And That's Why We Drink - E352 A Vampire Castle Gift Shop and Millennial Secret Passageway Dreams

Episode Date: November 5, 2023

Welcome to episode 352! Where Christine shares some mystery photos from the 1800s, only adding to her haunted podcast studio. This week, Em takes us through the history of Vlad the Dad, we mean, Vlad the Impaler and the hauntings of Bran Castle. Then Christine covers the notorious and heartbreaking case of Martha Moxley. And can a manila envelope be a Dybbuk Box? ...and that's why we drink!

hmm what does how to say how to say what to say and how do i say it christine oh i'm so glad you asked welcome to and that's why we drink We tell you scary stories about ghosts and about murderers. And those are the reasons why we drink, except we also have more. Christine, do you have anything to complain about? Oh, always. Thank you for asking once again. I have something here. I'm going to turn the computer to show you what's next to me. Oh, my God. Well, let me move my geriatric pill container because that what's next to me oh my god i've well let me move my geriatric pill container because that's also next to me um this is not a joke i received this in the mail oh god what is it more teeth what is it no it's probably worse it is hundreds of photographs oh my god they're like dead people they're not dead in the photographs but they are clearly dead now i mean look at this one i have some in my room okay i received a box and it was

very ominous and it had a name on it i totally forget who sent it it had a return address but that's it had a return address and then i opened the box and it was just piles of these photographs and on the back they're like signed it's this one says levi bond two years and seven months old i mean these photos are from like the what what decade would you say that also 1800? I would say it's from the 18. It was pre-1920s. And I only say that because I have exact pictures like that right now that are from before the 1920s. And I could hear.

You want to do another sound where you drop one? Because it's not just paper. Oh, the tin ones? Yeah. They're like. Yeah. have tin tin type photos in here oh like look at this this is literally on the back of it is an ad for crayons from 1889 i mean like i'm telling you when i opened this and there were all these photos fell out of all these i mean hello look at this broad she looks like she knows how i'm gonna die um here yeah i don't know how to how to show but

like there's like little tin but they just arrived and some of them say like cincinnati ohio on them and if you sent these to me uh bravo because you really scared me i opened this and there was no note there was nothing except no explanation nothing except all these creepy photos of old dead people and i was like what am i supposed to do with this um i feel like I was just listening to another podcast as well. Oh, this guy's very handsome, though. Oh, hey, girl. OK. He's a looker.

I just like like creepy Victorian children, like black and white photos of like sepia photos of children who are now deceased. It's really creeping me out um and i put them in my closet because i like kind of love them and i kind of hate them all at the same time you put them in the same spot where you put everything you hate in the closet everything goes especially haunted stuff and then i was like oh it's so weird i keep getting all this strange activity in my office and then someone my brother blaze was like didn't you get like a million i mean hello if this is not a lady a haunting picture i mean her eyes are missing like she literally has no eyes and like i mean she does look a bit like she was the prototype for a spirit halloween course right it looks like it's a fake

thing but like she's beautiful like 1891 i'm sure she had a great heart so and it like family portraits and you know like the amount people spent on a photo like one of these portraits of their whole family like you know this was like a prize possession you know what i mean like the amount of money and just like the amount of i do think it's real ballsy like i mean i can kind of low-key call her a spirit Halloween corpse because I'm not in the room with her. But it's real bold of you in the same breath to say, there's a lot of activity in this room. Also, look at her. She doesn't have eyes. Okay, you got me there.

If she could see, she'd be looking at you so hard right now. I call these people mom and dad. I call his beard my pet. Look at her braid. You know what? She looks like she appreciated the benefits of a library. Maybe she likes my messy-ass closet. Anyway, I've been meaning to show these to you for probably, like, three months.

Because I got them a long time ago. Well, hello, Christine. You've been saying, oh, I don't know why, but things feel weird in here. Things feel weird in here. I know. It's so stupid. It occurred to me the other day when somebody made the connection for me. And I went, oh.

Of all the pictures, you know how, like, how like when you pull like a tarot card or you pull like you have to go with like what your soul is feeling your intention if you had to pull one that you think might have an attachment to it which one do you think it is i think it's girly with the no eyes girly with no eyes this one looks like um 11 from stranger things to me yeah um you know um i would say probably these like a dust bowl survivors that'll do it yeah i you know it's a hard question to answer because literally all of them scare the shit out of me. And no one's ever smiling, of course. And they all rang long white Victorian dresses. I mean, anyway, I just like felt like I had to share this.

And if you sent these to me again, bravo, but also reveal yourself, because in my mind, I've created a narrative that like a ghost sent these to me from beyond, you know, and I'm supposed to like do something with them. I'm like, I don't know what to do with them. Like, I don't want to just toss them. They seem like people's memories, you know. But also it does feel like if it was one or two, I could see you hanging them on a wall and like lighting a candle for them. But there really is hundreds next to you. Like, what do you do with them like it's statistically speaking some of these people had to be assholes at least

someone was a piece of shit yeah right like i don't think i necessarily want to invite all of these people's energy into my home so i'm sort of like how do i go about handling these does anybody know like should i give them to like a historic site? Like, I don't really know what to do. Well, especially like them, because I feel like it's fun to like, look through and see people's memories and families. But part of me is like, well, I don't know if I'm the one who should hold on to them. maybe you can pull one what sorry this lady literally has standing next to a chair and on the chair is just her beautiful hat it has its own she's the one you have to light a candle for the hat is the one the dead ostrich or whatever that was made into a hat is the one she deserves to be framed with a candle for her a thousand i mean amen like she is so extra she literally is standing next to a chair she's not even sitting because the hat has taken the front seat i like to think there's either two narratives going on one it's giving like feminist

and she's like i don't need a man here's my fucking fashion for you married my hat or also like she was in a shitty relationship but the guy didn't make it to their photo appointment and she was like you know what this is what you're worth to me i'm going to put the hat in your place and the picture will be even better than if it'll look better than if you were here also a picture takes like what 16 days to take in the 1800s so like he could have made it for at least half but he never showed you know she went high child cowboy child is it a cowboy or is he just wearing a sun hat well okay well you know what i don't have the answer i don't have the answer for you i'm sorry um i do what about what okay so what if like i don't know enough of the witchy world but i do believe

there's probably something where you can put them on like one big binder and like do like a a little respect like a a mass uh an elm ritual letting them go and onto the light or something um but what if like one of them sticks around you know i do feel like you should pull a couple and whatever like speaks to you maybe they're supposed to be with you and the others can be brought to a nice an archival space i mean it does say they're from cincinnati so those people did live in your neighborhood i didn't even think of that yeah some of them are like dayton some of them are Indiana. They're all like local. Girl, you should go to your own fucking cemetery.

Oh, no. And see if any of them are buried there. Like you say my own cemetery. Like I own and operate it. Well, if you lived on it, I think of you as the groundskeeper. You're not wrong in that respect. My cats and I did spend an inordinate amount of time. But that's the one you should keep. How eerie would it be if one of them actually has been buried in your front yard this whole time

that's horrifying well here's one of another cowboy child who might just be in a sun hat but he's not even in a hat he's just a child he's just a child he's wearing like little booties and like a little ascot okay maybe that's just what happened when it was dirty everywhere i did maybe i'll just mail them to you you seem to have a good understanding of how these no i'm meaner i think i'd put them in the trash so i probably just like throw them away immediately yeah i'd be like i'll in the dumpster i'd say i leave you with love and light farewell this one farewell this one i call walter because his eyes really frighten me he has enough eyes for him and that other girl yeah maybe he

took hers hey he's wearing he's wearing a fedora is he a cowboy or you know i've had just about enough of your attitude today um anyway i just like i felt like we should all, this is the last one I'll show you. This bearded man. That's Abraham Lincoln. What if it was? As a child. Abraham Lincoln as a child. With his white beard. He's from Kentucky, isn't he?

Log cabin. Okay. I'm so sorry. I'm done. I just, like, that's why I drink for many months now. Shit, that's why I drink. And I kept accidentally finding them because like you said, there's hundreds and I would like put them in a pile and then like one would slide out and be like clank on the floor. And I would look down and be like a roughly Victorian child staring at me. And it's just like it's been so unsettling to have these in my presence.

But I also kind of love them. I don't know. You know, you know, I love them also a little bit. I also kind of love them. I don't know. You know I love them also a little bit. Man, I do know you love them, which makes me a little nervous because I don't think you're ever going to fully relinquish them. No, I'm not.

Unless there's like a really sincere reason someone says I should, then I'm not. Sorry, everybody. I do think it's lovely that someone sent them to you knowing. It was a little manipulative. It felt a little like they knew what they were we we both know christina's not going to get rid of them so at least i know they're safe in her house but but i mean you are the right person to love them if they need if that's what they need if they needed a home sure yeah you cornered me person dear sender i took them i i'm giving them a home and um sometimes they are on the floor. And I'm sorry about that.

But they're not in the trash. They would be in the trash with me. So you sent them to the right person. You sent them to the right. And this was months ago. So I imagine you would have gotten some too if this were like a double gift. I'll send mine to you too. Okay, thank you.

It's not that I like I am just as sentimental as you are when it comes to like the fact that they were somebody's prized possession, but I love me more than that. And like, I, I have to have a spiritual boundary and not allow hundreds of people I don't know to come into my home. I mean, I also have to do that. I've just, I just simply don't, I just simply can't. So yeah. I also, I have so many pictures of my own great, great, great, great grandparents I never met. And I

know they're just following me around now. I've got enough going on. Maybe that's part of it. Maybe I wish I had photos of my own family. Like I don't really have any. I don't know if I've ever even really seen any. So I'm like, maybe I just feel like, oh, this could be my grandma, which is a really insane thought. Wow. Looking at a lady with no eyes. But, you know, it just is what happened. I'm sorry.

Well, I so I am currently on a mission where. Oh, boy. Well, it's not as wild as most of my stuff, but on Ancestry, I'm trying to find pictures of all 16 of my great-great-grandparents. Right. And I've gotten, I think, half of them. Jeez. And I'm trying to put all their faces together. Wait, where are you getting the photos?

On Ancestry. Who's putting them there? Like, there's other people who've made trees and I'm somehow distantly related to them. Oh my god, are you serious? I think it's because my family's from Europe like there's not a single person you know what I mean like there's no connection like people over there don't really use it so it's like there's just no way to speak. It's like my grandma can hear me she's calling me right now. No way. No like I we don't to be fair there's not like a lot of pictures and they were also

prized possessions but um i am surprised at how the ones i do have are in very good condition and so i'm like trying to figure out did i already tell you this i'm thinking of framing them and making it look like spirit halloween um and i got you beat because i have 85 000 to those actually those that those are actually just terrifying yeah these are just from spirit halloween i think but my dream is to put all 16 faces up and then be like who do i look like and just try to see where my like where my looks came from you can like circle like charlie day red string it like yes my nose goes to my ears because so far of the eight that i have i don't look like fucking any of them so now i'm like it's hard to say that about yourself i bet if we looked at them

we'd be like oh my god this one has your eyebrow you know what i mean like i bet i i bet even i or listeners could like pinpoint some things that you don't see i'll do a powerpoint presentation with you and be like okay this is this person's nostrils what do we think i'll be calling uh the authorities under the table and being like okay i'm you stay put we're getting you help right now anyway um i'm i guess that's a that's why i drink because i'm on a a certain quest and i already know i'm never gonna find one of them because apparently the schultz line is just with every generation it's worse than the than the rest like my grandpa was not a great guy and his dad was worse and his dad was worse and his dad yeah the Schultzes are not like really a name that I should proudly carry on I mean same with the Schieffers let's be real like I'm i understand why there are not many photos on the internet yeah family um and uh the the schultz is my like fifth great grandfather um we don't even

speak about him remember i told you when i first started ancestry i like finally found his name and i never know his name because they literally won't say his name um yeah and he's apparently just supposed to be so fucking terrible at a time when it was not allowed he was disowned by his own family and like his wife was able to get divorced and like was taken about so he is pretty awful and because no one ever has a really beautiful feathery hat because i may have found a photo of her well she didn't have eyes so that's interesting oh well okay what a tough relationship that must have been for both of them and um she well so i've never known anything about him and i just know there's not a picture of him anywhere so um i'll only ever get 15 out

of 16 but can you believe it what if i fucking only look like him that'd be crazy i mean what if i fucking only look like him that'd be crazy i mean maybe anyway that's why i drink because i'm on i'm on a quest for 16 faces well i'm on a quest to figure out what to do with like 98 faces but you know if you've already got it's way too many i'm looking for just a handful and you've got a bucket no i give you a special No, I don't. I can give you a special pick. Some of these people, like, you know, we're not good people. Like they're super rich. And I'm like, this is an interesting time. I really, I would, if you're going to give me any picture, it's got to be homie with the hat. I love her. She is an icon. Even if she was mean, she seems like she kind of owned it like yeah yeah she at least

was confident and self-aware enough to know it about herself good for her yeah i'm proud of her uh oh this seems to be a pattern here's another lady with a hat oh wait now i'm getting upset are these people like honoring a dead person or something there's like empty chairs next to them oh my oh maybe the hat was someone's favorite hat we're such dicks oh you know what it's our own it's it's the education system's fault for not teaching us yeah um hey i never never took 1800s photography it's not my fault okay this is della and she might be mourning somebody who died and you know what um i'm sorry that i didn't know that you know what it feels like if you're gonna write her fucking name on the back of that you could also write more information like you could i would

think so um somebody was was out of town oh so maybe they maybe so he was just traveling for the 16 days it took take took to take this photograph i don't know rebook their appointment that's crazy i guess two hours east of franklin i mean geez this seems like quite a uh quite a journey people had to go on to get these photographs taken i like to think it was in their version of like a Sears mall. And it had to know there's a name on the bottom of a lot of these that is like clearly a studio. It's called this one. Doddridge Studios in Mentone, Indiana. You know, they were like the hop in place to get your photo taken.

Sorry, I keep talking i just like i just this is just such a weird uh and also very me experience like the person you sent i really knew what they were doing you know what's wild though is think of how many now dead people's hands have touched those pictures thinking about and i was thinking how many people's eyes looked at one of these photos every single day and thought like, oh, I miss my mommy. Oh, I like look how cute my child used to be or who knows what. Look at my head. Look at my dead mom's hat that I am still being mocked for beyond the grave.

Anyway, so I just I just felt like i should give those a little shout out i don't know if that's gonna help anything or not or if that's just gonna stir shit up i wonder if you can like do like some sort of um negotiation with the historical society and be like i'm not giving you these pictures but i do want you to figure out who they are for free and tell me all about it you know and i think that negotiation is a winner in my book i don't really see any downside for anyone not for us not for me anyway um okay great anyway what a way to start this thank you for making it nice and creepy in here now i have to sit next to 400 i change the number every time but just please know folks like i'm gonna show this

one more time on my camera but there's and this is not all of them this is just a handful i took from my closet um but there are i mean hundreds of them it's multiple shoe boxes worth multiple yeah for sure um how big of a box got sent to you i mean it wasn't even that big it was just very dense it was probably like you know like a shoebox size and it was just like packed with photos and i just was so alarmed can you at least do like the the like like shuffle oh you know what actually i'm coming to think of it i think it might have been sent in a manila envelope which is even creepier something sinister about that was there a bloody handprint on it you know i may have thrown the packaging

away before i realized that that might contain a clue you know um it says confidential leave for the police do not open it's like a divic box you're gonna unleash something oh gosh well i'm glad to not be you. Well, what else is new? Okay. I have a story for you today. And I feel like, you know what's wild? 300-some episodes. I still feel the need to tell you I have an episode, like a story for you.

It's like, that's why we're here. I do it every time, too. I go, well, I'm going to tell you a story. Surprise. Yeah. Okay. do it every time too i go well i'm going to tell you a story surprise yeah okay well my story for you is another story where it's got a lot of overwhelming information and a lot of history so this is a 101 and i'm trying my best but it's like a bunch of the characters have the same name so um and also i did try to figure out the pronunciations for a lot of the stuff because it's in fucking romanian um just know i tried i tried i

tried okay so um this is the story of the bram castle brom Castle, and Vlad the Impaler. Vlad the what? Vlad the Impaler. Oh, I thought you said Impala, and I was like, you're already messing it up. Yes. No, I didn't fuck it up that bad. Okay, good. I at least knew there weren't, like, I'm thinking Impala's the car.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's Chevy Impala, yeah. Okay, so this, and and again if you're like a historian and you're all about this kind of stuff this is not the episode for you this is not much of a or it is and you can just if you are a calm person who doesn't get upset by inconsistencies or yeah i am also equally obsessed with certain things and if i heard just a quick overview i'd be like that's you're not even mentioning really crucial things like what about the adventures okay i see what you're saying if you're someone like that then you know maybe just skipped right to christine's story so um

this is i'm starting in the mid 15th century um vlad or vlad is known uh at the time he's just i'm just gonna call him vlad great um and because he goes by a bunch of different names but uh what he was known for originally was that he was a voyvode um of what i think is it's called Valachia, which is now part of Romania. And a Voivode. Oh, I gotcha. A Voivode is this very powerful king appointed position in the military where you're like you're essentially a like prince status. Oh, and not only that, but you are raised your entire life to be ready for this position.

The only way that they know that you're eligible to become one in the future is if you're a descendant of a previous Voivode. And so I guess and I'm sure there's other things. But in his case, he was eligible because his father was a Voivode. And I think like his great grandfather or another ancestor of his was a very powerful guy too um so essentially it would be a legacy right and uh so he was raised training for this title to potentially be the next voivode he was learning um prince-like etiquette he was learning different languages he was learning music and horseback riding and how to fight in combat and he was expected to have essentially like a spartan-like athleticism to him like he's supposed to be perfect yeah hi mark yeah something i don't want to be a boy phone it sounds like a

terrible job it sounds awful but you go like essentially to this boarding school and so it's like a very elitist thing um he was also taught through this that because he was getting getting all his experience and all his training and he was going to be this print or king appointed position in the military he was being taught his whole life that he was very superior and he was destined for like sovereignty so um he's a little prince he's a little narcissist um not to conflate the two the community he's a little pillar of the community exactly so uh he went by many names he went by vlad the third so that's one he was also uh known as vlad dracula which dracula the vampire was not a thing yet so his dracula was because um his dad was known as vlad dracul and dracula was the son of dracul i see um so he was known

as vlad dracul or no i'm sorry he was known as vlad dracula he was known as vlad the third or he was also known as vlad i think the romanian pronunciation is tepish it's spelled like teps um but any person with a romanian accent who i saw on youtube was calling it vlad tepish um and it translates to vlad the impaler oh um some in romania would call him a hero because he was like known to like take no shit, essentially. But outside of Romania, he is known to be quite a bloodthirsty monster. Right. I'm like, I don't think I've ever heard anything super good about him, but. Right. Not like all of Romania thinks he's a hero either. But some people would argue for like devil's advocate purposes i guess that he you know protected the

country or something um so in 1431 or around there we think he was born in transylvania which is also now a part of romania i think that's what i've been told i'm terrible at geography me too so don't look at me folks uh speaking of being terrible at geography. Me too. So don't look at me, folks. Speaking of being terrible at geography, I tried to look up the pronunciation and I got three different options. So, uh-oh. But his mom was a princess of Moldavia? Moldavia? Moldavia. Moldovia? I have no idea. That's Moldova. Oh, Moldova. Right. Moldavia? I think it's Moldavia. But his mom was a princess there, and his dad was the illegitimate son of a nobleman. Illegitimate was brought up quite a lot in the research, so I feel like I need to say it.

His dad, Vlad II, or as I call him, Vlad the Dad. or as I call him Vlad the dad um he was uh he ended up being invited into this elite order of Christian knights but I think was also king appointed and it was he was called or the order itself was called the order of the dragon oh my my and he got to be part of this this order as a knight um and I am assuming him having been a Voivode himself helped him get to this point. Sure. Eventually, Vlad the Dad, because he was in this order, he was given a name. And so instead of Vlad the Second, he was called Vlad Dracul. And Dracul was translated to dragon.

Ooh, that's pretty kick-ass. Can you imagine it's like oh i joined this like sick secret society but they call me dragon yeah yeah yeah oh that yeah that's just my alter ego dragon don't worry about it they call me dragon but don't worry i'm not like a bad boy i'm not a bad boy only if you catch me on the wrong day side of the bed, I don't know. So Vlad the second or our main character's dad becomes known as a dragon. Um, and so his name is Vlad Dracul and then his son becomes Vlad Dracula, which means son of the Dracul or son of the dragon.

Gotcha. Okay. So, uh, eventually I'm just gonna start calling them dragon or son of the Dracul or son of the dragon. Gotcha. Okay. So eventually, I'm just going to start calling them dragon or son of the dragon just to get through this part because there's too many fucking Vlads. Great. I'll follow. Eventually, dragon, he betrays the group to fight for the Ottoman Empire. That is apparently an understatement. There are chapters and chapters and history books on this. There's somebody out there who wrote an entire dissertation just on

that. And you just said it and they and then went on, moved on with your life and they are having it. I get now why you're saying people might have an existential crisis listening to this. I'm giving a log line when they wrote a whole thesis. But in summary, this is what happened. Something like this anyway. It's like, but we could just say it this way, couldn't we? Yeah, but it's easier, you know, to just move on. So he betrays the group to fight for the Ottoman Empire. And in 1442, things go wrong when the Ottoman Empire's leader, he's a sultan. He, I think he like, he trickslad because vlad is something goes wrong where they

were helping each other another not helping each other another mad at each other so the sultan says like oh vlad come or dragon whatever come here and bring your two sons and for a meeting blah blah blah blah well it was a trap and vlad the second or dragon gets arrested. And the two sons that he brought with him, Radu and Vlad the third or son of dragon, they end up being essentially kidnapped. Oh no. And to be freed from being arrested, the father agrees to,

I don't know how or why, but like talk about fucking daddy issues for Vlad the impaler. Oh, to be freed dragon says free me and you can have my two sons yeah you can guy yeah i saw that coming give give them away just leave them with the sultan of the ottoman empire all right like that's not gonna create some problems yeah so now they're in a country that they don't know apparently they're it's a language they don't speak um and the agreement that they made at some point was that the brothers education would still be continued even though they were hostages oh good well as long as you get to do homework while you're being kidnapped to them everything's fine oh my god kill me like at least you'd get to miss out on school you know what i

mean like i think that'd be at least one perk but whatever in such in such intense education too seriously like learning french and the piano i can only imagine well so this was um actually a political tactic because the sultan was thinking if i bring them up to be on our side then i'll build trust between their people and mine. I see. Okay. LOL. I'm going to build trust by keeping the prince hostage.

Yeah. It's a little Stockholm syndrome-y, I guess. Yes. He was very much, if we're going to totally boil it down to something, he was leaning into Stockholm Syndrome is going to work in our favor and they're going to like us. What a bold choice. So he raises the brothers because both of them, remember, since they're both legacies of their father, both of them could become a boyhood. So they're both being raised this way. And I guess the brother, Radu, he was seen as much more agreeable and he was adjusted more to the situation than Vlad did.

Vlad was seen as more of the troublemaker. And this actually led to creating a wedge between the brothers because one was getting favored more. Yeah. So on top of like incredible abandonment issues and the pressure of being a fucking prince, Vlad also now only has a friend in this hostage situation with his brother and now they're being torn apart so at least a lot of resentment between them and i think also the sultan had a son who was growing up and was around their age so like all three of them were being raised together but the brother and the sultan's son were closer so vlad's felt like

the third wheel a lot um tlc would have a field day with this shit this is like game of thrones level drama i know uh i'm sure there's a historian out there where it's like it's called the history channel they have it yeah it's actually i'm sure it's not the history channel if you watch that channel lately no what no it's like all about aliens and shit it's like travel channel like they're like this nevermind historians must be pissed yeah um so eventually the the brothers are being raised here under the agreement they made with their dad to be freed but eventually the father starts breaking whatever agreement he made with the sultan so the brothers start being treated a little worse

and i don't know what that means because their education continued but i think they were just not treated as one of the sultan's own kids or maybe he they were maybe they were being like beaten terribly i don't know yeah um whatever happened it ultimately contributed to even more of future vlad the impaler's tough exterior, if you will. I see. So five years into this situation, it's now 1447, and the Ottomans end up killing the dad. I think it was like some sort of political move, or they just wanted to- Vlad the second.

Vlad the dad. Vlad the dad, got it. So the Ottomans end up killing him. And another brother who wasn't held hostage. So now Vlad's finding out, oh, through all of this other stuff, my life is nothing but peaches. And now on top of all this other garbage, my father and another brother of mine have just been killed by the people raising me. Oh, OK. Later, Vlad, our main character, son of dragon, he is released and this is when he begins his rise to power.

And in his own rise to power, some think that his motivation was just to avenge his father and brother. Others say that he was power hungry from the start. There's a lot of theories as to how he got this way, but also like any therapist could tell you that it wasn't going to be good for him i was gonna say things started out rough like let's be honest and keep in mind up until this point he just turned 16 years old oof so some formative years of a lot of fuckery yeah you read my journal from 16 and it sounds like i've been through the same thing and i was barely scratching the surface it sounds like so in 1448 he's 16 years old he takes the throne

as the next voivode um but he only holds the title for like fucking two months and then i don't know what the i don't know what the drama is here but if you're a historian and you want to tell me that'd be great and wants to know just that homie gets fucking exiled for eight years. Oh. After two months of being voivode. You don't know why? I think, I'm sure there's an actual reason. I just didn't do enough digging on it. But, or no, there's, I still don't know the answer, but there definitely was because I was watching a YouTube video

about like his entire life and it got mentioned, but I was finishing up notes on something. It just didn't get written down. But he gets exiled. And so loving the drama that everything he's ever worked for. And then despite all of the fucking bullshit he had to get through on top of that, he finally does become Boivod. Like, what an accomplishment. And then eight weeks later, he's exiled.

It was fun while it lasted, I hope. So he essentially is now backpacking through Europe. Like, I think he's just got nowhere really to go. And at some point he's taking a victory lap. And he ditches the Ottoman Empire. I don't blame him. Sounds like they've done a number on him. And he aligns himself with Hungary.

He engages, I think, with the Hungarian Voivode. Andode and they do like hand-to-hand combat oh and this is in 1456 so now he's six eight so now he's 24 years old um he's been backpacking this entire time then he aligns with hungary now he's becoming he has to fight hand to hand with another Voivode to claim the title. Oh boy. So he, and I'm assuming that another reason that I'm using a bunch of different names and trying to avoid this one is because our main character Vlad has to fight, I think, I'm pretty sure the Voivode of Hungary, whose name is Vladislav. So fucking everyone. It's like the name John. of Hungary, whose name is Vladislav. So fucking everyone.

It's like the name John. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So both Voivodes fight each other. Our main guy, he straight up beheads the other one.

Oh, and immediately, this is like, I guess he won the fight. So he begins his reign as the new voivode with Hungary's military support. That's all it takes, I guess. Just one head. Yep.

So immediately he's known as a harsh ruler with no tolerance for crime. LOL, he beheaded someone to get here. No tolerance policy. And starting now. Right. It's like, unless it's me. So he also appoints people from other countries and commoners to official positions instead of, I guess, like people higher up politically or royally. So I think this was a power tactic because they didn't have any other, they didn't know any other people amongst allies to collude with so they had

to fully rely on him okay if that makes sense like he hired people that he could fully control like put his own people under him i i see and it was also a very scary thing because he fully controlled them um and he's he beheaded somebody to get here so he's not afraid to fucking kill you if you disappoint him um which like had to be rough because like if you're a commoner who has no like qualifications for this job and then you fuck up in some way are you just dead now like probably i mean like imagine being an intern at the white house or something uh or actually i'm sorry imagine being you and now you work at the White House all of a sudden. And if you disappoint anyone once, you're going to be beheaded.

They're like, the president picked you. Aren't you lucky? This machete is going to hang here just in case. But things are fine. Oh, so terrifying. So just an example of how scary. I mean, he's called Vlad the Impaler. Yeah, it had to come up for a reason. Just to give you an idea of how scary i mean he's called vlad the impaler yeah it had to come up for a

reason just to give you an idea of who he is there's um one example of where he invited um the people who overthrew his father killed his brother all that stuff um he invites 200 of the men involved in that and their families to an easter banquet and during the banquet he stabs all of the women and old people impales them and he forces all the men into enslavement what the fuck just to avenge his father jesus who by the way didn't fucking deserve it because he fucking left you for freedom yeah talk i mean you said daddy issues and it still rings true to me i'm just saying in the coming years he would continue on with this reputation there's another rumor where he ate his dinner surrounded by the bodies of his victims that were still jerking around

one time he invited um people without homes and a lot of poor people in his community. He invited them all over for a feast, locked them inside and burned the building down to the ground to solve poverty in his home. Oh yeah. Well, glad good. It worked. Seems like it worked well.

Thank you for that. When conflict arose between Vlad and the Saxons, he set their towns on fire and had roughly 30,000 of their people impaled to death. 30,000? 30,000. Fuck. He, at this point, was still just called Vlad Dracula or Vlad III, but at this point, everyone is now calling him the Impaler or Vlad Tepes. one is now calling him the impaler or vlad tepish um in 1462 the pope uh i think pope pius's second reported that vlad killed 40 000 people in attacks throughout transylvania and in another battle he allegedly impaled thousands of people for no reason but to scare the opposing troops so they weren't even troops he just killed thousands of innocents. And then he displayed them together to make a forest of bodies.

Ew, what a sicko. It's also been said that, this is just a rumor, but it's said about him that he would, after killing people, would dip his bread in their blood for dinner. And he would eat surrounded by them and just drink their blood. That's fucking disgusting. I know it might not even be true but it's gross in total it's estimated that in his lifetime he killed 80 000 people during his reign jesus fuck um this time period was during the printing revolution which was the time right after the printing press was invented in 1440 and the printing revolution

allowed written news and propaganda to spread throughout Europe like ever before. So like never before. So his, um, so people were writing pamphlets, condemning his cruelty and talking in detail. I'm sure this is where like a lot of sensational news came out about him,

like drinking blood and shit. Right, right, right. Um, this plus the war draining his finances, people getting sick of his violence he eventually loses power ironically to his brother who he trained beside his whole life oh boy i mean after all

that and you still lose your seat to to the brother and you know he had the nerve to go why i know who me and my zero tolerance for violence policy? So his brother is known as Radu the Fair, which, by the way, he could be fucking awful and still be seen as fair. He could have killed 79,000 people and been the fair one. I wonder if his name was just sarcasm. It's an ironic nickname. Between the two, I guess I'll go with him. He's so fair. It's an ironic nickname.

Between the two, I guess I'll go with him. He's so fair. So I don't know the story here, but he was imprisoned at one point for 12 years. This is Vlad. He was in prison for 12 years. Then he's released and rejoins the military. He's fighting against the Ottoman Empire. I don't know why anyone allowed him to do anything once he was no longer in power. Just sit down.

On 1476, while in battle he's defeated and beheaded so full circle wow in 1820 so this is like fucking 400 years ago time to loop or was it time leap jump time jump there it is um in 18, a book is published called The Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia with various political observations relating to them, which included information on Vlad Tepes. It's the fucking thing where they just love. Sorry, I fell asleep. They just love their fucking titles.

God, they love the words, man. That's as long as a historian's thesis, I think. I think that was the entire thing. So this book came out 70 years later in 1890 when all your pictures started showing up. I was going to say this is getting a little too close to home. In 1890, the author Bram Stoker read the book on Vlad and found his inspiration for Dracula. Aha. So he had actually read that in Hungarian,

Dracul meant dragon, but I guess in Romanian, it actually means devil. So that's why he named his character Dracula. Oh, that's kind of fun. In the worst way. Yeah. So, I mean, they both, Vlad and his character Dracula, both share the name Dracula.

Yeah. Both have some devilish tendencies. Both known to drink blood. Both from Transylvania. Both, you know, so. I get it. Yeah. It was, it's not even like it was inspired by him.

It feels like nearly based on the true story. Yeah. So Vlad, his bloodlust and the descriptions of Transylvania and the Carpathian Mountains obviously affected Stoker's writing. So Bram did get a lot of his ideas for Dracula, not just from Vlad, but from Victorian vampire media, which needs to be my new hyper fixation. That's my whole identity now. Victorian vampire media, which apparently for decades at this point was already incredibly popular. I don't know why I fucking hear about your stupid spaghetti Westerns. I've never heard about victorian vampire so um i guess up until bram stoker got involved this vampire media that was already really popular

had a bit of a different take on vampires or whatever it is but when bram stoker added dracula to the mix it was an iconic cultural reset um he based his book entirely on Vlad or him him basing his book entirely on Vlad is often an exaggeration to the truth when really at least half of the inspiration was from earlier vampire media so oh so he didn't yeah okay I get it but the other 50% was all vlad the impaler so yeah um dracula this is where i give you a little thing about him he had a castle i'm saying it right carpathian mountains i think so yeah carpathian he had a castle on a cliff on a cliffside in the carpathian mountains and its description in the book is very identical to the real

brand castle in romania okay and i think i'm saying brand castle right i don't know if it's Its description in the book is very identical to the real Bran Castle in Romania. Okay. And I think I'm saying Bran Castle right. I don't know if it's Bran Castle. I'm getting... How do you spell it? B-R-A-N, like Bran. Okay. I think I'm always confused by it because of Bram Stoker and Bran Castle.

I thought the same thing because I always... In my brain, I always thought they named the castle after Bram Stoker but like what are the odds that it's kind of Bram Stoker letter off yeah and really it's not even one letter it's like one extra loop on a right it's not even a full letter um but so yeah I always thought it was called the Bram Castle because it was Dracula's castle written after Bram Stoker like that's what I thought yeah okay so and i hope i'm saying that right again two different youtube videos told me two different things i'm panicking i don't know what i'm doing with pronunciation um but yeah that's what i thought but apparently bram stoker wrote about bran castle okay um and they were not affiliated before that so um as far as i know but bran bram stoker he never actually visited transylvania so he could have never seen that castle himself so a lot of

people think it's just a coincidence that he perfectly resembled the castle in his book other people say he could have just seen a picture of it and just knew how to describe it well i mean like how many was it like oh it's like made of stone or was it like there are this many walls facing the east facing like it was a little it was a little weirdly identical like even like all the way to like it's sitting on a cliffside in these mountains and like yeah maybe he just like knew about it right i feel like if you were all about victorian vampire media someone might have written about a castle yeah or put if they had pictures of these random cowboy children i'm sure they had pictures of this castle somewhere you could look yeah it's called a magazine ever heard of it so spirit halloween catalog ever heard of it

so a lot of people are like did you write about this castle specifically or does there just happen to be one that exists that magically matches your description of where dracula would live right um so either way brand castle ended up being known as like dracula's castle and dracula's home because the description was so weirdly on point with what Bram Stoker wrote about I see um also interestingly there is evidence that it's very minimal but there is some evidence that can be very quickly blown out of proportion to suggest that Vlad the impaler actually did stay in Bran castle at some point oh which adds a connection to the fact that the inspiration for dracula and the inspiration for dracula's castle actually did have a connection in real life yeah

um some people say that he was imprisoned there when he was gone for 12 years um we don't totally know if that's true it's just weird that like a person he was talking about in a castle he ends up describing actually were a part of each other's happen to be yeah connected um so brand castle has now just become known as dracula's castle they've really fucking owned it really every year apparently there are 800 000 annual visitors to this castle. And gift shops just sell out all the time. They're a vampire merchandise. They like fucking owned it.

So imagine that gift shop, you know, you and I would go ham in that thing. Fucking bonkers. It'd be crazy. We would lose our minds. Our bags would need bags. I need a bag for my bag, please.

bags would need bags we need a bag for my bag please so brand castle is um and god i really feel like it might be braun castle it's said to be one of the most haunted castles in the world it was built all the way in the late 1300s and it was actually built on the former border of transylvania and volocia. And in 1920, it was offered to Romania's Queen Marie as one of her properties. And she fell in love with the castle and had it restored and modernized, which like maybe means it had light bulbs. I don't know. Modernized, yeah. It did have an elevator. So she did put it up. That's pretty modern, I would say. We still have those. She put an elevator in. And it's so wild that like, I mean, we're really doing a lot of time leaps here, time jumps.

But like for it to be built in the 1300s and now we're talking about someone living there within the last hundred years is wild. It is trippy to think about. Yeah. So Queen Marie, she fell in love with it. She restored it, put in an, and it was her favorite residence. But when she died in 1938, her body was buried. Her body was buried with the Romanian monarchy, but her heart ultimately was interred in a crypt at this castle. No way. And ever since that happened, people have claimed to see the queen walking the castle grounds, especially in the gardens and stables that she designed herself.

Oh, and in the elevator. She's like, we soldiers are also seen haunting the castle. Some in 13th century military uniforms would scare the shit out of me like anytime i can't even process civil war soldiers in your bedroom or like uh any sort of soldier with like a weapon like that would scare the absolute bejesus out of me but also like what does a weapon look like in 13th century military like is it an axe like i don't know i just went to uh germany and saw some medieval castles so i could tell you a lot of sharp knife-like objects that were basically like, yeah, like knives attached to knives attached to knives. Like, oh, a knife for your horse.

Like a knife for your... Oh my God. It's just like knives everywhere. So scary. That was all they had. Ugh. When did guns become guns? I mean, I assume the winchester rifle isn't that when it kind of i guess so yeah yeah i think so i don't know but like when i think of like

civil war soldiers to me that's like a revolutionary war soldiers that's the oldest soldier that exists but no it's like there's centuries more than that. Yeah. So 13th century uniforms, I can't even process. So there are ghosts that look, there are ghost soldiers around the castle in those uniforms. And talk about range because the soldiers here are either in 13th century uniforms or go all the way up to World War II uniforms. Oh, jeez. So some of them are like, wait. Like, are we even in the same military? Yeah.

What are you wearing? I'm confused. What is that sharp knife for your horse? What is that weird ballistic handheld you've got going on? What are you holding? I'm sure they had some sort of gun, but nothing like World War II. So World War II soldiers are seen here, too, because when the queen loved this place so much, her daughter ended up building a military hospital here during world war ii so there's also a lot of dead military up through the 1940s so i maintain that like a hospital is probably one of the more haunted like naturally haunted places because like

i think so too pain and like fear i always think it's hospitals jails and whatever i mean they're still technically hospitals but specifically like mental facilities yeah yeah um hospitals and jails are just because there's just on mass despair you know or orphanages or oh yowza. Many peasants are also seen here, and they assume that they're peasants based on how they're dressed. But it's, I guess, a previous ruler also committed similar crimes here that Vlad the Impaler did and just, like, killed a bunch of their poor here. These spirits are also seen walking around. They're wearing medieval clothing, and they look they look shell shocked, which terrifies me. Oh, that's not good. But like, they look like they're traumatized while I'm looking at a fucking ghost that's

traumatized. Oh, yeah. What about me? Ghost? What about my feelings? God damn it. My mother is feeling shoddy today, too. I've been getting phone calls this whole time from all my family members.

Everyone can relax. Um, Em is just collecting a wall of all of your photographs talk about um en masse despair what is going on everyone's just i don't know now you're making me nervous though like no i i i don't know what they want but i'm sure it's just wanting to talk my mom's favorite thing is to talk to me in the middle of the day and be like oh what are you doing and i'll go i'm working and then she goes oh great so anyway and then she talks for a half so anyway let me tell you about me busy um and then the best part is always in that phone call she'll complain about how her mom will call her while she's working and like doesn't get the hint that she's working that amazing

you're like, oh. It's probably the meanest grunt I ever make, but it's in every phone call. You're like seeing it in action. And I go, uh-huh. Annoying, isn't it? Interesting development, mother. If history repeats itself, I'm already sorry to my future kids because I'll definitely be calling you at 11 in the morning on a Wednesday and wondering what you're up to.

At your White House internship. Like, hello! Okay, so where were we? Oh, yes, despair. So at the same time, people not only see ghosts that look shell-shocked, which we didn't even take enough time to really appreciate that. That's terrifying. It's upsetting.

It is. Spirits are seen walking around. People sense an overwhelming feeling of sorrow within the castle and some of the emotions are so strong that people have actually reported cases of mild possession oh god because the feelings are so overwhelming it seems to control them that's really sad because like as someone who went through really bad depression like that is what it feels like it feels like it you have no control over it and i feel that to me that's one of the scarier things when you're at a haunted place that you can be

overcome with like the despair the emotions that they felt because it's like how do you tell that that's not just me versus like i'm feeling something that doesn't belong to me like that's a really scary gap I don't know yeah I and I I'm sure there's other people out there who struggle more with a mental health than I do but when when it happens to me in places where I feel something usually I have like a pretty good reason for why my feelings would shift like that and so if it happens out of nowhere all of a sudden i'm like something's happening to my body that i'm not asking for backtrack and be like what yeah i feel i feel worse for people who visit these places that are like can much more gradually

slip into things on their own and they can't tell the difference they don't know yeah yeah yeah i feel like i mean i don't know i think i would struggle with that to differentiate what's my feeling versus i don't know that'd be hard i very rarely feel anger so in moments where i've been in a haunted place and i felt anger i've known it wasn't mine because i'm like interesting i'm like what the fuck do i have to be mad about right now you're like it's it can't be christine stomping around and like ruining all the audio i'm sure it's not that well i will notice it's more like being irritated quicker. But like I have to stop and be like, would I usually behave this way? But also, but there's sometimes like where there might be like in this situation, something so powerful doesn't even allow you to have that filter.

Right. Right. Where you're just like taken over by it without the intellectual parsing it. You can't rationalize it, yeah. In this castle, there were once secret passageways, but they have been found. And so one of them was so well hidden, it wasn't even discovered until this century. Oh, I love shit like that. And this castle was built in the 1300s.

So, I mean, it feels like a goosebumps movie to me i'm like imagine if you actually found a several centuries old secret passageway in a stone fireplace and like you hear a rumbling and i mean it's all our dreams i feel like it's all millennials dreams to find a secret passageway it's all our dreams but also like the more impressive part is that if there was a mechanism making this door open and close, how is it still working after 1,300 years? That is sorcery of some kind. It has to be. It wasn't even blocked by spider webs over the centuries? Whatever.

But in here, even though it's cool, people report the most sinister presence and being something staring at them, stalking them. It feels truly evil. This thing in this tunnel, which like maybe it's like close the door again. Like it's been. Yeah, I was just thinking, like, is this one of those Dybbuk box situations again where it's like, well, now you've opened it. Good luck. Yeah. Well, in this area, paranormal investigators have claimed that they have had things like rocks thrown at their heads.

They've seen orbs. They've seen green glowing mists. And people have also seen shadow figures walking through doors. They've seen people appear and disappear in the halls. And people have heard a lot of voices talking to them. So mainly there are ghosts of soldiers, maids, cooks, guards, families, merchants, mercenaries, warlords, and royalty. All said to room here. That's just the main ones?

Just the main ones. All the main 600 of them? Okay, got it. Just the main ones. However, Vlad the Impaler himself, because he was rumored to have appeared here at some point while alive, his ghost does not seem to be in the castle. It's probably for the best it is a nice touch that maybe he's crossed paths with this castle if they both inspire dracula but um vlad the impaler himself is not ever seen here in spirit i mean i'll be honest that kind of to me i know that this is kind of like maybe backwards thinking. But to me, I find that validating.

Yeah. About ghosts. Because I'm like, well, wouldn't you. Someone would make it up. Wouldn't people invent that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. As like part of the lore. So I feel like it's kind of validating to be like, oh, the most famous one has actually not been spotted here.

Although I would argue, who the fuck is this evil one in the secret passageways? Yeah. And you said warlords. And I'm like, like well what is a warlord if not an impaler 80 000 people so apparently no one i guess has you know heard specifically that it was him but there have been some um some very few examples where usually i'm all for whatever evidence people are finding in ghost hunting but i don't i don't know them i don't know if it's been stretched to fit a narrative

but some people have said with dowsing rods they've been able to make contact with vlad the impaler which by the fucking way why would you don't do that i'm like i'm like looking at my dowsing rods now like you know me and i push all these boundaries. That's when I'd be like, no, thanks. Like, I can appreciate wanting to go ghost hunting and getting answers. But like, there's a few people as a ghost hunter myself, I don't really have an interest in contacting. Yeah. One of them is the devil. The other is Vlad the Impaler. Zozo, Vlad, Beelzebub.

Bazuzu. Bazuzu. Yeah. I got a handful. But it's like, oh, you want answers. Well, he's just going to tell you exactly what you think. Right. Like he's going to say, I loved murdering people. Like what answer is that? He's clearly a messed up dude. I don't know. he confirmed the rumor that he was imprisoned here but this was also very few people have found this and i would argue a spirit that with that much energy with that dark of energy would be coming around more often i don't know yeah um i don't know i'm not an expert that's just my my hunch so uh if you do for some reason want to encounter vlad the Impaler's ghost with more of a likeliness that he'll be there.

He's allegedly often in Boldew Forest at the Witch's Pond. Love that he's at a witch's pond. It's said that this is the spot where he was beheaded. Oh, my. And it's an important pond today for a lot of witches. It's said to have incredibly powerful water, both good and bad so it helps in both sides of spell casting it can make items disappear sometimes it's used for healing but the darkness to it also keeps animals from drinking out of it no matter what no matter how thirsty they are they refuse to drink from it that's scary there's a weird rumor that if someone is pregnant and they don't want the baby if you bathe here

all of a sudden the pregnancy will disappear i don't i don't want to know more details than that but apparently that's the rumor of the witch's pond so it feels perfectly dark for vlad the impaler to be hanging yeah yeah it sounds like he would hang around there. Yeah. And this is where most people see his spirit pacing the banks for eternity. So that is Vlad the Impaler, Bromcastle, Bramcastle. Wow. There you have it. I always forget when you're telling me stories that at the end there are ghosts. So when you start with the ghosts, I'm like, oh my God, there's ghosts too? ghosts too this is crazy well i felt bad because with everything i was saying at first i was like this is a christine story for sure and i was even when i was reading through the notes i was i was like does this get haunted like what where like you

are good you nailed it because like with the i mean i feel like all these stories need the history lesson behind it even though we don't necessarily like to say it's a history story but i don't know i also don't usually like history but i love drama so that's yeah i feel like we just need to reframe history you know what i mean because i i don't know if i was telling was i telling you recently maybe it was on the podcast like i've realized i like history a lot i like it when it's told to me the right way. Yeah, I didn't know that about myself. But I'm like, oh, my favorite part of like a neat ghost tour and stuff is like learning about all the different buildings and old. You know, I don't know.

I've learned that I really like history, which I think is something that my history teacher from my AP Euro teacher is like pulling her hair out. Like, are you fucking kidding me? Now you like history? I know. I hated history. I still really don't like history unless it's told to me like gossip like yeah yeah that must be the key um because i'm kind of with you on that i just love i just love to hear about it i don't know i want to know the story of all these people in my photographs i don't know fascinating um well good job em thank you and since you don't know what Fascinating. Well, good job, Em. Thank you. And since you don't know what to expect, I'll tell you. I have a story for you, too. Surprise. What?

I know. I have the story today of Martha Moxley. Okay. You know this one? Mm-mm. No. sort of knew about just because it's a very famous true crime story but i didn't know all the details so i went into kind of a little rabbit hole with it um so let me tell you it's uh takes place in 1975 and the young woman in our story the girl 15 year old martha moxley she lived in bell haven which is a private and exclusive neighborhood in Greenwich, Connecticut, a.k.a. one of the most richest, one of the wealthiest areas in the country.

And she was in an exclusive neighborhood in Greenwich. So, like, very, very exclusive, right? Okay. It is a very wealthy place. Very, very exclusive, right? Okay. It's a very wealthy place. And, of course, it's one of those towns where people feel like they are safe and secure and know everything about their neighbors and nothing could go wrong. And, you know, we're talking the 1970s.

Like, this is pre all the, like, safety protocols and precautions we take today. So, of course, tragedy will come soon. So Martha had just moved to this neighborhood a year prior with her parents, Dorothy and David and her brother, John. Belhaven was an insular community and was a little introverted. It was kind of like old money style, like people weren't flaunting their wealth. But Martha, when she moved in, was kind of like a breath of fresh air for the people who lived there. She was sort of a California girl. She was bubbly and bright. People described her as being very girl next door. She had like a wonderful personality. She was blonde and bubbly. One of her peers said in an

interview that she made you feel like you were the center of the world she just kind of showed up and like brought a ray of sunshine into people's lives lit up a room people gravitated toward her especially boys uh-oh trouble nothing good happens there so despite moving across the country at such a pivotal age, age 15 or 14, I guess, Martha thrived immediately in her new home. She was even voted most popular girl at Western Junior High School, which I'm already scared of her and I'm in my 30s. And the power that she holds to be new there and already do that. To move to a new school and be all of a sudden the most popular, pretty impressive, especially in like a rich, richy rich neighborhood, you know? It had to have been a private school of like 10 people or something.

That's probably true, including her brother. So, yeah, I guess that's probably true. Her brother, John, speaking of him, told CNN, Martha was a person who had everything in the world going for her. She was friendly. She was athletic. She was talented in the arts. Everything seemed to come very easily to Martha. She was very easy to get along with, upbeat, friendly, the kind of kid you'd like to be around. And what she liked to do outside of

hanging with her friends was spend time with her family and her cat, Tiger. She also liked hanging out with some of the neighborhood kids, and they got up to the usual neighborhood antics, teenage mischief, drinking beer, smoking cigarettes. And so she did a little bit of that as well. She spent the summer of 1975 hanging out at the pool and tennis courts at the Bell Haven Country Club with wealthy friends who went to elite private schools. So she was kind of thrown into this like, you know. Gossip girl era.

Lavish. Yes, a Gossip Girl-esque environment. And a couple of those friends were called the Skakel Boys. Oh, I hate them. I'm so scared of them. Do you know them? No, but they just sound like they have a group name. What are you talking about?

I'd be so nervous around them. Oh, it's just their last name. There's two brothers named oh skakel brothers and you made it sound like they had a like their own little gang yeah skater skakel like if i ever met a guy and he was like i'm in a band we're called the skakel boys i would immediately be inferior i'd be like at 14 years popular kid at Western Junior High School. Yeah, so the Skakel boys was not a band. Maybe it was, but it was mostly just the family across the street. So their mother, Ann Skakel, had died two years prior of cancer.

So she left behind her husband, Rushton Skakel. Is that not the most like wealthy country club name, Rushton? Like he was meant to sign like checks, checkbooks. Oh, yeah. at that he's got the wrist strength you know yeah yeah um so she left behind her husband rushton and their seven children oh my god so rushton was tremendously wealthy as you can probably guess he had inherited a mining fortune and his family also had powerful connections and that's because they were cousins of the kennedys holy shit okay yep yep yep yep big name martha moxley became fast friends with two of the skakel boys 15 year old michael skakel and 17 year old tom skakel however she had her own issues with them. They didn't always get along. The boys were pretty rambunctious.

And one of Martha's friends refused to even hang out with them, was like, these two boys are just too much. Some described them as having explosive tempers. Michael and Tom, who were two years apart, 15 and 17 at the time, they were constantly in competition. And it was kind of the the reminds me of your Vlad and his brother story like they're constantly kind of pitting against each other and the younger brother always was trying to you know get what his older brother was getting and that was everything from sports to girls uh and ultimately Martha, allegedly. So, rushed in Skakel, the dad, traveled often,

and so he kind of just let the kids live like Lord of the Flies style, but super rich. Like, he just left them at home to fend for themselves. That sounds terrifying. Terrible. Just seven rich kids raising themselves. In a mansion with like no consequences. Like, of course, things were going to go very wrong. There was a lot of partying. And Michael, who was 13, allegedly was already a severe alcoholic by the time he was 13 years old. Holy shit.

Like he had developed alcoholism as a child and drank heavily regularly. Wow. This really bothered Martha. One night after spending time with Michael, she actually wrote in her diary, quote, Michael was so totally out of it that he was being a real ass. He kept telling me I was leading Tom, his older brother, on. Michael jumps to conclusions. I really have to stop going over there. And let's all take this moment to appreciate the foreboding nature of this sentence.

What did you say? The awareness of like something's going on. Yeah, definitely the awareness. Definitely the awareness. And also like foreshadowing, you know, it's a little bit like. I should not go there. Yeah. Trust your gut, you know,'s a little bit i should not go there yeah trust your gut you know

but like you're also 15 so it's not on you you know but it's just sad to see that she already had that kind of inkling so the entry referenced tom's feeling this is the older brother who's 17 tom's feelings for martha according to friends most boys who knew knew Martha had a crush on her, so Tom wasn't really any different. And in her diary, she also wrote, In the fall of 1975, she wrote another entry. Martha also wrote in a letter to a friend that she was not interested in tom but it seemed like tom's younger brother michael was very insecure about this and felt like she was leading his older brother on uh and that really bothered him so although martha's diary makes her sound wary

of tom's affection and michael's, she did continue hanging out with them. And like, you can't blame her. They live across the street. They're having fun parties. Like, you know, you're 15. You're like, well, it's not nothing serious. Like they can just be annoying, you know, or they can be an ass. But they're a 16 year old boy.

Like, of course they can. So, you know, there's a sense of security. I imagine hanging out like on your own street with kids your age. Like, I don't think that she knew how drastic the fear really should have been. 30th. So this is sort of like a Halloween story in a way because Martha went over to the... It's mischief night. It is. Exactly. Exactly. Martha went over to the Skakel house to hang out with the boys and their mutual friends and hang out for mischief night, get together for mischief night. Basically, they would run around the neighborhood. They would throw toilet paper in neighbor's trees, you know, the usual teenage antics before Halloween. I don't know whether cabbages were part of the equation. I feel like maybe painted in gold at this family. Yeah, they're like gold leaf cabbages. And so, you know, they're just doing

their typical teenage Halloween antics. Rushton was away on a hunting trip, of course. Of course. I imagine he had some quail he was after. I don't know. A bald eagle or something. A bald eagle to mount above his fireplace, perhaps. So everyone was gathering at the Skakel house unsupervised, unsurprisingly. gathering at the skakel house unsupervised unsurprisingly at 9 p.m martha and some of the skakel boys piled into the front seat of the skakel's car to listen to music martha sat in

the front seat between tom and michael the brothers who were vying for her attention and it was shortly after that she was sitting between the two brothers and then their brothers said oh we need to use the car. We have to go to our cousin's house to watch the U.S. premiere of Monty Python's Flying Circus, which is like, wow, what a time capsule that is. Yeah. So they had to get home stat to to watch the premiere. So this is where the stories get a little muddy. Whatever happened from 9.30 p.m. onward that night is subject to debate among everyone involved and pretty much everyone who knows anything about the case.

The only thing we are certain of is that Martha never made it home that night. By 1 a.m., Martha's mom, Dorothy, was very worried. It wasn't like her to stay out late uh dorothy notified the police and started calling martha's friends houses but nobody had seen her or knew where she was in the morning dorothy walked across the street to the skakel house and michael opened the door dorothy kind of took a look at him and was like, man, he looks hungover. He looks exhausted. He looks like not good. He wasn't in good shape.

And she asked if Martha was there. And he said, no, she's not here. So she's getting more and more upset, worried. Some people in the neighborhood start canvassing around looking for Martha. They're thinking, well, she probably just stayed the night at a friend's, had a few too many beers and forgot to tell her mom where she was. Right. So the friends are going around like looking for Martha. And it was around noon when one of Martha's friends made a horrible discovery. And this was right at the edge of Martha's and her family's, the Moxley's property. Martha was found dead lying beneath a pine tree at the back of her family's yard.

Oh, my God. And the scene was absolutely gruesome. Someone had clubbed and stabbed Martha to death. The blows were all to her head and the sheer violence of the attack made it seem as we've noted in several cases very personal very emotional yeah very passionate and there was also a trail in the grass from where she'd been dragged sort of into the line of the woods and then just left. Oh god. which just something about that is also so sinister police followed a trail of blood to a bigger pool of blood near the moxley's driveway

and there they discovered the murder weapon which was the shaft of a golf club oh god yes and this is pretty upsetting um the golf club had been used to beat Martha until the club itself broke. As in the metal part snapped or broke apart where the joint is. And then whoever had attacked her had taken that jagged metal piece and stabbed it into her throat. oh my god i keep saying oh my god um oh wow it's heinous i mean it's it's like so brutal and an investigator described it as a maniacal attack that should have stopped but didn't and i was watching a documentary where they kind of did like a vague recreation or recreation of it recreation i don't know recreation yeah and the way they showed it kind of put it in a perspective to me where that i hadn't really thought of it was like somebody must have hit her from the back just out of anger right like an initial blow out of anger and then she had probably fallen unconscious

or otherwise onto the ground and then they had made they had like a forked road in front of them like they either get the fuck out of there or they like finish the job so to speak and they clearly went the other direction and was the sorry it was the first hit could it have been accidental where like they're fucking around with golf clubs and it just like hit her no i think um they was the first hit was from the beginning it was out of anger yeah yeah probably Yeah. Probably like a rage. Okay. So police determined that Martha had been murdered between 930 and 10 p.m. the night before, which gave them a pretty concise pool of suspects because everyone knew what she had been doing the night before. So they tried to put together a timeline of that night to figure out who was last seen with Martha. And some friends told police

that Martha and Tom, the 17-year-old brother, had been flirting and the friends felt a little awkward and embarrassed. So they left because they were like, we were just watching them like kind of be flirty. And like, we were like- This was too hot and heavy. Gross, yeah.

They're like, we don't need those cooties. I had that happen to two people. Sorry, I know we're in the middle of like a dark moment. No, no, please. Let me take a break. I do want to say at like 14 or 15, it was like the year when everyone was like kind of starting to make out and half the people hadn't.

Everyone but me. Everyone but me. I had a bunch of my friends come over. There was like four of them. And two of them were very hot and heavy and into each other. And we're like, I think doing hand stuff in the room with the rest of us there. And the other end, but they were in my house. Like I didn't.

And I was 14. What do you even do? I would have been so wigged out. I don't know what I would have done. It wasn't like I could leave, but I also I didn't have enough um like you know gall to say get out or go away but also they're 14 so like it's not like they could drive home like i'd still have to awkwardly hang out with them until their parents pick them up to come yeah i feel like i would just like text my mom and be like help you can make some bagel bites and call us from

upstairs i don't know but the other like the other shelter child the other three of us were just watching it would be like there wasn't but like you couldn't take your eyes off of it it was like it was like a train wreck but it was like we were just watching like something like stupid on tv like we were monty python's flying circus it's always something similar watching the stupidest things like i remember the first time i like made out with somebody was i've told this story but donnie darko and like every time i think about donnie darko i'm like oh god that was so embarrassing but like you think back and it's like we just have no fucking shame like at that when you're like in that zone or whatever as like a teenager like i mean again i didn't even through college i none of us really had a lot of shame i saw a lot of lack it's kind of like well either stay

here and watch or go upstairs i don't know i feel like there's a lack of uh you just throw your etiquette out the window you're like well, well, I want to make out. We were in college. We were all staying in a house and like there were already too many people for rooms. And so a lot of people had just stayed on the floor. For some reason, I needed a bed. I think like my back was hurting or something. You're already an old man.

But my, sorry, girl, my friend Brandy was like in the middle of hooking up with somebody and she was using my bed for it forget it i just walked in and i laid down in the middle of them you were like oh let me make myself comfortable my sciatica is really acting up i there was something i think i was just so tired because i was trying to hold out and wait for them to be finished before I used the room. Yeah, you gave them their time and space. And they were taking too damn long. And I just walked in and they were in the middle of stuff. And I was like, you can keep going.

I don't even care. I just have to go to bed. Give me two feet of space to wedge myself in. I'll put my earplugs in. I'll put my earphones in. Yeah, it was a lawless land between like 14 to 24 it was a good word for it it felt lawless and like mine my experiences again I was kind of sheltered so I didn't really have any of that till I was like in my 20 like early 20s I would say or

like so college post-college but like I remember those feelings of like well I did that in front of people that I mean we had my my basement was like the hookup pad for a long time and it's like it all started when you were 13 and they were like I know the best place to make out it's Em's house because everyone else just sits there quietly. We literally had a mattress that like was known in my, like, I don't think there's a person in my friend group that didn't hook up on the mattress. It's just so wild to me because like,

you always say like, you weren't doing that kind of thing. I know like there were, I was surrounded by people who were willing to do it publicly. That's all. Like we, yeah. I think it's so amazing.

Cause I'm like, if I, I would have been like, get the, yo, I don't want to be part of that. That makes me uncomfortable. But I like that you were just like, listen, it's so amazing. Cause I'm like, if I, I would have been like, get the, yo, I don't want to be part of that. That makes me uncomfortable. But I like that you were just like, listen, you guys do you.

That's very, um, I think it was very, um, I, it's not like I wanted that to be clear, but I, it was also, again, uh, we had, uh, like there were times when like we were too young to drive, but someone would bring someone over and they weren't at their house and they were just they started hooking up and everyone else was falling asleep. We would wake up to hearing stuff. And I was like, oh, God. But that mattress became pretty notorious. We ended up having to, I think, burn it. I would.

I would think that's the only way I could. It was a wild time. I could like it was a wild time. So I I understand the, you know, just getting hot and heavy and in the moment. And maybe there's a movie that's intentionally bad. So neither of you have to focus. And then it's actually it's like an excuse to like all sit together on a couch. And oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yes, exactly. And I also get the feeling of and i i imagine that was also hard not to immediately shift into this horrible thing again but like i imagine that was hard for her friends to the next day have to come to terms with oh i left her there with somebody oh my god yeah oh god yeah they said oh we just felt really uncomfortable they were being super flirty and these kids are like 15 years old you know so i imagine some of them were like i mean she's the cool popular girl at school but like awkward people like me would have been like i'm out of here and then that feeling of like oh should i have and other people like me would have been like okay girl do you i'm gonna leave to give

you privacy and like space exactly it wouldn't have occurred to anybody to like get her out of there she looked like she was having a fine time. And they know him too. It's not like, oh, we don't know who she's with. It's not a stranger. And so her friends kind of admitted like, yeah, they were getting a little flirty and hot and heavy. And we felt awkward. So we left them alone.

and hot and heavy, and we felt awkward, so we left them alone. And that essentially meant to police, at least, that Tom, the older brother, was probably the last person to see Martha alive. So, you know, pretty strong place to start. And at first, Rushton, the dad, was pretty cooperative with police. He allowed them to canvas his property and you know look around for any sign of what might have happened and while they are canvassing his property they find a matching golf club that used to belong to ann skakel the late ann skakel who had died a few years earlier so it was one of the family's golf clubs from their set and so they did determine that the club used to kill Martha came from the same set and I I think I forgot to add this later so I'll say it now just in case I forget but the handle of the golf club has never been found wow still yeah still to this day so

somebody must have hidden it presumably to hide fingerprints or whatever so tom of course became a key suspect at this point and police questioned him on the timeline of that night and this is what he told police he said martha left at 9 30 and he went inside to write a paper for school about abraham lincoln okay and to that i say likely story on mischief night when you're all tping each other's houses and heading home to watch monty python you're telling me you went home and wrote a paper about abraham lincoln yeah yeah yeah yeah okay uh and he said at 10 p.m he was watching tv with this guy ken littleton ken littleton or kenneth was actually the Skakel's new live-in tutor who had moved in that day. So this guy moves in and the next day police are at the house like someone was just

murdered and we think you might have like provide a timeline of that night. Like imagine you're like I got this cushy tutoring gig in this like wealthy suburb. And now all of a sudden you're like at the center of this crazy murder situation. And there was definitely some weirdness about Ken that they go over in a few of the documentaries. But it seems a little bit like red herring stuff. I don't I don't think he was ever seriously a suspect. OK, I'm not 100 percent sure. He was never a suspect in the eyes of the police at least so he said tom seemed totally normal when they were watching tv together and so it was hard for

police to kind of wrap their heads around like well okay if he's home watching tv and he had just committed this like brutal murder it doesn't really match up like tom or i'm sorry ken would have sensed something was up if he walked in like right just murdered his friend i feel like even if you even if you thought you got away with it if that was the first time you ever killed a person i feel like you'd be really something would be weird like you'd be a little adrenaline right like you'd at least be shaky or something or like overly chatty or something to like disguise how calm you are not calm yeah exactly so you'd you'd at least think like okay

he he would he would have noticed something um but he said he seemed perfectly normal so police you know put him aside for now and said like we're not going to rule him out but we're going to keep looking then they go to michael the younger brother who's 15. And Michael tells the police that he went with the other boys, his other brothers, to his cousin's house to watch Monty Python. And he says he got home at 11.30 p.m. and went straight to bed. Has no clue what happened. Wasn't part of it.

Okay. Despite their many suspicions, investigators could not put together a solid case they just didn't have enough evidence to hold anybody so months go by and at this point rushton on the advice of his attorney stops cooperating with police which i can also understand if your sons are at the center of a murder investigation and you have that much money like yeah i assume your attorney the first thing they're gonna say is like don't fucking let them wander around looking for clues you know what i mean yeah this could be a big scandal and all that yeah yeah i can imagine why why that move was made

so i don't necessarily critique him for that um but because of this martha's case basically goes cold and bell haven is now like shell shocked with this newfound fear thinking like oh god we hope that this was an outsider who it's a one-time thing we hope but like maybe it was somebody we know maybe it was somebody in the neighborhood so they're grappling with this in town and meanwhile michael the younger brother is continuing to struggle with his alcohol abuse he gets into a drunk driving incident at age 17. And this is when his father sends him to a private and elite institution in Maine called the Elon School. Oh, we've talked about that. Yeah, I was like, I don't know if

you remember, but I read, oh, he was sent to an elite school. And I went oh no i bet i fucking know which one this is and it certainly is the elan school in maine which i did in episodes 264 and 265 it was a rare two-parter on on my part uh it's horrifically abusive an abusive place that has gone down in history with just like a dark dark uh narrative to it and uh the point of the school is basically a reform school with like all these kind of at the time new agey ideas about like psychology and they would have them like do screaming all i remember is like they would have them stand there and just like scream at the top of their lungs and the punishments were always very um cruel cruel exactly and uh just a lot of terrible shit you know kids were getting injured and dying and it was covered up there was a lot of stuff

going on there so I mean it was a two-parter so if you want to learn more about that but so he has a connection there as well and I can only imagine getting sent there probably didn't fix his problems. You probably wanted a drink for sure. Yes. Imagine. I imagine so. Hard to blame him. So he's sent to the Elon school, which is, you know, catered to children with mental health and substance abuse problems and sort of a reform school. And at this point, years go by. There is no news about Martha until 1995. Now, this is 20 years after her murder. Her family has just been like waiting for anything. So in 1995, a Kennedy was tried for rape in Florida and was acquitted. But somehow a rumor began circulating,

and it's not true. But this rumor was that this Kennedy had been at the Skakel's house 20 years earlier when Martha was murdered. And even though this was just a rumor and it wasn't even true, it reminded people like it reminded the public about this case and so it became a headline again if that makes sense like yes that does make sense the guy wasn't actually there but because it was a rumor people were like oh yeah the Martha Moxley case whatever happened to that and it came back into the public eye okay and so because of this, public pressure mounted until police decided to reopen the case. And this time they started off offering a reward and launching a tip hotline that people could call. So Rushton feels like, OK, now the pressure's back on. Eyes are on me again because

of this whole Kennedy scandal in Florida. And so he thinks to himself, I'm going to hire my own investigators to clear my family name. Oh, boy, did this backfire? Oh, big time. So he has these investigators compile a report to like prove his family's innocence, right? Well, that report was never meant to see the light of day did they find a little too much somebody leaked it to the press uh-oh uh yeah uh-oh so in this never meant to be seen report made by russian's own personal investigators they found shocking confessions from tom and michael that both boys had lied to the police and admitted this to their own personal investigators in 1975 according to them they both only lied because they were both innocent and thought the truth would make them look bad uh-oh well this makes you look

bad my friends yeah talk about like a double like a back big backfire double wh. Double whammy. Yeah. Double whammy. Like you're trying to make yourself look better and you just like dig the hole deeper, you know. So Tom told his father's investigators, this is the older boy, that after the other boys had left to go watch Monty Python at their cousin's house, he didn't go inside right away. In fact, he stayed outside making out with Martha for about 20 minutes before they parted ways. outside making out with Martha for about 20 minutes before they parted ways. And this version of events made more sense than his initial homework alibi, especially after investigators had discovered that no teacher had assigned a paper on Abraham Lincoln that during that time. So like at first they were like, you are writing a paper on Abraham Lincoln.

They talked to the teachers. No teacher had assigned a paper on Abraham Lincoln. They talked to the teachers. No teacher had assigned a paper on Abraham Lincoln, but they couldn't like prove it. But now they're like, aha. OK, so there was never a paper on Abraham Lincoln. He bullshitted that. Meanwhile, he was outside making out with Martha. So Tom insists that he left Martha alive and well outside and it was the last time he ever saw her and he had nothing to do with it. But he thought making out with her would look bad that is true and so he never told police

meanwhile michael's story was even worse even more concerning even more red flags he went golfing that's a really good guess not quite it's actually way worse So he said that once he got home at 1130, he actually didn't go straight to bed. Instead, he went to Martha's house. He said, wow. Yeah. He climbed a tree with a view of Martha's window so he could watch her for a little bit. Then he said he could see her through the window. And so he masturbated in the tree. he said he could see her through the window and so he masturbated in the tree right so the belief now became at least among investigators and people who are critical of this family that he is saying this to put his dna at the scene for a reason if they find his dna this is one of the theories is that he said that's there he knows it might be there that's one of the theories is that he said that's there he knows it might be there that's one of the theories is that why would he admit to this well maybe he was trying to cover for the fact

that but they never found his dna so it's also like we don't know if if you know all that to say that's one of the theories uh but he did say he masturbated in the tree. And at one point, Michael, when he was older, pitched a tell-all book on Martha's murder and his own innocence. And, again, this guy's, like, doubling down and making himself look worse because he referenced the event and he had made these, like, audio recordings. You know when, like, people, like, fancy people write books and they, like, do transcription or they're like talking story idea yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly like chapter one how i became the person i am you know so he is basically pitching his own book about his own innocence in regard to the martha moxley case and these audio clips come out and he references the event and so he said when dorothy moxley came over the next morning asking about martha he was all panicked because he thought maybe she'd seen him in the tree or maybe he had gotten caught okay so soon witnesses started coming forward

with more troubling news and these were some of mich Michael's classmates at the Elon School. And they said that Michael once confessed to Martha's murder in group therapy. Oh, God. Yeah. But the school's owner, Joe Ricci, denied it. So it's like he said he said. Well, I'm sure he was getting paid famously to have one of those kids at the school, right? Oh, probably. I imagine that I think the tuition was yeah notable yeah i also think this russian guy would have probably made a heavy donation to like make sure he was treated right or something you know yeah yeah and also like you can't even necessarily trust like after learning all that we did about the elon school it's also like hard to trust

anyone's confession in a place where this is not a safe, medically supervised place. And it's all full of children who are being abused. So, you know, it's hard to say like, oh, even if he did say it, who knows if it was just part of their weird new age procedures or what. But this classmate said that he did admit to it. So another former classmate, Gregory Coleman, said one of the first things Michael ever said to him was, I'm going to get away with murder. I'm a Kennedy. And according to him, Michael had admitted to beating Martha to death after she rejected his advances. John D. Higgins said Michael confessed to him too, but he was crying and confused during his confession and told John that he only remembered fragments of the crime after he committed it. Okay.

So it's not looking good for Michael. Is there any world where Michael didn't do it and he was trying to like look cool to the other guys to like earn bragging points? Yeah. Okay. like look cool to the other guys to like earn bragging points yeah that's okay that's kind of where the disparity comes in of even if he had actually said it maybe it was just pressured out of him maybe he was bragging maybe he was trying to establish a place in like a hierarchy that was kind of lord of the flies you know who knows what like the motive was. We don't even have proof that he did admit to it. Okay. But like you said, even if he did,

maybe it was just a brag or a lie, you know. So it's unclear, but it's also not a good look for someone who's trying to claim they're innocent. So in 1998, the state attorney convened a rare one-person grand jury to assess all the evidence in the case regarding Michael and Martha Moxley. After an 18 month review involving dozens of witnesses, Michael Skakel was indicted on charges for Martha's murder in January of 2000. At the hearing, he approached Dorothy Moxley, Martha's mother, and said, I feel your pain, but you've got the wrong guy. Also, don't say I feel your pain.

You don't. That's crazy. That is a crazy thing to say. That's wild. You're incorrect. I know how you feel. No, you literally don't. But OK.

So the defense tried to get Michael tried as a juvenile because he had been obviously 15 at the time of the alleged crime, which would mean little to no jail time, even with a guilty verdict. But the court determined to try him as an adult. So now, by the way, Michael at this point is 41. And this occurred when he was 15. Jeez, it has followed him. Yes. And it continues to do so. So in 2002, he's 41. He goes to trial and the prosecution aims to discredit Michael's alibi. One witness testified that she was at the Skakel house that night and that Michael did not go to his cousin's house to watch Monty Python. So she's like that whole chunk of his story is a lie. Although there was no forensic evidence like DNA or anything tying him to the crime scene,

witness testimonies were pretty compelling. So in his closing argument, the prosecution did something that even the people who find Michael to be guilty considered unethical. Really shady tactic, in my opinion as well. The prosecution played the recording Michael made referencing masturbating in the tree, where he was worried he'd been seen in the act, but the prosecutor removed the context. So the recording sounded like he was worried that someone had seen him that night at the scene of the crime. So to explain it a little clearly, they have a clip of him saying, oh, cause I had masturbated in the tree. I was worried that maybe someone had spotted me that night.

They cut out the tree part and just put, played the recording of him saying, I was so worried that I was caught at the scene that night, you know? And so they made it sound like he was admitting to being at the site of her murder. When in fact he had been talking about the tree being a peeping tom in a tree so unethical not not great um but it was basically the final nail in the coffin um i also meant to send you some photos i feel like there's something about like seeing these people like

these kids and just seeing like how i mean young and like here's martha and we'll post these on instagram um as well and i'll send you a picture of michael at the time okay that's martha that's martha i mean they're so little they are oh man they are so young they even have like baby face they do they're i mean 15 and then um this is michael this is michael um in court so this is you know decades later wow so just to give you kind of a visual um because i think that's something about these documentaries that are that's like powerful too is seeing the old photos and putting a face to the names um so anyway this confession quote unquote that they played seemed to be a final nail in the coffin so on august 30th 2002 michael was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison for the murder of martha

moxley wow but michael didn't give up. He got a new defense team who started working on appeals. And, you know, he has the money to be hiring new people to be hiring the best of the best attorney wise. Then a man named Tony Bryant came forward. I believe he's a cousin of Kobe. Oh, yeah, I'm pretty sure that was the story. His name's Tony Bryant, and he came forward with somewhat of a strange story. He claimed that two of his friends from New York City had actually murdered Martha Moxley.

Whoa. Plot twist. Random fact time, I guess. Random fact time. Okay. According to him these two friends had visited bell haven several times and had once met martha at a local event tony said one of his friends had become obsessed with martha and possessive of her whenever he was around her on october 30th 1975 allegedly according to him the three of them were walking around bell haven and this friend who was obsessed with martha picked up one of the skakels golf clubs and said they were going to hurt someone that night his other claim was

that the friend who was obsessed with marth with mar Martha claimed he would go all caveman on her and get what he wanted. Ew. Yeah. And, you know, this put into perspective to me also when they talked about the golf club and it coming from the Skakel's house. That sounds so damning. from the Skakel's house. That sounds so damning. But at the same time, the way that these kids who are now adults described the environment, they said there were just golf clubs everywhere. We lived basically in a country club. It wasn't unusual for someone to just take a golf club from the Skakel's house. So it wasn't like, oh, somebody must have broken into the garage

and steal in the golf club. They were just kind of laying about. Gotcha. Okay. Which is like the most stereotype of like country club people. Like they just have golf clubs scattered about the lawn. But apparently they literally did. So it kind of puts into perspective like,

okay, I guess it's possible someone else picked up a golf club and attacked her with it sure so when he saw them again allegedly tony was like yeah my friends were like we're gonna hurt this girl and go caveman on her and they never said martha's name but he said later on he ran into them again and they told him they'd killed a girl oh my god yeah and so this is this groundbreaking story coming forward then one of michael's classmates who claimed michael confessed to the murder this is one of the people from the elon school who had said no no michael told me like he killed martha this guy comes forward and goes I have something to admit I have a confession to

make I was high on heroin when I said that oh okay yeah and so that also have been high on heroin when you killed her like what no the friend sorry the one from the Elan school who had come forward and said Michael told me he killed Martha then like years later came forward and said oh I know I said that but I was high on heroin so i don't when i accused a person when i accused him or when i when i made up the story or when i told the story that he had killed martha i was high on heroin and this guy actually ended up dying of an overdose so you know it was easy in the eyes of michael's defense team to like discredit this guy and say well this guy is high on heroin Are you going to believe everything he says? You know?

So at this point, Michael's defense team feels pretty strongly. They file an appeal largely based on this Tony Bryant's testimony. The only problem is that Tony refused to testify under oath. So they only had a recording of his story. And unfortunately, this did not win over the court and the appeal was denied. So we fast forward to September 2010, and Michael's new attorney files an appeal, which argued that his previous defense team had failed to properly represent him. They argued that Tom, his older brother, should have been called to the stand and that he might have been the one to kill Martha. And now a new witness came forward and said, no, he was at his cousin's house that night. I was there. So, I mean, it's basically he said, she said like, yeah, back and forth nonstop.

And it's like been decades. So it's like like does anyone really remember are they are their memories being colored by all this craziness you know how much of this is true how much of this do you feel pressured from the family and also if it wasn't them yeah if it wasn't 25 years of this following you around and you didn't do anything wrong you know yeah yeah yeah exactly and so they're very exactly and that's why they're very strong divided opinions on this like some people are like he was in unjustly imprisoned and then people are like he absolutely fucking did it you know there's a very polarizing case. So they argued Tom is the one who should

have been called to the stand. A new witness comes forward and says, I did see him at his cousin's house watching Monty Python, I swear. And so this is like a he said, she said. And in 2013, a judge finally granted Michael a new trial on the grounds that he had not been effectively represented in 2002. Michael was released from prison after 11 years on $1.2 million bail. But in 2016, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled his legal representation was in fact competent and they reinstated the murder charge. So it's like back and forth. He's in jail.

He's not in jail. He's a murderer. He's not a murderer. So after the hearing in 2016, Martha's mother, Dorothy, said, I am sure that Michael is the young man who swung the golf club. There is no doubt in my mind about that. Oh, damn. So that's damning, at least coming from Martha's mother. Now, this is when our good friend Robert F. Kennedy Jr. comes into play. Oh, I was wondering when he'd make an appearance. He always does, huh?

So RFK Jr., a little bit of Looney Tunes, you know, as we record this, just announced he's running independent into 2024. No comment. So RFK Jr., he is a former prosecutor and environmental lawyer, and he was convinced of his cousin. I just want to clarify their cousin. So there is some bias here, I would argue, convinced of Michael's innocence. So he wrote a whole book about it. This book is called Framed, why Michael Skake Skakel Spent Over a Decade in Prison for a Murder He Didn't Commit. This book that RFK wrote pointed the finger back at these two friends that Tony talked about, the New York kids. OK. And he said those are the real culprits.

He claimed to have definitive proof that they were the culprits, but they there were obviously some holes with his story. So the book claimed that Martha wrote in her diary about meeting Tony and his friends, referring to them as two strangers she encountered at a dance. Nope. In the actual diary entry, she says several guys asked her to dance the night of the dance. That's it. She doesn't talk about strangers. She doesn't talk about meeting two boys from new york there's no reference to them and even specifically even if even if they happen to be there for some reason they would have been two of the many boys who asked her to dance she

wouldn't know remember and the thing that's so like jarring is like he claims he has definitive proof and it's like that's definitive proof you? Like a diary entry where multiple people asked her to dance? Yeah, a diary entry where they're not mentioned. Exactly. It's not a strong case. Sorry, bud. So she then went on to list several boys she danced with by name. And she said she danced a lot with her friend Dickie.

And they talked to Dickie. CBS News reached out to him, interviewed him. He said, yes, I did. I danced with her a lot that night. I spent most of the night with her. I never saw Tony or his two friends from New York. Wow. OK, that doesn't hurt a lot of nuance to the case. But it's a significant detail that as Dickie kid said, I didn't see these two friends because Tony and one of the two friends are both black. And in a neighborhood like this, you would have noticed if they were there. OK, if these two out of town city boys city boys right who were black are coming to town in a 1970s country club in a 1970s country club allegedly obsessing over

this girl like he would have people would have taken someone would have someone there was racist and someone would have said something someone was come. Come on. We can all agree on that. Right, guys? Like we can meet there in the middle. Yeah. So it's it's telling. And Belhaven, like I said, was a very exclusive, heavily white neighborhood where even white people who didn't really fit the majority stood out like a sore thumb. Like even if you came from different means, but you were still white, you stood out. So two black kids from New York would have stood out. Dickie told CBS there is no way two black teenagers could have hung out in Bellhaven in 1975 and gone unnoticed. It's just not possible. Someone would have remembered them going to the dance or hanging around the night of Martha's murder. And also, I got to be honest, I watched this special called Murder and Justice, the Case of Martha Moxley. It's a multi-part documentary. I don't know where to watch it because I hacked into my dad's Xfinity account and watched it that

way. But it's online and it's a multi-part documentary. It's hosted by former federal prosecutor Laura Coates and she's black and she does an interview with RFK Jr. And I just love this moment because he's like so staunchly saying, oh yeah, they didn't, these two kids did it and whatever. And this former federal prosecutor who is also black looks at him and goes, I mean, I like I'm going to paraphrase. She said it much more eloquently, but she basically said, OK, let's be real here. This is the United States in 1975. And you're telling me that if two black kids had been there, they weren't the first people everyone pointed a finger at. Like if they had been

hanging around, you don't think they would have immediately been taken into the station. And that would have been easier pill to swallow for the rest of the neighbors than like the kid across the street who's a Kennedy. I mean, come on. Perfectly, perfectly said. Right. Like she put him so on the spot and he's like, well, it's because this and that. And it's like, no, no, I don't believe you. Anyway, it was like 15 years until like desegregation.

I mean, yeah. You know? Yeah. don't believe you anyway it was like 15 years until like desegregation i mean yeah you know yeah and this is like the height of like that kind of preppy like we're entering the 80s polo club i mean come on we can all agree that if they had been there they would have been an easy target but for some reason he kind of casually dismisses that and says no no but i have definitive proof and then never seems to show it. So whatever. I do recommend watching that documentary. I thought they did a good job. Tony even mentioned that his friend who was allegedly obsessed with Martha was particularly interested in her blonde hair. in her blonde hair and now it became sort of like this i don't even know straw man like scapegoat story of this stereotypical young black man who's coveting this wealthy small town white girl like

it became such a trope and like some people found that really easy to swallow like oh this black kid must have just looked at her and thought i want that for myself you know yeah it's just a very like cringy take you know um the accused man's attorney who's also interviewed in this documentary very well spoken like i think does a really solid job of defending his client claims it was a clear case of black and white and two of martha's friends agreed in an interview that robert f kennedy and michael were trying to scapegoat the most vulnerable person they could find, a young black man who was out of his element in this white neighborhood. And I will add here, just in case we needed it, I put a screenshot of some of the shit RFK Jr. has said in the past few years because i'm like if anyone even tries to challenge me i'm like well it's not racist i'm like okay well i have some uh definitive proof okay uh okay about

bullshit he said um about covid and other uh other silly things timely silly silly goofy things um so i have this here if anyone wants it anyway in a november 2020 cbs special an interviewer asked rfk do you have any regrets pointing the finger at two people who have never been suspects there's no physical evidence that ties them to the crime this is a factual statement they're literally just asking yeah this question he stands up in the middle of her sentence tells her she was wrong there was plenty of physical evidence linking them to the crime what is the evidence nobody knows he never thought it's a fun little secret uh unclear what the evidence is and michael's defense team continued to rally behind

him with this kind of narrative like they're creating this narrative here uh to try and clear his name basically they even like i said pointed the finger at his older brother tom who they claimed is the most likely culprit of which i'm like i thought it was a black kid but okay i guess it's also your brother um anyway on may 4th of 2018 with a new judge seated the connecticut supreme court reversed its 2016 ruling and vacated mich's conviction in a 4-3 ruling. And they granted him a new trial. When asked what the Moxley family planned to do in response, 59-year-old John Moxley, Martha's brother, said, I don't know what the next steps are.

My mom is getting older. I just don't think she has the strength to go on with this which is just like heartbreak i mean think of all the back and forth and just trying to get answers on october 30th 2020 so this is 45 years to the day after martha's murder the state of connecticut officially announced that michael would not be retried for martha moxley's murder it was decided there was not enough evidence to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. At this point, it had been so long, I mean, 45 years, of 51 potential witnesses, 17 had died. There was no forensic evidence to prove that he had been at the case. So John said, the brother, he'll be in jail for the rest of his life.

He may not be physically in jail. He may be walking the streets, but he'll be in jail for the rest of his life he may not be physically in jail he may be walking the streets but he'll be in hell at some point i was like oh that's powerful fucking yeah moving so today no one is legally responsible for martha moxley's brutal death uh as the charges have been overturned um but dorothy remains convinced it was was Michael and she is one of these people you see and you're like wow you are an old soul like she is so she's been through so much pain but she just sits there and she's like if I'm wrong I'm going to be so sorry and uh the uh host says but you don't think you're wrong she's like oh no I don't think I'm wrong. She's like, oh, no, I don't think she's like, I understand. Like, if I am wrong, of course, that's a really bad thing. But I don't think

I'm wrong. And I think I know who did it. And she said, like, you know, I have a really happy life. I have a really blessed life. I've I have so much to be thankful for. And she said, and he's going to live the rest of his life with this following him around. And you know what? Yeah. Another point she made, too, is she said, people come up going to live the rest of his life with this following him around. And you know what? Yeah. Another point she made, too, is she said, people come up to me and say nice things. I have caring friends. I have people who take care of me, who love me, who say nice and kind things to help me heal. She said, I don't think anyone's saying those things to Michael Skagel.

I don't think he's getting nice messages from people. I think he's going to be followed by this forever, even if he's not in jail. So nobody, nobody, nobody's in jail for it. Dorothy, Dorothy remains convinced it was Michael. And she said, I will never forget the day they found him guilty. It gave me all the sense of justice I needed. So she almost feels like that was closure, even though he was later, you know, released. And she felt like, you know, that day I felt like I got my justice and I felt secure in that. All right. And this this part, Saoirse added in and wrote like kind of a note saying this was actually the because I didn't watch the CBS episode. But Saoirse said this is the closing note of the CBS episode.

So like they were like, I don't know if you want to use it. You can. But it's like the same thing that they said. But it's really powerful. So. OK. Or as Saoirse said, really haunting. So I'll just read the last line of how they ended the CBS special. In Martha's diary at the end of 1974, she wrote, Dear diary, today is the last day of 74.

Boo hoo. 74 has been one of the best years of my life. Well, hope 75 is just as good. Oh. And that is the as good. Oh. And that is the story. Haunting. Haunting.

That's like, especially when I read earlier that thing of like, man, I shouldn't go over there anymore. It's like, oh, God, it's that hindsight of, you know, 2020. Yeah. Looking back and feeling like, oh, man, I just I wish I wish there was any way to get her out of this situation um but yeah it's uh it's really fucked up well good telling it i just i found it really um uh i don't know i found watching martha's mother dorothy talk about her life with this uh like hanging over her very inspiring i can't imagine the heaviness of 25 years or however long it took 45 45 oh my god 45 years? Wow. And she's just like such a, you could just tell a very strong, self-assured and kind woman.

And I feel like that kindness is a strength. Like I think if I went through something like this, my resentment and bitterness would be so overpowering. And I mean, I'm sure she's had decades to reflect and therapize and what have you but I mean I can't imagine I would ever be able to really let go of that like anger and hatred you know I feel like that would just tear me up not me so not me not me I'd be a lot meaner me um speaking of mean just to shift shift gears here um i got a text from my mom just now oh god and she texted me saying i think you smell she said i think you smell like milk and um well that's very rude and then yeah and then i said i smell. And she said, good cold milk. And then she said,

I love the smell of grapefruit though. Is she, is this, oh wait, is this one of your secret code words? Like is she in the trunk of someone's car and you get to call her? No. Like, is it like you smell like milk? Alert, red alert. I would like to call someone and ask them to put her in a trunk if she's going to keep telling me I smell like fucking milk. She's going to end up in your trunk. You're going to go pick her up be like come on get in the car which like i also don't smell like milk you don't smell like milk to be clear like if i don't know if you needed that validated but like i can confirm my mom and i aren't very physically affectionate she's never near me enough to smell me and then also i live on the other side of the

country what is she smelling? Here's my theory. She hasn't been around. Maybe she drinks oat, soy, I don't know, whatever. She probably doesn't drink a glass of milk, right? Something happened. She happened to be pouring a cold glass of milk, milk on cereal, who knows what. And as she's pouring the milk, she goes, this reminds me of Em. And it's probably because you're the only person under the age of 65 who drinks a glass of milk ever and so it's probably like oh this smells

like someone oh it's it's got to be m who else the fuck drinks plain old plain ass milk out of a cup so i feel like that's my theory i am a little worried though though, because I have heard that apparently to people of color, white people do smell like milk. Oh, no. Have you heard this? I've heard we smell like milk. I've heard we smell like pennies. And I've also, like, we smell like outside. Which it's like, I get the outside thing.

I can smell that on people. But, like, the milk one really freaks me out. Because I'm like like that's a funky smell yeah that's bad and i'm so sorry to people who have to live with that sense like if you're a person of color and we smell like milk and you just have to be near that all the time that's if anyone needed a reason to shower today i was gonna say i didn't think i needed a reason but you just gave me one so now i've heard it's like like the wet dog smell it's like when we're when we come out of the shower or something. Yeah and by the way you told me that one time while we were hanging out

and I was very pregnant and Gio had just gone on the balcony and we let him back in and you were like did you know that this is what you smell like to people of color and I was like um thank you I'm very heavily pregnant but thank you for that nice fun fact i texted some of our friends like text and i i was gonna say my friends but you know them too i've i've texted a few people and i went hey just like a quick question like i just learned after 30 years of being a white person that apparently i smell like pennies and wet dog milk sick and it was not denied oh no i remember yeah you were like i mean christine confirmed it the other christine and i was like well i think that's all you need to know she's one of the people who confirmed it she was like who told you yeah you uh yeah who told you

that's secret knowledge which i love that that's such a power that's like such a power card that they have uh in their pocket if they need it because like that will demolish some people probably not all people but to me i'm like sleep about it yeah me too me too um i but yeah so my mom telling me also just her see them works it's like it's one thing if strangers think that about me but my own mother from across the country yeah Yeah. She's like, huh? I never noticed before. It's like, I feel like she thinks that's a compliment. Like I smell like ice cream or something, but like, no, I'm thinking of like curds of milk. Yeah. I feel like milk is one of those smells where for like a few days, not a problem and very, very low smelling. But I feel like if milk has a smell that's

when you know things have gone wrong you know exactly if i smell like milk i smell rotten so yeah you smell like milk that smells which is bad milk yeah oh well thanks mom anyway you smell great too jesus you smell like a wet dog okay good Good way to end this. So everyone, go take a shower. This is also your reminder to stay hydrated, you filthy little rats. Oh, I drank my whole iced tea. And I guess that's it. So and? That's?

Why? We? Drink.