And That's Why We Drink - E315 A Compendium on the Birds of Kentucky and a Celebrity Opossum

Episode Date: February 19, 2023

It's episode 315 and you're invited to become obsessed with opossums like Christine and Eva! Em is also invited but has rejected said invitation. This week Em brings us the story of the Torsåker Witch Trials of Sweden and Christine covers the murder of Connie Dabate. And what is prayer if not a spell... and that's why we drink!It's our first week on tour! We're so excited to bring you our brand new On the Rocks live show - come join us for a creepy, fun time! andthatswhywedrink.com/live

hello hello hello christine hello um goodbye no no okay night night night what's going on how are you today's gonna be a weird episode. I can already feel it. How do you know? Because I know. But I didn't know if you knew. I already know because, as you know, well, they think it was a week ago. But as of yesterday, I was like debilitatingly ill. And then I slept for a very, very long time last night.

And I refused to wake up until I felt better. I just like. I love doing that where you're like, no no sleep more. You force yourself to sleep more. I pulled, pulled an ultimatum on my own body. And so I went to sleep at 6 PM and I woke up at what? 9 45 AM. So I just truly slept almost a whole, I just, I was like, I don't even care if I'm wide awake. I'm closing my eyes until I'm tired again. And then I finally woke up and I'm good. I'm so proud of you. That's amazing.

Thank you. Because you saw me yesterday. I was not doing hot. I've seen you every day. You have. It's been a road. So anyway, now that I've got all my energy back and I also slept for like 15 hours, I have a lot to offer.

Jeez. Oh, okay. Good for you. None of us asked for it, but thank you for offering. You're welcome. How are you? Oh, I'm great. Thank you.

I also feel the energy buzzing. Buzzing, for lack of a better word. Oh, that was our energy texting me. Whoops. Was that a text? I was like, wow, you really just emulated the sound of your text message perfectly. I thought that was pretty impressive. It was pretty good, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I have like, wow, you really just emulated the sound of your text message perfectly. Didn't I? I thought that was pretty impressive. It was pretty good, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I have a lot to say. Okay. Okay. The floor is yours. Okay. First of all, I received, I haven't mentioned this ever, but I'd like to finally give a

shout out to my secret Santa, Taryn, who sent me this cozy blankie. Ooh, what's on it? It's like a big dragonfly. Oh, fun. I don't know. I just was like, oh, cute, a cool blanket. And then I've just become so obsessed with it. Like, I don't know what it is, but now it's my studio blanket.

And I always have it. And it's very soft. And I keep it up here in my office. This was for the, and that's where I drink. I think it was a patreon secret santa I'm not sure but um and I got to send a gift to someone named Siobhan which I know is a name we've talked about on the show not that specific Siobhan obviously but um yeah so what did you get Siobhan um so we can judge your gift giving a lot of stuff just like a whole mishmash, like a big box, a couple things from their wish list, because I was like, okay, I want to get them stuff they actually want. But then of course, I put all sorts of fun, you know, I secretly anonymously asked if they had any pets. And so I added some stuff for the cats. And it was a good time. I just love doing it. And our pal Jess, you know, headed it up this year, or I guess it was last year in December. And so I'm delayed, but I just wanted to say thank you for that.

And then Em, can you ask me why I drink? Yes. Why do you drink? It's like the first time you've ever been invited to do that. I love when I get to interact, when I'm asked to interact, because I always have the social anxiety of like, do you really want me to do this? But then when you ask, it's taken away from me. I doubt that. I always have the social anxiety.

I'm like, since when? Mine just manifests in me acting like I really, I try to really pull off the confidence thing. I see. I see. So anyway, why do you drink? I'm really into birds right now. Well, I, okay. I'm really into birds right now.

All right. For those of you who are not on YouTube, Christine just whipped out a fucking compendium of birds of Kentucky. compendium of birds of Kentucky and I don't I should ask where you got that from but I honestly you could have just found it on the side of the road and been like I'm taking it home they do have a couple of those free libraries on the side of the road it's very possible um no I I'm just what happened I'm really nervous how did we get here is what I'm trying to ask. What's the story? You know, it's been a long and storied road. Let's go back to the beginning. When I was young.

No, I'm just kidding. I'm not going to give you a whole spiel. But I was always very afraid of birds. And for good reason. My stepmom took me to Turn Island when I was probably 12. I was like 13. And Turn Island is like a habitat where they rehabilitate uh turns t-e-r-n which are like this sea bird it's sort of like a seagull and we arrived on this island and my brother faked

sick that day so it was just me my stepmom my dad and then a couple other people we took a little boat out to turn island and then the moment we arrived they handed us all pointed sticks no and they said the birds know that humans weaknesses are their eyes excuse me your brother was so smart to bail talks about it to this day he's like remember that time i made you go to turn island by yourself he he really I mean I can't think of a to be like all of that sounds bad and for you who's terrified of birds to go I'm still gonna go I couldn't get out of it like he literally pulled the card so aggressively that he had a stomach ache that like I couldn't also bail he took all of that energy you know what I

mean like he took the like play sick card that day. And my stepmom was like, we already bought the tickets. They were so expensive. So I had to go. And that Christmas, my stepmom gifted me this giant wooden turn. And I like, I like dropped it. I was so afraid when I opened it. And we had to wear hats with flowers on them to blend in to the botany on the island so that they wouldn't see us and go for our eyeballs. It was so upsetting. And I've always been afraid of crows as well, because they're very smart and they have facial recognition software. That's what I call it. And they know. Well, birds aren't real, right? We've, we're all birds are also not real. That's yeah, that's exactly that's the underlying current of all this.

For sure. For sure. But so anyway, the point is, I've always been afraid of birds. And so this year I was like, let's look inward and really think about this issue because I love animals. And I'm like, why do I not like birds? I always say I hate birds. And now I'm kind of like, you know what? Maybe there's something to it. Like they're so smart, but that's really cool. So now I'm just embracing it. And I found a couple of birds on TikTok that like some crows that know how to do like shape games. And they're very freakishly smart.

They bring you presents. And so I'm really into birds right now. And then I found that thing I told you about where I got my mother-in-law that bird buddy where, like, the ring doorbell basically takes pictures of the birds that show up. And it's extremely expensive. So I've been considering buying myself one maybe as a birthday gift because it comes out in June. Yeah. So that's that. Anyway, I'm really into birds right now.

Why do you drink? Is it because I'm really into birds right now? It's because I'm not into birds right now. And it drink because i'm is it because i'm really it's because i'm not into birds right now and it's probably gonna stay that way well you know i'm also into possums all the things that you're not into i kind of glom onto everything it seems like a stand with you like you're just like not i just i'm enjoying animals leave me alone i know but it's almost as if you only you know how to pre-select the things that you're going to be invested in that i have no interest in okay well okay what are you interested

in i'm interested in elephants okay uh birds okay possums just i feel like every i mean every time it's a every time it's a random animal it's a new animal i'm sorry is there is there a very selective list that you follow of the only animals I'm supposed to be interested in? Well, I feel like... Is it just golden retrievers? I don't like fish. I feel like I will not be surprised the day you become a big fish person. Oh, well, that changed it up.

Okay. Although, hang on. It's not entirely true. Because I do like octopi, octopuses. I'm fine with that. Because they're very smart. I mean, I don't want to interact with one, but I'll look at it and not be fully disgusted. They're cool.

Yeah, I'm impressed with how smart they are and how they can get in through a keyhole and shit. Yeah, and an octopus can open a jar. I can't even open a jar. Well, they have eight arms, to be fair. That's true. If we had eight arms, we could probably open a lot of things, too. Excellent point fair that's true if we had eight arms we could probably open a lot of things too excellent point all at the same time that's right um i as long as you don't get involved in fish and make me go to like an aquarium with you we're probably solid but other

than that you do whatever you want thank you but also i don't want to be involved with this bird nonsense or the possum nonsense yeah not at all but eva does i know she does i know i feel her energy vibrating through the screen and it's always i think what i hate is like it's the the is that you and eva always team up on it like as soon as teaming up you're invited you just reject the invitation i feel like you frame it as like oh we're just not allowing you into the club and that's not not true. I don't think that. But it is weird that as soon as one of you said the word possum, the two of you became obsessed with possums. I'm like, how did that happen?

How did it happen? How did it not happen? I mean, I'm just. It's probably because you guys travel together when we're on tour. And I usually will stay in my hotel room. So I think the two of you just like form bonds when I'm not in the room and then I show up and all of a sudden, like you have everything possum and I'll be honest. I don't, I think for that, maybe it was that, but in general, I think even I just have a very similar outlook on like very specific things like, like food. We have very very very similar outlooks on like food and

beverage like alcohol food uh and then animals i feel like we have very similar like we even found out we like support the same shelter you know like this like monthly donations and you like the same video games you read the same books like everything interest wise we have a very similar palette taste for life palette yes that's a great way to put it yes and so and you're always invited but like you're it's just not your jam my palette is the complete opposite so every time you guys are into something i'm like oh but you guys have marvel i don't know nothing about that but we don't marvel we don't have marvel though we had marvel during quarantine and then eva got a girlfriend and never watched a single marvel

production again okay now we're just going on it's the truth and she knows it i have been saying we got your girlfriend watches them with you all right that's true but eva and i we went through a phase where we watched everything uh together and then she would not watch one of the shows and she knows i know she's listening to us right now and she knows what's happening i don't know what that was uh directed toward maybe all of the above i think all the above because i really we were we were very on board and like we weren't watching things until we watched them together and things like that and then like one show she could not get through and now and now she's very far behind maybe something. Maybe it's because she was trying to get on board with your interests, right? And like, you've never tried to get on board with our interests.

You know, you've never been on board with the opossum thing. In fact, you've been off board, like so far off board. You've been like floundering on a life raft far away. And saying, I refuse to come back aboard. That's true I have I have offered to tread in the ocean while you ship away okay that's fair that's good and I wanna I wanna um also give because we've never even talked about this people are probably like what are you talking about opossums real quick and I am I'm not I'm not gonna make this a big thing I promise but Eva found this store in New Orleans and long story short uh eva got

robbed at dinner and like had to get a new her fanny pack got stolen along with our her cards and our business card it was just like a real on halloween by the way um and it was like a really tough time and then she discovered this store okay um based on Sesame the opossum, and who was like a, what do you call it? What is wrong with me? Oh, an Instagram opossum. Like a celebrity opossum. I'm like, what do you call it? An Instagram opossum. That's right. That's the word. A social media, a socialite, a media socialite. A socialite, yeah. And unfortunately he passed away, but the owner or the person who helped rehabilitate Sesame

now rescues other possums and takes care of them and has a store in New Orleans. And if you go to New Orleans, you freaking have to go to the store, okay? It's called Coco Alley Vegan Boutique. They sell like every, the store you walk in and the store. Okay. It's called Coco Alley Vegan Boutique. They sell like every, the store you walk in and the store is just like possums, like you're drowning in possums. And one of my good friends, Julio is like obsessed with possums. So of course I went in and I bought

him like one of everything to the point where I walked out of the store. I couldn't carry all my bags. And then halfway down the block, they came back out and they were like, you forgot some of your bags inside. And I'm like, oh my God, I like went too wild. But then guess what? The owner came to our live show and like came backstage and we were hoping there might be a little baby possum in her pocket because sometimes she takes them with her, but there was no possum in her pocket. No possum in her pocket. A possum in her pocket. But anyway, in her pocket. No possum in her pocket. But anyway, Coco Alley Vegan Petique is amazing. Eva even got me like a Ouija board possum canvas that I'm going to hang up right here behind me.

Anyway, so I just feel like they deserve a shout out. Everything in their store is vegan also. And they have some art of other animals that maybe Em would be slightly more into? Question mark? I don't know. Oh no. M froze. All right. M like bailed on the conversation and quit Zoom. Not really, but it felt that way. And you were right to do so because I was talking too much. My computer glitched and I apparently fell out of Zoom, but it looked like I just waltzed away from the screen just went black. But to be fair, this is the next thing I wanted to say. I know, guys, I'm almost done. I promise. The next thing I wanted to say is that I have kind of a ghosty story and was there. So it's probably not that exciting, but it meant something to me, I guess. And I feel like this just leads right into it because we were on a podcast recently called

The Witching Hour with Patti Negri. She was a delight. We had so much fun. A peach. She's a peach. And hilarious too. And so you should go check that out. But like right as, so the morning before we recorded,

I was at my dad's house fixing something for him because he's out of town. And I saw a picture of my grandma and I hadn't thought about her in a while. And I saw the photo and in my head, I said, hey, Oma, I'm going to be talking to a psychic medium later today. So if you want to say hi, or send me a sign, you can do so. So we hop on this call and the interview begins and literally the second she's like and welcome to the show the power in my house just like complete like you hear that like everything shuts down i'm suddenly plunged into darkness and i'm like seriously like that was your freaking sign you just unplugged the electricity you took me off the grid and then i checked and all our neighbors

were still on. So I don't know like what happened. The power just like... She was like, I don't want us to make a connection today. Yeah. She's like, no celebrity mediums. I'm a good Catholic woman. Anyway, so that happened. And as you were just disappearing off the screen, I was

sitting there talking to Eva and my computer screen just went like completely black. Like just dark. And and i thought did my computer just die you opened yourself up to like a ghost computer i feel really weird now because like the screen just went black and then i was suddenly kicked out after you were kicked out and my computer just turned itself off and i'm like it's at 100 battery there's no reason anyway I don't know what's going on but if this is my Oma I'd really appreciate she not like um oh now Eva got kicked off Eva just got kicked off what's happening maybe it's not my grandma maybe it's somebody else I will say Patty introduced us to a haunted doll and I'm a little afraid we maybe ticked her off so I don't know

I didn't do anything I waved and said hello her. I did blame her for the electricity going out. So that's not my fault. That wasn't good. Well, one thing you want to tell me your favorite part about that show, Christine? I don't remember. The affirmation you got about your favorite little friend. Oh, oh, I thought you meant the Zach Bagans comment where she said he's her soulmate. But no, OK um the other little friend

I have okay we said in the interview you know there was this time and I don't think we've really talked about it on the podcast but there was a time where we felt like things were just going completely awry in the most comical ways anyway listen to her podcast to hear about that but we felt almost like it was like a hex or a curse or like something was put on us where things just were going like hysterically wrong all the time and she said oh well there's a good way to kind of negate this kind of energy and cleanse your your group and your space and we're like oh really what is it she's called she says it's called a lemon cleansing and i'm like this has to be this has to be a fucking joke and she goes what you do is you take a lemon and em's face is dropped and not having it the whole interview

thank god they would focus on like one face at a time because i was silent and my face i probably was rolling my eyes the whole time em and i were just staring daggers at each other like like you can tell when you're on zoom and you're looking at a certain person and they know that you're looking at them. You're trying not to make it obvious. I was doing that with Christine being like, are you kidding me? She's giving us a whole ritual on lemons. A lemon ritual. Are you kidding? Yeah. And she said, Oh, you just, you take the lemon and you put salt in it and you say this. She's like, it's in my book. You say this thing and you, you basically lemons banish bad energy. And I went, Patty, I need you to understand what you're saying to us right now.

And I even said like, hey, by the way, we had this lemon and I found it under a bed. And she's like, oh, good. That means it was there to banish bad energy. And I'm like, yeah, but I took it with me. I don't know if that's good or bad. It sounds like it caused the issue. Yeah, I feel like maybe it contains all the bad energy and I just pocketed it you know it's just sitting in my closet right now yeah uh then put it in m's house so anyway that was that was my favorite part when she goes it's called a lemon ritual and i said you like this you've got to be psychic you are definitely psychic like not that i ever

questioned it but like you know what you're doing lady, we will end this intro on a high for you and me trying to leave you with an olive branch of sorts. Okay. A reason to come to Fredericksburg is my step-sibling actually just, their first job was at this place, I think. And it opened last year. It is called Possumbilities. No, it's not. Yes, it is. It's not.

It is. And it's a candy store but possum themed i think it's called oh possibilities no just possibilities not the oh possum which is what it is actually called but possibilities they're actually called either one anyway uh and uh they have marsupial mondays where if you buy a certain amount, then you get to go upstairs and play with the possums upstairs. I can't deal with this. Eva, we have plans. And I also want to point out, oh my God, a little stuffed possum heading to Germany. Sorry, their page is great. I want to also say that Eva texted and said, oh no, my power just went out right as you were talking

about power outages and I'm like this is just I hate this something's going on I'm sorry to whichever doll also she talked about PTD with her first name and I was like uh-huh we don't do that man that was it was literally so bold she was like oh yeah well I've also she held PTD's hand she was like well I held her hands and I was like, you know what, girl, can you stop saying the full name? Can you just, we go by PTD. This is your show and you can say whatever you want. But like.

I even said, I was like on our show when we've said it, people have gotten in car crashes and gotten nosebleeds. And she went, oh yeah, one time, like I said it in front of someone, they had a heart attack. And I was like. She goes, and they were too young to have a heart attack. I was like, girl, you are bold as can be, my friend. Something involving heart attacks. I was like like that so stop saying the name you literally said oh people have had nosebleed car crash and she goes oh yeah and heart attacks and we were like girl no

anyway your turn uh oh my turn great well um also let me know if there's anything uh you want on this they have a lovely site, too, not just the store. Oh, my cart's already full. Don't worry. Have you seen the mouse pad? Because I feel like that's right up your alley. I'm mailing you something. No, you're not. Okay, fine. I'm mailing Eva something. Hold on. Now someone's calling me? Who the hell is that?

Is it PTD? I don't know. It won't let me decline hang on i'm telling you something is up and we felt the energy the second we started i just have to wait it out something is up do you hear it no oh i don't know if you could hear my mom just said we need to talk in four minutes i'm like what what's going on i i'm getting the craziest whiplash from this scary i'm like a little bit afraid okay let's let's get out of here quickly okay so let's start with my topic as we do and just and just begin as we do okay let's get back to basics this is um episode 315 i think and the topic of today is the two

the two oh shit charcuterie they're witch trials to to shakur to shakur to shakur witch trials t-o-r-s-a-k-e-r but we're in sweden so it's definitely not t-o-a-S-A-K-E-R, but we're in Sweden, so it's definitely not poor sector. T-O-A-S-K-A-R? Yeah, I had a pronunciation link to it. That seemed to work pretty well for you. Okay. Well, my computer is doing this thing now where I can't click on links. I have to highlight it and copy and paste it into the bar. It's very frustrating.

What is going on? Also, Eva, I think we can hear you in the background. Hi, Eva. very frustrating also eva i think we can hear you in the background hi eva i'm like i'm like somebody's laughing and and then i look at m and m's not amused by what i'm saying so i'm like it's something either either peggy is sorry i said her name either maybe she retroactively knew like maybe she knew i was to say her name and she's like, I'll just get started now to fuck up your equipment. I told everybody this was going to be a weird episode and I hope you believed me and I hope you were here for the ride. Oh boy. Okay, so let's get into this witch trial situation. So we're in Sweden and by the mid 1300s, sorcery has been outlawed by Sweden.

So by the 1600s, there was a lot of anti-witchcraft litigation. But at first, I do want to say there were levels of witchcraft at the time. There was like healing magic and herb craft was allowed. And even like Catholics were participating in spells because they were protecting their livestock. I love how it's like, oh, you you know rituals and stuff are okay if it's like for capitalist purposes or like right yeah it's fine if you just want to keep your your animals safe or like make money on crops but otherwise exactly back off and also like i would like to make it clear that i feel like all religious people are involved somehow in their own version

of witchcraft and like i mean like what is a prayer if not a spell like what is exactly it's all the same it's all the same um so anyway you could be fined at the time because people were protective of this space you could be you could be fined for accusing someone of witchcraft because it was not to be messed with it was like checks and balances thing yes it was lovely oh however you um because witchcraft eventually became a spiritual crime not like a government crime the church was punishing people oh boy so we dive in quick oh boy so originally the punishments could be public shaming shunning even taking a beating which is just awful but um as the protestant reformation spread through sweden catholic

prayers became known as bad magic and practices started becoming devilish demonic however you cyclical. Oh my god. Okay. Let's move on. The church got more involved in civil courts and witchcraft became more of a secular crime because of that. Sure.

The Christians avoided it, I suppose. Avoided getting the axe. Good for them. So now that it's becoming more secular crime by 1550 the first woman in sweden is executed for witchcraft oh boy and her name is lassus i've been doing like the most american version of this i guess um dialect wise but lassus bergeta of oland okay. And by the 17th century, there was a wave of hysteria. So only like 50 years later, really a hundred years later,

because it was the mid 1600s. But from 1668 to 1676, there were so many witch persecutions that that one eight year period is known as the great noise. Oh, that's the like single-handedly most creepy phrase to use it's eerie yeah like and so it all begins in 1667 when a 12 year old oh boy let's remember that her name is gertrude sven's daughter and uh oh like sven's like sven's daughter? Is that what that means? That's so cute.

Sven's daughter? Okay. I bet because I feel like a lot of those names came from those same kind of... Like just a title or something. What's a bathtub? What's that word? A compound noun. A tub? A bathtub?

What? Like, isn't... Like, you know when you combine two words, it's like a compound... Is it a compound word? Like bathtub? Oh, sure. Yes. What's a bathtub? You literally said, what's the word? A bathtub? What's the word? you know when you combine two words it's like a compound is it a compound word like oh sure yes what's the bathtub you literally said what's the word bathtub what's the word i was like bathtub you just said it what is it but what is the bathtub okay sorry uh no but i feel like a lot

of those names did come from there like the name grayson is like gray son the son of the gray-haired man i think is what it means and like um i mean obviously there's a lot like she for means slate which is like we used to do roofing back in the day you know um so that probably is what that means that's cool uh okay so yeah i hope i hope i came up with i figured it out on my own that'd be a fun thing my brain did today i love it uh so 12 year old gertrude's daughter uh was working with another shepherd. She was a shepherd. She was working with another shepherd. His name was Matt Nielsen. Maybe Nielsen. I don't know. I think so. And the two of them were working together.

They got in a fight about something. We don't know what. And she beats him up. Yeah, she does. So good for her. Probably defending herself. that's what i'm thinking i'm not promoting violence folks okay i'm just saying you know sometimes you guys stand up for yourself i don't know what happened but i'm just gonna go off of the track record all of history's ever had and assume that she needed to defend herself. During this fight, the goats that they were tending to all ran off. So Gertrude goes to find them. So she gets in a fight and then gains composure,

regains composure and goes back to work. This guy runs home after getting beaten up for something he may or may not have done. And while Gertrude is out looking for goats, he thinks, okay, well, this is my moment before Gertrude gets here and can say what happened. So he decides to make her look really bad. Jackass.

And so he said that he had seen, I don't know if he made her look really bad, but he said that he'd seen her walk on water. Yeah, he's like, I'm going to make her look so stupid. But he said that he saw her walk on water across the river. And then when she found all the goats and led them back, she also was able to give them the gift of walking across the water. Which is like pretty dope. Like I'd be like, I'd pay for your services to teach my goats to walk on water, you know. I would love someone to give me the gift of walking on water.

That'd be so badass um so matt's father he neil i'm calling him um he uh he went to the local minister whose name was lars elvius okay okay sounds like an evil person. It does. He goes to the local minister and soon Gertrude is interrogated multiple times and under extreme duress until she finally confesses that she has met the devil because in her home parish, her neighbor's maid had her meet the devil. Oh, come on. The neighbor's maid, by the way, was named Merritt, John's daughter. I guess she's John's daughter. And she's called, she's often called store Merritt or big Merritt in the story. Okay. But I guess Merritt took her to meet the devil. So boy, oh boy. In this trial, I guess trying to find some sort of mercy or protect herself however she could gertrude ends up accusing 19 women in total and at just 12 years

old she is sentenced to death jesus so because she was 12 and a lot of people still had like some common sense to them they were like hang on a second maybe we shouldn't be killing children they were like maybe we should be saving them from evil and she's a kid so we should drop her sentence down to flogging so she still got flogged for nothing but those 19 people she accused weren't children and to save themselves, they started accusing one another and they started accusing other people and other people. It was like survival tactic, you know?

Yeah. So it quickly grew into, I mean, if 19 people are naming two people each, that's another 40 people on top of these 19 people. And so that's already 60 people in town. Um, so pretty much everyone's already 60 people in town. Um, so pretty much everyone's getting accused out of nowhere.

Everyone's daughter, everyone's daughter, John's daughter, Sven's daughter. Um, and so merit, as we mentioned, the neighbor's maid,

she was trying, uh, she was tried twice, but ultimately it was executed along with many other people. and basically, like I said, if you think about it in terms of numbers, within seconds, 100 people could be witches in this town. If everyone's just like throwing a finger. Yeah. So total hysteria ensues.

Sweden is already going through it because in the recent years they've had really religious stuff going on they've had war they've had mass poverty and all of northern europe had been dealing with the little ice age which was like extremely cold summer so everyone's crops are hurting so people are eating less and food security is isn't being promised and people also thought that you could steal luck from people it was just a super a superstition at the time was you could steal luck from your neighbor if you um uh sold yourself to the devil basically so if you sold yourself to the devil then your neighbor's crops would do worse than yours oh great so everyone's crops were doing bad. Everyone's cows were getting sick. And if your neighbor's doing better based on this one superstition, they might be a witch.

It's because of them. Yeah. Mm hmm. And I think we talked about that in rituals, too, at some point. Maybe not the same area, but we have talked about witchcraft on rituals. Go listen to rituals. And they were really looking for any reason at that point. And they were really looking for any reason at that point.

I think the first episode was about weather witches and about how people would base everything on the crops, which is understandable. I mean, that's their livelihood. But it got out of hand. Yeah. And if you're hungry and you can't promise food for your family and the neighbors next to you seem like they're doing pretty good and you can't tell why or what the difference is i mean you were just nature just looking for a reason to compare yourself i guess right and basically people were ready to snap just waiting for an excuse and they found one in witchcraft so the news about gertrude spread to a bunch of villages nearby and people start freaking the fuck out uh the government was dealing with a lot at the time well they always are but they were they were dealing with like well beyond what they were

probably comfortable with and they couldn't even afford to deal with this at the moment so they were letting the villages build extra committees of priests and judges to help the parishes root out witches i see so they're like you handle this on a more local level oh boy so in norway's witch trials which we're talking about sweden right now but in norway's witch trials many of the accused people were an indigenous group of people called the sami and they were in norway fin, Sweden, and Russia. But the Sami people mostly lived in a farther northern region. And they were, although they were targeted in northern Sweden, the most heinous trials were in southern Sweden. So in southern Sweden, that was where a bunch of Finnish people had just immigrated to

the area and they were being noticed for their cultural differences, which my dumb American brain doesn't often think that they would have much difference between their cultures. But apparently there's at least some practices that they do differently, including they would live in the forest. They would cut down trees and burn them to create rich harvest, which meant that their crops were doing better. I see. Because they were smarter about or they had some different practices. Yes, that were able to help them out.

Right. Yes. Okay. So God forbid. Okay. Exactly. So they were also, they were nicknamed by the Swedes, the forest Finnish, which I guess was, it became a slur for them at the time. So most of those accused of witchcraft in Southern Sweden became Finnish just by, or

became Finnish people that they were targeting just because they were known, they had now just like gotten their own timely slur they had they were now being judged as like the forest people their crops were doing better and everyone in sweden was really struggling food wise and so they just started accusing anyone who was either finnish or affiliated with finnish people and the oldest woman at the time to be accused for witchcraft was also finnish And she was like in her 80s. Oh, boy. Like, leave the woman alone.

Leave her alone. And when accused in trial, apparently one of the differences between Finland and Sweden is that in Finland you're allowed to bring weapons to court. Cool. At least at the time. But she didn't know that that was illegal in Sweden. And so she tried to defend herself in court and brought a knife. Oh, boy. And so that really didn't know that that was illegal in Sweden. And so she tried to defend herself in court and brought a knife. Oh, boy. And so that really didn't help her case.

Anyway, so just that's just an example of one of the Finnish people who got called out for no reason. And also in Sweden, torture was technically illegal. I guess, you know, it's technically always illegal. And yet people find a way to do it. Yeah. Interesting how that works. But I guess their logic to it about why they should use torture during these witchcraft trials was because you couldn't get an execution approved without indisputable evidence. Okay.

The only indisputable evidence they were going to get was a confession i mean i can't even count the ways how backwards that is but sure go for it so uh i know we're just we're breezing past otherwise we have already shown how quickly we can derail today so yeah so they basically needed a confession otherwise they couldn't do anything about all the witches and the only way to get a confession was through torture so if we wanted to handle the witchcraft thing we needed to torture these people the people quickly figured out that this was a way of they basically figured out that um to torture someone into a confession was the only way they were interested in in figuring out if someone was a witch or not there was like even if you could prove it in some other way there was

nothing more as effective as torturing. Yeah, they were like, this is the most effective, so we're going to keep doing this. Yeah, when we torture people, we somehow end up with 100 witches versus... Yeah, it's the weirdest thing. It's like 100% effective 100% of the time. You never believe it.

Oh, so horrible. So they ignored the rules on torture in the name of finding out who the local witches were. And the higher courts, I already said they were really going through it right now. And they quickly got overwhelmed at just the amount of cases that were coming through of witchcraft. So when local, like lower level courts needed their approval for an execution it's so twisted when they needed an approval for an execution the higher courts didn't get to them in time because they were so busy with other shit going on that they wouldn't give them a timely answer on whether

or not the execution was approved so the lower courts would just bank on the fact that they'd probably say yes oh no and go through with the executions anyway on the tech on the technicality that they were never told no so it's like oh uh better to ask forgiveness and permission yeah yep jesus christ well they never said no it's like well they never said yes what are you talking about about? That's so backwards. I mean, I'm like not surprised, but it still sucks. It gets worse because children now are getting involved too. So kids' testimonies were seen as too unreliable. But a lot of kids were the key witnesses because they could tell you stories about their teachers.

I mean, they were on the inside right they also they could tell you about mommy and daddy at home and mommy no and you know they've proven time and time again that children will say what they want you think you want to hear that's how that's how the whole fucking um whatchamacallit sex scandal what was that like that horrible time when all those teachers got accused of like devil worship and and all that and it was all mishandled and bungled and it was all a myth but anyway yeah it's like been proven the kids just say what they think you want to hear so that's that gets mentioned in this too later so um their testimonies were considered unreliable until how cool they were all of a sudden

talking about all these witches because they probably heard their parents talking about witches and the witchcraft trials going on so now they've got things to say yep or if there was somebody who was accused and they needed to interrogate somebody on it and see is this person really a witch who better to go to than their children who they could torture very easily disturbing so now even though they were once considered unreliable their testimonies are now supporting death they were unreliable until they were useful to their cause yeah they were unreliable until they were the only ones these courts had to rely on which should tell you something even worse they were getting or not really even worse but they were uh they often got the accused woman's children to act as one of the sole witnesses um and these kids were

as young as four so imagine being four and christ that's terrible essentially you know when you grow up and have a guilt complex you will be telling yourself every day you killed your mother so terrible um but one child's testimony was not often enough they were considered a fragment i guess a fragment of a person therefore a fragment of a testimony cool so the so the courts now had permission to go interrogate slash torture 30 to 40 children to accuse one person and with 30 to 40 children if you, give me a name on who's a witch, they're going to pick anyone they know. So that's 30 to 40 new witnesses or 30 to 40 new people on trial. That's insane. So most children, their testimonies often led to something called the Blackula, which I like to think of as Michael Scott calling Daryl Blackula

when he was dressed as Dracula. So I thought that was really the only reference when I first saw this. I was like, that's the only source I've ever heard on Blackula. Well, that would be our only source, you know. I've never heard of any other thing, but apparently torturing children for our sources. So that's true. We just have have the office i would like to go back to a time before i knew about actual blackula and just thought of daryl um but okay guess not i'm currently in that time so maybe just skip this part so i can live there yeah you've only got about like three seconds left in this world so um so most of the children's testimonies again because they were probably hearing about it non-stop at the dinner table or from other kids at school or something but

everyone seemed to have a story about blackula all of a sudden which was a hill or a mountain uh said to be in sweden where the devil would host his sabbath his unholy sabbath i see so it's not technically hell it's his like staycation where he like good it's not technically hell. It's his like staycation where he like, good. It's like his verbal where he goes to do fucking seances and shit. Okay. It's his layer of sorts. And so,

um, it's an upside down world where all the rules are backwards. So on the Sabbath, which is would ride farm animals backwards or horses and brooms, or they would hop on the backs of men in their village and ride them like a horse. Or, um, they flew North where they enacted an unholy mirror to the Sabbath. I mean, it would, it would sing backwards. They would pray the Lord's prayer backwards. They would, my favorite one is that there was apparently a saying that a church bell would knock a witch off of her mount. And since that was apparently true, at Blacula on the Sabbath,

the witches would chew apart brass church bells and spit the pieces into a lake. Ew. That's such a weirdly, like the first person to come up with that, like brava, because what a beautiful picture you've painted like i'm so sorry you were used as like a witness for a witch trial when you could have been an author and it

would have been yeah i feel like in a different age you would have really shined you know during the stephanie meyer phase you would have really your your watt pad would have been crazy i bet so um but no that was one of the rumors that had been told around the village that they would chew Your watt pad would have been crazy, I bet. Your watt pad! No. But no, that was one of the rumors that had been told around the village, that they would chew church bells and spit pieces into the lake. Which, by the way, if you needed proof where you wouldn't have to torture people, why didn't anyone go looking in the lake for pieces of the church bell? They probably did and didn't find any. And we're like, well, we don't have time to look.

They disappeared or something. It's like oh they fade away after the sabbath something you know so the witches would also apparently abduct innocent children um to make them go to these sabbaths with them which like by the way if the whole scary thing about a witch is that they're like this independent strong woman i don't know if they're bringing children to their parties like for fun. Yeah, I feel like, you know, speaking of someone with a lot of friends who are, you know, child free by choice, I don't think they want to just invite along a bunch of kids.

I feel like that makes like the debauchery a little less fun, you know, as someone. And again, there are wonderful places where wonderful children can be gathered. But as someone who is child free by choice, my idea of a party with the devil does not include bringing random children and then being in charge of them. Who has a child? My idea of a party with the devil also doesn't include children. So, like, let's just put that out there. It doesn't matter whether I have kids or not. I think it's pretty obvious. Good point.

with that out there doesn't matter whether i have kids or not i think it's pretty obvious good point uh all i'm saying is like i can't imagine someone goes hmm you know what makes this night fucking crazy if we bring i mean i guess maybe they have a point i'm kind of coming around to their point like as someone with a toddler now i'm like oh boy she can rain some hell down you know if she really wanted to maybe if you were having like baby Olympics or something. There's something to be said. Who can bring the cutest little baby? I mean, there is something to be said for their destructive tendencies, you know, so I could see that being helpful.

But I feel like if you really wanted to go against the devil, you would bring him to a party with a bunch of babies and like give him his own version of hell. Like have the babies like bring crayons and draw all over his fiery walls that's a great point spit up everywhere and just scream and cry and he can't get away from it like oh and don't worship him and don't and pet the goat instead of slaughter it or whatever yeah oh yeah like bring babies to hug all the animals yeah yeah yeah yeah see that would be a great way to go against the devil. I get it. I get it now. Whatever. But apparently they would kidnap these children who were like on board with Satan, I guess.

And these abducted kids would apparently be like, you know, what insert creative or non-creative thing here, beaten or like married off to demons or something. But these were all stories that allegedly the children were telling mid-torture, let's be clear. So like they, they would get lured away with like treats and gifts. And I do understand like the storyline of like the witches were bringing them while they're young and impressionable to the devil to be turned into evil people, I guess. But so these were just stories that all the kids were bringing in their in their trial or in their interrogations yeah what the what the witches would do with them um they were forced to listen to people screaming and hell and you know insert whatever you want

there when they finally got home apparently the presents they were given to be lured away would turn into dirt and snakes okay there's another story cool and and basically there's just like blackula accusations popping up in the trials early on which by the way if this if blackula was a concept during satanic panic you know there'd be stories and movies written about like a group of five to six teenagers all trying to break into blackula to have a big party prove themselves yeah so uh if anyone needs a like script to write love it have a good time uh like a bunch of teenagers from the 80s time travel to blackula era and like i like it it's like midsummer but and accidentally save all the people from witch

trials that would be the great ending because it's like midsummer but like with a happy ending yeah yeah sort of except unfortunately this story like actually happened and is true and it's exactly it's too bad so anyway the as the story truly goes all the kids were saying horrible things they go to blackula They're meeting all these witches. They're being consumed with evil, or that's what the witches are trying to do to them. But luckily, they got saved in time to be able to talk about it at their trial. Right. So at these trials, there were two types of witchcraft or two types of magic that people were put on trial for.

So there was Maleficia. Maleficia. Okay. Maleficia. Okay. I keep wanting to say Maleficent, which would make sense where her name comes from now, I guess. Or there was Diabolism. Diabolism.

Diabolism. Thank you. Those were the two types of magic that people could be on trial for. And, and the first one, which I keep calling Maleficent, um, it was based on one person who was usually like the trope of like the old cranky woman who's a burden on society. She doesn't like a man or, you know, whatever it whatever it is um and she's charged with witchcraft often because like someone had an issue with her for land or a money dispute or they just didn't like her face um and then like the problem's over like it was just like a one witch one-time deal sure

but diabolism trials was when someone was accused um the accused were sworn to like satan's service and they're here to harbor evil on the town and it's a much it's very um like the salem witch trials were like it was a group of people who were all in charge of like being in cahoots with satan oh boy so blackula or the sabbath were considered diabolic diabolic diabolic oh my god diabolic diabolic i'm literally so stupid um but because if there's a sabbath that means there's more than one witch so you can't just try the one person without getting names of the other people so it very quickly became a mess of the accused accusing others um nowadays uh nowadays like present day in the story uh all magic was evil even the previously acceptable like healing acts that people were

doing early on in like the 1300s and it's all out it's all out everything's bad and the crescendo of you know this the great noise movement um came out in tuschaker tuschaker which is in south central sweden um and that was on october 15th 1674 uh a hundred people mostly women were accused and a trial began for witchcraft jesus okay um one woman managed to escape and so did her son because he was like a sailor and had already shipped out before the trial began so he was like somehow got away and so did she um a lot of children were called to testify and witch hunters did pretty much whatever they had to to get testimonies out of those kids so you can use your imagination on that um one of the stories is that they would uh hold the children under ice water and like cut holes in ice lakes

and put them under there until they shit um that's just one of i'm sure a hundred versions of whatever happened um which i don't know how in today's world or even even then i don't know how in today's world or even then, I don't know how witch hunters shouldn't already be accepting that they would be on trial next for abusing children. Right. But I guess maybe they were just seen as saving the village by doing whatever it took to get the witches out. Or maybe people were too scared because they were like, well, I don't want to be next.

Whatever happens to the kids when they're growing up in the village and like have to like they go to a bar or a tavern and then they see the guy that used to drown them as a child like how do you traumatized and i can't even imagine i can't even imagine no um horrible so anyway other kids just as you mentioned earlier there were some kids who were tortured for to tell their stories, but there were other kids who so badly wanted attention and praise at a time where children were to be seen, not heard that. And on top of it, they were fighting for God if they were telling the stories of witchcraft. So they wanted to be seen as little town heroes. So they wanted to be seen as little town heroes and, you know, because the more they talked, the more people were finally interested in what they had to say. They were just coming up with the craziest stories, probably Blackula, probably the church bell thing, just to, you know, have five seconds of attention.

And ultimately, again, this is like not the children's fault. They were under extreme duress. Um, but due to a lot of the children's testimonies and then other, you know, townspeople's, um, stories too, it wasn't just the children, but due to all of these testimonies, 65 of these people were women out of the hundred, I think. Um, and they all died, which means one in every five women in Tushar Kher were executed in a single day. In a day. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. That's 20%. In some families, three generations of women in one family were killed that day. What the fuck? I'm surprised there were so many men, though. Yeah, me too. But maybe they just ran out of fucking women you know seriously maybe they were like they had like a roster of everyone that lit like a census and they're like

every woman's been accused i guess we've got men we gotta call out now too or else such a frenzy it's horrible like how would you not even think like if every woman has been accused maybe none of them are in on this yeah or like if we kill all the women what are we men to do now in town yeah i don't think they thought that through they must not have what would have happened when you killed all of them and then like and then it's just men like now what now fucking what good luck like okay anyway 65 in a single day it was the largest civilian execution in sweden's history jesus i like it's so bizarre and so that was 65 women and just so you know out of the hundred um it was 71 victims that day so that's like still like 30 of them somehow got out of being

executed i'm sure they were terribly punished in other ways. So not all 100 were executed? 71. 71. And 65 of those were women? Wow. So six men. That makes more sense. That does make more sense. Like ratio wise. I mean, I wonder if it was 65 women and 35 men and out of the 35 men, only six. That's what it sounds like. That does make a lot of sense. Yeah. So it was on a mountain in the parish where all 71 victims, oh man, were beheaded. And then their bodies were burned at the stake

and their family and friends watched. Dear Lord. I can't imagine. This is so barbaric. I can't imagine. In any time, not even in this time but including this any time where there was execution by beheading or execution at all but beheading for me is like a particularly gruesome brutal barbaric like you said kind of act i can't imagine knowing like you're next and you like if you're in line yeah you just watch it happen like what

if you're the 71st and you just had to watch 70 beheadings and you're the last one i mean think about like i mean this is just a dark thought but like think about how many times they've used that blade on like so many different people and also i don't know i think for me you didn't ask me this but for me my most like disturbing form of execution has always been burned on the stake like i just think that's the most it's got to be just the most painful way you know honestly i wonder if they thought it was like a quicker way to well i was going to say by beheading them first they didn't have to experience the burning like maybe they thought they were like giving them mercy or something because i still burned all about i bet it was just like we have so many to kill that like you can't just burn all

of them at the stake at one like i guess so you'd have to kill them first i mean at least with beheading like they didn't have to experience uh being in a fire until they died but still i i mean it's none of it's just horrible and 71 like how did they even find an executioner who was willing to do that? Unless you found a really fucking sick person. You had to find someone who really hated witchcraft, I guess. Or a group of people. But also like family and friends watch. That means everyone who basically accused them, you know, because it was just it was so the hysteria was crazy.

There was at least a kid there who watched their mom or sister die because they said something and like yeah not that it's their fault but like i can't imagine them growing up and having to reflect on feeling good about that right their contribution even if it was completely by force but like i i also think like i gotta do a number on you in the context of history they probably you know weren't unpacking their childhood trauma the way we all are today. You don't think so? And they certainly didn't have. TikTok didn't teach them how to do that?

Well, they certainly didn't have like any gentle parenting to help them along the way. So like, so like. These people, these grownups were literally dunking them in ice water. So like, I think whatever the opposite of gentle parenting is, that's what was going on. I just like can't imagine like, even if you try to reflect on it one day, there's no one to talk about it with you. Like there's like,

no one ever was healed from this. And so, um, the, this day finally, uh, was just so gruesome that it ended up sparking skepticism through Sweden and officials had to step in, which I would like to say the officials should have fucking stepped in a long

time ago. Too fucking late, my friends. And after this, because it was just so terrible, child witnesses were banned and people were no longer allowed to persecute people out of superstition. Great. I know, 71 people too late.

Too little, too fucking late. Priests could no longer condemn people. They were expected to help people find oh you don't help not kill they were um they were expected to help them find their way back to god through prayer not torture and in 1676 so by the way like that was the big day that was the holy crap day but there were still a few killings after that too so in 1676 uh the last execution during the great noise took place in stockholm so that was uh two years later a year and a half later um but uh there were still killings from that one

big horrible days over a year after that people were still being killed by witchcraft they were probably just honestly if you're that type of person who like wants to execute people out of witchcraft they were probably just trying to churn them out before they knew the government would come in before they intervene yeah exactly so in 1704 which is another whole like 20 30 years later uh the last witch execution in set in sweden happened so 1704 you said 1704 and then the the big 71 people day was 74 and now it's 1704 so that's literally 40 years 30 years later 30 years later and um that then only then was the last execution for witchcraft in Sweden. Dang.

And then in 1779, 75 years after that, the death penalty for witchcraft was overturned. So I guess just kind of laid dormant for 75 years. But it still technically existed. Yeah. And now the mountain where the execution took place is now still called Witch Mountain. And that's not Blackula. Blackula was like a fake thing. Blackula was a story created.

I wonder if they still did the executions where they thought Blackula was. That's what I was wondering. Like, are they trying to be like, look what we can do to override Satan? I don't know. Right. But then also, they couldn't just one person go up there and take one look around and go, yep, no devil. I guess we don't have to kill them.

Maybe he's hiding. But so I don't know where the Blackula Mountain is said to be, but it was all just a story anyway. But the mountain where they actually executed people, which could have very well also been the Blackula Mountain, was still it's still there. And it's called Witch Mountain. It's also called Bonfire Mountain, which yikes. there's also a museum nearby to learn about the tragic events and in 1975 which was on almost the 300th anniversary sweden erected a stone monument there and one of the stones says women died men judged the faith of the time affects the human. Wow.

Whoa. Whoa. I just got goose cam. That's so powerful. That's the Tushar Kher witch trials. I gotta say, you know, like I just did the Stockholm Syndrome episode and it just makes me think because Sweden nowadays is known as so peaceful so progressive and like it is and you know you look back and you're like wow that's horrifying but then you think about like the stuff that happens here every day and in other countries every day and it's like man I don't know I just

I'm I'm proud I guess I'm proud of Sweden for coming so far and now being such a progressive, safe place. Yeah. Well done, snaps to Sweden. Good job, Sweden. Not back then. You really fucked up. Not back then. That was not cute. Guess what? Everyone apparently was fucking up back then because I feel like you were far from the only witch trial happening. Yeah, we really don't get to talk with our Welsh trials. We've killed many more people than that for way more fucked up reasons or equally fucked up reasons but still that was uh that was a wild time anyway what was that the

great noise is that what it's called the great noise that is such a spooky it feels like i'm gonna get sucked into a black hole or something yeah especially like the it's so it's so powerful but so vague because like the noise could be anything the noise could be the chatter of gossip it could be the screams of the witches it could be all the trial talk it could be anything oh i don't like it the great noise yeah um you know anyway my friend alssa and I when we were little we would if we were on the phone um like on the landline and we had to pee or if we were like peeing on the phone we'd be like joyful noise and then we'd flush the toilet so if you said joyful noise it was like hold on I have to flush the toilet oh that's precious I just flush as I'm on the phone

with you and wonder if you hear it or not i don't but i think back then we didn't have a mute button or i don't know i don't know why we just were like anyway i'm peeing uh but hold on i can't hear you for a second let me joyful noise like it was like make a joyful noise so no one else has to hear it no it was more like here comes a joy i forget why that even happened it was just like i i literally don't know i couldn't begin to tell you but um joyful noise that's well and then my brother worked for a record label called joyful noise and i was like that's the sound of a toilet i cannot get it out of my head i have i can start doing joyful noise with you next time i'm on the

phone we should try it. Next time I do one of my famous potty calls. Because you're the only one I talk to on the phone anymore. Oh, you're the only one I call on the potty. So that's what I was saying. And I've never even, I hope it's an honor. I've never even thought to like press mute when I flush. I just. Oh, I literally never noticed.

So. I literally FaceTime you and tell you I'm on the toilet. I need to talk to you. Phases me zero. Again, I've been doing this since I was five apparently joyful noise so joyful noise well all right we'll give it a shot next time as long as i'm not stealing you you know it's so embarrassing once we did a simultaneous joyful noise oh me too just like that's that's not embarrassing that's so in sync that's harmony oh anyway good times. And when my therapist asked why I'm afraid of the phone, I'm like,

I can't imagine why. There were only wonderful things happening. Okay, let's get to something fucked up, shall we? Yeah, let's continue the fucked up train. Yeah, right. Let's stop pretending like we're going to break from it. I just noticed I'm literally holding my chapstick like a fucking cigarette. Like I'm just like, I'm just like, tell me, like, I'm just like, tell me a story. Tell me what's going to happen next. Let me just get a, get a little, uh, I'm not cool enough to know smoking lingo.

I'm like, let me get a drag. There it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was about to say a whiff. And I'm like, you want a hit or something?

You want a hit of that this is me pretending to be undercover like with which now next time i'm with you and i have chaps gonna make you want to drag oh i mean like can i get a hit of that yeah yeah yeah it feels very nice though uh i'm actually very jealous my lips are very dry um anyway let's get to this this is the story of it's a murder story surprise surprise yeah i was gonna say kill what you don't say this is the murder of connie debate and it's spelled d-a-b-a-t-e and i my initial instinct was to say debate like debate um but her friends pronounce it debate and i listened to like a dateline podcast uh about it and one of the friends mentioned which is this is just such a random fun fact but one of the friends mentioned they called their house the

the debates the debate family's, they called it the debate estate. Shut the fuck up. That's the coolest thing I've ever heard. Which is so funny because you could literally say the debate estate, but they were like, we're going to change the pronunciation to the debate estate.

Now they would be my fucking friends because that's just how like- I know, I know. That's like what I'm telling Allison, like I'm at the apartment. She's like, where are you? I'm like, I'm at the manor. I'm at the manor, yeah. the manor yeah i would give anything to be

able to call it the debate exactly oh my god that's like my nosh galosh it's your nosh galosh it's your troll hole it's like just the best of all worlds by the way eventually maybe we do that for um for the after chat i'll show you my nosh galosh because it's she's currently stocked to the she's arrived see i never even saw her yet she's been here yeah and she's made herself at home she's well loved don't you worry i'm gonna see the nosh galosh in the after chat if you would like to uh join patreon and check out the nosh galosh you're more than welcome i just feel everyone going no thanks and also anyone who missed that episode uh the nosh galosh is literally a galosh full of snacks that i can nosh on.

I think that's pretty, it speaks for itself. I feel like people should figure that out. Just so we're clear. And if you want to join and learn more about Birds of Kentucky, you can also join the after chat. Just kidding. I would not do that to you or him. You will though. I will though.

So this is a Murder of Connie debate of the famous debate estate. I'm sorry. I know it's about to be so tragic. Just let me have this one. That's why I'm trying to force some like good fun in the beginning before it gets horrifically dark. Thank you. So let's get to it. Connie was born in Connecticut in 1976 with three siblings. She graduated high school in 95, college in 99. this just gives you an idea of like where she was in the timeline and went on to work um in pharmaceutical sales in june of 2003 at the age of 27 she married uh the man she had fallen in love with richard debate their birthdays were only three days apart which

is um adorable that that's something people, I don't know. They get to have a birthday week. They get a birthday week like we do. I know. Imagine. Trust me, it's fun. It's very fun. It's fun, guys.

You should try it. Actually, you know, speaking of Alyssa, her birthday and my birthday are three days apart. Really? So ours are four days apart? So she is the first. So you're two days apart. Oh. I know. I know. Now we just need a need a second to fill in the blank okay okay um so connie's friend said they looked like a really solid

couple like a really together couple that had made it work and when they interviewed the friends on the dateline episode on the podcast uh they mentioned you know at a party he was always doting after her he would say like let me make you a plate and basically put all the other husbands in the neighborhood to shame. That was like how much he doted on and cared for his wife. People did note that they were an opposites attract type of couple with a lot of differences that seemed to make them stronger. Friends considered Connie the more responsible one of the couple she was an active volunteer she was like a class mom worked helped with the pta did other activities or events that friends and families needed her to volunteer her help with lit a room lit up a room trust me i'm

getting there i even put in here actually lit up a room um she was once even the vice president of the ellington volunteer ambulance corps like she's just like stepping in wherever she doesn't work in medicine well she works in pharmaceuticals but not like how obscure i know i know i love it so people described her as here we go having an effervescent personality and a local pastor said people were naturally drawn to her but in you know listening to her friends talk about her it's very true she had a lot of people who said like oh she's my best friend like she was just such a good friend to people um just so involved and so responsible and just really well liked and and legitimately lit up a room, as cliche as that is. Meanwhile, as for Richard, people saw him as more of a clever, quote, overgrown kid.

According to friends, he would- Wait, Allison, write that down. I know! I knew you were going to say that. He made, like, get ready for this, maybe take notes. He made corny jokes and puns. Hmm, nosh galosh, anyone? The debate estate? Now I get it. Yeah, true.

Now it makes sense. But he was really quick on his feet, and he could come up with a joke for every situation. That does really sound familiar. I'm not going to lie. Thank you. One friend said he was definitely an odd character. I would say Rick is Rick. He was kind of quirky.

definitely an odd character. I would say Rick is Rick. He was kind of quirky. He did, however, have some credit issues, but that aside, he and Connie seemed pretty financially secure, and they seemed to work through things pretty much like adults as a couple. And like I said, Connie worked as a pharmaceutical sales rep, and Richard, meanwhile, was working as a computer network administrator the two of them had two sons together and they lived in just the most like suburban idyllic neighborhood called Ellington Connecticut wow it does sound like a movie right okay well buckle up because this movie's about to get rated r okay so sadly for Connie more than a decade into their marriage richard began having an affair shit i hope this is where you and rick differ you know part ways let's so far

certainly so far certainly only one of richard's friends knew about it after Richard confided in him. And Connie probably looking back didn't know that Richard was cheating. But that being said, she was also far more unhappy in their marriage than she let on. Like other people didn't realize, even her closest friends didn't realize how unhappy she was in her marriage. Oh, wow. realize how unhappy she was in her marriage. Oh, wow. And we know this now because in her notes app on her phone, there was a memo titled why I want a divorce. Girl, you got to make it you got to make it say milk or something like a grocery list. Yeah. PTA volunteer information. By the way, if you ever go through my phone, don't look up milk in my notebook.ad. Yeah, I was going to say, you got to change that, bud. I'm going to change it now to like popcorn or some other grocery list.

You stop listing them because you're going to run out of ideas. Well, I usually I have because I have obviously we all have like secret notes in our memo pad or most of us do. I don't know if you do. I mean, I do. I certainly do. Imagine everyone listening is like, no, we don't. And it's just you and me. There's one person out there who would validate us i think but uh no like i have like ones that's like certain like birthday gift lists and like things i want to mention in therapy and like

like obviously there are things that like if you ever want to find out my deepest argocesis probably on a notepad somewhere and like you same. You don't just title it the most obvious thing possible. Well, she did. Okay. And it was called Why I Want a Divorce. And it was basically a pros and cons list for decision making about this. But it was only cons. It was like a cons and cons list.

Right. Like no pros. Just bad. Just bad things. negative things got it so it was last updated in december of 2014 and she wrote that richard took money from bank accounts that weren't his so that is a big one i would say for wanting a divorce yeah that one's that one makes a lot of sense okay that's a big one um she also said he was an unfit parent acts uncaring toward her doesn't come home on time and acts like a kid constantly apparently according to this note he also took out a credit card in her name and she didn't know we don't know if she knew this at the time but the suspicion is she did not know that he used it to spend over a thousand dollars on flowers and dates with his girlfriend that he was cheating on her with with a card in her name like how

twisted yeah that's a that's someone made an impulsive choice and did not think that through yeah yeah or did and did it anyway which is equally as fucked up oh yeah didn't even care yeah didn't care whether connie suspected like why he was spending this way was unclear. But she was mad about the overspending itself because, again, she's like the responsible one. She's trying to keep the family afloat and together. Sure. Yeah. Happy. And he's just like fucking around and making and lying and stealing money from her. It's just like all it's it's messy.

And nobody outside of the family knew this. Right. it's it's messy and nobody outside of the family knew this right so i mean thankfully she did title this note because we were able to i mean we the investigators were able to find it later and be like aha there's a whole she literally wrote a list of all the things that were wrong um that actually does work out really well right paper yeah yeah so it seemed like connie was trying to talk herself into like making this decision but she never got the chance because three days before Christmas 2015, police received a signal from a home security system at the debate estate at 1016 a.m. Two minutes later at 1018, Richard tried to call 911, but he misdialed at 1019. He got through and when he spoke to them, he sounded confused, and he was moaning in pain. So police arrived at 1030.

They saw blood on the top of the basement stairs trailing toward the kitchen, and that's where they found Richard. Richard was lying face down on the kitchen floor, and he was bound to a brown aluminum folding chair by zip ties. Yikes. The chair was on top of him. One hand was bound to a brown aluminum folding chair by zip ties. Yikes. The chair was on top of him. One hand was bound. Both ankles were bound. And there was a zip tie around his neck, securing him to the chair. Yikes. Richard was moaning in pain. He told officers there was still someone in the house. So police called for backup. And one responding officer even thought Richard was dead because that's how still he was laying in the kitchen. Oh, my God.

And when they asked him what happened, he said there was a break in. And they said, you know, can you describe this person? He said a tall man in camouflage and a mask had broken in and attacked them. He said he watched the intruder shoot Connie in the basement. Oh, my God. Connie in the basement. Oh my god. So officers found Connie indeed in the basement dead of two gunshot

wounds, one to the stomach and one to the back of her head. It's so fucked up. Beside Connie was a box cutter, a hammer, a butane torch, and some burnt papers. There was also a Ruger 357

magnum handgun nearby. So when EMS arrived to help Richard, they unbound him and found small superficial cuts on his chest and thighs. A canine unit arrived on scene and began tracking. And the dog's job was to follow scents, not just at the scene, but specifically scents that led away from the scene to try and track where a fleeing suspect might have gone, if that makes sense. So instead of following a scent leading away from the crime scene, the dog followed the scent out of the basement and then back inside the house. Weird. The officer led the dog away and said, OK, let's try one more time. They initiated a new track to identify a foreign scent at the scene.

This time, the dog tried to climb into the ambulance where Richard had been moved to. Interesting. Interesting. So the officer removed the dog from the area and tried a third time, this time in a different spot, trying to find any hidden track. The dog failed to find a single scent leading away from the scene. It just followed richard's scent the whole time a second and third canine unit responded and likewise every single

dog failed to find a trace of anyone fleeing the scene and he also only had one hand zip tied interesting good good eye or good ear good ear good brain really good i wouldn't go that far okay well that that little chunk that was used was pretty good today good nerve nerve ending or whatever good one cell that made it all the way richard described the intruder as six feet tall at least stocky with a deep voice. He actually described him as sounding like, who's the Fast and Furious guy? Vin Diesel? Vin Diesel.

Like literally, they played in the Deadline episode, they played the interview and you can hear him saying, he had a Vin Diesel-like voice. Okay. He said he couldn't name the skin tone of the person but he could identify that he sounded like vin diesel which like i could i could argue that someone in crisis you never know what part you're gonna focus on that's fair so sure maybe that was almost like so weird that it would have made sense but okay yep exactly that's a good point you're maybe what your one neuron that's sparking like picked up on the Vin Diesel thing. It's like I've seen Fast and Furious. Well, I feel like if like a guy that looked like Brad Pitt was broken to my house, he'd be like, that fucking guy looked like Brad Pitt.

That's crazy. They're like, how tall is he? I don't fucking know. How tall is Brad Pitt? How dreamy were his eyes? I don't know. Think about Brad Pitt. I got lost in them. I can't tell you. be where his eyes i don't know think about brad i got lost in them i can't tell you yeah so that's kind of how he described him which was like odd but you know like you said i'm sure odder things have happened when people are in shock so essentially he said this guy who sounded like what do we say vin diesel why can't i remember his name i want to keep my say van haylen or you can also just call him groot because they were the same person okay he sounded like groot although didn't just say groot yeah he actually looked like a tree when he was in the house it was crazy oh wait it was actually a tree i looked yeah the dogs tried smelling for him they just peed on it

okay so he described him as having a vin diesel voice dressed in all camouflage with gloves and a mask on. And so, of course, they're thinking, well, it's broad daylight in a residential neighborhood. Somebody must have seen him. So they start canvassing the area. They set up perimeters. This is the investigators, I mean, to question passersby. But nobody in the neighborhood notes seeing anything strange. And I want to point out here that that again i keep referencing this uh episode of dateline but it was really fascinating to hear from her friends and the neighbors because one neighbor said her kids were on the couch watching the ipad and all of a sudden police just like

swarmed the neighbors like her best friend's house uh down the street or across street and then came to her door and said we're searching the area there's there is an intruder and like potential killer on the loose in the neighborhood and you need to take your kids and get in the powder room and shut the door while we search your house to clear it like it's terrifying and so you know she's probably i don't want to speak for her but i would have been absolutely traumatized by like a police officer just showing up and being like get in the bathroom there's a killer on the loose and he might be in your house like yeah so she said oh i just i hid the kids behind the toilet and i like and he said only open the bathroom door if i knock twice like that's the signal that we've cleared the house but at the time they really thought like there's a killer a maniac on the loose and so

they're searching all these people's houses. And again, this is a very quiet, like idyllic neighborhood. So, of course, the last place anyone expects this kind of thing. But nobody sees the guy. Nobody, none of the neighbors have seen the guy. And Richard is at the hospital. He's pretty quickly cleared of any injuries. And he is brought in for questioning

obviously richard tells investigators uh this is his timeline okay so at 8 10 a.m he dropped his two sons who are six and nine off at their bus stop then he went home said goodbye to connie who was getting ready to go to her spin class at ymCA. He watched her back out of the driveway and then he left right after her. Halfway to work, however, he realized he forgot his laptop, so he turned around. On the way back home, his phone pinged and sent him a notification that the house alarm system had been tripped and was going off. So he said he assumed he'd said it wrong. So he went inside to fix it and nothing seemed out of place. So he went upstairs to double check the house and he said this is when he spots this intruder in a closet going through his stuff. And he says the intruder manhandled him, pulled a knife on him, threatened him and demanded his bank information, passwords, PIN numbers, etc. him and demanded his bank information passwords pin numbers etc then this intruder said i'm going to sit here patiently and wait for your family to get home done done done oh shit so tragically connie came home likely have also having gotten the alarm notification or maybe her spin class

had been canceled either way she enters the house, and Richard yells at her to run. The intruder makes his way to the stairs, and Richard runs after him. He first tells the police he fell down the stairs. Then he tells the police he was pushed down the stairs by the intruder. Either way, he fell down the stairs while he hears Connie heading for the basement. And why would she go to the basement, you think? Well, he said they kept his gun down there. while he hears Connie heading for the basement. And why would you go to the basement, you think? Well, he said they kept his gun down there. And he said she was probably going to get the gun

when she hears there's an intruder in the house. So Richard chases after the intruder, who's chasing after Connie, into the basement. And then he hears, as he's approaching, he hears a shot, a gunshot ring out that is so loud, he said he couldn't hear anything else for five minutes. Notably, though, let's take a pause because I want to tell you that Richard's story tended to change several times when he retold it. In one version, he said he saw Connienie get shot very outright saw it happen when questioned again he described the scene very differently then on a third explanation he said oh no connie

actually was fighting with the intruder and then he shot her and then in a fourth explanation he said it was too dark to see anything at all so he just heard the gunshot didn't see it okay so already really fishy uh in the basement remember there were they found those burnt papers next to like a butane torch so the intruder for some reason was burning papers near connie's body with a butane torch then he allegedly forced richard back upstairs where he subdued him, bound him to a chair, and then tormented him, using the torch to singe him and randomly poking his chest and thighs with the box cutter. Although Richard described it as him saying he wasn't overly aggressive with the box cutter, just gentle stabbing. He was just

tickling you with the box cutter. Just a little tickle. It was just a little fun game, you know? stabbing he was just tickling you with the box cutter a little tickle it was just a little fun game you know meanwhile i would think if someone has already has the adrenaline of having just murdered shooting someone just shooting somebody and now you've got a whole witness that person's so dead so he's gonna just do a little paper cut i don't think so that's exactly exactly what they were thinking yeah and when i said well what did he sound like aside from this vin diesel thing he said i couldn't hear anything he said because my ears were still ringing from the gunshot okay okay but you were able to know what he sounded like before yeah i see i guess i think he's just i think this was

just his way of saying oh i couldn't i couldn't understand what he was saying or like you know why he was doing this i couldn't understand what he was saying but when the attacker left richard somehow made his way to the alarm panel panic button to signal police for help he said he got the screen for help and then a gentleman came in the house saw the scene and called 9-1-1 and then left and never identified himself hmm a gentleman cool a gentleman although to be fair if i heard someone screaming and i walked in on that scene i would also not want to stick around but i would call the police for them you have to stick around oh i didn't even know that well i mean if you've witnessed something like you're gonna be you need to describe what you saw that's true I've seen have I've called the police before and then asked them do I have to stay or

can I leave oh I think it I think it I'm I'm assuming in this case they'd be like please wait there because a couple of times I've called the I've called 9-1-1 for like I saw an elderly woman get hit by a car and she flew like 15 feet it was horrifying um and she survived thankfully but it was just one of those moments of like slow motion just horror and so of course I called 911 and they were like please stay there so we can you know ask you what you saw and write down you know the details and make sure she's okay you know and I think especially if you're calling for a medical emergency they instruct you like how to do oh really because i've called i've called for a

medical emergency before but on yourself or what no like i was driving i straight up saw a person i'm only starting to giggle out of nervousness but i saw a guy literally without his arm like it would it was recently gone and he was just walking around just like okay i don't think they would expect you to get yourself involved in that and i called and i was like i don't know how to say this but this man clearly just lost his arm and is walking around like like he might be on adrenaline and not even know what's going on he might be on drugs and not know what's going on and they were like on drugs and not know what's going on. And they were like, what did he look like? And I was like, it might've been a white shirt, but it's fully red now. So red shirt, I guess. And then I was literally in my car when I saw this happening,

like across like the highway. And I was like, I have no way of getting to him. I have. Oh yeah. No. I mean, I think that's different. I think if you were to walk into a house and be like, I see a guy laying on the ground. He's begging for help. Like they'd be like, okay. Ask him what happened or something. I mean, I'd still, I'd still at least hide somewhere until the cops got there and then re show myself and be like, understandable. Like, you don't know if the perpetrator is still there or, you know, if you're in danger, but it's also like, why would you walk into someone else's house? And no, that makes sense for 9-1-1. Like, it's just very weird. And then disappeared and never said anything. Like, wouldn't you be like, Hey, I'm what happened here? I'm calling 9-1-1. It seems like a very important anonymous tip. Yeah. Yes. It's just like, so bizarre,

especially in a neighborhood where everyone knows each other like you know it's not like a random apartment complex where you don't know it just struck them as odd um so the community of course is shocked um so violent so brutal so terrifying this neighborhood's known to be safe very calm um richard made a and of course the person, Connie, who was killed was just a quote light, like a favorite of everybody's like just so everyone knew her. So everyone knew her. So if they were a random neighbor walking by, they'd know whose house that was. Yeah, exactly. So Richard made a public statement on Facebook for his friends and family after the incident.

And I'm going to read some of it to you. OK. This is a screenshot of Richard's post. As most of you know by now, Connie, and by the way, tagged Connie's profile, which I find kind of weird. I don't, maybe that's not weird. I don't know, but it's like a link to her profile. Maybe it's not weird. As most of you know by now, Connie has been taken from us far too early the volume of loving friends family and acquaintances who we saw at services is a testament at how much she touched the lives of others many questions unanswered but we are all doing our best to move forward as impossible as it seems we try to stay strong for the boys RJ and Connor need me now more than ever both my family and Connie's have been so incredibly

helpful and loving to those boys. Our friends and neighbors have also been showing an amazing amount of support. To all of you, I say thank you, and Connie thanks you. She was also much better than I about communication on social media. While I reserved it for irrelevant current event talks, jokes, geek rants, etc., she used it in a more meaningful way, although we all know she was pretty solid in the jokes department. It's going to take me some time to get a rhythm here on FB, but I'm going to use it how Connie used the Caring for Connor page. Not only did she post important information about Connor's medical journey, but it was therapeutic for her. Many times as she shared items, she helped someone else or someone helped us.

I'm going to turn to my Facebook family quite a bit. And it goes on. But anyway, that's just an idea of like his statement following the murder. And the friends in the episode also described the aftermath. So like the wake and the funeral, very strangely. And they said at the time they never ever ever ever suspected he could have had anything to do with it right but he was acting

very weird and again they said like maybe it was shock we just didn't know but i want to point out a couple of those things so first of all at the wake, the friends, and they were like best friends, these three. And they lived in the same neighborhood. And they called themselves like the three amigos. And they are BFFs, right? So the two friends come to Connie's wake. And they are standing in line to pay their respects. And like three hours in, they finally reach Rick.

And they're just like, you know, we're so sorry. And he goes, how did you know my wife? And they're like, huh? Like they know, like they know each other. Like they've, it's just very odd. And they were like, we just kind of let it go because maybe he's just like in shock and isn't understanding reality. But it would be like me going to your wake and Alison being like, how did you know my partner? You know, it's like, yeah, it's just so strange. Like,

what do you mean? Like, what an odd question. Yeah. Yeah. I guess maybe he was trying to act just so discombobulated that. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. And like, maybe that wasn't even part of it. I don't know. But maybe that wasn't even part of it i don't know but it you know they were they were just noting some very strange behaviors like he they stuck around at the burial and he just like left almost immediately like he wasn't part of it he apparently texted the group of friends like hey great neighbors uh what's some good takeout around here like days like days or weeks after the murder and they were like what like he's like where do we get good takeout where do you usually order from and

they're like why are you texting us this like why is that even on your mind right now you know yeah also like the facebook post seemed a little odd like it felt like it was more like i'll take on these tasks versus like we're heartbroken. Yeah. It's sort of like, oh, my kids need me now more than ever. And obviously we have hindsight, you know, 2020, but it's like, God. I don't know. Also, like, I guess people heal differently and that's how anyone would have justified it, I guess, at the time. Yeah, exactly.

So neighbors are not really aware that this is going on, but behind the scenes, police are starting to add up all these red flags. And something that they also talked about was another suspect who kind of came up around this time. Because when they asked neighbors, you know, did anybody, did they have any enemies? Pretty much everyone in the neighborhood said yes. There is a contractor that they had just sued in small claims court and they had a very bad relationship with him apparently he had promised to do some work on the bathroom but then the changes that they wanted were too expensive and they refused you know they didn't want to whatever you know classic like contractor conflict situation and they ended up suing him in small claims court and settled.

But they said, you know, this has been like a very fraught relationship with this guy. And so, you know, if you're looking for someone who may have had a motive, check this contractor out. So they do check out the contractor. And first of all, he's pretty small, not over six feet, not stocky. And his voice does not sound like Vin Diesel. So pretty right away, they're like, this isn't really a fit. Also, his alibi completely checks out. So this guy is off the table. And now nobody else can think of a possible suspect who would have wanted her dead.

So as they're, you know, asking Richard over and over again for his story again it continues to change every single time so originally he says he sees connie leave the house for her spinning class then he says oh wait actually i left before her while she's still in the garage he originally said i left for work at 8 30 then he changed to 820. Then he changed it to later than earlier. And when they checked his phone, there was no alarm notification. And he said, oh, I deleted it. OK. By the way, I don't know.

I know this was several years ago. But like on ADT, you can like see like, why would you delete? Whatever. It doesn't matter because it's all bullshit. But he said the intruder forced him to the chair in a headlock but then later he said the intruder used some sort of special pressure point technique to grab him by the wrist and walk him like a dog to the chair okay okay things just were not clear they were like well what do you think these papers were that he was burning he's like i have no idea

couldn't tell you he said the more i talk to you the police the less i remember because the questioning apparently was freaking him out i don't know i don't know okay i don't know i'm just waiting for it to make sense well you're gonna wait a long time yeah uh so there was also the question of richard's injuries or more notably lack thereof according to richard he was thrown around the room by a huge assailant who then pushed him down a flight of stairs dragged him across the room bound him to a chair threatened him with a blowtorch and started gently stabbing him with a box cutter and the issue was that according to his medical records when he was examined right after the

attack and again in the following days and weeks there were virtually zero signs of any trauma on his body there were no defensive wounds there were no push down the stair of wounds there were no burn marks like it nothing matched up to this story he was telling according to the arrest warrant specifically there were quote no bruises abras, other cuts or lacerations noted on the body of debate to indicate any struggle had occurred. Not even on his pressure points on his wrists that he said the guy was using to drag him across the room. Obviously, like I I guess if he if I'm going to commit a murder and then look like I was another victim I would have to commit to like also hurting myself you'd think but like he was clearly too afraid to actually hurt himself like yeah he's like oh well he was just very gentle with the exacto knife or whatever it's

like well was he gentle with the gun five minutes ago yeah no it doesn't make any sense and it's like what a bastard to be like oh well he didn't want to hurt me. But like, you might as well have made up a story that you showed up after. Like, and why even say I fell down the stairs when like you don't even have a bruise? Yeah. It's just like you didn't even need to add that. Like he was just adding shit to make it seem. And you know what they say? People who lie add way more detail than people who are telling the truth because they're

trying to prove their story. And it's like, yeah yeah i'm seeing how this is happening because he's saying the same details but differently every time he's adding shit to the story it's like something is fishy here my friend the shallow so he had these very shallow superficial punctures from this box cutter and they lined up in a way with such an angle and consistency that guess what they appeared to be self-inflicted what a surprise after the exam at the hospital he pretty much walked away without a scratch um or maybe with like a scratch and that's it but a gentle one a very gentle stab uh in his arm and he left without any pain so police this is a good question that i hadn't thought of until i read this research which is that police asked richard why he never got up and checked on connie while he was waiting for help he had a free arm like you noticed a free

leg he was able to get to the alarm panel and it seemed like he was physically fine so why were you lying on the floor of the kitchen moaning in pain when you had no injuries and why didn't you go check on your wife who was shot downstairs it didn't make any sense so richard said well i was afraid that someone would come back and shoot me if i did anything but like he was screaming for help and calling 911 and hitting the alarm panel. So that's a bullshit excuse. Things started looking worse for Richard when they found out about his affair. And he actually had told them pretty early on, even in the hospital bed, he was already

talking about this affair because he kind of wanted to get ahead of it. And he's like hey i know this sounds crazy but like i'm having an affair and i want to get it out there before it comes back on me and in the dateline episode you can literally hear the beeping of like the hospital oh god like you hear like the beeping because he's in a hospital and so he's telling them you know i have been in this relationship apparently this affair has been going on for seven years on and off and uh most notably of all they find out that his girlfriend is pregnant oh shit oh and when questioned richard assured the officers that not only did Connie know about the affair and the pregnancy, but she was considering co-parenting the child with Richard and his girlfriend in order to keep their families together for the sake of their sons.

He clearly didn't know about this memo in her phone that said reasons for a divorce because. Well, if he had, that certainly would have been deleted. Deleted? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. This is nuts. divorce because well if he had that certainly would have been deleted deleted yeah yeah exactly this is nuts in fact he said connie wanted a third child according to richard but she was having trouble conceiving so they recruited yep recruited sarah as a surrogate but when the surrogacy didn't work out like getting semenmen, they went the, quote, old fashioned way. And he just had sex with her to get her pregnant.

Oh, my God. I know. I know. What a story. What a story. He's telling this story and saying, oh, it was actually her idea. And they were like, what? They're like, wait, so your girlfriend or your wife was OK with you having sex with your girlfriend to get her pregnant and he said oh no it was actually her idea and it's like okay okay

likely story so that's what he's telling people and in that same literal same conversation beeping still going on in the background he starts to change the story. They pressed him a little bit on this saying like, really? Your wife really wanted this? And he said, well, actually, it started off as cheating and she didn't know about it at first. And he said, but Connie cheated, too. And they never found any evidence of that, by the way. Finally, after a little more pressing, he admits that the whole affair was a secret from Connie she had no idea and the pregnancy was an accident well duh why didn't you just start with that because he thought he could outsmart them also like wouldn't they have just interrogated her and she would have been like yeah

obviously the wife does not know about this yeah well I will say I misspoke a little bit because he did still at this point insist that Connie knew about the affair not that she want knew about the pregnancy not that she had anything to do with the pregnancy but he said she did know about the affair and was fine with it but of course when they find this memo saying reasons for divorce and there's no like he's having an affair on the top of the list they're like I don't think she knew about this yeah i hmm i don't believe you yeah because if she knew that he was spending a thousand bucks on a credit card in her name but didn't specify on his girlfriend she probably didn't know you

know i think that would have made the cut the note did however say quote he is never happy nothing i ever do is good enough he swears at me he was not sympathetic when my dad got diagnosed The note did, however, say, quote, with their homework. I have to do it all. He gets mad at me. He drinks and drives. He just screams all the time. So this was in the list of, you know, why to get it or reasons to get a divorce. She had also, as they, uh, as they went through her technology, her computer, they found out she had been searching how to avoid traumatizing children during divorce, which makes me feel extra sad because obviously. She was clearly thinking about the whole family. About the family, the kids. And then, like, of course, the most traumatizing thing of all happened. It's just horrible.

Six and nine. She was also researching how to settle on shared custody. She wanted their potential divorce to be peaceful to keep the kids safe and you know protected she did have a couple pros on the list just a couple and she mentioned that he sometimes babysits the children yikes gross sometimes gives her neck rubs and that he's fun to be around when he's in a good mood those were the only benefits to being in a relationship with this guy so that he does so he every now and then rubs your neck yeah and then and then every now and then agrees to watch the children he chose to have exactly yeah he babysits them like and then every now and then he's in a good mood and during that good mood wants to spend it with you.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Sounds like a real catch. Sounds like a catch. Yeah. And she didn't even. And that's why when they said like they looked through it and this affair wasn't on the list, like it would have been in there.

This is an extremely detailed note. Like all of her friends and family said, too, you know, if she had known she'd be pissed. Like she wouldn't have just said, okay. And moved on. Right. Yep. The list is extensive. Okay. This list about why she should get a divorce. She never mentioned an affair, never mentioned a pregnancy. Um, it did not seem like she knew. So the woman Richard was seeing, they had known each other since middle school. She even had read a reading at Richard and Connie's wedding. Yikes. That's awful.

At first, she didn't like the idea of breaking up this marriage. She said she didn't want to break up a family. And when she realized she was pregnant, she planned to raise the baby on her own. But Richard kept insisting to her that his marriage to Connie was unhappy and he wanted to raise their child together. And so, of course, when Richard is telling police this, he knows this is a bad look. He said to the police, this story popped up like a frickin' soap opera. He's like, can you believe the odds? You know.

Yeah. Wow, what a weird coinkydink. However, more issues came up because friends knewnie as being very vocally anti-gun she was afraid of guns she never wanted one in the house so it would not be her instinct to run and grab a gun if someone were in the house it would be especially like probably to leave also in every horror movie like we the first thing you yell at people about is running down into the basement. We could run out the door.

Yeah. Yeah. And so he's like, well, that's where I kept my gun. And it's like her friends were like, she would not have gone and gotten that gun. She wouldn't have even thought of the gun, you know? Yeah. She would have ran. And the only reason there was a gun in the house, by the way, is because Richard said he became worried months earlier when someone apparently tried to break into his car in the driveway through the windshield.

And he said he wanted to get a gun to protect himself. But guess what? When they went back through the officer's report, the responding officer had noticed that the windshield had been broken from the inside of the car. So he broke his own windshield and then said, well, I guess I should get a gun because we're not safe. Which is super. I was going to say that. So he was months out on this. Isn't that horrible? well i guess i should get a gun because we're not safe so which is super i was gonna i was gonna say

that so he was months out on this horrible like so sinister like to know that for months like you're or i guess she never had to worry about it i guess but like if she knew that the last several months you were living with this person he plans on killing you it's horrific horrific or for the kids to find out you know it's horrible. And he used that incident as the excuse to buy the gun. And by the time of the crime, he had two guns. So the gun he purchased in October was the gun that he used to kill Connie in December. Now, this is where things take an interesting twist, because with evidence mounting mounting police looked at some unassuming clues that richard clearly had not thought of and that was the data from connie's fitbit tracker

they were able so she had a fitbit that she attached to her waistband and he did not think to remove that or destroy it or hide it because they were able to track her steps her movement her heart rate and they were able to follow her morning from the time she woke up when she put the thing on went to the ymca got home at 9 23 and at the time that he had originally said she was supposedly running from the intruder her heart rate and movement were normal she was calm just walking around the house and in in the time between Connie coming home from the YMCA and her last movement, which is so horrific, at 10.05 when she died, she had walked over 1,200 feet in total. And investigators measured this. They said if Connie had come home, walked in from the car, heard Richard yelling to run, and sprinted toward the basement, she would have traveled maybe 150 feet, not 1,200.

So minutes later, after she's supposedly running from this intruder, the second floor motion sensor went to sleep and like nobody was up there. So it's not even tracking movement. And meanwhile, he's saying he went upstairs, found this intruder in the closet, and they're having this big battle. No, the motion sensors upstairs were off. Nothing was happening. Meanwhile, at 940, again, while she's supposedly fighting for her life, Connie was posting multiple videos to Facebook. And minutes later, she sent a message on Facebook Messenger to a friend, all of which was during this time when Richard said she was fighting for her life with this home invader and was within 30 minutes before she was killed so the data did not stop there because in the months leading up to the attack they were able

to search richard's search history great yep guess what he googled. Everything from how long until a body starts to smell and how to shoot somebody quietly and how to every the use. I use so fucking stupid. How to kill your wife and get away with it without your two sons finding out right away. It might as well be, you know, he wrote deadly over the counter pill combinations. Tasteless poison easily available. I bet he searched tasteless poison first and then was like, no, these are too complicated to get. This is how I know that like we don't actually have FBI agents like staring like individually tasked with each of us. Because, you know, people say like, oh, my FBI agent obviously knows I want this jacket because it keeps showing up on my computer.

If we did, that FBI agent was sleeping on the goddamn job that day he should have been like uh mr president this guy is like obviously gonna kill his wife mr president we have somebody we need to intercept because he's trying to easily obtain i don't know arsenic okay yeah yeah yeah how many apple seeds does it take to right it's so fucking it's so cliche you know it's embarrassing so he writes tasteless poison easily available untraceable homemade poison how much ethylene glycol is lethal and he also googled connie's spin class schedule uh at 9 45 which so he's googling during the time frame where he said he's battling it out with this home invader like he's even leaving a trail i feel like even okay i promise i don't have any murderous tendencies but if i were to like if i were to even think

about committing murder in the year of 2023 right i would think well technology would absolutely out me so like why would i like there's no like between facebook fitbit his texting the security who do we think we're kidding that we're gonna get away with it right like who do i think we're kidding i would even if i wanted to commit some sort of crime and technology would somehow you know let the cat out of the bag i'm not even trying it at that point. I'd be like, well, it's just not going to happen. It's not going to happen. And like, even when you do take measures to prevent looking guilty, then you look guilty because why would you turn your phone off for three hours when you've never turned your phone off before? Is it to avoid being traced? Like there's, it's really a hard thing to do. And I think the only way a lot of these

people get away with it is because they just somehow convince a jury or, you know, or it's just classic, like, justice system thing of like, there's just, I don't know, things just take too long or things are bungled or they don't look at evidence properly. I don't know i i feel like i would not trust my odds at trying to beat technology you know oh yeah i mean but then i hear about people like this who don't even go in incognito mode and i'm like fucking amateurs you know yeah like not again not that i condone any of this but it's one of those things of like people who are just like i guess one of the main characteristics of a killer at this point is like absurd amount of confidence yep but like for you to really think you could get

away from the internet i mean there's a reason why there's like government doomsday preppers that are terrified of the internet like they know that they're being tracked i know without being a doomsday prepper that i'm being tracked how is like joe schmoe who thinks he's apparently king and can kill whoever he wants and get away with it how is he soe schmoe who thinks he's apparently king and can kill whoever he wants and get away with it how is he so blissfully unaware that google and any app you use and your phone in general and the internet and all of it's watching you like and like you type somebody into google what do you think a search history is like how did you think you would get away with it i just don't understand the like complete it's it's got to be some sort of factor on like

spontaneity of like oh i'll figure it out when we get there it's like what do you mean like you have to plan just an element of narcissism of like they won't look there you know i yeah like who knows what the thought process is if there is one and you know i i know it was like the two that like it was what now 2014 so what's eight years ago i'm so bad at math i mean technically now it's nine years ago but it's really eight eight ish i put the like but that was still plenty of time for someone to understand how the internet works history like you know about google search history i mean you google like that is just if a jury's gonna buy anything it's like oh he googled how to kill his wife hello like how much more obvious can you get whether it's circumstantial

or not it's still pretty fucking damning to say oh he was searching how to kill her and then she just happened to die just like so it's horrible and to know that he was in the under the same roof with her and the kids and searching like how to poison her is also like a bit of a sidestep but the fact that he was looking up how to poison her to get away with it that way and he basically was able to figure out it would be impossible to do so then he just resorted to shooting this elaborate tale about getting like my windshield broken i mean like it's horrible how much he wanted her dead it's it's like and for what like for what up like what was your reason like really to really run away with sarah and like raise the baby i just i just can't imagine

ever it's beyond me it really is beyond me so he's searching her spin class to figure out what time she's gonna get home and this is this just adds like a sinister twist here because the day before Connie's death uh she and Richard had had a disagreement and um usually her texts with him were very uh very sweet and she called him sweet pea and buttercup um oh by the way they looked at the text between him and sarah and the day before the murder he called her his oh god what did he call her his love nugget or something ew yeah something weird like that gross um but the day before nugget i don't like it that's kind of it's crazy okay anyway i don't even know if that's right i could probably be totally off but it was something that kind of made me go oh you know um probably somebody out there's like that's what i say to my love my partner i'm sorry i'm not trying to i mean

i call mine stinky witch i know i'm not trying to yuck anyone's yum. I think it's just the fact that he's texting this woman under the same roof while he's trying to poison his Googling how had had this argument and it was about a bill. She found a bill and he was lying about it. So it sounds like she was in the right and was cornering him. And she said, well, once again, I have to clean up your mess. And she said, quote, great day off and Merry fucking Christmas. Oh, so they were in bad shape that day. Shortly after her death, Richard tried to collect on Connie's $450,000 life insurance policy, but the insurance company denied him. And apparently when Richard found out his girlfriend was pregnant, he had started taking large sums of money out of their bank accounts, his and his wife's, as much as $175,000.

Jeez. Yes. In January of 2016, he took $90,000 out of a Fidelity account that belonged to Connie. After a lengthy investigation, Richard was arrested in April of 2017. The warrant was nearly 50 pages long. They had gathered so much evidence to arrest him there was kind of a hiccup because like i said these things move so slowly sometimes in the justice system uh that march of 2020 is when the court date was scheduled and what do we think

happened march of 2020 i think he couldn't make it in that day. I think it was postponed due to a little illness that was going around. So did he end up just getting house arrest for two years or something? Yep. Shut the fuck up. Yep. He was able to post his million dollar bond and was basically free until the trial started. So, you know living life

i think uh connie's brother described it as like the only one dancing and singing in the street is him like he's the only one having a good time everyone else is like devastated about this loss is reeling is trying to recover and he's just like woo i'm free you know and fucking around i can't that's just the cruelest. Like, where did his kids go during quarantine, too, by the way? I think they were with him. I'm pretty positive. He got to just raise his kids and just basically live like everyone else, as free as everyone

else. Once he went to jail, they were moved, I believe, to their grandparents' house or just another family member. But yeah, he was with them for quite a time. Finally, the trial did take place. It was about five weeks long. It was revealed during the trial that there was gunshot residue on Richard's shirt

and Richard gave very unconvincing testimony. Also, they interviewed, or they had Sarah, the pregnant girlfriend on the stand. She was kind of defending him. It was she was a little abrasive. They said she wasn't belligerent by any means, but she was

pretty abrasive and it was clear that she was not looking to put him away, if that makes sense. Either way, Richard was found guilty after the trial and uh this was august of 2022 he finally seven years after the crime was sentenced to 65 years in prison and after the hearing outside the courthouse connie's brother said it enables us to get a little bit of closure even even though it won't bring Connie back as a family.

We can move forward. So that is the story. I mean, taken way too soon. And and to post it on Facebook and be like, oh, she was taken too soon. And my kids need me now more than ever. It's like you just took their mother away. Yeah, they don't need you. You took their fucking mother away.

They needed both of you. And you just fucking took both of them away. Like's beyond me that how you could do this wow but do we know where the kids are today they live now with a family member i guess you know i'm not sure i think since they're minors they don't really share much about that um what i heard was that they went to yeah a family member geez yeah that's so sad i can't even imagine like their life now they have to just upended you know make it work and like no that shouldn't have had to happen and i always wonder about that feeling of like if a parent is in jail for the murder of your other parent like do you have to just tell yourself like they

didn't do it they're innocent do you i mean i'm sure it's like a constant struggle of like it's still your dad but like do you reject that relationship you know i i just always wonder how that is and i'm sure it's different for everyone but it's just so dark um but yeah so you know uh and i i also want to point out a lot of times people call this the fitbit murder but uh her family has kind of said they'd prefer to shy away from that because it's kind of i'm sure fitbit would also like to shy away yeah well that's true too that's true too but yeah so you know i think it's just a kind of makes it a little too light-hearted of a yeah makes sense phrase but yeah so you know what this fucking guy the husband did it wow

everyone sends good energy to those kids because they really need it no um wow i don't think you've done a one that was that recent in a long time either yeah i you know i felt that way too i felt like this was very much one like ripped from the headlines you know yeah it was like five months ago 2022 being the the trial yeah wow crazy well thank you for thank you for the story you are so welcome um i'm glad i coughed and sneezed through it a lot less than last week other than that i i don't know is there any news we gotta tell people anything we gotta we got going on listen we're about to be on tour maybe are already on tour uh we're already on tour i think this is our first week on tour or last week was you're right we just the day this comes out we just did our first shows phoenix and anaheim whoo and i'm really hoping i didn't pass

out on stage all right because what a fun headline headline grabber that would be that would you know for the pr extra you know i i'm fine to pass on stage as long as it gets us good marketing so we've always said that we're like if anything ever happens to me like use it to your advantage yeah just use the shit out of it i like i've also told the story write a book i've also told Christina I was like the only way I'm going to get through this particular part of my medical journey is through humor so like if I pass out if it's in a funny way I'm gonna need you to laugh really fucking hard you're gonna need to take a photo put it on tiktok go viral yeah do it do whatever you need career-wise if I pass out you know I will and honestly this obviously the same goes for you.

Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. Use it to your advantage. Get all the likes you can. Well, good luck to me and good luck to you. Good luck to everybody on any particular journey they're on. Yes. And I guess if you want to hang out more, we've got our after chat and I hope everyone goes and checks it out. Yeah. I'll tell you more about the birds of Kentucky. Whee! Okay, sounds good. Bye. Oh, that's...

Whoa, why? Whee! Yeah, drink! Whee!