And That's Why We Drink - E319 Synchronicity Sandwiches and Long Lost Mustard Friends

Episode Date: March 19, 2023

We’ve got episode 319 coming at ya and we’re peeling back the proverbial curtain on Slack channel microphone mishaps and podcaster group chats! First Em brings us a continuation of their last story on crossroads and liminal spaces with the Goddess Hecate, who among so many other cool things is the goddess of ghosts - how are we only just now learning that? Also, Hecate, help! …us with boundaries. Then Christine covers a topic Em requested (and neglected to mention has a personal connection to), the murder of Janet Aboroa. And is anyone’s favorite food mustard? Write in and let Christine’s inner child know… and that’s why we drink!We can’t wait to see you in Ohio! Make sure to get your tickets to our Columbus and Cleveland shows at andthatswhywedrink.com

hello oh interesting where did you learn beep boop bop because that's a go-to for you well that was definitely something that i got a lot of flack for uh because of my favorite murder so i'm not gonna say it oh do they do it yeah well she does something georgia does something very similar and i think i just listened to that show so much when we were first starting the podcast that it got in my head part of the vernacular and then i started doing what people pointed out was blues clues do do do do do do do like i started doing blue skidoo you can too and uh we didn't realize it somebody messaged us about it and then i couldn't unhear it and so beep boop bop i think is what george just said so this time i said beep boop so

everybody leave me alone oh okay you're right sorry My bad for even causing a ruckus. Well, you should have heard the one day My Favorite Murder and Us released the same true crime story in the same week. I've seen complaints about that before. Well, it only happened once. I feel like people think we're in a group chat with my favorite murder and morbid and all these other podcasts i feel like apparently apparently we're all announcing like we're telling each other let's all release the same episode on the same day i think like i'm on i

feel like we're all each on our own little island and we can maybe wave to each other every now and then but like we're very isolated because we're so focused on our own shows that i think you know we don't broaden our horizons that much just a reminder to those that if uh we all put out a story at the same time it is truly just a fluke i don't think it's ever happened again i mean it happened one time with my fair, and that was like three months in to our show. I was like, oh, no. Now I'm like, whatever. I think that one time might have done a doozy on you and you're not aware of it because I've heard you say a few times like, oh, I had notes for this, but I just saw another podcast. Just put it out like last week.

Well, yeah. So I'm going to hold off now. I try to be like the podcast, especially that I listen to regularly. I really do try to make sure people who listen to the same ones aren't just getting the same story twice. Sometimes it's a topical story and like everyone's covering it, you know. That's true. I usually wait a few months so that, you know, I assume everyone else's brain is like mine where it just loses all the information after a certain point. And then I can re-entertain you with the knowledge, you know. Yes, understood. So anyway, hi. Hi hi why do you drink this week christine oh well i'm drinking um iced coffee and i'm still on that grind of daycares and i have four tours next week or not four years it's like kinder i don't know know. See, this is the thing.

I feel like I'm so out of my element. It's like Eva even had to put me in touch with her friend, Jenny, because I was like so. Like you were there. I don't know if you were listening. I was there. You were there. Okay. Well, you were in the backseat of the rental car.

And this was pre-gasoline being gone. This is as the car was still moving across the Canadian border. But I was like, I have a question for you guys that like you don't know the answer to, but I'm going to ask you because I need to talk it out loud. And it was just about like,

I'm waiting to hear back from this one day, toddler program that starts in the fall. And I asked for information and all they said was, oh, well, we'll tell you when we know and I'm like okay could you tell me like a season a month like is there any sort of year a year like when because the program starts in August if I find out August 1st that's a little too late for me okay point being I've just been like on edge and so I applied to a few new places and I'm learning all this stuff that daycare is

different from like a toddler program is different from preschool I mean I'm saying um I feel like I'm learning so much useless information um that by the time you have any children just fucking FaceTime me and I got you that's what I plan on doing with the house and a dog and a marriage in a marriage yeah I go I like listen anyone planning a wedding I've gotten some since I'm the first of my friend groups like get married and I mean not that I can think of any of my friends are married or engaged but uh the ones that like some acquaintances have reached out to me and been like you're the only person I know who's married. What did you do?

Help me. Help me. And I'm like, oh, God, I don't want to delve back into that nightmare hellscape. But, you know, I'm here for you. I'm here for you, Em, if you ever need me. Thank you. So far. If you need to hang a curtain?

No. No. That's not what I'm going to call you for at all. If I ever need you to just throw a nail into any part of the wall to hang not what i'm gonna call you for at all if i ever need you to just throw a nail into any part of the wall to hang any item i will call you oh but it doesn't have to be straight right well technically if it's only one nail it never needed to thank you but that's the life tip for today folks okay well let's just move on because honestly this is like such a stupid little reason but uh i all of a sudden i cannot figure out the

weather in la is very odd right now and so our practices with the thermostat have been really weird and you run very hot right i run very hot uh and i'll go into a room and i'll be like aren't you like sweating your ass off allison and she's like in a five blankets like she's so cold and so uh today the apparently things have changed because she seems easy breezy out there in the common room and my little tootsies are frozen so i'm i'm currently very cold but i don't know why i don't know why she's not much colder than me it's very odd that's why i drink that's fascinating and thrilling all at the same time i saw your eyes dying a little bit i didn't they didn't they're alive look they awake. The light was going away. I could feel it. This is almost as fascinating as the time you broke your glasses.

Wait, which time? Like with the lenses? Which time? That should tell you all you need to know. It was the time when we were on with Wine and Crime and you spent approximately 13 minutes. I had to cut out of you talking about your glasses. And then one of them said, like, my cat died. And we were like, well, cool.

Wait, what? I don't even remember that conversation that it wasn't a cat dying it was it was like you you know we do why we drink this week and we all kind of had an answer and then yours was like about your glasses breaking and then one of the wine and crime gals had like a much more intense reason and we were like we we look like assholes i'm so embarrassed when i no i don't know why I'm shaming you that's the whole point of the show is to just no no dumb things that I was gonna say I'm so embarrassed when I realize how long my tangents can be oh they go long I mean I know but I don't edit anymore so

like I don't they don't as much bother me they used to bother me because I'd be sitting there at three in the morning like when is this gonna end? Because I've already listened to it once in real time. But now, you know, I just ride the wave, baby. Thank you. It definitely should have shocked no people that I had undiagnosed ADHD for a long time. Anyway, I try to be more aware of it now, but it still comes out every now and then no i love it the people love it well i have uh is a two-parter remember this is a technically a two-parter and it's not ley lines no but that could be next week's if you means a lot to you, which I know it does.

So probably it will be. Don't stress yourself on my account. That was a lie. I said it and I was like, that wasn't convincing whatsoever. I know both of us well enough to know that if it's important to you, I'm going to do it. So that'll probably be next week's. but this is kind of a weird continuation from the last episode which we were talking about crossroads um and liminal spaces and i feel like i still i did so much like research on it but then i still feel like i barely covered it it's so weird

it was just can i say something kind of on that note about crossroads that i thought of what i just was listening to this always happens speaking of also this is our i guess synchronicity um but a lot of times when i listen to lore the podcast like things that we just talked about or just mentioned show up and it's i listen to a bunch of podcasts on the same creepy topics but for whatever reason i always feel like lore and our show is like kind of intersecting well it's because we're in that group chat with them and we you know oh right yes we're all on the same island having a luau together yeah and so i was listening to lore and we were doing our big hangout session on the beach metaphorically speaking and he mentioned the word I think he mentioned the word crossroads and I was like whoa that's trippy and it was this morning on my way to story time

um and he said he made a point of oh no he said liminal space and he was talking about childbirth and I was like oh my god what what a crossroads. Think about it. That is wild. Eva just wrote into Slack, microphone mishaps. She's probably trying to rescue me. Thank you, Eva. So I thought, wow, it's like another crossroads, like another liminal space, like from the womb. You're like between worlds almost. other liminal space, like from the womb.

You're like between worlds almost. Well, I want to say interesting that you mentioned that, but really, I can't be that surprised because I literally am doing a continuation episode on it. Oh, okay. You don't seem impressed by my cool fact at all. No, no, no. Okay. It's fine. No, no, no.

I'm trying to relate it to the notes I'm about to do, but like you've already nailed it. Like we're going to talk about exactly that. So it is very odd. Childbirth? I don't want is very odd. Childbirth? I don't want to do that. Childbirth for, like, a split second. Okay. But, like, the concept of, like, just like how we were saying last week,

liminal spaces can be something as, like, your own body parts are liminal spaces. Like, just it's all based on perspective. But even, you know, another maybe more obvious crossroad is moments of transition and changes so wait what's the topic for today so uh since we were talking about crossroads last time one of the figures i was mentioning last time um was the goddess of crossroads or i guess there's a lot of different deities depending on, you know, your culture. There's a different god for Crossroads. But one of the oldest standing ones is Hekate, who is the goddess of Crossroads.

And she, childbirth is involved. Interesting. So is that like a double layer synchronicity? Yeah, I don't know. Maybe triple because I was we we just spoke about how sometimes so how we worry about other podcasts talking about the same topics it's all intertwined baby feels like a synchronicity sandwich and you're the meat i don't want to be that part well this episode and last episode are the bread and you talking about it in between is can i be the dijon yeah well okay sure okay i this is also topsy-turvy

you can be whatever you want to be christine thank you do you like dijon love it i'm okay with it i love all mustards i like all mustards except normal mustard uh you don't like yellow no i'm a i'm a french i'm a spicy brown you know i love a yellow mustard man i used to actually say in elementary school that mustard was my favorite food and it really looking back now it makes sense why i didn't have any friends but but also not be your friend i think you wouldn't have been my about me literally remember those posters you'd make mine literally said my favorite food was mustard you got a weird life christine i feel like if i i don't know i think in today's world i would want my child to be friends with that child but i don't know if as the child i would have been super ready one or two teachers who were like I get it but like 99% of my teachers were like this freaking freak girl get her out of here. If there were two kids in that class though and mustard was both their favorite food oh my god

it's like written in the stars. I swear to god it's fate. Anyway back to Hakate. Okay so if anyone out there was like I also wrote mustard on my reach out maybe we're long lost twins or soulmates or something yeah yeah you can be in on the group chat we've been talking about you come to the luau it'll be great bring the mustard so uh i have a um a fun fact going into it which is that william shakespeare has mentioned hakate and macbeth a midsummerummer Night's Dream, and King Lear. Whoa! And then another fun fact is that her name lends itself to the word hecatom, hecatom, hecatom, which means a sacrifice of a hundred. So a lot of times people would sacrifice a hundred for Hecate, a hecatom. And because because 100 is like written into her work into her name

the 100th discovered asteroid was named hecate that's so lovely i love it and interesting because her mother is the goddess of astrology okay so it's only fair a little double fun there i like how she's the literal goddess of astrology and her daughter gets the name of the asteroid though she's like what the fuck what's her name our oh uh maybe she got something too i'm a dumbass her name is asteria like i was gonna say i feel like maybe she already got her name in there. I assume she's OK. I just wanted to touch on that just in case. OK.

Thank you, because otherwise you would have brought it up later. So, again, from the last episode, Hakate is associated with crossroads or liminal spaces. And in Greek mythology is known as the goddess of crossroads. She is. I planned on this whole episode being just about her and crossroads um which it like i guess is like a subtle layer over everything the entire time you'll see crossroads as a general theme but damn i made a good call last week by not going in depth on her um because there would have just not been enough time this girl has a lot going on so

not only is she like i can't like like i when i first hear like goddess of crossroads not to be like not to judge crossroads but when i hear the goddess of crossroads i'm like oh like you're only the goddess of like if you got selected for that in class you'd be like really like i'm an interesting topic i know what you mean well again thank god i made this call last week because this girl the crossroads is the least of her fucking worries she is the goddess of i'm not kidding everything and like started out that way as everything over time. She has slowly dwindled and has become known for certain things. But at the beginning of time, she like predates several of the other gods.

And so for a long time, she was just in charge of fucking it all. And now she's just delegating. I love that for her. Now she's just, you know, she's climbed her way up. She's really she's defined her role. But so what she is currently known for in today's like witchcraft circles she is known as not really the goddess of crossroads anymore but as the goddess of magic literally the goddess of fucking magic cool big casual goddess the goddess of witchcraft so

if you're a witch she's the one you got to pay attention to um she's the goddess of the night she's the goddess of the moon she's the goddess of god she's the goddess of ghosts and she's the goddess of necromancy like oh how how i stumbled upon her how we haven't ever know stumbled upon her yet until now it's shocking the goddess of ghosts i feel like that should have been like the first thing we ever paid attention to seriously she's also the this kind of falls more into crossroads world she's the protector of the household and family entranceways transitions and thus crossroads and liminal spaces she was one of the few who could this we'll talk more about this but she is one of the few deities ever who were able to move between worlds.

Ooh, that's cool. And that probably leads into now why she's known for necromancy and ghosts, because she was able to interact with the living and the dead. Thus, her liminal space as someone who could go into liminal worlds. That is very cool. She also is able to control other people's passageways and so that kind of over time um morphed into us thinking that she can also pass on her gifts to other people so um and she's also known as Breaker of Chains and could remove bindings that were holding you back from further into your journey. Ooh, that's deep.

So I think I'm going to say this wrong. The Chaldean oracles? I think it's Chaldean. Chaldean oracles. Okay. So those were second century magical texts. Second century magical texts. And in that, it's one of the pieces of literature she's best known for being written about in.

And this is in the second century. It's farther, farther, farther into the future. We've already got like years of knowing who she is. But this one text describes her probably the best compared to anyone else, which basically said she is the liminal space between concept and creation. Okay. My brain, it's not feeling good. It's hurting a little bit. A.K.A. she's the key holder of the cosmos. Oh, my God.

This chick is busy. oh my god this chick is busy and uh they even in the these texts they call her the savior and the world's soul no pressure by the way i know so i guess in in those writings uh it was that there is one god who was all about the ideas of creating a world and then there was another god who actually would materialize the world and she was the mediator between them so she's able to understand the intellectual side of things as well as the materials the practical side whoa listen her name means worker from afar and she has had as i just said extensive powers in all realms like childbirth to the ocean to i mean she's all over the place um and so that has caused a lot of confusion because she's often conflated with other deities that are best known for certain things so like she's she's the goddess of the night but also there's nyx who is literally

the goddess of night so um i think the story goes that before all these other deities came about and kind of selected one she was just in charge of it all until other people started getting assigned stuff okay got it before it was delegated and so because she had so many abilities and she was just so far reaching in her power, it also led to her still to this day being worshipped in countless ways. So some people worshipped her for one thing versus another or for all things. So that's what we're working with. A lot of options. A lot of options. And because we don't know much of her origin, she's considered much older than a lot of gods of the Greek pantheon.

So she's the only child of the Titans Persis or Persis and Asteria. Persis is a Titan who was the god of destruction and peace, which is interesting that her own father had a duality thing going on. And then her mother is Asteria, the goddess of astrology and the stars. Her cousins were Apollo and Artemis, although they were both often conflated with Hecate. So, for example, Apollo and Hecate could both they both had the gift of prophecies. And then there's one theory that Artemis and Hecate were actually, they both had the gift of prophecies. And then there's one theory that Artemis and Hecate were actually the same person at one point. And then over time they became two different characters. Interesting. Cause I know Artemis, but I did not know Hecate very well.

Yeah. And I guess Hecate and Artemis are very similar, but Artemis was perceived as a very lovely, beautiful being. And and hakate over time became like this darker figure i love her i love her too i bet she liked mustard as as oh you know she was team mustard i bet her about me said that too her away message was brb eating mustard Hit the cell. So during this is the first time that we really see Hakate's, I guess, liminal status, because even though she was she was created by Titans during the war between the Giants and the Olympians, she defeated the giant uh named kleitius and she earned all the olympians respect because she actually helped zeus um but zeus and the titans don't usually get along so because she helped zeus she was the only titan who was not banished to the underworld oh lucky duck which is ironic because she later becomes so associated with the underworld right because she's able to go between both of them but i wonder if that's also why zeus didn't

banish her there because like she could just come back whenever she wanted it's like grounding someone with like an open window it's like i'm just gonna leave again but i was trying to think of an example but I think that's probably the best one. Yeah. Well, Zeus really, really respected her after she helped them and even shared with her, I think only her, the gift to be able to take and give things away from humanity. Ooh, that's dark. Purely at will. If she, if like all the way to, if someone wasn't worshiping her the way that

she wanted she could like cause fucking evil on them like she could and so zeus really like had a soft spot for her and was like you and i can do this and no one else um she was also a mediator between the titans and the olympians um so that was a way that she was good at that mediating thing very good it's almost so i saw one article which was very clearly like a modern day witch was writing about hakate because like at one point it was talking about how hakate was dressed and the description was like this is her drip like this is what her drip was like okay girl but so uh they they did a really good job of saying it's interesting that she was known as a mediator while also being the goddess of um like thresholds and crossroads and the common word between those two things being boundaries

oh i need her in my life as we we know, I have no boundaries whatsoever. Well, so she's able to give like physical bound or protect physical boundaries, but also like mediating emotional boundaries. Kakate, I need help. Girl, help. So she's able to talk to the Titans and the Olympians with respect. She's able to go between the realms. She can talk to the living. She can go to the underworld.

She can really, she's really always an in-betweener in all of the stuff that she does. And although she was said to not have any children, other texts later suggest that she did have kids, but I think it might be like symbolic kids or metaphorical kids

or they were really close. Maybe it meant goats meant goats yeah i'm sure it did not uh well so one of them was i'm gonna i think i'm gonna say it wrong cersei cersei okay so some sources say that that was actually hakate's daughter um others say medea who was like the most powerful witch in Greek mythology. They say that she was either her daughter or niece and also her priestess. And Medea even credits Hekate for giving her her powers. And they both share magical abilities and necromancy, the night, sleep and herbalism. Dang. Power, power, mother daughter duo. Yeah, they're just, you know, killing the parent-kid game.

So where Hakate originally comes from. So there are a few theories, but she comes from either West Anatolia, which is like today's Turkey, Egypt, or Greece. So the Greece theory is, there's two Greece theories. One is that she was the princess named Ephigenia, but then turned into a goddess by Artemis. Another Greece theory, scholars have noted that Apollo, see Apollo and Artemis keep coming in, so they all get kind of mixed with each other. Scholars note that Apollo was occasionally given the name Hekatos instead of Hekate. Oh. So some believe that Hekatos and Hekate may have once actually been the twins instead of Apollo and Artemis,

especially since they have similar powers of prophecy. That is so interesting. But eventually Hekatos wasn't really that big of a name for Apollo, and so they're just like, oh, maybe they're cousins, I don't know. But anyway, the Greeks over time focused more on Artemis's purity and positive aspects, like I said earlier. And they made Hacate more of a darker person.

So even any theory of Artemis and Hacate being the same person ends up not falling through. any theory of artemis and hakate being the same person ended up not falling through then there's the theory that she originally comes from egypt because um there was a frog-headed goddess in egypt named heket who actually breathes life into babies at birth oh and because of this hakate is now associated with frogs and being a guardian of midwives and childbirth. Frogs and childbirth. What a combo. Well, so it's I think it's I guess they can't tell like maybe Hecate is different than Hecate. But if she really came from Egypt first and then came into Greek mythology, that's why they're piecing her together with the frogs.

and then came into Greek mythology. That's why they're piecing her together with the frogs. And because not only was Heket a frog-headed goddess, but frogs are one of the only animals that can live between two different worlds of earth and sea or, you know, land and water. Oh, you just blew my mind. I didn't even think of that. So that's another reason why frogs are associated

with her and then again midwives and childbirth because if she is also the same goddess as haket then on top of everything else she's also in charge of babies being born and you're like oh i forgot she had a frog for a head that's a minor thing we forgot to mention like that's the one that was the detail that almost didn't get written yeah like that seems important guys well so out of all the origin stories of her the main theory is that she's from west intolia again roughly turkey um because they that area had a really close tie to greece at the time and she would have originated in an area called caria um which uh and then she would have come over to greece uh from that area during the archaic age or at least her she would have come over to Greece from that area during the Archaic Age, or at least her story would have shown up. Got it.

So the first time we ever have any knowledge of Hekate is 7th century BCE. And she first appears in the work Theogony. I hope I'm saying that right that sounds right to me it's i don't know but it sounds how would you pronounce the guy h-e-s-i-o-d hisoid that doesn't sound right no no no this is like harmoine all over again okay uh well he wrote theogony and in it he kisses Hecate's ass. I thought he kisses her. I was like, oh, it's a Rome ass? No, like literally just kisses her ass throughout this, like such a brown noser in this whole writing.

Even historians are like, he literally dropped everything he was doing in this book to just talk about how great Hecate was. I don't blame him. I mean, she's pretty baller. i think i'd write a book about her and honestly if if he thought she was real like maybe you want a brown nose a little bit so the goddess of everything doesn't hurt you um and then he also wrote about her uh when talking about the giants versus the olympians then you know the the next century over in sixth century bce the oldest physical evidence of her exists which is a terracotta statue okay another century over in the 5th century bce her statue is placed at the entrance to the athenian acropolis oh so those are the first big things

we see her in but one of the writings she's most popular for is the homeric hymn to demeter which is the story of hades and persephone i don't know if you know that one uh yes i do um do you yeah because i was just telling this is so random i was just telling my mom um because she okay we were eating a pomegranate or we were talking about pomegranates. Uh-huh. I see where this is going. Okay. But get this.

Apparently the German name for pomegranate is paradise apple. And she went, I don't understand why it's called that. And I was like, I do for once my seventh grade Latin came through. Anyway. Um, so I do vaguely know the story. Well, for those who don't know't know uh and if you have to use like hercules disney hercules imagery for this i had to so because we're about to talk about hades and i did think of him with blue hair the entire time oh sure yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

so hakate is most known for this story and hades he stole his niece He kidnaps his niece. His niece's name is Persephone. Right. From her mother, Demeter. So Persephone, who's getting kidnapped by Hades, she's crying out for help. And Hecate and this other god named Helios, they're often paired with each other because I think she had the gift of being able to, I'm going to butcher this, but for some reason their powers worked in conjunction with each other because i think she had the gift of being able to i'm gonna butcher this but for some reason their powers worked in conjunction with each other well helios like for sun i imagine and she had the moon right so maybe yeah and also he his powers were brighter during the day and his

hers were brighter during the night so they were always kind of love it they had like a twin telepathy kind of thing going on without really being twins. Yeah. So when Persephone gets kidnapped by Hades and she's crying out for help, Hecate, with her gift of prophecy, is able to hear it happening from somewhere in the world. Helios is able to see it happening. Uh-oh. And Demeter, when she finds out that her kid is gone, she's looking everywhere for Persephone. She's looking everywhere. Hecate eventually appears to Demeter with torches in her hand and tells her, I know where your daughter was kidnapped.

I heard the abduction happening. Let me help you find your daughter. Oh my gosh. So now Hecate and Demeter are looking everywhere. Hecate leads her to Helios who says i actually saw what happened and i can tell you that it was hades who kidnapped your daughter um and also zeus was like wildly involved so uh because of this demeter i think she was the goddess of agriculture or something and she just like rips the fucking world apart um which is an actual quote from the

source i used like rips the world apart this might be the same source who used the word drip i was gonna say did it say rip the world fucking apart because that it sounds like the same person uh and so basically she just like tears the world apart looking for her kid or like you know just being pissed and like trying to prove to zeus like yeah stop your bullshit with hades and eventually come help me so she's ripping the world apart until eventually zeus commands hades to give persephone back um and by now hades is actually given persephone a pomegranate and it ended up splitting her soul into a mortal half and an immortal half. And now part of her is always

stuck in the underworld. Wow. So even though he's supposed to give her back, part of her is stuck in the underworld. So Hecate becomes Persephone's companion anytime she has to go back and see her other half in the underworld. Whoa. And because of this story of Hecate guiding Persephone's mom, Whoa. And because of this story of Hecate guiding Persephone's mom, Demeter, with the two torches, she is now very often depicted in imagery of her holding torches. Okay, that's cool. So that was one of the main stories of her in Greek mythology. But after the Romans defeated Greece, a lot of their ideas merged together,

and that included a lot of Greekreek mythology went into roman ideals so hakate became part of roman beliefs but her name was changed from hakate to trivia whoa what which is weird because you would think trivia like pub trivia but apparently trivia for sure but trivia means three roads because her power because of her power oh my god i never thought about that because her power was associated with crossroads and she was most powerful at three-way crossroads oh my god even though that's the penis one that's the penis one yes okay i got it just from our previous episode yeah yeah if you're listening backwards just don't worry about it well now i kind of hate the patriarchy because what i learned in this is that you know she's one of the reasons that three is such a divine number now but i hate that like three-way intersections that represent men is the divine one versus the four-way

intersection that represents women yeah it's very confusing anyway she was known as trivia until 7th century a.d so quite a fucking long time wow and now these are just some of the symbols that she's associated with today obviously torches because of that last story frogs because of haket the egyptian goddess and because it can travel between two worlds and she's also known uh for any wild animals at all they are all sacred to her but especially nighttime owls or not nighttime owls nighttime animals including owls possums your favorite i fucking guess possums and the ones that i also have written down are snakes and ravens um my other favorite ravens uh but owls especially because you know they're a symbol for wisdom and since she had the gift of prophecy she knew all wisdom of what is was and will be whoa also owls signify an impending death so that's a good i thought that was crows

no owls are often seen before like at least there's different i know there are a ton of different legends and myths about this but at least in germany from bavaria from what i know three hoots of an owl means someone's about to die oh good to know poof yeah plug your ears I guess if you're in the woods I don't know what else to tell you so another big symbol for her is black dogs she was often seen with two dogs next to her and you could even in a lot of stories hear them barking or howling before you actually saw her so they were the the three hoots if you will the three hoots um dogs are often accompanying her because they are guardians just like her and the dogs uh one of the dogs was said to be this is like such a wild story

um that one of the dogs was said to be the Trojan queen who she ended up saving and turning into a dog. Okay. Um, just going to go with it. Cool. And because of, uh, because of this dogs, this, this part, you're not going to like, but because of this dogs for a while, we're using sacrificial rituals and her, right. Um, but there were other people who would leave offerings at crossroads for her Cate

and extra for her dogs. Well, that's nice. Kind of a, you know. The association with dogs might actually also come from, so there's the dog Cerberus, who is the underworld's guardian dog and has three heads. Think Fluffy from Harry Potter. Yep. world's guardian dog and had three heads think fluffy from harry potter yep um and so a lot of people think that think dogs because cerberus was a guardian dog of the underworld with three heads and hakate was a guardian of places including the underworld and sometimes she had three heads

she did were they frogs i'm so confused my god there's so many things to follow here so this is because uh she was a what's considered a single goddess for a long time which was that she was just like she appeared as an individual okay um and well let's get back to the three heads thing i want to finish this off real quick so we have an order to things um don't forget the three heads thing i know you know i certainly won't so uh other animals that she is seen with is the pole cat because apparently she saved another witch or goddess that and then turned her into a pole cat and other friends what's a pole cat apparently it's like a weasel oh okay which i guess it's a cat shaped like a pole that makes sense

i guess so when you put it that way it's only logical if animals were just like named named by their shape it would make things a lot easier for me. Yeah, yeah, I like it. So she is known for, again, the torch. But the torch is important, not just for the story with Persephone, but because it is a liminal help to light and darkness. Also, she is known for a key, which is her opening gates to other worlds. She's known for the key, which is her opening gates to other worlds. She's known for the cross for crossroads. She's also known for a knife and rope because since she's still associated with childbirth, it's cutting the umbilical cord.

Oh, I was like, what is the knife and rope going to be used for? OK, I get it. I guess symbolic. She's also known for a snake for her dark powers. And then she's associated with the pomegranate for what Persephone ate. Plant wise, she's also known for Cypress, Hazel, Willow, and then U, Y-E-W, because it's half poisonous and half not. And then Black Poplar because it's half light and half dark. Wow.

So now let's get into the three faces. Dude, she's pretty badass. I her so into it as for the three faces thing uh she's often described as a single-formed goddess or one being but eventually her image morphed into more of a symbolic version of her where she was a triple- formed goddess which meant that she either was one being with three heads all facing in different directions because she could see all directions of the world or she was three bodies standing back to back all kind of looking in different directions as a single cool as a single unit so this was pretty common with a lot of gods or goddesses that they were like

sets of three think of like because i'm a five-year-old and think of in disney hercules the fates oh sure they are technically one goddess but they're a triple formed goddess where there are three beings all together um so in that respect she was originally like in her first evidence of her just being like a terracotta statue. It was just one person. But over time, she became this image of three beings all being together. Sometimes if she was just one being with three heads, it symbolized her looking in different directions simultaneously. And sometimes even the animals she was accompanying or that were accompanying her also allegedly had

three heads and so i think that's why a lot of people associate cerberus with her and think dogs are a symbol of her um there are other reasons why she has been given this image so that there are three aspects of hakate being recognized all at once so for example she can see the past present and future another one is uh early on she was given the power over the sky the earth and the sea also because she's the goddess of the moon she's in charge of all three phases so all these things just kind of are all reasons why she got to have three heads compared to other people um and at three-way crossroads she's considered the most powerful compared to other people. And at three-way crossroads, she's considered the most powerful compared to other crossroads.

And Greeks would often leave three masks on a pole, each facing a different way. On a pole or a pole cat? Important distinction. If the pole meows, that's how you know. Okay, just checking. So because of this, she helped the number three become a divine number.

And one of the rituals that a lot of people would do for her is called Diepnon. And it's this ritual where people would go to crossroads and leave food for her and her dogs. And it was often on the last night of a lunar month. And it was sometimes used just to cleanse evil spirits but it was also uh ripe it was also used before somebody started on any type of journey physical or mental oh yeah you mentioned that i think last time yeah so it was if it's a physical journey and they're going on a trip or if it's a mental journey like they're about to make a big decision so i'm always going on a mental journey you could really this show is a mental journey. You could really use one of these words.

This show is a mental journey, honestly. That's a good way to put it. We should have titled it that a long time ago. I don't think so. A journey. A journey. Colon, a mental journey. Mostly mental.

A, parentheses, mental journey. So because she was the goddess of prophecy, people looked to her for protection, which is why they would do these rituals at physical crossroads for her. And being linked to liminal messaging and to travel, her and Hermes are often paired together and their statues are often placed together for protection in certain areas. And her her statues are also placed at city gates, doorways, any entryway, including like private homes, even like I said, the crossroads near the Acropolis. So she's just all over the place to protect physical thresholds while being known for all of her liminal abilities. And then the last thing I'm going to say before I end is on witchcraft, which thanks to her powers giving her access to the underworlds, her goddess role over time morphed into more of a witchcraft icon. Okay. By the medieval period, she was mainlyized so her association to witchcraft really

like solidified her as like a hag look so now a lot of times pictures will have her looking like kind of the old crone um and that really started in the medieval period i don't know about that what i don't know how to feel about that. Oh, I don't like it. I don't like it, but also I'm like, you know, what if you do look like an old hag? So what? You know, like, if that's your look,

I'm not going to be like, you shouldn't look like that. But also I'm like, I don't know. I think I don't like it because she was so clearly like this, like, beautiful, ever powerful. It was very much like she was giving feminist you know like and now all of a sudden it's like you know women are being demonized and there's no way it could be beautiful and powerful and a true goddess that's more powerful than all the others you have to be an old crow right and to add like the darkness of it being like oh she must be old and evil and whatever it's like exactly okay i'm so i was i paused there because i was like i don't know how to express my displeasure about that but also because

a lot of most stories suggest that she never married or had any kids and so she's considered a virgin goddess gross but uh but because i mean think of witchcraft back then like or blaming people for which for being witches. They were alone. They didn't have a man. A spinster. Yeah. So very quickly, you know, the medieval times, they hit her rough.

And so she went from being a goddess to being, like, just the scariest witch alive. I see. Okay. That's very interesting. Even Alistair Crowley himself said this about her. okay that's very interesting even alistair crowley himself said this about her hakate a thing altogether of hell barren hideous and malicious the queen of death and evil witchcraft jesus yep alistair crowley himself like aren't you all about fucking witchcraft your thing like geez so hakate became uh the goddess of witchcraft very quickly after that and people slowly leaned

into her being more associated with dark arts and sorcery than anything else she was in charge of to begin with okay so as someone who could go between worlds and realms she was quickly linked to necromancy plus the fact that she was able to talk to the living and the dead she literally knew fucking hades all of that on top of the fact that over time she became an icon for rebellion resistance and breaking the status quo love it because if you remember from last episode i said that at a lot of crossroads one of the reasons that they think they're incredibly supernatural is because a lot of quote undesirables were buried at crossroads because they weren't right undesirables like unbaptized children yes if you weren't if you weren't

religiously fit to be buried with the rest of your friends and family you were buried at crossroads so it theoretically so that way you would get lost at the crossroads and not know how to find your way back just insane so because a lot of quote undesirables were buried at crossroads she somehow got like written into the narrative where she's like in charge of these undesirables good for her and so she kind of took she kind of got this um reputation as like being in charge of the social outcasts and like being there for the social outcasts so uh that's really nice yeah so she became associated with the restless dead um those who were ousted by society and people would then leave offerings for her so she wouldn't leash the outcast spirits on them which like we um this led her to being like seen as one who

rejects the norm and thus crossroads became the center of these spaces where people could you know break out of you know society's expectations of them love that so that's one of the reasons why she's so popular amongst witches today especially because she's a big figure for social minorities especially in today's liminal cultural shifts you know so if you're feeling like a social outcast the crossroads where hakate is protecting them is a really you know warm spot to be a powerful place yeah and she's also still worshipped not just for that, but for any type of liminal event. So if you're moving houses or a job change or if you're going through, you know, family stuff, like any event at all that leads to transition and change, people still think of Hekate as the person to go to. And that's pretty constant. I mean, the transitions like that's just that's life yeah so she is still always uh being worshipped by someone in some way usually at crossroads

and i'm so glad i didn't cover her last week because she's a badass she did deserve her own episode for sure anyway that's a kate my friend you did great that was so fascinating i like never would have thought something that about like mythology would be this interesting no offense but you know it's just not usually my jam but that was great i might do a future episode on just how she's like somehow the goddess of ghosts i mean i know she talked to people in the underworld and but i feel like how i feel like she probably has so much more to her that i still didn't even get to think you and i like have somehow missed something like goddess of ghosts i like i just wonder like why again i know we say this all the time but like why didn't latin class talk about that like i would have been

paying attention you know well also like think about, synchronicities, because I really just looked at her as an additive to my story on Crossroads. And now she's the literal fucking goddess of ghosts. Like, how did that happen? You know? She knew. She knew what she was doing. She knew. She knows.

Good job, Em. Thank you. Are you ready to jump into my crime story? I'm ready. Not jump, but I will dip a little piggy in, you know? Stop talking about your piggies. Even I'm going to arrest you. Piggy dipping.

I'm going to citizens arrest you any second. You can't because I'm so far away. I'm going to do it. Me and my piggies are going to, all 10 of them, they're going to run away from you. I can't stand it. I can't cope with it. What is your issue with my piggies? Do you want me to even go there or should we just move on they're clean i didn't say

they weren't i'm just saying that's the only that's the only thing a second person should have an opinion about with my little piggies you know what i'm saying hey comment below like and comment comment below if you like when m calls their toes their little piggies. And then we'll see what the consensus is, Em. We'll see what the consensus is. All I care about is your opinion, you know? Well, you've got my opinion. Yeah, but I'm going to change it.

Don't worry. Oh, okay. Well, you know how well that. Me and these little piggies, they can't be stopped. You know how well that goes when you tell me you're going change my mind i think that's gonna be yeah you're like literally just created a lost cause for yourself so congratulations okay that's fair okay this is the story of janet abaroa and do you recognize this yes okay why because apparently you requested this and i didn't know that i don't remember requesting it i must have but i i the i think i did it knowing oh future em will forget

um uh she was a teacher at my school. What? Yeah. Why was that not in the information that was given to me, Emma? Because I probably didn't say it. You didn't say it. You just were like, Oh, look into this. No reason.

Yeah. She was a teacher when I was in second grade and her husband was the I think soccer coach at the same time both at my school at the same time and I have uh I don't but my I have friends who remember her and they remember the beginnings of what you're about to tell. Oh my God. Oh my God. So what do you know? I remember only her face.

I don't remember her teaching me at all because she wasn't my teacher. What did she teach? Do you know? I don't know. I mean, I don mean i don't think she's taught spanish oh my gosh and uh the story is going to be about domestic violence and uh my friends remember her um their mom was also a teacher at the school and so they remember their mom, like hiding her in different rooms when the husband would come looking for her on their lunch breaks.

Oh my God. Okay. Wow. I see. I didn't know they were, they worked at the school. They talk about how they both worked at the same place. Yeah.

It was my school. Well, apparently, well, you'll get, we'll get there. Well, maybe multiple times,

but one, one time was at my school yeah well apparently yeah we'll get there because um okay interesting interesting m wow okay so do you know like the i know the ending you do know the ending and you know like the okay well we'll just get into it okay this is not fun for if i have commentary i will bring it up please do please do so let's jump into it april 26 2005 raven abaroa called 9-1-1 at 10 45 p.m absolutely frantic he was screaming to the dispatch that his wife, 25-year-old Janet Abaroa, had been murdered in their home. He told the dispatcher, my wife, she's dead. She's been shot. There's blood everywhere. When police arrived, there was no sign of a robbery or major struggle in the

house. And the couple's six-month-old son was in the nursery next door, but he was completely unharmed. You're making me nervous like you're going to be like, wrong. No, no, no. I really, I don't have as much information as you think I do. It's very minimal. I was seven, so. That can't be right. Were you?

I was, and then they moved to the carolinos or something oh i thought you meant you were seven when this happened i was like my only memory of any of it i was seven so i see i see i was like i don't have much to offer i was like you are making yourself younger and younger with each episode we do okay i'm just 19 leave me alone you're making me the cryptkeeper all the time. So they go to the house. Thank God the baby's okay. But there's no sign of a robbery or struggle. And so the murder just isn't adding up as like a random intruder.

So Janet Christensen, which is her... What's wrong with me? Maiden name. Apologies. So, Janet Christensen, which is her maiden name, she was born the seventh of ten children, and she grew up social, patient, and kind. She was confident, smart. Young kids looked up to her. She absolutely loved children, and family friends said children gravitated toward her. She was also a born athlete. She was extremely outgoing. She was on the soccer, basketball, swim team, made friends wherever she went. Just a very sweet, outgoing, kind person.

When Janet graduated high school, she went to play soccer at Southern Virginia University. Where's that? I don't know. Oh. Well, that's where I thought. I was like, here's your commentary. Oh, never mind. Never heard of it.

That's where she met her future husband, Raven Abaroa. And she was 19 at the time. This was 1998. And Janet actually had a boyfriend when Raven came into the picture. But Raven was persistent, which always rings as a red flag to me, but okay. According to those who watched him woo Janet, apparently he swept her off her feet. One friend said she was convinced that he was the one. He was very charismatic. He knows how to talk to people. He's Prince Charming and she fell hard.

And another of her sisters said that he tried very hard to make everyone believe he had the perfect life. So as for Raven, he was very sociable as well. So they both have these outgoing personalities. He would make the room like him, was one quoteable as well. So they both have these outgoing personalities. He would make the room like him was one quote by a friend. And Janet was no exception. She was pretty much infatuated immediately. But Janet's sister Erica remembers being wary of Raven right off the bat because her first impression was that Raven was trying too hard to be liked and she wasn't sure why which I know that I've sensed that in people where it's like I you don't need to like prove

anything to me you know what I mean like if you meet somebody and they're just trying really hard to like impress you and you're like you know you can just be chill like yeah like I know that feeling of like why are they putting on such airs you know or trying to impress me i know yeah it's like you're really giving a lot of energy yeah a lot a lot yeah really frenzied energy and for what yeah because i don't have the bandwidth for this thank you so janet's brother mark felt the. He remembers that from the very beginning, it felt like Raven was hiding something. Now, this is where that same thought goes to my mind of like, if somebody is like trying to prove something to me, I'm like, why?

Like, what are you trying to either cover up? And we've talked about this before, where when people are lying, they tend to give way more details. Yeah. And so, you know, that's just what that reminds me of. So when Janet brought Raven home over Christmas, the entire family was put off by him and his performance, which is a nightmare to me as someone who cares a lot about what my family thinks about my partners.

I will tell you. Oh, it is a complete. I've been there. And me too. And it's not fun. It's not fun to know that everyone in the room hates each other especially then later when you're like oh they were right oops well i was going through the thing where i knew everyone was right i i knew how terrible

this person was and uh we just kept riding till dawn i guess and then not fun isn't that i had to do the whole apology tour later and be like oh oh, I knew what was going on. I'm sorry. But I can tell you, I do remember him more than her at school. I think I really, I think she was our substitute teacher a handful of times or like during like after we had like an aftercare program. I remember interacting with her like twice and i remember her being very kind but quiet and then but him i remember him having like the crazy eyes like you know what i'm saying like oh sure i remember knowing like oh like don't make him mad at seven see like and he was a coach you know he was screaming at children like i can't imagine being one of those kids oh my god but i remember him walking around

the school and i just be like something's off with that guy whoa okay see now we're really getting the behind the scenes folks the only time it might ever happen i don't know i'm like are you connected to any other murders because i want to hear your input um yeah all i know about her is she was very quiet but she was also i thought she i had like a like a school kid crush on her but just because she was really pretty but that was all i knew about her i never really had many interactions i just thought oh that's a cute teacher yeah that's so wild how i know worlds collide crossroads you know oh you know that whole thing anyway so her brother mark remembers when i met

him i was just uncomfortable i felt like he was trying too hard to charm me trying to charm everyone trying to win people over to make them like him and it just to me it felt forced but to other people it worked mark was right one day right by the way mark at this point was like a teenager and he described this on an episode of 2020 it was kind of shocking he said one day raven randomly accused him of stealing money which he didn't and mark says raven snapped he said you don't know who i really am and what i'm capable of oh my god and then he grabbed mark by the back of the head and slammed him against the wall and this is his wife or his girlfriend's little brother who's like a teenager geez and mark said i'd never seen someone's eyes turn like that full of rage he didn't know that to know that that was before he came to work with children

is also so scary i didn't even think of that he decided not to tell anyone the brother uh least of all janet because he he didn't want to cause trouble for her and she was so happy and you know he didn't know what to do he was was a teenager. So he just let it go. Raven, meanwhile, kept playing the innocent smitten boyfriend. In an interview, he says that he found Janet attractive and felt so much comfort when he was with her. In the end, Raven won over Janet's family as best as he could because, like Janet, he was a devoted Mormon and that was really important to her family. Janet's faith was extremely important Mormon, and that was really important to her family. Janet's faith was extremely important to her. She was said to always carry the spirit of Christ

with her everywhere she went. So it was really important to her that she married someone with that same view. And so when Raven showed up in the picture, she was like, ding, ding, ding. Yeah. Raven showed up in the picture, she was like, ding, ding, ding. Yeah. Raven talked constantly about his faith and his mission work in Peru. And two years after they met, Raven and Janet were officially married in August of 2000 at the Mormon Temple in Washington, D.C. They then moved to Durham, North Carolina for a new job opportunity. And while they were there, they were known to make

videos for their family who was not living in North Carolina. So for one Christmas, as an example, they emailed a video Christmas card out to wish everyone they loved a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. And in this video, Raven shows off his favorite gift that he got for Christmas from himself. And it's a new knife. Cool. Oh, my God. Okay. Woohoo.

Oh, yeah. And he apparently collected knives, which was his favorite hobby. So it seemed like they had the perfect life. That's what was coming across. Raven bought them their first house. They each owned a nice car. Raven even had the motorcycle he'd always wanted. They were very active in their church and their community. They were both from big families and felt a little lonely in their new

homes. So instead they befriended their neighbors and sort of created this like community, like this family with their next door neighbors. They became close with one local family in particular, the Dowds. And Janet once told Tim Dowd that Raven looked up to him as a father. Like they really took on the role of like pseudo parents to the, to Raven and Janet while they were living away from their families. Yeah. So three years into their marriage,

here's the first big bomb that went off. Raven tells, what is wrong with me? Raven tells Janet he has a confession. He was having an affair. Okay. With several women. Oh. Yeah. And he decided he wanted a divorce and he walked out of their marriage. So not only is Janet heartbroken at this point, but she realizes pretty soon after that she is pregnant. Okay. Wow. Great.

So she went to the Dowds for advice. She was crying. She didn't know what to do because on the one hand, you know, her husband had broken the vow that was so important to her, the religious vow, the relationship vow. But on the other hand, you know, she didn't want to raise a child as a single mother. And so she was really struggling to figure out what to do. So Tim, the dad or the, you know, pseudo dad got in contact with Raven and who, who remember looked up to him as like a father figure. So Tim contacted him and said, I read him the riot act in a major way. What the hell do you think you're doing? You're married. Your

wife is pregnant. You need to grow up real quick. So Raven was like, you know what? You're right. He moved back in. He promised Janet that she and the baby would be his priority from then on. And according to Janet's sisters, she told them that they were just taking it day by day and trying to rebuild their relationship and create, you know, a safe and loving environment for their new baby. So she didn't seem to really enjoy the wife part of the relationship. And I will add as my own commentary, if the guy I were married to was sleeping around with a bunch of people, I probably also wouldn't enjoy the wife part. So yeah, I wouldn't either. Hard to blame her for that. Talk about fully valid resentment. Yeah, exactly. But she was, however, thrilled about becoming a mother.

This was like a huge excitement for her. And he was born, their son, October 17th, 2004. His name was Caden. And at this point, as can, you know, it's not the most shocking thing in the world, but it was pretty hard on them. They descended into financial, basically, I don't want to say disaster, but really bad financial situation. Oof, okay. Raven was not managing their finances at all, and they were suddenly in really deep trouble.

Their landlord, thankfully, was sympathetic and gave them a two-month grace period on their rent. Their landlord, thankfully, was sympathetic and gave them a two-month grace period on their rent. And they turned to their church for help, who provided them with financial assistance as well. But that wasn't enough for Raven because he pretty soon got busted at work for stealing merchandise and embezzling funds from his workplace. Wow. Okay. So this is not the school, i assume no no no okay so that already they've already moved to durham right oh yeah so they were so was it back when they were at southern virginia university they they lived in they did all the Virginia stuff before they moved to the Carolinas.

I don't remember. I think maybe she I don't think she was even pregnant or had a baby in Virginia. Yeah, because that happened in North Carolina. So, OK, that makes sense. So they've already moved on past. Yes. OK, got it. Like them being married in D.C. in 2000 is kind of where it ends. So, oh, OK, my story. Yeah story yeah but but earlier on i you know my friends would tell me that like you know he was already incredibly abusive and like like the they would hear their mom talking about it who was again was another teacher at the school and a bunch of the teachers would like help hide her when he would like get in a fight about something or he'd get mad at her for something and he would try to find her at school.

Or she might stay or she would stay later after school so she wouldn't have to go home right away. Or, you know, he was also he was a coach. I think he was a soccer coach. And so they were always after school at school until five anyway and so i think whenever they had to find each other if he was looking for her the teachers would would tuck her away and they remember like bruises and marks on her so i mean it was it was already abusive before they even moved to the carolinas and that's i you know those are uh anecdotal hopefully that's hearsay from our end total hearsay but that those are I mean pretty direct contacts I have that can tell you those

stories or that have told me those stories so that is really really dark um yeah that definitely is not something that was covered here so you, you know, good insight to have. Yeah, at least all the teachers stuck up for her whenever they could. They tried. They tried really hard. So, as I said, Raven got caught for stealing from his workplace. The awkward part is that she worked at the same business. I don't know what it was, but they worked at the same company.

And so she resigned out of like embarrassment. Like she was mortified that her husband was stealing from their workplace. So she resigned. I don't blame her. So now she doesn't have a job. He's in trouble for, you know, legally for stealing and their financial situation is just in the shitter. It's like really, really bad. So an ABC reporter describes Raven as the ultimate opportunist. He says that Raven is the kind of person who doesn't care who he hurts or what is right or wrong. He'll do what he wants to get what he wants. In the end, yeah, commentary is that he's bad. It's bad. Yeah. So in the end, he pleaded guilty to the theft. And of course, now their financial stress is just growing every single day.

Janet is trying to protect her son. And she thought that meant holding on to Raven, you know, as the father, despite what he was putting them through. So she put on a brave face and Caden was her motivation to keep striving for peace with Raven and trying to make it work. But, you know, through all of these schemes and legal battles and her having to leave her job, like it must have been a nightmare. And it also didn't seem like Raven was pulling his weight with a baby either. What a shock, you know? Yeah, Cal's surprise. Well, also, even if it were, I mean, I'm just imagining he's going through this, like, money stuff. He already probably is not, like, super in love with his wife if he was already stepping out on her. He's got this kid he feels responsible for. And he has, like, incredible anger issues.

Like, I can just feel the tension rising and rising in their relationship. It's horrible. And every time she probably leans on him even though she thinks she's doing the right thing maybe he feels like more pressure because she's depending on him but i mean either way she didn't do anything wrong but like i i could imagine him finding ways to be mad for any reason yeah i mean it's like that that scenario we see over and over where it's like someone's walking on eggshells in an abusive relationship, but it doesn't matter how gently you walk and how few eggs you break. You're still.

You're always wrong. You're always wrong. You're going to be the target. And it seems like that's exactly what was happening here. She was trying her best, as a lot of people do, and it just was not going her way. as a lot of people do, and it just was not going her way. So this is very interesting, Em, because it goes back to what you had just said. On the evening of April 26, 05, Raven said he was going to go play soccer with friends. So you were probably right about the soccer coach thing. Yeah. I just remember him being a coach, but it had to be soccer.

It makes sense. So he went to play soccer with friends. This was April 26th of 2005. And he left Janet home alone with her son, Caden. And Janet was on her way to bed when Raven left. On his way home, Raven stopped at a convenience store. Then he got in at 10 p.m., which is when he found Janet's body on the bedroom floor. On the 911 call, which you can hear in the 2020 episode raven was hysterical he was crying he told the dispatcher it seemed like she had been shot right in the chest and it's really like jarring because when you hear

the dispatcher ask how old is your wife he says 25 and i'm like god they were so young like she was so young it's just terrible when police arrived things seemed strange right off the bat first of all there was no sign of forced entry like i said no sign of a struggle it seemed sort of like janet had been caught totally off guard and was killed without a big fight janet's family said she always locked the door as soon as she came home so it was hard Like Janet had been caught totally off guard and was killed without a big fight. Janet's family said she always locked the door as soon as she came home. So it was hard to imagine someone just walked in the door and killed her. Yeah.

Next, baby Caden was unharmed in his crib in the other room. And if this had been like a random violent attack, you know, why did they leave the baby alone? Right. Could it maybe have been one of Raven's former affairs who had it out for Janet and came for vengeance? But, you know, they weren't sure. So Raven told them some things had been stolen and he said maybe it was a burglary gone wrong. And they were like, OK, so, you know, they stole your laptop, but they OK, this is what he said. They stole his laptop and one of his collector's knives okay uh-huh okay um however they didn't steal her wedding and engagement rings which were on

the counter uh or any electronics which is like the first thing that gets stolen in a robbery right police also found a bloody footprint and fingerprint and they were sure they had a homicide on their hands neither the footprint nor the fingerprint matched raven though which is interesting yeah that is interesting but about 5 a.m remember that uh they had already ruled this a homicide so that night raven calls janet's family to tell them that janet had died by suicide wait so they already know that she was murdered but now now he's saying actually she did this to herself this was they don't know yet they don't even know that she's passed oh no he was the only one at home when the police arrived. And he was the one who got the information that this was a homicide.

So now he's telling the parents different information. Correct. So now he's calling. So, you know, the paramedics arrived like, I guess, 11 midnight, like sometime late at night. And after taking a look around the scene, looking at the body, they determined it was a homicide. And instead of conveying that information to her family, he tells her family that she died by suicide, even though he's been told that's not the truth. That's not it. He didn't think he was going to get caught in that lie?

It's like an obvious lie. They're going to find out. But they're going to hear from the police who are gonna say no it was not at all a suicide what are you talking about and who told you it was he did oh that's weird red flag um you know it's so funny well it's not funny at all but uh the brother mark had he mentioned in the 2020 episode that uh when he heard from raven Raven that Janet had died by suicide, he was like, even though he told me that, my first thought was he had something to do with it. Even if it was a suicide, even if it was staged suicide, like he definitely had something

to do with it. Like that's how bad of vibes this guy was giving her family. Jeez. I mean, trust your gut. Trust your gut, for sure. For sure. So, like I said, Mark himself heard this news and was just in shock, but not a single one of Janet's siblings were convinced that this was actually a suicide. And she's one of, like like 10 or something, right?

Yes, she is. Yes. All of them are like, firm pass. We know that's not true. Not even one of them. It's like nine out of 10 dentists agree. It's like not even one of them. It was like 10 out of 10, you know?

Everyone agrees on this. So they thought even if she had been secretly hiding her suicidal ideations, they knew she would not die by suicide she wouldn't do anything while caden was in the house like there was no way that she would put him in danger that way and they were convinced convinced of this so janet's friend kathy shows up and sees a yellow police tape and you you hear her tone when she describes it's so heartbreaking she's like it please tell me that tape in the distance is around a different house, not my friend Janet's. And she gets closer and realizes it is indeed around her friend's house.

And she hears that Janet has taken her own life, and she kind of does a double take also. Like, what? No one's believing this. Nobody's believing it. By the way, it's only Raven saying it, too. So it's like, the officials haven't even said that. Oh, God. Well, obviously they were all right, because investigators had figured out that Janet had not shot herself or even been shot at all.

She was stabbed multiple times. Stabbed? Yeah. So he's on the phone going she's been shot oh my god what a dumbass he's so stupid what did he what did he think what was his plan what did he think was gonna happen i have no godly idea i mean it's one of those things again where you think like if i were to commit a crime like that, like there's, there's certain things, even when trying to cover up a crime you've committed that you have to play

by the rules. And that's like, like not changing the story. So obviously that you're going to look beyond guilty when people catch you. I wonder my first reaction to this was maybe he wanted it to look like he didn't know she was stabbed and just saw a bunch of blood and was like she's been shot and like was just pretending like he didn't know that she'd been stabbed if that makes sense like because i because i can see somebody lying you know lying there and

like calling you know if you really didn't do it and you call and they say what's wrong like i think she's been shot you know or something like i can sort of see that but you know knowing that how this story goes um that's my only guess like my only guess is maybe he was trying to look like i had no idea she was stabbed you know i guess so but like i just feel like if you're going to straight up commit homicide like have a plan going into it that you think could be foolproof you think like that clearly was like an off-the-cuff decision it's just not that i mean there's no right way to commit sure but still it's just like it blows my mind how stupid these people are sometimes honestly how smart they think they are which is what infuriates me it's like they really

think everyone else is so stupid that we're all just gonna fall for their bullshit but but then they just pull things okay yeah we're on the same page absolutely um so like i said she had not been shot at all not by herself nor by anyone else because she had been stabbed multiple times oh my god so janet's family held a vigil and of course her killing was heavy on the public conscience um days after the murder raven went to basically left town to stay with family in utah uh while this was happening, before she was even buried, he cashed in Janet's $500,000 life insurance policy and then left town, left North Carolina and went to Utah just to be with his family. Wow. So, you know, Janet's sisters thought

it made some sense, sure, if he's going through this trauma to go be with family. But what they didn't like is that he just completely went MIA off the grid, was not talking to police, wasn't participating and organizing a reward. He didn't visit. He didn't reach out to police to see where the case was and police said that was also very odd because usually if somebody's loved one has been murdered you know they're on the police's ass to get get it solved to get information to do you know and they said he just was like all right good luck and left and like gave zero shits so in the end he went on the news once and it was only to insist publicly that he had nothing to do with Janet's murder. So that was his good luck. Yeah, that was his one big foray into television. And after the police questioned him, he just let it all go. And all his interviews, some of them you can see in the 2020 episode, for example.

But his interviews were very odd like he he gave strange details and this goes back to what we said earlier he gave strange details that contradicted each other and made the story just more convoluted and he would change things like he would say uh oh the baby was asleep when i got home and then he would suddenly say no the baby was screaming in his crib and it's like you gotta like keep to one story yeah come on and that's just one of the details that he kept changing um but some people actually said oh no that's pretty normal for him he lies all the time to impress people and to try and get what he wants so why wouldn't he lie about this but does kind of go with the vibe of over impressing or overperforming.

And like making up stories and trying to woo people. So Janet's sister became pretty quickly convinced that Raven was the killer, which is understandable. They never liked him anyway. They always thought he was a creep. And what's worse is that while Janet's family is busy trying to bring her killer to justice, Raven had started dating again. went to school or went to daycare and he this this woman was at first not interested in a relationship she wasn't interested in him which again sounds like the last story where he's persistent and you know it always is a red flag when someone says i didn't want to have a relationship with him but he was persistent aka pushy just a huge red flag. And he, you know, she kind of softened because he said he was a single father and she was a single mother. And so she felt like, you know what, we have this connection. I'll let him take me out to dinner. They were also both Mormon.

And so again, that was like another thing to her that was really important. Her name was Vanessa Pond. she described raven as seeming very upfront very honest and genuine i found out that he was a single father and i really admired that but then when vanessa found out raven was a widower she immediately googled him of course duh like anyone would um she her dad was actually a cop and so she's like well i just want to look into this dude uh and so she does she does some research online and she said she watches all these in these his interview he she reads the articles and she she's like i couldn't help it i didn't believe him.

She was like, I just felt like he was lying. Follow your gut. Follow your gut. She didn't quite follow her gut because she met up with him and said, hey, I have these questions. What the hell is going on? And apparently he was able to just twist everything around and convince her that he was innocent that he had nothing to do with it and the way his ex-wife or his former wife was killed was by an intruder and she said he just somehow got in her head and convinced her fully convinced her that he had nothing to do with

it despite her hesitations it is frustrating because like we were just saying like how is he so stupid but also it's how is he still so slimy that he can like actually he must be like that last guy we talked about just like such a good manipulator that even despite your best efforts you like believe them you know so she said he had these stories about how people were trying to frame him about how horrible the cops were how he was trying to find justice and blah blah blah and so she said you know what okay i believe you they moved in together and in 2008 they were married now this is three years after janet's still unsolved death and raven clearly had fully moved

on uh only janet's sisters were still looking for this killer so sad i can't imagine the the loneliness that's got to feel like yes yes like the abandonment you know like everyone else has moved on but us yeah it's horrible it's like nobody cares anymore even her own the father of her child it's just it's horrific when the sisters heard about Raven's engagement though uh they were like we gotta give that chick a call yeah we gotta let her know what's going on that is what they did they called Vanessa and they told her, you got to run. You got to run. Yeah. Good for them. I know. And they were like, you know what? We didn't care about him being with someone. We just cared about her safety and wellbeing after what happened to our sister. And Vanessa remembers feeling absolutely heartbroken. Like she just could,

she did not want to believe this man that she loved had anything to do with his wife's murder. But now there are the multiple people kind of telling her like, you're in bad hands with this Then it got physical. So here, you know, I mean, we all saw it coming, but I want to add one more anecdote that I forgot to put in the notes about. It was I think it was the night of her bridal party or bachelorette party or something before the wedding and uh they got into an altercation and he threw her up against the wall and was screaming in her face uh and apparently he later then tried to gaslight her into believing she tripped what just like blatantly was like i didn't do that you fell oh my god it's so horrifying um and so you know that the marriage is going not well uh in spring 2009 vanessa had the marriage annulled and publicly stated that she believed raven was capable of killing his wife and that he likely did kill janet and she actually mentioned uh at one point that she believed she would have been his next victim

if she hadn't escaped and there were times there were times where apparently she he was trying to he was trying to paint her as mentally unstable and she believes it's because this is so dark she believes this is i think from the crime junkie episode where i heard this but she believed that it was because he was trying to paint her to look like someone who might die by suicide yeah oh that is dark but it does make sense yep like she said he was just telling everyone like how wacko she was how unstable how mentally ill and you know she wasn't any of those things i imagine if you've been able to do it once before maybe the second time isn't

is like he's just convinced or something like pull it off maybe he's like learning he's like well now i have to make it seem like she because, you know, Janet, nobody believed she died by suicide. Yeah. He like he's learning from his previous mistakes. Yeah. And that was, you know, her assumption of what was happening. So we don't know. But thankfully, she was able to get out of there safely enough. Makes total sense to me. I think it's a very valid guess. Yeah. Recently, a new detective named Charles Soul had been assigned to Janet's case because Janet's case was in danger of just going completely cold. So this guy interviews Raven and the way that he explained the way this detective explained

his approach just was like had me it had me cackling because he said he played that kind of dumb witted small town detective to try and make Raven feel like he had the upper hand. Oh, wow. Because as a narcissist, like, you know, he loves that feeling. And so he was like, I just wanted to let him feel like he was in charge, you know, and feel like he had the power. And I thought that was really genius. So strangely, these interviews took place over the phone, but strangely, Raven filmed the interviews with his own home video camera, like film himself talking on the phone. So maybe so he could go back. I wonder if it was also to learn from his past mistakes to make sure he didn't say two storylines. Oh, so he could. Oh, my God. So he could trace his own stories.

Practice his own script or something. God, I didn't even think of that. He's like making like a self tape for an audition, but it's just to keep his lies straight. Yeah. Well, yeah. And like just side note, this is pre iPhone, like selfie filming. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know if that existed back then in 09, but like. Either way, it wasn't the norm for that. So he had like an actual camcorder he was using. So wild.

So weird. And he set up this tripod and he filmed himself as he spoke on the phone. And then it gets weirder because after he hangs up he would look into the camera like he was on the office and do like a talking head commentary shut the fuck up it looked like he was trying to be jim halpert i'm sorry that's not funny no but it's ridiculous he looks into the camera and he goes in these bizarre rants like he he hangs up the phone he looks right at the and he goes in these bizarre rants. Like he hangs up the phone. He looks right at the camera.

He goes, well, I didn't feel great about that. And then I'm going to quote the exact quote, okay? Okay. I feel myself getting frustrated. I'm not 100% sure why. You know, the more stuff I give them, the more stuff that gets leaked. I need to win the lottery. And if I were to win $3 million, I would dedicate $2 million to fighting this. Two-thirds were to win three million dollars i would dedicate two million

dollars to fighting this two-thirds of my winnings if you would so michael scott wrote that that's that feels exactly like something you would say in a talking head confessional on a only the office on maybe parks and rec yeah so it gets better he goes i would give i would dedicate two million dollars to fighting this charge two-thirds of my winnings if you would so oh and to make janet's name more recognized at southern virginia so he's he's like i would spend what a saint what a saint exactly so everyone was like okay like you're like i would fight i want to win the lottery so i can fight this charge against me oh and i guess i would put do something in her honor maybe as an afterthought sorry but also

so you wouldn't be willing to spend all of your jackpot savings to get yourself out of this pickle oh love that hypothetically he won't even say he's gonna use all three million he's like yeah i'm only gonna use two of my three invisible fake dollars me going to jail is not worth all of my jackpot being spent yeah um even in a fake world where i'm the one making up the story some money for you know extra ramen in prison or whatever i don't know it was just so bizarre and so he would like do this uh and kind of the oh by the way i'd also do something for for Janet as like an afterthought. Yeah, thanks so much. So cringe.

And you could just tell he was unnerved. I mean, he basically said, I'm unnerved by this. I don't feel good about this after that phone call. And in the 2020 episode, I know I keep mentioning it, but I just want to give them credit. There was an FBI agent or former FBI agent who was interviewed and he said narcissists think they're clever. But when they keep talking, they're just giving police more information, which is so true and so fascinating. Like we see that when when narcissists get caught for crimes because they just got too cocky and they just felt invincible and it just doesn't you know you're just walking yourself right into jail basically right to jail straight to jail uh but detective soul even though he was pretending to be a small town dummy uh was not and he had

actually quite an acute eye for detail. So while he was reviewing crime scene photos, he noticed something nobody else had noticed before. Is this the part that you know about? Like the ending? No. Oh, I don't know how it ends, I guess. This is like what made this case like notable not notable that sounds terrible but like this is the kind of like um hook of this case if it's being covered on i thought the ending was that braven killed her was killed janet oh that was the ending i didn't know that is that is an ending yes i didn't even know about the previous the next wife or the next fiance or anything. I know any of that. Oh, gosh. Yeah. So here we go.

This detective soul, he notices a contact case on the bathroom counter with the top off of it indicating that the contacts were probably not in there, which would be contrary to her going to bed or, as Raven had said, in bed already and going to sleep. Now, for some people, this wouldn't mean much because a lot of people do accidentally or intentionally sleep in their contacts from time to time, but it's not safe to do unless they're specifically made for that um but janet was very intent about removing her contacts every night um she did not go to sleep in her contacts uh and so this is a thing where her friends and family were like if her contacts were not in that case and she was wearing them she was not in bed like she would have taken those out wild okay wow so get this they have to exhume her body to take her contacts out of her eyeballs yeah oh my god yeah so i i know i just skipped a bunch of lines because i was like guess what happens but i will go no it makes it to make sure that she was actually awake.

Contacts. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, if the contacts were not in their case, she probably wasn't really in bed. So the clue was really suspicious paired with the fact that there was no sign of a struggle, especially with a stabbing death.

Cause usually a stabbing death is a very violent, bitter fight, but it just seems like she had been caught off guard and was killed pretty pretty quickly so they exhumed her body and you know hearing the family react to this is terrible because they're like we just want her to rest and now we're digging her up again and you know and obviously it's it's in honor of the case but it's still heartbreaking i also can't imagine the the mental load of like just trying to be done with all this and like now you know like her body's still being like messed with closure

is just not happening yeah it just feels like like picking off a scab that absolutely has not healed yet yeah yeah exactly that's a great way to put it so they exhume her body um but you know the family agreed because this is for the case and uh guess what she was buried in her contacts so they determined she was not asleep when she was killed aren't autopsy people supposed to like check if there's contacts in your eyes i don't know i've heard that they check, which maybe my mom just told me because I was so weirdly paranoid about it. I've heard that they check if you're in the hospital, like if you're, for example, in the ER or ICU, but I don't even know if that's true. My mom might've just said that because I remember I had this one freak out where I was

like, mom, what if I'm in a car crash and they don't take out my contacts and then my eyes fuse together and she was like Christina they're don't don't be insane I don't know I feel like I feel like it would be incredibly cheaper if autopsy techs started doing that instead of us having to exhume a whole fucking body and re-traumatize the family the first time it's been relevant whether someone was wearing contacts I don't feel like this is a common occurrence but yeah maybe I mean you know more information, the better I would argue. So it's probably, you know, I feel like when in doubt, maybe check. Yeah. It's a good point. So, you know, they didn't know it would be relevant, but yeah. So she was actually buried in her contacts, which means she had not been asleep so riven was arrested and charged with

first degree murder in 2010 and while investigators built their case okay this is wild they even put contacts in pigs eyes and buried them oh wow to show how decomposition affects contact lenses to assure a jury that janet was buried in her contacts and that they hadn't like disintegrated or that they weren't wrong about that information. They wanted to prove that she was buried in her contacts. Got it. So when the trial began in 2013, Raven's ex-wife Vanessa actually testified and she said, when he sees weakness weakness he just comes at you harder and harder he told me how much he hated me and how much it didn't matter if i died oh my god but the evidence at this point as we can probably all guess was circumstantial at best uh there were still missing puzzle pieces

like the bloody footprint the bloody fingerprint that didn't match his and so it ended in a hung jury and a mistrial before the second trial raven's attorney entered in an alfred plea for raven do you remember what this is it's like every so ever so often i bring it up when a defendant says, I didn't do it, but I know that there's sufficient evidence to convince a jury I did do it. Does that make any sense? Yeah. They're basically saying, I... They're saying, like, it looks bad. I know it looks bad. Yes, exactly. Like, I didn't do it, but I can see the risk of going to trial because they might be convinced

that I did do it. Like I, I see how everything's turned against me sort of. Um, so, you know, he acknowledged there was evidence to convict him of Janet's death, but, uh, he, he did not want to admit to guilt. So he's like, but I didn't do it. So people felt like it was a total cop out. Vanessa said, that's not justice at all. It's just not justice. And so in 2014, he was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter

and he was sentenced to only seven to 10 years in prison, which means he's out now, but he was granted time served for the four years he had spent in jail awaiting trial. So he's really out now. He's out, out, out, out. So after his sentencing nine years after Jaina's murder, Raven said to the court, I would just like to state that I didn't receive a fair trial the first time. I don't think I'll receive a fair trial a second time. I don't think it's worth risking the possibility of spending the rest of my life in prison for something I didn't do i take this plea to ensure that doesn't happen and that's the only reason i didn't kill my wife he was released on christmas day in 2017 and he still lives in utah does his son what's the where's the son

caden i don't know i don't know is he with his I mean, I'm assuming he's with his dad. Janet's siblings and Vanessa all hope that women in the future will recognize the signs of manipulation and abuse in their partners and get away while they still have a chance for safety and freedom. I want to tack on to that. And its sisters took the time and went out of their way to call Vanessa and say, like, you're in danger, even though they didn't. It wasn't their responsibility. But I just thought that was like so. See something, say something. Yeah. I thought that was like really, I don't know, respectful and mature of them.

Yeah, definitely. Especially to say like, hey, we can't get our sister back, but nobody else needs to hurt. Yes. Yes, exactly. Even though their sister wasn't coming back. That's a great point. So ultimately, Vanessa told ABC, please don't be drawn in and please get away as fast as you can. And that's the story of Janet Abreua. And I'd like to say here that I know he was convicted of secondary manslaughter um so all of this is alleged and sure i don't know what really we don't really know what happened i don't know the bloody footprint and fingerprint throw me off i will say that yeah that also throws me off i i wish there

was an answer to that but there's no clean cut you know answer but either way he was an abusive asshole and uh definitely definitely had the potential to hurt or kill his partner the way that you can definitely agree he was an abusive asshole and intimidating do you even like what he did to like janet's brother like throwing him into like yeah fuck off with that yeah at the very least he was an abusive narcissistic asshole so whatever happened you know whatever beyond that is uh something we may never know well great but thanks for that story you're welcome yeah it is weird that i could finally say i knew somebody in a story you were telling but i had no idea until like the episode my memory got jogged when i was hanging out with um high school friends and they're like do you remember miss saburoba and i was like oh kind of and then i ended up

going through and like looking at like you know pictures and stuff and and but yeah it was it's weird i definitely remember him more than her but it's probably because she really did seem so quiet and he definitely had a very intense energy to him um but yeah and yeah that's it just what a wild time because we brought it up at the woodward remember i was like when we were rehearsing for the for the live show and i said m did you request something called janna abaroa and you went no and i was like well somebody said you did uh and then i told eva and eva was like oh it was probably because of the contact lenses like maybe you knew about the contact lens thing and wanted to hear about it so i don't think contact lenses. Like maybe you knew about the contact lens thing

and wanted to hear about it. So I don't think any of us knew. Well, you didn't even know you requested it. I didn't know that. I totally forgot. You knew this person. I think I was so in rehearsal mode. I was not thinking about anything else.

I think you were like not wanting to listen to me anyway. Understandably. Sure. We spent a lot of time together that day. But yeah. Okay. Wow. Wow.

Anyway. Yeah. And truly the only information i can give is what i've heard from others but just that like they very much remember like hiding her from him when he was in a bad mood which like it's just horrific certainly tracks with our theory of how things went down but again all alleged so you know man and i just gotta say like as part of i don't know as part of this whole thing too what was i about to say i don't know sorry i just saw an email come in from one of leona's daycares and and you got your you got your thing you're freaking out a little bit sorry a little bit it just says that she's first on the waiting list but they don't know if anything will open up i'm like what does it mean no well i hope that they squeeze her in this is almost worse than

just being told no because i'm like well shit okay sorry i'm so sorry i derailed i uh no you're okay go go handle that and i uh i guess we'll we'll see y'all next week folks and uh and i guess i'll be talking about after chat though after i pee and look at this email okay cool sounds right right are we still good for that uh i have a doctor's appointment i need to get to oh then let's do tomorrow or another day okay uh sounds good anyway it's been real it's been real chaotic all of a sudden very quickly the energy went bananas and that's why we drink