Sure. For good reason. Yeah. You would never want to ever have your information out there again. Exactly.

But last I heard, she still works at ESL or at the same company. I don't know if it's still called ESL, but. I'm amazed that she would want to keep working for that company. I know. But you know what? It was her dream job. She said, wow, this is for me. And allegedly last I heard, she was still working there i would have been like

i need a glowing review of like i need such a recommendation and i will be leaving leaving you owe me yeah yeah i'm gonna go work for i don't know apple or something and just become the president i'm gonna invent apple bye yeah oh j Yeah. So I just want to let you know, let everybody know, you know, if this is something that you are dealing with, there are plenty of resources that you can, especially now with the internet, obviously, you know, the statistics are still very scary, but there is stuff you can do. If you go to victimsofcrime.org, there is a stalking resource center and we can put that in our show notes. And, you know, it'll there's some response tips on there. There's, you know, a guide for how to respond.

For how to respond, there are different explanations of, for example, like stalking through technology, which obviously is now like a new angle on it since the 80s, being able to stalk through the Internet. And then specifically for women, womenslaw.org will put this also in the show notes. There are safety tips for stalking victims. Or if you know somebody who is being harassed or stalked, there are safety strategies and legal options that you could pursue. This is like specifically a legal resource. And, you know, one of them, for example, says to create a log to, you know, date and time every incident, uh, who was present, ask witnesses to write down what they saw. And you know what? It fucking blows because yes, you are, the onus is on you as a victim, unfortunately, a lot of times to, to make, you know, take these steps. But for example, if you are a witness, you see something like this happen, you know, step in, do something, say something, write, you know, contribute however

you can. Don't turn a blind eye. And so, you know, save evidence. If somebody's stalking, online harassing you, take screenshots, keep voicemails, text, don't delete them. Keep evidence of all of that because it might be important later when it comes to, you know, gathering evidence. important later when it comes to you know gathering evidence so that's that wow i wish there was more that could be done but unfortunately it's a very limited amount that you can do um i mean you know slightly more thankfully uh than a couple decades ago but still i mean at least if there was something to come out of it at least there was you know legislation you know being kind of written up and taken seriously yeah at least it caused some action to be taken and i will say i'm gonna say it again but you better fucking do it is read the gift of fear because he this is his entire job is literally helping people get out

of these kinds of situations, preparing workforces for being able to tell people, tell workforces who is going to take action on a shooting threat, for example. If somebody is a bomb threat or a shooting threat, he is able to tell, after so many decades of experience, who to be taken seriously and who should be just kind of so many decades of experience who's who to be taken seriously and who should be just kind of brushed away you know and so it's it's a great resource so read it and there's more resources in there uh if you're if you're struggling with that so anyway this was a big episode i apologize but big episode there is i mean a lot of psas but again it's it's one of those things where it just it feels like it could happen to anyone overnight.

And I will say it's not only exclusively women. It also happens to men, of course. Yes. The binary doesn't apply here either. It can happen to anyone, by anyone. So just be aware. And if you're wondering if this is something that's happening to you, you know, check out some resources online. And, yeah, be safe out there, folks. Oof.

Well, I don't know. I don't know what to say. The end. Sometimes I really love when you do old time stories because it doesn't feel as. Not only does your older stories feel further removed in some way but also it you know i i don't know i just like stalking really is such a such a thing where like i feel like we all know someone who's had some level of a stalker or it's so relatable in the worst way it's so scary it feels really personal this one feels really personal We can all kind of understand the fear and the terror and like how useless you can feel in that position.

Yeah, everyone knows the feeling of helplessness. It's like vulnerability. Yes, exactly. And helplessness. And this whole story just from beginning to end, just really, you can absolutely feel at least a splinter of a fraction of what she had to go through. Exactly. And like we can all relate in a way, which is very scary. Wow. Well, thank you for that. And I hope we did someone some good out there, whether we prompted you to be an advocate for somebody or maybe, you know, you're going through a situation right now and hopefully some of those resources help you and if you happen to listen to our show and you are someone who maybe is you know really having a crush on someone and you want to pursue them and it doesn't have to be you know as intense as fully stalking someone but even if you're thinking like oh i'm gonna ask them for the fifth time to the

dance maybe all four no's are enough and maybe let's just end it there before anything that's a great it's bigger great great point because i mean i've had to learn that i feel like in high school you know you get a crush on someone you're like unrequited love it's so romantic and then over i feel like that's how so many stalking things start where it's so gradual and you don't maybe they don't even think that it's gonna lead to something dangerous but it just gets really blown out of proportion very quickly. There's an illusional element sometimes of, yeah, exactly. If someone says no or if they don't even say an enthusiastic yes, just read the room and move on.

Let's just leave it there. Read the fucking room. Read the room, folks. It's not, there's no game. There's no chase. No means no means no means no. And with that, folks, I guess we'll see you next week for some more fun oh my gosh and that's why we drink