And That's Why We Drink - E332 The Mysterious Bisexual and the Sauce of Time

Episode Date: June 18, 2023

Welcome to episode 332 and a recording run by sickos so please pardon our DayQuill grind! This week Em takes us on a wild time travel adventure with the story of Sergei Ponomarenko. Then Christine covers the murder of Nona Dirksmeyer and the frustrating judicial aftermath. And honestly, if future you doesn't show up to stop you from making a specific decision, how bad could it really be? ...and that's why we drink!Don't miss Christine on tour this summer with Beach Too Sandy, Water Too Wet! beachtoosandy.com

welcome to the sick show where a bunch of sickos christine's sick and i'm sick and oh christine it's about to be our birthdays very soon i know when people hear this it'll already be our birthdays and fingers crossed we are healed people, but we are going into our next birth years rough. Yeah, well, it sucks because also I have a wedding this weekend. So I've been like obsessively testing for COVID and it's been negative every time.

I just have like this horrible sinus infection. What's the vibe at a wedding for you? Are you going to mask it up and stay like in the back away from everyone? Or are you like in the party? So I'm not in the party, thankfully. And I'm only a couple days away. So I'm hoping like I just keep this. I mean, it's been going on for like two freaking weeks. I'm like, at a certain point, it has to stop. Right. Right. One would think so far. No but maybe like three days to really uh you know wait so what are you doing for let's let's be happy for a minute let's try well

hang on here's my here's my smile okay okay let's be sad that didn't make me feel good um what are you doing for your b-day i know your mom is coming to town what are you doing for your B-Day? I know your mom is coming to town. What are you drinking right now? What's happening? Right now I'm drinking any and all fluids that I can find. Look what I'm drinking. What is that? It's an Almdudler. That was not going to be my first guess, Christine.

I'm drinking an Almdudler. Is it apple juice? What is it? It is. It's apple juice with sparkling, sparkling apple juice. It's an Austrian classic. That sounds like something I could get behind. Yeah, it's really good.

And I used to hate anything sparkling when I was little because it hurt my mouth. But now I love it. And they sell it at Jungle Gyms in the Germany aisle. There's no sparkling that I really, truly, fully enjoy. Like, yeah, I'll drink la croix but half what about like a dr pepper or something oh that's a to me soda and sparkling are different things right but this is like sweet because it's like apple juice you know oh that's true i feel like you'd like it because it's like apple juice with a little bit of a bubblies in it i do i

realized i do love a blood orange san pellegrino which is like my god m we found it we found our one crossover beverage that that i that's my ideal that's my ideal fancy bitch drink where i'm like they sold it at costco the other day and i was like i'm getting a 16 pack of these things and they're like 50 i didn't buy it but But I was like, I love that shit. Oh, my God. Blood orange. Wait, that was in my wedding cocktail. It was blood orange cocktail. It was a gin and, geo and tonic.

And it was blood orange gin and tonic. Oh, my God. I'm a real salute for the blood orange. Me too. I think we found our weakness our combined weakness um to answer your question tell us you hate blood orange so we can all finally em and i can have something you can't have is that uh to answer your question for my birthday i don't know what i'm doing i'm really hoping that i'll feel better i I think I'll be fine. I'm coming down from it so far, at least.

That's what I feel like, too. Do you feel like your mom's planning stuff, or are you the one who has to plan it? Honestly, it's... Also, why is she staying with you? I thought she's not getting a hotel. Sorry, I'm asking so many questions, and they're... I'm sorry. Well, I like to talk about myself, so this works really good for me.

Why is she staying with us um honestly she's listening to this now too so it's going to be embarrassing anyway but i know my mom has told me enough times that i should have retained the information and i don't know and i'm afraid to ask at this point so i'm just kind of okay coasted and when she so i'm just wondering i mean i don't because she hasn't in the past right no but also i didn't have a guest room in the past because rj fair point okay that no that well that explains it yep um but she does she's not someone who's trying to like pinch a penny so i don't know why she's saying that's my other question is like usually i picture her being like enjoy your little apartment

i'm going to the ritz or something yeah yeah i i usually feel like that's her vibe so i don't know why she's staying with us maybe because it's your birthday she wants to like i don't know never leave me great um and i don't know what we're doing for my birthday i i don't i think it's supposed to be vague and i think i'm supposed to not know what's going on but also maybe i'm just like hoping that's maybe like holding out that like I'm doing the right thing by being confused. But I think Allison has something planned that my mom has agreed to and I will just kind of get chauffeured around. OK. So I don't know what I'm doing for my birthday, but I know my mom will be next to me during it, which is what we both wanted last year.

And it just couldn't happen for my big 30th. So this is the reprise. You know, I was telling somebody recently that sometimes it's the off. I was telling my brother because this year I'm going to a wedding on your birthday and I'm going to a wedding on my brother's birthday. But my brother is also going to the wedding on his birthday. Oh, and it's his 30th. I realized, Oh, I had no idea.

But also what I was kind of telling him was, you know, as people who've now celebrated our 30th in less than ideal circumstances, I was, uh, I think pregnant and it was COVID, um, you know,

like things like that. I was like, you know what? These big milestone numbers have so much pressure on them that I almost feel like the year after, like the kind of off years, like 31 or 32, those are the more enjoyable. mean and then the disappointment's not there so i told him like we're definitely gonna do something fun for his birthday it'll be great but like you know just because it's your 30 it doesn't mean like you're never gonna have a fun birthday again like well next year for 31 we can go all out you know i see what you were trying to do there and it is lovely but i'm such a diva that loves a spectacle that i still demand it but i know i know what you're saying spectacle any year you know what i mean you can be like 31s yeah you can do a spectacle any year. You know what I mean?

You can be like 31s. Yeah, you can make 31. Just because 30 passed doesn't mean I don't get to do another big spectacle birthday for 10 years. You can just say, you know what? Fuck it. I skipped my birthday this year, or it was a flop, or whatever. I do like the idea of the theme being last year's spectacle plus more.

Plus one. That's exactly what I'm saying like you can use that to your advantage and be like next year we're going all out you know yeah and i i think um it just takes a little bit of the pressure off i think allison would be right on board with you because last year since it was my 30th and i had such a goddamn crisis about it which i'm not ashamed of by the way uh but i am aware that i was a menace to everybody. And but I did tell Allison even before my birthday last year, I was like, I really want 30 to like be big because I have fantasized about this and like, let me have it. But next year, I swear to God, you're off the hook, Allison. You will not have to worry again for a very long time.

So I she really tried last year because I made that promise to her also because she you know she loves me she's wonderful but she but I I know she like did not forget that I said this is the last time you'll really have to like put a weird amount of effort into it and next year like we're just coasting baby and this year I think she she still put something together and I'm sure it's great but I haven't heard her say anything about being as stressed so I'm glad we're all kind of chill and vibe and I almost feel like sometimes those birthdays end up being more fun because you're not like forcing it you know what I mean yeah I and I'm it took me 30 years to learn that because I was very disappointed that my 30th was like during COVID. And I know a lot of our friends, a lot of our listeners, same thing. But then when I hit 31

and I had like the best birthday party ever and it was like super chill, I finally got to see everyone like after COVID. It was so great that I was like, you know what? Like it can be it can be fun to just put it off a year, you know know do the big thing the next year are you hoping for anything for your birthday so i actually have planned a birthday party um at a barcade downtown uh yeah i'm really excited because we're going to a wedding on saturday which is your birthday and then my birthday is the next day but the reason it worked out so well is that so many people coming to the wedding that we're going to are like friends from out of town so everyone will still be in town so we can do like a big yeah so i booked out like this barcade and

it has unlimited bowling and all these like pinball and arcade games and um a big bar and i just booked out like a section of that and um i'm just kind of a bunch of random people whoever wants to stop by uh come in it's gonna be fun i think um blaze has already he said we need to clear out the fridge and i was like for what and he's like your birthday cake and i was like okay now that's a husband he's i know i was like i got you a cake the size of a football field i'm not clearing out the fridge and he's like it's for your birthday cake i was like okay i'm clearing out the fridge i'm such an asshole i'd be like interesting allison i thought it was my birthday so yeah he's like not yet give it another couple days um the only thing i'm the only thing i'm hoping for which i actually think i'm might not

be getting now which i i know i mentioned it last time was um the cupcakes that allison's made that are like the neon tie-dye yeah i've been thinking about those non-stop me too i uh i'm hoping allison hears this in advance and then like panic makes them i don't think that's possible because i think this comes out in like fucking july or something but i we mentioned it in a previous episode so oh oh right true um i should also just maybe hint it later today that I miss those yummy cupcakes. It's not a bad idea. Not a bad idea. But my mom, my mom has not spoiled the plans, which I'm sure was very hard for her. So good job to mom. But Allison, I've already told you she's an itinerary girly. So she has written out quite a schedule. And my mom has told me that we from like pretty much from like sunrise to sunset, we will be out. And so I don't know. That's fun.

Yeah. But I think that means we won't be home to eat cupcakes. Oh, I see. Wondering what the situation is. But intriguing. I'll find out along the way. She has a whole weekend, you know, if they're not there on your birthday, you can be like, Oh, so tomorrow the cupcakes are coming out.

And then she can be like, Postmates, crap. I need flour. It'll be good. Um, I have a reason why I drink. Okay.

Besides being sick. And it's not your birthday. It's not any of the above a new reason. Yes. Well, so when this comes out, everyone pretend that you are um just time travel back to when christine and i were recording this which is june 1st everyone time travel back

you know it well you've been there we haven't um so june 1st okay uh happy pride happy pride everybody happy birthday alissa one of my queer friends who is also born in June. I just I love my little like queer June tribe. You know what I mean? There's nothing I love more than the fact that Gemini season and Pride season happen at the same time. It's delicious. It couldn't be more perfect. It's delicious. Oh, I was going to say last week we discussed the Duggars.

Yes. Correct. we discussed the Duggars. Yes? Correct. Do you realize, I never even mentioned this because I really went into a tirade on the, you know,

we really talked it up. Did you know how topical that was? No. Because do you know the most recent update at all about the Duggars? Okay, so. It's like I went in and then I immediately locked it up

and launched it into outer space and never looked back. That's fair. Nobody really needs more of that. I mean, I feel like you'll tell me as you are right now. Well, I feel so silly that I should have said it then. But now it's like delayed and this is old news to everybody else. But to you and me, remember, we're all here on June 1st right now.

So, yay. Right. What happened? At midnight, the Duggar Tell-all documentary comes out oh tonight tonight which is our fucking birthday m birthday weekend and for my birthday gift you told me about the they were just so perfectly lined up and i totally forgot to tell you about it so uh tonight because um i'm obviously going to watch it and i have to make it a spectacle as we've said um as you know because we've discussed this enough privately is that the duggers are obsessed with this meal called

tater tot casserole i love that we discuss it privately like because it's such a personal discussion not only that but christine has a custom cricket made me my own tater tot casserole pan thrown it out or forgotten about it by now do you know how many times i've made tater tot casserole and that thing you have actually used it yes only for tater tot casserole so i'm gonna cry i made that with my cricket machine and some glass engraving tools well tonight i will be using it again uh they're they're also obsessed with um pickles that was like that's like michelle duggar's pregnant food i love a gherkin and so uh i'm gonna have so why are you making that face it's the truth so i'm going to sometimes i think we don't have enough like one-liners on this show

and then you say things like i love a gherkin and i'm like fucking put it on a shirt baby let's go oh now that's a vlasic so i okay we can't take that one guys that that one's covered sorry anyway tonight i'm having my own little watch party. Even though I'm sick, I have nothing to do tonight. And so I'm just going to sit there. Fucking yes. It comes out at midnight. I'm going to have my TTC.

And I'm going to have my gherkins. And we're going to have a little party. What does the casserole dish say? I was afraid to ask if you still had it because I didn't want you to feel like, oh, no, I threw it away. I think it just says M's Tater Talk casserole dish or something yeah i think that's right i forgot the name of ttc tater tot casserole and it has like little swirlies on it yeah it's very excited southern bell dish anyway that's if this is i am aware this news is delayed but in this present moment it's like what do you think is gonna happen i don't know i feel like i think i'm gonna get like two really good pieces of intel and other i don't know

i don't know so jill and derrick are in this and they're gonna talk about their experience and they're pissed i'm pretty sure they are like fully removed from jim bob and some of the siblings so like i think they at this point have only the truth to discuss and they have a and they have a memoir coming out next year so i think are you gonna real talk are you gonna read the memoir are you gonna do an audible are you just not gonna read it uh tiktok clip it usually i i tick tock clip it or like i'll wait for reddit to post it in clips because i really don't want to like give them my money right um if for some reason i can't i i might wait around and see if something leaks and then if it doesn't i might give in but i'm gonna try my best to not give them my money um so because one of the things i really liked about

reddit with uh ginger's book is that someone was just like copy and pasting like the pages into the reddit like which like is so fucked up but also like none of us wanted to like give her our money so like it was useful i'm not saying it was right but it was useful uh but so uh it's unethical but but it's. You have to balance the morals. It's like, which one of which one do I hate more or less? Exactly. Exactly. So but I'm excited about I will I will figure out the information in the memoir.

I don't know how I'm going to get the information, but I don't doubt that at all. And the documentary today that comes out later today. I don't know. There are some like really big players that are like in the documentary, which is cool. So like, I feel like there's going to be some good information, but I also don't know.

I don't, I don't know. I'm we'll see, but I'm expecting to be disappointed, not in like a negative Nancy way, but in a like, let, but in a let's keep it restrained. Let's keep our expectations in check.

Yes. Okay. Got you. Anyway, I'm very excited for my party of one Duggar watch party tonight. I can't wait. I'm so happy for you. You know what? I might watch TV tonight, too.

Ah! That'd be fun. You should make TTC. I should. Can you send me the recipe for real? I don't have it. It sounds disgusting. It actually tastes kind of good. And I'm so ashamed of saying that, but it's good. I like everything. I eat everything. It fills the old tummy up real right. So it's a good time. I will send you the recipe. It's very simple. It's like four ingredients and

you just shove them together. Okay. Wow. I feel like I stole the show there. Is there anything you would like to say? No, I'm just like on that day quail grind. I'm just like loving life, drinking my sparkling apple juice, going back to childhood mentally. Are you, before we get into it, and it is is pride i want to say happy pride to you is this your first out pride i still don't feel like i'm technically out but yeah well you're only talking

into a microphone for the masses i know i think that's why it doesn't feel real um but yes i do i do identify as bisexual and i have a cute little sticker on my laptop to prove it. Okay, everybody. Okay. I mean, that sounds pretty out to me. Happy pride, Em. Thank you so much for acknowledging that. That makes me very happy. Well, I've had- And since I said that, a couple of friends that I have are like,

hey, did you know I'm bi too? And I'm like, what? No. You bi's, you're all sneaky. We're hiding. You little mysteries. That's why everyone hates us. They're like, ooh, they're all sneaky. You little mysteries. That's why everyone hates us.

They're like, ooh, they're too sneaky. We can't trust them. And guess what? You can't. Yeah. Every time I turn a corner, I'm like, is there another one over there? Yeah. Yes.

I feel like I will turn the corner. Everyone can take a look at me and know what the situation is with you. We hear you coming a mile away. You know what I mean? It's like, here comes Em. Here comes Em screaming, I love women. I'm very queer. I love women, but also tater tot casserole and the duggars just figure it out you know yeah whatever the who whatever my identity is i'm going to hell so whatever if you talk if you talk to the duggars that's what they'll tell you okay so uh anyway happy

pride i didn't want to forget to say that to you. That's so kind of you. Thank you. Happy pride. And to you and Eva. And that's it. Nobody else. Okay. Just kidding.

Everybody. Just us. Just us. This episode is a shorty, so I encourage banter. But great. So it's going to be four hours long. Yeah, I shouldn't have done that. It's okay.

I'm ready. But I was doing the notes and I was like, oh, they're a little shorter than my usual stuff. So I feel a little nervous. Whatever. No, don't worry. It always ends up being a good thing. It evens out. Well, I personally love this story.

And I think you'll figure out the vibe very quickly. I think you'll know why this category of topic is my favorite. I'll just get into it. This is the story of Sergei Ponamarenko. Whoa, you said that so smoothly. I practice because I know I fuck up so much on the misspellings or on the mispronunciations. Ponamarenko. Ponamarenko.

Who's that? I'll tell you. As I get into this, I would like to give shout outs to the YouTube channels Joe Scott and the Y Files because 99% of my information came from their videos. Nice. And I looked elsewhere, but really they were the most concise and well put together stories so that was what i worked off of and also as i'm saying i know i fuck up pronunciations it's kiev right or is it kiev in ukraine i think it's kiev or kiev kiev i don't know i'm glad you don't know because i feel like lots of the dick but I feel

like I've always listened to the news clippings and gone okay that's how you say it and then I fuck it up anyway I watched like 10 YouTube channels and everyone said it differently and I was like well this does not fucking help me I think it may be Kiev yeah okay just saying that for no reason what is wrong with me everyone leave me alone we're pronouncing it kiev and know that i tried and if i still fucked it up what else is new okay uh okay so let's talk about sergey potomarenko that i can fucking say everybody okay how amazing by the way congratulations thank you once in my life okay so we the date is april 23rd 2006 okay. Okay. In Kiev. Kiev. Kiev, Ukraine.

Okay. April 2006. People are walking around town, hanging out in Ukraine, and then they notice this man. And he seems very confused, and he's looking up at this building. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. I know what's happening, I think. What? Is it like a time travel he seems very confused he's looking up at this building he is in his early 20s and he is wearing

clothes that are new and yet out of date yes Yes! Oh, fuck yes! I love these kind of stories. Everyone thinks it's very odd how he's dressed because his clothes do look like he just bought them, but they are 50 years out of date. At the same time, something else he has

that's very new on him is an antique camera. It still has the price tag on it and stuff so weird he approaches all these people because he's confused he's like asking people for directions nobody's able to help him because he's looking for this street that does not seem to exist Dun, dun, dun. This catches the eye of two cops. Of course it does. Of course. Anything suspicious or not suspicious, they will be suspicious of.

This catches the eye of two cops. The eyes of two cops. Whatever. I think the eye in the phrase, the the idiom catch the eye of someone or something well two police officers show up they see that he looks confused he's looking around they're like how can we help you this guy says i'm looking for this one street and they've never heard of it so they show him a map they're like where are you trying to get to? He points to the map where the street should be. And there's a landfill.

Oh, no. This poor guy of all things. And the cops are like, who are you? Can you show us some ID? And he says his name is Sergei Ponamarenko. And he hands them his ID. And the cops are very thrown off by his ID. Oh my god.

Because not only does the ID say that he's from the Soviet Union, which is not a thing anymore, and it also says that he was born in 1932. Oh boy. And he looks 25 years old.

He either has a really good korean skincare regimen or something time travel-y is afoot something silly is happening here uh they're like how it says you're born in 1932 what what's the situation and somehow and sergey uh i think they probably said something like how were you born in 1932 and you look like you're 25 yeah and through very quick conversation sergey says like uh the year is 1958 oh no that's very far off sir it's like you might not be onto something no unfortunately pretty far off i wonder if he said that the year is 1958 or last i checked it was 1958 because if you're i feel like a cop in 2006 looks very different than the one in 1958 and great great point like you're walking around nobody looks looks like you. This like, is it not clicking? Something's off.

People are on the phone. Like women are wearing pants. Like things are wrong everywhere. It's yeah. Something's amiss. You've got to immediately realize that. Yeah. Well, so the cops hear him say it's 1958 and they go, okay, let's take you down the street

to this psychiatric clinic we've got a visitor yep and uh let's see how much help you might need um so apparently at this visit there was cctv footage that shows sergey looking very nervous and a nurse that was interviewed later ended up saying that he was acting very strange and agitated, would not give his belongings to her, and kept staring at her phone, her mobile phone. Aha, see? Which 2006, that was like the first year of the iPhone, too.

Imagine. He came at the right time. Right time, and also like the hot pink razors were still vibing. Blackberry, I mean, imagine learning to play Brick Breaker on an original Blackberry. Remember the chocolate? Oh, I remember the LG chocolate. It was the first phone that did this. It moved up.

Yeah. Did you have the lime green one? No, I was a razor kid. Me too. And I didn't have an iPhone until- I know we already knew this about each other. I know we've had this conversation. I just feel it in my bones.

We'll have to discuss our phones again because I made a list of every phone I ever had because I apparently make lists. I think we did this on the show. I think we did this in an after chat. Did we? Maybe we'll do something similar. Anyway.

Anyway, originally I was a Razor kid and I didn't get an iPhone or a smartphone at all until college. No, until grad school. Until I met you in't get an iPhone or a smartphone at all until college. No, until grad school. Until I met you in Boston. Oh, that's right. Neither did Blaze. He still had a flip phone.

It didn't even have internet. Yeah. And I was like, you are in graduate school. You need a phone. My mom, when I was moving out of the state, she was like, I need to know where you are. I was like, okay, that's fair. I mean, if she's going to pay for your phone, like, why not? You know? it was a

fair argument so okay so he's staring at the phone undetermined if uh it was an iphone or the chocolate or the razor or blackberry or blackberry a lot of foods black Chocolate. That's kind of weird, huh? Hmm. Hmm. Apple? Oh, what is happening here? Do you know why they named it Apple? Fun fact. Um, let me think. Something about fucking Eve. What?

No, my brother just taught me this. Apparently, I think it was either Steve Jobs or Wozniak. But one of the wait was Wozniak the other one anyway one of them um when they were coming up I think it was Steve Jobs was coming up with a name he wanted to be like the first um in the yellow pages when you look up like a tech company and so he did an a name and did apple smart I know I feel like there's an Eve thing. I feel like some Christian probably wrote a story about it. Like made it, put it part of the zeitgeist, you know?

That's you right now, because I think no one's ever said that except you. Let me see. I believe you fully, but I feel like there's got to be. Was it the Duggars who said that? Because it sounds like the Duggars would say some bullshit like that. Apple logo why? Apple logo why? Why?

It represents knowledge as in the biblical story of Adam and Eve. Okay. I feel like it was. Hold on. I can't say it right, but you can say it. Say it. The double. Say it. Say what?

Oh, double entendre. Yeah. I think that's what it was. I think it's a little bit everything. Okay, well, you're probably right. I don't know. Maybe my brother's was... No, that makes sense, too. Steve Jobs was...

In reality, Steve Jobs named the company Apple because he liked the fruit. Steve Jobs called it a fruitarian diet. Okay, so maybe that's why. So every answer imaginable is the right one that's hilarious i know he was like the king of like user design and like ios psych i totally believe the apple thing in the front of a yellow page that totally makes sense it makes sense right uh maybe my brother made that up i have no idea i don't know i believe i believe it i am believing

it so whatever um okay anyway he's still he's staring at the phone. He's acting really weird on the CCTV footage. And at this psychiatric appointment, this is where he meets a psychiatrist named Dr. Pablo Kuchikov. Okay. And basically, Dr. Kuchikov says, what is the last thing you remember? Because, homie, a lot has happened since 1958. Fair question.

And this is a quote from Sergei. He said, it was daytime and I wanted to go for a walk in the city. I took my camera, but when I left my house, I saw a strange object that had a bell shape. It was very strange and it was flying in a strange way. It's difficult to explain what I was seeing. It might be better to look at the photos from my camera. Oh! This is the kind of eyewitness we need.

So they take his camera. Fuck yes. And they realize that it is a vintage camera obviously but it's also a rare camera so they needed to call in a specific photographer who would know how to develop the film the right way the photographer his name was i think it's vadim uh vadim posner posner vadim posner and he was a photographer who knew the camera well. He said the camera was a Yashima Flex. And he also said what was interesting about the film for this camera is that it was discontinued in the 1970s.

Discontinued. Oh, and it's brand new looking. It's, in fact, in perfect condition. Oh, my goodness. Even though it's almost 50 years old oh my goodness so when he develops the film he looks at the photos and the photos are from uh the same part of town but everything looks like it's from the 1950s. The cars, the people, buildings that are no longer there. And that's my dream is to be able to see like photos of exactly where I go day to day. Also, maybe I'm an idiot when it comes to like vintage film.

But to my knowledge, if that film wasn't developed, there's no way that that guy could have known what was on the roll of film beforehand when he when he handed over his camera and said look at my camera like unless he took the pictures he wouldn't know it was on that roll of film because it hadn't been developed yet right but he did take the pictures right yeah but i'm saying like for the skeptics out there who'd be like oh well he might have known what was on the camera but it's like but how but unless he took the pictures himself and like like how would he know what's on the roll i'm i'm saying like for skeptics who might think like he just like grabbed a random camera and like was oh oh oh was was grab it i see what you're saying i see what you're saying yeah so you're right yeah you wouldn't know there's no

like playback feature that he can like go through and be like, yeah, view what's on there. I see. Like he had to know it was on the roll of film to be able to tell people my camera and everything in there was 1950s Kiev, including pictures of him in front of buildings that no longer exist in the same outfit he was wearing in that moment. So it was as if he wild. It was as if those pictures were taken today. And bananas, dude. It was as if those pictures were taken today. That's bananas, dude. And it wasn't just him in the pictures, but it was also of his girlfriend slash fiance. Different sources said different things.

Her name is Valentina Kurish. And so there's pictures of the two of them just walking around the city, taking pictures together. And the last photo is of a bell shaped UFO in the sky. Shut up. Sergey says at the same moment when I took the picture, I went down to look at the camera and somehow I showed up in this year. And then he looks back up and there's this fucking giant building.

And that's why he looked confused screenplay screenplay that night i guess they like held him because they were like this is either psychiatric hold yeah right it's like either this is so true the government needs to get involved right fair point not true and hospitals need to get involved probably multiple motives here yeah so that night they have him in a room he goes back to his room um and i guess this is around the same time when they're developing the pictures uh they go try to get him the next morning and he's gone fully vanished and the door had cctv on it the whole time so there was only one way in one way out and he never left and there's no explanation for how he disappeared he just wasn't in his room the next

day what the f my first thought was like oh the government got involved and kidnapped him and like made him disappear yeah but uh i don't know if that's possible i guess i that's that was my first thought but that doesn't seem to be the majority theory um but anyway so he's banished and now they're like well what do we do like do we just keep going with this like investigation do we like try to look for him again where do we look for him when do we look for him like what like what happened so they're trying to learn they're trying to learn more about sergey to get some like information uh and when going through old archives and old police reports they learn that there was a sergey uh sorry a sergey ponamorenko who was declared missing in kiev in 1960 no by the way it took them two years to declare him missing yeah i don't know

if i were like i wonder if back in those days it was like i don't like i don't know maybe he'll be back maybe he just like when the fiancee reported it they're like he probably just ran away didn't want to marry you well so they also knew that his fiance's they knew his fiance's name because he had told them and so they looked her up and they looked up valentina kurish and they found a 74 year old woman named valentina kurish who was still nearby i'm losing my mind this. This is crazy. So they go meet her. They show her the picture of Sergei in the missing persons report.

And the picture that the police had in the missing persons report, she had that exact same picture. And she said, yep, that's my fiance. And that's my boy. Where the fuck is he so apparently uh they showed her the picture and she said sergey did disappear because they were saying like he was saying it was 1958 and he just

vanished from 1958 she said he actually did vanish in 1958 the same year that he was claiming it was but showed up a few days later and the amount of time that he was missing was the same amount of time that he was in 2006 whoa and then so then he eventually returned and he went missing a few more times so that would explain the 1960 and then he disappeared again in the 1970s. But after that, he never returned. So now the investigators are thinking we got him in some sort of time jump in 1958. But after that, he's time jumped more. And now we really don't know where he is.

He's just lost in the sauce of, of, of time. It's like, we thought we found him. We thought he would jump back to like 50 years ago, but then 50 years ago, another like 12 years after that, he's gone. And now who fucking knows where he is.

Oh my God. So it's one of those trippy things of like, well, in the, in the future, in the past we did this, but in the future, it is,

this is very crazy. It's very, those trippy things of like, well, in the in the future, in the past, we did this. But in the future, it is this is very crazy. It's very. Anyway, apparently, she said in the 1970s, he vanished. And this time it was for good. And even though she never saw him again, one day she got this weird piece of mail and found that it was a picture of him that was sent to her. And he was in Kiev and he was standing with a sky with the skyline of the city behind him but the skyline had more buildings than it should have as if the buildings were built at a later date and he was sending a picture from the future

and the picture was dated 2050. and the picture was dated 2050. Okay, at least we know Kiev's not gonna go totally down, right? If this is true. Can you imagine also, yeah, I know, I know, given how everything is. Exactly. Can you imagine though being an investigator,

being like, well, I guess we just wait another 30 fucking years like i'll be retired i'm not me but the sheriff or whatever be like i'll be retired by then i guess at that point though if you know it's taken in 2050 for the entire year just have someone around the clock exactly where he took the picture to grab you know wait that's a great point like somebody has to be waiting yeah so she gets this picture in the mail. It's dated 2050. It's a skyline that has not yet existed. And on the back of the photo is a handwritten note that says, Dearest Valentina, everything is fine with me. I will try to return when I can. Yours, Sergei. Oh my god. So that first one in 2006 must have been the first time this happened yeah and apparently he's just been bopping around is so fucking used to it now yeah he's like got a whole system where he can mail things in the past and shit oh my god blow our gourds from the future

crazy i'm so impressed a good old gourd blowing and so uh don't put that on the shirt either eva so now she's got this letter and she never heard from him again so he knows how to mail things into the past but not get back to the past he also knows how to leave a girl hanging you know i was gonna say maybe he just wasn't that indy stringing her along every now and then she get like she's with a new man and then all of a sudden this photo of her futuristic boyfriend appears and her person's like, seriously? Although she's now 74 and still had this picture ready to give to the police. So she's still waiting on him.

Oh, poor thing. Maybe she's like, well, I'll go back too. Right, yeah. Yeah, back in time. So after that, he was really never heard of again the last thing we know is that he apparently will be in ukraine in 2050 in front of the skyline okay i'll be waiting and then in 2011 so just over 10 years ago for us a documentary that is only in russian and has to be translated into english to watch the whole thing thing it is called the time traveler and it's about sergey um so if you are able to get access to

that and speak russian you can watch that also there was a ukrainian tv show called aliens and episode three was dedicated to the story of sergey ponamarenko okay and if this is true if all this really did happen and he really did time travel the running theory is that because the last picture in his camera was of a ufo and then he got blasted into another time period uh they think that maybe the ufo like noticed him noticing them and reacted or like tried to zap him away and something happened and he wormholed into another time zone or another time period um but then i wonder like but then why would they zap him back to his own time or to other time periods? Do you wonder? Do you think maybe it could be like accidental?

Like they did something to him and now it's like a glitch where he like can't control it. Like, I wonder if it was part of because I mean, it would make sense with other abduction stories like you lose track of time. So maybe they like accidentally flipped one switch and not the other so instead of like making him forget the time he was in they accidentally moved him to a different fucking time i don't know right yeah it feels like almost a a little bit of a hiccup in their planning or like maybe they reacted like spontaneously and accidentally fucked it up somehow i like to think there was like an alien on board who was supposed to be in charge of that he like tripped and fell onto a lever and it like

and he still won't admit it and he's like oh no it's like faulty technology it wasn't me but so now he's got like i don't know if the theory is then that he now has this like power to time jump or if they are constantly watching him and keeping tabs on him and they keep trying to are they trying to bring him back to his own time and keep fucking up like i don't fucking know or are they just like using is this now an experiment you know that he's part of huh all i know is he probably regrets taking that last picture of a ufo yeah i would think so this is a psa for everybody if you see something in the sky turn around walk away that's all no freaking way take a picture

and email it to us immediately i'm not from 2050 from mail us a postcard no uh i don't know i feel like if i saw something we all have iphones. Like the aliens can't just zap everybody who tries to take a picture. That also makes me wonder, like, how familiar are they with our technology for them to know he was using a camera? Like, maybe they didn't know he was using a camera. Maybe they just sensed that he was seeing them, seeing them. I don't know. Maybe they thought the camera was a weapon because he was like aiming it at them. And it was all old and bulky yeah i don't know like do aliens today know when our iphone is taking a picture of them yeah well you know you hear this in uh stories where anytime there's like um an anomaly

or a cryptid sighting or something weird and you go back and watch the cctv it just like skips or it glitches it's almost like or if you try to take a photo of a ufo it just turns out black or a ghost you know what i mean yeah like they know something we hear that all the time it's like it either just doesn't function with our technology or they can block it yeah i don't know well holy shit m so the theory is that they reacted somehow and it caused him to start glitching through time periods and uh this uh again this enables the theory that aliens and ufos are capable of space-time travel that we are not capable of right according to einstein's theory of relativity which i will not be getting into, is... That'll be my story this episode.

That's the true crime. It is the true crime. So very simply put, Einstein has said that time travel is possible, but we would have to move so unbelievably, like speed of light fast to even experience like a blip of time travel. And we just don't have the technology for it. But theoretically, it is possible.

It's possible. And technology is exponentially advancing. So yeah. And AI, like maybe AI can add to it, you know? Oh, my God. and uh ai like maybe ai can add to it you know oh my god can you imagine if you just like go into like chat gpt and you're like i need you to tell me the formula to time travel can you please well that's what i'm currently doing i'm typing out um in chat gpt what is einstein's uh theory of relativity since i'm supposed to cover it in two minutes and i don't know what it is

i'm actually asking them to tell me so it's actually working pretty great they they it is pretty interesting i was watching videos on it and i was like it's just not worth getting into today but but some of some of the experiments they've done to prove that time travel exists is very i mean they've they've done experiments that have shown technically time travel but it is so so like so uh like not like i'm not a what's wrong with me am i can i speak i don't like such a minuscule yeah yes like on such a small scale like a micro scale that yeah like they were using like super accurate clocks and flying like a like rocket speed to then show that that accurate clock is actually now a second behind like a millisecond back. Yeah.

I mean, it was pretty powerful. I remember that. And I feel like that's pretty incredible because I mean, all we need to do is. Be lightning fast. Think about 50 years ago ago like the thought of a fucking chat gpt would have been outrageous so like you never know in 30 years if we will just suddenly be able to do that um and make it bonkers so they think that since technically time travel is possible, we just don't have the advanced technology for that.

Maybe the UFO that saw him, they do have the advanced technology for that. And so they accidentally warped him from one place to another. They're like, he's not used to this. Oh, shit, I forgot. He's new here. forgot he's new here uh there is after all of this there is however a very large chance that none of this is true for obvious reasons but uh some examples that people have used are that the discontinued camera film even though it was not manufactured anymore and since the 1970s it was still something you could purchase through the 90s sure so only 10 years

from 2006 he could have found it in his basement taking a picture but like for what i guess just to cause a scene i guess i guess so i mean he fucking nailed it if he was trying to like like pull one over us like what did he get out of it personal private bragging rights i don't know like decades later they find oh no it wasn't decades later they found the fiance it was like that time right was it in 2006 they found her they found her in 2006 oh yeah so so maybe i mean also i guess if you wanted to pull an elaborate ruse you could just go in the phone book and after apple find the next person who's like in there just pick a name and then just like show people a picture of a random girl and just be like oh that's that this is her name she's 74 why would she have the photo

oh yeah no what i'm saying is maybe that was his actual fiance and he was or his some lady he actually knew and was like here when the police come show them this photo right like it seems so ridiculous like why would you get your 74 year old neighbor to do this weird prank with you yeah i don't know it's just odd maybe like his grandpa had the same name as him and the grandpa dated that woman and that grandpa left her randomly in the 70s and he looks very weirdly similar to him so the picture matched his face that explains it i don't know so anyway learned photoshop and could make that weird to that 2050 uh skyline well so they say the camera film technically could have been purchased in

2006 and still been pretty much in perfect condition they also say that um the cop they interviewed that found him said this all happened on a tuesday but april 23rd 2006 was on a sunday that could be a genuine mistake um also apparently the soviet union id card that he showed the cops had the wrong seal stamped on it but this was also a picture that was used for the show aliens so maybe it was just like a random graphic designer error for like as like it was just like a random b-roll to show on the show of like and his card looked like this and like maybe they just like they just made a made up a fake one yeah and like for a prop and yeah and whoever did the art didn't know the history of what seal goes on a card so it could

have been an error from the show also sergey apparently told them he was born in june but the id that was shown on television said in March. Again, that could have been a similar art error. And the CCTV footage had the wrong date on it, but cameras have wrong dates all the fucking time. Right. And then, just like you said, the pic from 2050, the buildings in the skyline could have been photoshopped especially because one of them does look exactly like the empire state building okay that's not reassuring but that picture was also used on the television show so it could have been a dramatization and

like because what's interesting is if this story is real all of the photos and all the documents and all the cctv footage that we have was actually just used in this show aliens and they were all reenactments okay now i'm getting it so all the clips were dramatizations including the cctv footage any interviews they were all not the real people they were all reenactors doing restoration scenes so even though i think the the the major problem which this is um one of the youtubers his name was joe scott he was the one that i guess figured all this out. So credit to him. But it seems like this footage from the Aliens show, which was a Ukrainian show, was only on for a season, made all these dramatization scenes and clips for the show. And then because we never had the show, when it got spread online, we took all this and thought it was real footage and real interviews and real documents oh and so now it seems like this story might be a total bust and

everything we know is just from artwork they made for the tv show so like you think they made it up on the tv show i think it was i don't know but my my bet my bet is this is essentially an urban legend or a creepypasta or something and they heard the story and just kind of ran with it as a segment and had to make all the art from scratch because i think the story they go with is like oh the actual documents have never been able to be found and it's like well that's shady but also i guess you could blame like a government conspiracy on that so they had to make everything from scratch because they didn't have the originals and it's not like ukraine right now has other things on their mind you know right so uh joe he said maybe these were dramatizations

but if they were if there were really documents and footage, where are they? And he also looked for police records of like the missing persons information. He looked for proof that the doctor or the photographer were real. And he even tried to reach out from that 2011 Russian documentary. He tried to reach out to like the producers of it. Like he tried to reach out to anybody that would have any information on where he could find real intel or real proof that the story is true okay and he couldn't find anything oh man so it seems like this story just kind of ended up becoming an episode of a show. And then all that footage got spread online.

And it kind of built upon itself as this big, scary time travel urban legend story. Oh, my God. I like I want it to be real. So I do, too. And I did. This was a hard one to do any research for because apparently there are other famous Sergei Ponemarenko's um they are all athletes one is an olympic ice dancer and the other two are professional football players so if you look him up time traveler is not like the top link um you'd think it would be but apparently sports won this time I am impressed that someone was like an Olympian,

but also time traveler still beats you in my mind. So yeah, sorry. And our circles not as impressive. Yeah. So I tried, but it seems like all of this might just be a total bust. And man,

I knew these stories always kind of end up like that. Cause otherwise like we would all know more about it but i still love them because it's like there's such an air of mystery about it still that's like could still be possible you know i i want it so badly to be real but also my first thought would be if it was real the government would make sure we never knew about it right true point true point because like how easy is it? That's a different government, so, you know. That's true, but I think of, like, Russian spies, and, like, I think of, like, Ukraine,

like, I think of, like, those are, like... Especially during, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, Soviet Union, right? Like, I feel like you just hear, like, these, like, buzzwords of, like, oh, really intense governments that, like, are not going to... Right.

...let that shit slip through the cracks understood that does make some sense yes but anyway so i would love for it to be real but um it seems like this was all i don't know where the story would have started from or where it would have you know i don't know where it would have would where it would have came from, but I will say the, the TV show aliens, they even say, uh, like, you know how a lot of TV shows will have like a,

a warning come up like before the episode starts, like, like a PSA or something. It even says, uh, that all of these, uh, it said something like all of this footage is reenactments and we cannot confirm

that this story is true and so it seems almost like pretty much right away they're telling you this is a fake story and this is for like just the sake of storytelling man oh man but man what a good story if it were real to be real um if he's in 2050 he has access to old vintage podcasts from 2023 and maybe we're right maybe we're talking about him and he's hearing it hello can you hear me if he pops up in my room right now i will scream my little face off who's that behind you stop you did pause and i was like what's going on okay anyway if he's real and if any time travelers are real you know just maybe send us send us a picture of you in front of a skyline that doesn't exist yet you know be quiet we won't say anything except unless the

government like holds me for information then i will will absolutely crack. So yeah, yeah. We can't promise that under any sort of pressure, even slight pressure that we won't crack. We can't promise that. Even the threat of pressure, I will spill. Even a kind of an eyebrow raise and I'm done. You know, I don't really have much, much more than that. I have seen like the, it was a meme that went around for a long time in like college but it was like uh if future you doesn't come if your future you doesn't time

travel back to the past to stop you from doing the thing you're about to do how bad can it really be and i'm like it feels like such a chaotic christine move of like if i wasn't supposed to and future me really cared that much someone would have stepped in by now you know what i'm saying and i feel like uh i wonder sometimes like why hasn't like future me shown up to prevent me from anything and i'm like honestly because we both me and future me know that i would freak the fuck out so yeah you couldn't handle it you know you'd be at all i know myself they can't handle it the closest thing to time travel i will ever have is surprising myself with chocolate covered strawberries from future me or honestly is probably the best way we could all experience hope to experience it there's there's a uh

i guess like a meme account. I don't know. I think they're called like Frog Witch or something. I follow them on Instagram. But they have a shirt with a frog on it and it says, sleep is just a time machine to breakfast, my dudes. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm like, man, I love that. I have that on my Pinterest of like, I have a Pinterest board of like things to put on my little letter board. And that's one of my favorites. Sleep is just a time machine to breakfast.

You haven't heard that before? Oh, I've heard it. Every time I go past one of their pictures, I feel like I see it. I feel like that's been a thing for like I think I used to say that in like college when I thought I was really deep. Deep? But it still gets me. I've heard it probably 100 times now, and it still gets me going every time because I'm like, that is the closest thing to time travel is if I close my eyes long enough and

then open them, I'll be in a different time period. And you know what the most ironic part is? You and I have insomnia. So what the fuck? Why can't we just be like, it's time travel. That's such a good point. To food, to our favorite meal. And we literally still can't do it. Maybe that's how I need to start thinking about going to bed. I'm like, oh, kind of like how like I couldn't take my vitamins. I'm like, oh, I have to go to the

Apothecary. Like I had to make it fun. To make it a spectacle. It's like, oh, I have to go to the apothecary like i had to make it a fun a spectacle it's like oh i have to go to bed no wait a second oh i have to go time travel your bed is now a time travel capsule you have to put like lights and a door and you have to make it a spectacle it's a time machine it's a delorean you need to make it a delorean snorian no that was a snorian i it's better than all the other bullshit ones you say. No offense. What about this? You know how they have those race car beds? You could make a DeLorean race car bed.

Shut the fuck up, Christine. You know? And then you can seriously be like, I'm getting into my time machine. I love it. Oh my god. Don't look it up because I want to make it for you for your birthday it's kind of late now it's in two days i i'm pretty sure if anyone knew how to make a custom race car bed look like a delorean the price the limit does not exist don't google it i'm telling you to right now not to google it does it exist I don't know yet just don't google it

because I have some thing I have to do I'm not kidding I'll tell you once I've given up and you can google it does that work it's fine yeah that's perfect okay oh my god and Christine I don't know if you can tell oh where is it what oh you can't really see it here's my floor everybody uh back here that's a hoverboard pillow i could literally i could have that in my delorean i could sleep on my little hoverboard it's like literally couldn't be more perfect i'm a saying again oh my god and i have his back to the future 2015 future shoes as slippers i mean come on now the fuck are we kidding here i mean come on now who the fuck are we even kidding so that's three reasons right there for why we i mean we got the pillow we got the slippers we got

the bed it's a happening it there's literally no other reason it can't happen oh my god the flux capacitor could be a nightlight i have to get out of here okay we have to talk about true crime okay i have to force you to listen to something terrible yeah that's how this works right help me all right and that was a great story by the way i just want to i want to say um i really loved it it was one of my favorites i love true i love time travel conspiracy shit like that. Yeah, no, I love it. And I've honestly never ended a story better by fantasizing about my DeLorean sleep set. About your own time travel opportunities.

I promise you my sleep would improve by 5 million percent. I think I'm going to fix your insomnia. Just give me like a few minutes. I think you need to talk to like a sleep clinic and tell them you've cured it. I've cured it. In fact. For one person. So, you know, that it's one one step.

Oh, my God. I'm so excited about it. Oh, my God. I'm so excited. OK. OK. I'll figure it out. So this is the story of Nona Dirksmeyer.

Nona Dirksmeyer. OK. is the story of nona dirksmeyer nona dirksmeyer okay and she was a lovely lady born to paul and carol yvette larpenter dirksmeyer one name it's like when i initially planned to make sheifer lampignale part of our names and it would have been christina maria schieffer lampignale and it just too much you know yeah that's almost crazier than sergey ponamarenko almost almost not quite but almost but you've proven you could probably say it so yeah maybe i'll maybe i'll go back to the drawing board so those were her parents she was born in 1985 day after christmas and she grew up extremely social involved with her community.

She volunteered with Big Brothers Big Sisters. She competed in local beauty pageants. She's basically like the exact epitome of the cliche. She lit up a room. She was beautiful. Everyone loved her. What could ever go wrong? I mean, you know, all of those tropes were true for nona she competed in

local beauty pageants she was crowned county fair queen miss teen mount nebo among other awards and above all else she loved and adored singing so for that reason when she graduated high school in 04 she decided to pursue a degree in music education at Arkansas Tech University in a town called Russellville, Arkansas. And this pretty small town, she was a member of their concert chorale and their chamber choir. And by the end of 2005, Nona was a thriving 19-year-old sophomore in college. She had a committed relationship with her long-term boyfriend kevin jones they actually had been high school sweethearts who planned to spend the rest of their lives together and kevin for what it's worth came from a stable happy home he was very friendly low key very well liked in his community and nona was head over heels for him. They were basically in this like, in that sweet spot of like,

high school sweethearts, puppy love, but like it's working even though they're long distance now. The Corian Topanga. The Corian Topanga, yes. Like it actually worked, you know what I mean? Which is always so cool to see. I feel like in a lot of high school romance,

even if it's very sweet, you're like, oh, but it won't last. It's never going to last. But we're rooting for them. But we want cool to see. I feel like in a lot of high school romance, even if it's very sweet, you're like, oh, but it won't last. It's never going to last. But we're rooting for them. But we want it to last. And so, you know, they were doing great. And Nona's mother loved Kevin, Nona's boyfriend. She described him as a really caring person.

And, you know, Nona had recently been struggling with some deep personal issues. and uh you know nona had recently been struggling with some deep personal issues and kevin was extremely supportive and there for her even though he was only like a 19 year old boy basically and kevin's family loved nona too which i also love when the two families really get along you know what i mean i think i think that's hard to find and i think that's really important your families have that i'm so lucky because I've definitely dated enough people where it's not at all been that way. I don't think I've ever had that where like everyone. I mean, not in a bad way. I think it's always been like everyone has no problems with each other, which is the.

Which is great. I am totally fine with that. Yeah. But I've never had the like. Because we've seen worse. You know, I had. We've talked about my my old boss, Nene, and her husband and their two parents, they met obviously through like their kids dating. And now they like go on their own vacations without Nene and her husband.

Like they love each other and became like best friends with each other and like have cookouts and like don't even like they forget to invite their own kids they just love each other you're together oh shit did we not invite you yeah how but how convenient of a love is that but guaranteed the second that they have children uh if they have children the parents are going to be like okay now we want you to come over because we want to see our grandchild and it's like okay it was never about us okay yeah um so like i said kevin's family loved nona as well his father even said she was not a girlfriend or whatever she was part of our family which is just so special so in college nona and kevin stayed in touch by phone and nona was really big into communication they spoke every single day for four and a half years. And they texted every day throughout the day.

And it became kind of a running joke where if Kevin took too long to reply, she would jokingly text, you alive? Oh, no. I see where this is going. So on December 15th, 2005, Kevin hadn't heard from her in hours, which was immediately weird to him. He said this break in their longtime pattern raised a red flag immediately in his mind. And so at first he tried to ignore the feeling. And as a joke, he texted Nona her usual line. You alive?

She wasn't. And there was no response and so now he's getting actually really nervous and he couldn't shake the feeling um but he was supposed to drive his mom to a christmas party that night so he asked a friend of his named ryan who worked at a pizza place near nona's apartment to go check on her so ryan went and told kevin that nona's car was in her parking spot her apartment lights were on but she didn't answer the door which was very odd if the lights are on her car is there she must be home she's not answering the door so kevin like basically driving his mother to the party they basically were like 180 and drove to nona's place because now they're both worried and so they keep knocking and ringing the doorbell there's no answer and so

kevin's starting to get frantic he runs around the side of the house where he knows there's a sliding glass door he didn't even look inside he just tried the door and it opened and at this point, his friend Ryan says, man, do you not see her? He's like, what? And Ryan says, dude, there she is. And as they looked through the doorway, they could see Nona lying on the floor in the front room. And in Kevin's panic, he hadn't even noticed at first. So Kevin rushed to Nona's side. Ryan let Kevin's mom in through the front door. Kevin immediately basically straddled her and started doing CPR while his mom called 911.

The call was emotional. I've heard clips of it. She could not stop crying. She told the operator Nona's name and address. And Kevin talked to Nona while he was doing CPR. Like, you know, come back, sweetie back sweetie like you're okay you'll be okay and uh unfortunately as you already predicted uh she was unfortunately too far gone for any sort of intervention at this point what did she look like was she like bloodied up uh yes i will um okay i will give you the deets momentarily so police and paramedics arrive

and they pretty quickly tell kevin that nona is gone and kevin's mom remembers hearing kevin cry out so loudly in anguish that it sounded like he was howling like his grief was just like escaping him and that's when nona's own mother carol came by to check on what was happening and police had to tell her right there in front of her daughter's apartment that she had definitely been murdered so this wasn't an accidental thing this wasn't um a suicide this was a murder and what had happened is nona had been stabbed repeatedly and she suffered violent blunt force trauma to her head which was inflicted with the base of a metal table lamp oh my god yes very brutal so from the start this case as as we can probably see a little foreshadowing, was going to be a media frenzy because Nona was young, popular, beautiful, blonde, sociable, you know, was had the photos of the pageantry and all this. So the murder was violent. It seemed personal.

And her case basically fit that exact format of the cases we see news outlets kind of elevate above all other true crime stories. It was also the lead detective, Mark Frost's first homicide case ever in his career. So he felt a lot of pressure to figure the shit out fast yeah no pressure at all no pressure so with no time to waste police told kevin the boyfriend that they had a few questions and they took him directly from the crime scene to an interrogation room he didn't have a lawyer present um i i imagine he was still in shock and he was asked questions like whether he had a key to nona's apartment yes he did and quote i'm not accusing you of anything but did you hurt her

tonight oh and so kevin told the officer that he would kill himself before he ever hurt nona yeah with a like that howling grief cry i'd be honestly as a cop even if it's protocol i'd be like i can skip those questions like i i know like i can sense that yes that that's real so when officers left the room like any time that they left the room uh you can see on the cctv kevin just like fucking falling apart like he starts sobbing he's talking out loud he's saying things like she didn't deserve this she deserved a life and oh my god please tell me what am i gonna do like he was in full on beside himself hysterics like just beyond and he got angry he was like punching the back of his chair he was sobbing like he was just so overwhelmed and this kid's 19 this is the love of his life like he found her body bloodied i mean horrific

so some people were looking at this and feeling like hmm this is a little bit of erratic behavior um but also like we just said he's just just performed CPR on a murdered loved one of his. He's only 19. Like his frontal lobe isn't even fully formed yet. Of course, he's freaking the fuck out. But cops saw it as like just erratic and strange and guilty. They saw it as like guilty behavior. So as you just said, Kevin was going through acute shock definitely trauma and

he was alone without legal representation but not only that without emotional support so finally they i mean he has had no time to process this like no time to talk to his own mother so finally they tell him to go home for a few days um they were going to question a couple other people in nonona's life. But when they did this, they called him back and said, sorry, all the other guys in her life, their alibis checked out. You need to come back in, my friend, and take a polygraph test. I can't even imagine how distraught I would be. How terrifying is that?

Which, like, this is no different than i'm sure half the stories we cover but to to know that to be so distraught and at the same time to have to deal with like one of the biggest stresses of your life that you could go to jail for it like i mean i can't imagine juggling the two worst things that could happen to you at the same time no that's so true because and i've heard as you know i watch a lot of true crime documentaries. I know, shocking. But I've heard many times when they interview the partner or they interview the family or friend and who ended up not having done it, they say, they describe that feeling as, you know, you're being interrogated as if you've done this horrible thing. So you can't even grieve it yet because like you're defend you're in defense mode you're like defending yourself you haven't even had time to process that your sister girlfriend wife whatever was murdered because you're like i didn't do this it's like a double like you you

suddenly now have two two horrible things to grieve and. And like, which one do you pay attention to? Which one do you focus on? How could you? Yeah. And you'd have to do self-preservation. Like you'd have to say it wasn't me so that we can find the real killer. I feel like I would so desperately have to focus on the, I don't want to go to jail thing,

but you're so distracted by the love of my life is dead thing. Right. And so it's, it's horrifying to see like he's having a breakdown of course and they're using that as evidence that he's guilty of murdering her which is like it's so wild that no matter what your response is if you're the boyfriend of a dead girlfriend you're guilty like yeah that's wild like because you could range from that one guy who killed his wife and two daughters and he didn't have any reaction and it freaked everyone out to wailing like a banshee because you're so and they're like wow what an actor yeah so no

matter what you're fucked it's really scary how and you know what actually interestingly enough he does talk about that later during the trial he talks about like how he felt like any move he made he was like they were the jury was gonna read into it you know and uh he felt like there was nothing i could do that was right because somebody would read into it so anyway they call him in they ask him to take a polygraph test he still has no legal representation so folks out there i know that there's a lot of mixed stuff because it's like well why would you get a lawyer if you're innocent but you're owed a lawyer in this case and you don't have to say yes i'm sorry like call get a lawyer lawyer even even if I never did anything wrong like I'm saying it

now in case anyone ever if something ever happens and you hear me getting a lawyer don't take it as any sign of suspicion I'm doing it because I fucking don't trust myself because we do true crime podcasts and we know how fucked it can be when you don't have a lawyer and the system is against you yeah yeah you need somebody on your side no matter how innocent you are get a lawyer i think it's worth it and especially if you're being asked in a murder trial to take a polygraph and you're so distraught you're not thinking straight anyway so you can accidentally talk yourself into being guilty even though you haven't done anything and by the way your lawyer will probably be like no he's not taking a polygraph test.

You know what I mean? Like, so they can defend you in that way. So they asked him to take a polygraph and he did. And so the man giving the test told Kevin he had never seen someone fail a polygraph as badly as Kevin did in his 20 plus year career. Oof. But also, I don't know know i don't know enough about

polygraphs but if you're that distraught i feel like your body is not registering right right i mean all i'm gonna say is there is a reason that they are not admissible in court as evidence so okay you know for i i don't know enough either um I know they're making different advances and there's ways around the answers and that kind of thing. So I don't know. They could even be lying. I've seen cases where they say, wow, you really failed that even though they didn't fail it. Like they're just saying it because they think you did it. And they'll say, wow, you really bombed that test hoping that you'll finally be like, oh, you caught me.

Do you know what I'm saying? Like, sometimes they'll even just lie and say you failed it, even if you didn't. So who knows? But basically, they told him he failed worse than anyone else has ever failed on a polygraph test. And with no legal representation, you know, Kevin heard them say straight to his face, Kevin, there is no doubt in my mind that you killed her.

Oh, my God. Kevin said, you're dead fucking wrong. I'm telling you. Detective Frost talked over him saying we are done. You did this. You killed her. And the slight issue there is that there was such a lack of evidence so police were holding on to this one kind of tenuous piece of evidence it didn't seem tenuous at the time but it ended up

being somewhat tenuous because it was a bloody handprint on the light bulb of the lamp that had been used to kill nona and this bloody print was kevin's but the problem was he had climbed on top of her to do cpr yeah and was right in the vicinity of all the blood was was touching things of course he had contaminated the crime scene with his own dna i mean that's why i tell you don't touch anything because you're getting yeah you're messing everything up yeah well and he was trying to save her life so it was like yeah of course he's gonna jump in there but then you can't say well he touched it well obviously like he was there and he's also her boyfriend like his prints are gonna be everywhere anyway yeah um so that was the only thing they were really riding on um and the lamp itself was less than a foot from nona's body and

so when kevin had climbed onto nona um he he could have like just leaned on it for leverage to get you know leverage to do cpr um basically kevin's defense said what we just said which is uh investigators should have expected kevin to contaminate the scene trying to rescue his girlfriend like i mean especially if you beat people to a crime scene and you just you find the person you love on the floor you're not gonna not try to grab her you can't say like oh now this is a perfectly clean crime scene that points to the killer like Like somebody has been involved now. Yeah. And there was one more thing that kind of threw a wrench into the police's

theory. And that is they found a condom wrapper on the counter of her apartment. And on the condom wrapper was some DNA and it was not her boyfriend, Kevin's. Oh, okay. Okay. So things are still somewhat unclear and police did not arrest kevin that night instead they sent him home and called nona's mother carol to tell her

they believed kevin had killed her daughter so basically this boy that has become part of her family that loved her daughter that they were going to get married and they were just so happy together now she has to deal with not only her daughter dying but also now she's being told and her daughter's boyfriend did this to her someone you trusted and someone she trusted and also assuming that he ends up not actually being the killer like the reputation that that like he already lost the love of his life and now he's gonna lose his whole support team too because yep wow yep it's it's stuff like this i mean and it we mention it later but like court of public opinion can like fucking ruin your life you know even if

technically you're not guilty because it's always gonna like sit in their head then people get it in their heads yeah yeah and by the way that's exactly what fucking happened so carol said that the police told her that kevin was a quote sociopath with a narcissistic personality okay calm down and she didn't think nona would let anyone she didn't know inside so part of her thought well i guess maybe i just didn't know him well enough and um you know the investigators told her the stabbing was extremely personal they said he failed a lie detector test like understandably she doesn't want to believe this but she's starting to because she's like, well, the police seem to be pretty damn confident. And it made sense to her, you know, so now she's grappling with both of these things.

And so a week later, police hold a press conference and they say at this point that they know who the killer is. They just won't name him yet. So, right. name him yet so okay right so this small town of russellville arkansas quickly put two and two together and are like kevin did it oh my god kevin killed her terrible so newspapers started publishing headlines like nona's killer remains free people in town started putting justice for nona bumper stickers on their cars and the town called for kevin's arrest like they were like a mob like an angry mob and 90 days after nona's death police filed formal charges against him and on march 31st 2006 he was uh formally arrested and charged with the first

degree murder of his girlfriend. So Kevin's family, for what it's worth, at least were behind him the whole time, 110%. And they had to put up their farm as collateral to afford a good defense lawyer, which is just so sad. And that's also part of it is like,

I know I said lawyer up, lawyer up, but it's like not every, most people can't afford a good lawyer. Like who i to say like get a good lawyer like i don't know i don't even know how i would do that i don't know how to find a good lawyer like i guess what i'm saying is if you're in that scenario don't feel like you have to answer everything like you can say i want a lawyer and they have to find you one so that's all i know um we just did a crossover with sinister hood and i feel like um somewhere

heather's like i feel like someone's saying very incorrect legal things out there in the world so i'm probably saying things very botched but in any case there's nothing wrong with getting a lawyer but so they had to put up their farm as collateral so that they could get a good defense lawyer. And the trial moved to Ozark because it was impossible for Kevin, obviously, to get a fair trial in Russellville where people literally had bumper stickers telling him to go to jail. So in trial, the prosecution presented presented their case but they did have some issues so detective frost and his team had actually failed interestingly to fingerprint most of the apartment they why i know they only took prints from nona's body in the area immediately around her what you've never heard of someone like hiding upstairs until you get home or

something or the door a sliding door that was unlocked anything hello wow the fucking condom wrapper will get to it they did not test it they didn't nope trash trash so there was blood throughout the apartment it was near the front door it was on the walls it was on the blinds none of that was tested they didn't collect prints or dna from any of those spots where the blood had spread it's literally the john mulaney bit of like yes now on to my hunch mop that blood up yuck get that away. Forget that wallet someone dropped behind. Let's go with my hunch instead. I mean, it's ridiculous. So they did not take any DNA from anywhere besides her body. They didn't even take DNA from the MD condom wrapper.

And fortunately, the defense was able to have that analyzed because it was still in evidence. And that is how they determined that the DNA on the condom wrapper was still in evidence and that is how they determined that the dna on the condom wrapper was not kevin's and that he had never touched it and another man's dna was on that condom wrapper so prosecutors testified that kevin had murdered nona in a jealous rage and they said well the condom wrapper must have belonged to a man she was cheating with. And Kevin walked in on them and got angry and murdered her. But the jury could not ignore all of the missed evidence. Investigators also failed to collect and analyze any of the bloody footprints in the kitchen.

The fingerprints on the glass door that had been used by the killer to enter and exit the apartment thank god i feel like i would be so worried that if i were ever on trial that the jury was not competent or like was like they wouldn't because it's nice to know that at least they were skeptical of the fact that caught on to that yeah i i would be so worried that it would be like for kevin's sake if it's a jury that's just like oh that makes sense instead of like critically thinking of the room being like wait a minute well i think that's also the job of the defense to be like hey i'm gonna plant some doubt in your minds you know what i mean like right that's true so i think that's almost the i guess that's the whole game heather is that right the lawyer on sinister i don't know

um but yeah so basically the jury is thinking something's not right here um and the lack of thoroughness here made the jury start doubting pretty much the entire investigation, thankfully, even the alibis of the other men in Nona's life. So in a Dateline interview, the host says the police claim that they had checked the alibis of all these potential suspects. And then as they're interviewing the jury, one of the jury members sarcastically replies oh as well as they gathered the evidence and then they all started laughing so like she's clearly they went back to deliberate and were like what a fucking bunch of jabronis they didn't even get the fingerprints off the window so kevin's grandmother testified as his alibi saying kevin was with her during the killing in dover which was miles away a different town and finally kevin's defense team saying kevin was with her during the killing in dover which was miles away a different

town and finally kevin's defense team showed kevin's full interrogation tapes to the jury to show how distressed kevin was after finding nona dead because i think if you take the clips out of context like the prosecution may have done it could paint a totally different picture you know what i mean like they could probably take segments and be like look at what he's saying like she deserved better i i don't know like i wonder if there was a way to play that i don't know if they did um but basically they played the full version and kevin really came across as grief-stricken terrified um he did not come off as violent and erratic as they wanted to paint him and so that was really a you know point in his favor for the jury i feel like also any of that cctv footage of him just like

fully having a meltdown is right yes that's they played the whole thing and it was like when they were able to not just see like snippets, they saw the whole thing. They were like, oh, this is a man like in shock and grief. Not somebody crazy like the police are trying to make us think. So Kevin, during all this, remembers feeling extreme pressure in the courtroom. Like, I mean, imagine you're like 19 and you're in this horrible position. Everyone's looking at you, deciding your your fate like the fate of your life and he said quote one click of a pen one bite of a fingernail any wrong gesture or facial expression could sway the jury against me like he felt like they were always staring at him and like he he

didn't know how to compose himself to look innocent but not like too innocent and then you end up looking paranoid and then that could be bad you know you like don't want to smile you know obviously but you don't want to like fake cry like it's all just i imagine there's so much that goes into that thought process that probably lawyers have learned to kind of train their clients i don't know so in the end the jury thankfully found kevin jones not guilty um but of course like you said his life was forever changed um he was guilty in the court of public opinion and he had been for months so his reputation was seriously damaged um but kevin and his family were still determined to find nona's real killer um both to clear his own, but also because Nona was the love of his life and he wanted to know who the fuck murdered her.

Yeah. Everything we were talking about earlier of like all the pressure of like trying to get out of the situation and grieve your the love of your life. But then the secret third pressure is like someone who killed her is out there. Now there is right now we have to actually figure out who did it. You're right. There's no one's helping me. Yes. And nobody believes it because they think it's me.

Oh, my God. So they decided his family to ask this man who was a part time police officer, part time preacher for help. This sounds like an HBO series in the making. Sounds like a joke my dad would say or something. Two months after Kevin's acquittal, they got a lead, speaking of your dad, on a man named Gary. So Gary Dunn was one of Nona's neighbors, and police actually had questioned him early in the investigation and confirmed his alibi that he was out shopping with his mom. But the team got a hold of the dozens and dozens and dozens of boxes of evidence.

This defense team and this part-time preacher, this like kind of ragtag team, they get together. preacher this like kind of ragtag team they get together they have just i mean you know those uh legal boxes like those big banker boxes just like full and you saw it on the dateline show like just full of evidence and so they are going one by one through every little scrap of paper every piece of evidence and they're digging digging finally, hours and hours into this, they find one measly receipt, and this receipt proved that Gary Dunn had indeed gone shopping with his mother to the store that he claimed,

but it was not on December 15th, the day that she had been murdered. It was on December 13th, two days earlier. God damn it. And the police had just said, oh, was on December 13th, two days earlier. God damn it. And the police had just said, oh yeah, that checks out and moved on.

So they finally had a slight little lead here. They were like, maybe this guy's up to something. So when asked for his DNA sample, Gary Dunn agreed and gave it to them. And Kevin's family, because the police refused to do this, had to pay out of pocket for the DNA test.

And so they did, but it was worth it because guess what? The DNA was a match to the DNA on the condom wrapper. Ooh, okay. Yeah, so now we're getting somewhere. And at this point, prosecution felt it was enough to bring this case to trial. So in April of 2010, Gary Dunn went on trial for murder. The suspicion was that Gary had been stalking Nona. Okay.

And that he was obsessed with her. So it turns out he could actually, from his apartment, see inside Nona's bedroom window. And this is true or is this speculation? Nona's bedroom window. Oh, and this is true or is it speculation? No, this is true. Oh, okay.

Cause he was one of the neighbors. So the police had actually interviewed him way early on just because he lived next door. Um, and then he's like, no, I was shopping with my mom and they were like, got it,

move on. Uh, but turns out it was a lot more sinister than they realized. His wife actually testified against him saying that he was very violent in bed. Oh, shit. And that she considered him capable of this kind of violence. And that's, by the way, that's a woman right there to like put her neck out on the line to say that. It's a scary thing to have to say.

He could be right next to you. Absolutely home the next day absolutely like you're a victim yourself you know and so she also claimed the wife that right before nona's death she had actually caught her husband gary hanging out at nona's front door in the middle of the night. Ew! Ew! So almost like, either preparing or, yeah, like, pretending. Checking the lock? It's like one step away from officially breaking in. It's like fantasizing about breaking in.

It's like, how do I break in? It's like planning the break in. fantasizing about breaking in how do i break in it's like preparing the break-in oh which also means he probably went around to the side to check the fucking sliding door oh so sick so gary's defense public defenders claimed the state was simply wrong about the dna on the condom wrapper okay i don't know how you can really use that as an argument um they said there's no proof he ever touched the rapper and they also claimed his alibi was only off because he got the dates confused and yes okay the dates could be confused but also that doesn't mean he has an alibi now like now he doesn't have maybe he did confuse the dates but okay then where were you if you weren't there on

the 15th and where were you what's the situation't there on the 15th, then where were you? What's the situation? Yeah. Yeah. Tell me where you are. So the defense pointed the finger back at Kevin Jones again. Again? The boyfriend.

Yeah. Okay. They said there were inconsistencies in the testimonies both by Kevin's mom and his friend Ryan, who were the ones that found the body together. Kevin's mom and his friend Ryan, who were the ones that found the body together. So one inconsistency was at trial, Kevin's friend Ryan said he told Kevin to try to keep Nona warm. And he said when he first saw the crime scene,

he thought Nona tripped on the lamp cord and hit her head on the table. But at some point he also told police he tried to pull Kevin off of Nona's body while Kevin did CPR. And defense said, well, that doesn't make sense. Why would you tell Kevin to keep Nona warm and then try to get him away from Nona? Right. And I'm like, yeah, it doesn't make sense. But maybe the paramedics said, like, she's gone and he tried to pull him off. You know, I don't know.

I don't know. Yeah. And when Ryan was questioned about this he said i'm not sure why i gave conflicting stories i've tried to tell it the best i've remembered and like as we know witness testimonies are uh often flawed inherently it's just really hard for humans to actually remember clearly how something went down we like create a story in our minds i also feel like that makes it a little more believable because i feel like someone who's faking it would want an airtight story true yes but if you're saying like i'm trying my best and i don't know how else to explain it yeah that feels

like an honest answer i mean you're in shock like your your adrenaline's going i mean of course you don't know what to do this kid's probably also also 19. He's like, no, keep her warm. OK, wait, no, stop doing CPR. Like, who knows what it was probably hectic and crazy. And apparently Kevin's mom gave some conflicting information as well. of mistake in your son's trial and she said quote because i'm not a perfect robot who knows everything all the time i don't know how to explain this to you sir i was doing the best that i could under those circumstances what i'm telling you today is the truth fuck yeah mom yeah so in the end the defense unfortunately did a good job of convincing the jury that actually kevin might have done it after all even though he's already been acquitted so kevin's family said it felt like now even though gary's on trial it felt like kevin's on trial all over again so in the end it was a hung jury and prosecutors were so frustrated they immediately filed for a retrial and this time the court finally allowed the uh the attorneys to present information on

gary's previous felony charge from 2002 which in the first case had been you know not not allowed to be presented as evidence so here's what happened in 2002 it's quite a roller coaster okay so a woman was jogging on a popular wooded trail when Gary ambushed her from behind and started beating her over the head with a large stick. He struck her repeatedly until she broke free and ran away screaming for help. they found gary hiding in the water near the trail and he was put in prison for 18 months until he was paroled and moved directly into nona's apartment complex and this was a few months before nona's murder so the woman that gary attacked who had survived actually was extremely brave and took the stand and told the jury that the attack she had suffered was extremely violent uh just like known as killing so despite this new information about

gary's like history of violence the defense still did an amazing job of deflecting suspicion back on kevin like they literally were like crazy it's the boyfriend and the jury said in a dateline interview that they did seriously start to feel like kevin might be guilty not gary and this poor kevin is like i'm just trying are you fucking kidding me twice now seriously so once again it was a hung jury oh they just god i. They just felt like there was not enough evidence. So a special prosecutor on the case said the jury told him, Jack, we feel like he did it, but too many mistakes were made by law enforcement in this case. You guys would have to go beyond, beyond the reasonable doubt. So in the end, nobody was found guilty of Nona's killing.

Oh. But. Okay. so in the end nobody was found guilty of nona's killing oh but okay in december of 2018 gary dunn was arrested again this time on a kidnapping charge what already now this one is an actual roller coaster here we go a prosecutor who was involved in nona's case said i would love to tell you i am surprised he was arrested again but honestly i am not he is a dangerous person so what happened was december 4th 2018 a woman was on her lunch break sitting in a shopping center parking lot gary pulled up to her in his car masturbating he started asking her sexual questions and she quickly locked her car doors gary drove away and the woman reported the incident to the russellville police department later that same day gary followed a woman onto arkansas tech university campus to Arkansas Tech University campus.

Ew. Like Nona, this woman, Riley Wagner, was a beauty queen. She even says that she had grown up hearing about Nona's story from a young age because she was in the same pageant circles, you know what I mean? And she said, that was something my mom always warned me about, to be extra cautious, and she always instilled in me to be aware so when gary started following her onto campus they were driving he was following so closely that she felt something was wrong uh beyond just like an impatient driver and she noticed it was

a man at the wheel and she just didn't it wasn't right something wasn't right so she parked her car and gary parked in a way that blocked her car in ew terrible so as he gets out of his car she thought fast and locked her doors good job he started telling her to open her window and she was like no yeah which give me give me a reason no thanks give me a reason. No thanks. Give me a reason. I'll tell you here. He said, I need you to get out and talk to me. It's like, that's, I don't know why that's so much more sinister. It's like, you're not even trying.

Like you just. You couldn't even come up with a better fucking reason. Like that's like, it's like, you're not even trying to convince me. You're not like there's a puppy in my car and it's hurt. You're just like, get out of the car. I have to talk to you. Oh, I hate that. So crazy.

So he tries to convince her to get out because he has to talk to her for some reason. And she's like, I'm dialing 911. See ya. And he jumps in his car and speeds off. And he jumps in his car and speeds off. So barely 20 minutes later, Russellville police were dispatched to a local Baptist church where Gary had approached a woman in the parking lot, grabbed her, and tried to force her into his car, screaming at her to get in. Three for three. I mean, he was clearly on a mission.

He was clearly on a mission, and the first two didn't work out. You would have thought, I mean, I guess if you're not in your right mind to like that guy, but I feel like if you're doing something creepy and you somehow got away with it round one, be thankful you got away with it and just fucking

don't try again. Why are you still testing the waters to make it more and more complicated for yourself? Well, because he wanted to murder someone and to get his rocks off, I guess. And he failed the first two. So he's like, I need to get this. I need to finish this job, so to speak. So he found a woman in a parking lot and he grabbed her and he tried to shove her into his car screaming at her to get in but she thankfully managed to break free and escape back into the church so based on the descriptions of gary and his car by all three women police tracked him down

that night and of course it was gary dunn and in his vehicle they found an assortment of knives and ropes wonderful great wow that doesn't at all make you look guilty. You're right. Date night. Not. He was ultimately found guilty of attempted kidnapping and sentenced to 15 years in prison, but he is eligible for parole at the end of this summer, August 11th, 2023. And how old will he be when he gets out or eligible for it?

He was 39 in 2018. What does that mean? 39 in 2018. So five years ago. So he's 43, 44. Okay. So we've just found out he's like in his early to mid 40s, which is quite fucking young. He like he got to do all of that and he'll just be back on the street.

Back on it. And that's so terrifying. If he if he makes parole i mean let's hope not because clearly this guy has an agenda and the agenda is to harm women and rape them so i'm like how you could let this man out i don't know but again like he was not convicted of the nona case so it's like fuck like he he's only convicted of the attempted kidnapping not the rape not the murder it's like so infuriating the fact that he has like 50 more years to like do something he couldn't keep in control of for the last 40 years yes exactly oh so he's definitely gonna do it again

it's so so scary this is like one that i actually think i'll keep my eye on yeah just just i don't know i just i don't know why i don't know for what just to warn people in arkansas i have no idea so it was decided he wouldn't be tried a third time for Nona's death. And so for that reason, her case remains open and Russellville police welcome any new leads that the public might have. Maybe, you know, something about this mofo, Gary Dunn, that could actually pin him down for once. I don't know. But Riley Wagner, who was the one that got boxed in with the car. And, you know, she dealt with PTSD after this run in with Gary, especially finding out that that was the one that was like the boogeyman of her childhood stories. You know what I mean? I can't imagine not having PTSD because you even I feel like even in a town where it happened in your town, you still think, well, lightning can't strike twice. And it's like oh

it didn't happen to me great and like what are the odds you know and of course they're slim but it doesn't mean impossible and like imagine calling your mom and being like well you know that guy you always warned me about oh thanks for warning me about him the one time a mom does not want to be right exactly oh 100 100 so she that deals with ptsd for obvious reasons but she has since been crowned miss arkansas usa good for her okay that's what's up and she shares her story so people will feel empowered to protect themselves in situations where things don't seem right and i love that like if you're gonna use a Like if you're going to use a plot, if you're going to have a platform, I think it's amazing that you're using that to empower women. You know what I mean? Especially if you have firsthand experience. You know what I bet she's

read? My little Gavin DeBecker. The gift of fear. I bet they're friends. I hope they're friends. I do too. What a power couple. Not a couple couple, but like what power work couple, you know? You can still be a platonic power couple. Platonic like you and me. That's us. So Kevin has since made peace with Nona's mother, who for a little bit had been convinced that he had murdered her daughter. But so they actually are, they've mended their fences.

That's good. I know. And she obviously no longer believes he is guilty, which is great. He's now married and he works, get this, as a criminal defense attorney. Good. And guess where he works? He practices law in his hometown of Russellville. Wow.

Good for him. He went back to the place where everybody said, got bumper stickers, like wanted him in prison. And, you know, I don't necessarily blame them. It's like the police said pretty much he did it.

Of course, you're going to be like, well, fuck, put him in jail then, you know? So as a certain extent, I understand that mentality, but also that's also the lawyer you want on your side as someone is like oh yeah i've been

there truly been there wow so anyway that's the that's the case um if you want to watch the dateline episode it's pretty good um they interview kevin uh it's called dateline secrets uncovered it's uh season 7 episode 22 um and it's something cheesy like what happened to the prom queen or something something like that some classic dateline uh title but that's the story um of for nona dirksmeyer it's too it's just so sad yeah it's a real bummer it really um takes from the joy i was feeling earlier oh well yep i feel like i really thought you were going to say uh at the end i thought you were going to plot twist me and say like it was kevin all along and he admitted it i was gonna be so i felt that

in my bones because i because i i was getting I was like going along with you like, yeah, he's clearly innocent. And then I was like, oh, my God, I'm thinking I'm just like fucking setting them up. You're really like you're really reeling me in. I'm sorry. I feel like I've gaslit you so many times now on the show that like you never know what what fucking rug I'm going to pull out from under you. But no, this time it was all pretty straightforward. You know, he was in the wrong place, wrong time. It's just tragic.

So I'm glad he's like rebuilt his life, though. I think that's pretty incredible. Yeah. At least there's, I mean, it's not a happy ending, but there's like a productive ending. Yeah. I mean, it's not a happy ending, but there's like a productive ending. Yeah. At least he was able to move forward and, you know, I don't know, start a family of his own and be in the same town, even though it kind of did him dirty back in the day.

Yeah. I hope he has a real, keeps climbing the ladder there, keeps proving everyone wrong. Me too. Me too. And I'm sure he's traumatized. Think about it. Like 19 and going through that? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

He was either going to be a lawyer or a therapist after that, I think. I mean, you'd have to be. Or at least spend a lot of time with both. Yeah. Boy. Anyway. Well, Christine, how are you feeling after all that? Physically?

Mentally? I mean, definitely drained but like the day quill still going strong so that's good how are you feeling uh about the same okay I don't want you to be annoyed with me I'm sorry I know it's hard to uh

have this end the episode every week no maybe I maybe this is on me maybe I need to find a way i don't think anything's on you i think this is just this is the the con of having a true crime show it's like how on earth do you end it the only way you can appropriately end it is how they do like on dateline where they just like say like some really powerful goodnight. Oh, okay. I'll say it. Hold on. For Dateline, I'm Lester Holt.

Does that work? Yeah. Okay. Okay. Bye. For Dateline, I'm Lester Holt. Goodnight. And that's why we drink.

Oh, okay. Bye.