And That's Why We Drink - E354 A Tarot Therapy Session and a Ghost Cat Pawty

Episode Date: November 19, 2023

It's episode 354 and we're having the worst post-Halloween, Monday blues of the year (on a Wednesday)! But at least there's a ghost cat named Dennis in our future: This week Em is taking us to the Old Idaho Penitentiary, home of some lovely celebrations for Dennis the ghost cat and the animal rescues of Boise, despite the wild hauntings. Then Christine covers the mysterious and tragic disappearance of Kimberly Avila, a gender non-conforming icon who's accepting family our hearts could not break for more. And don't mind us, we're just here watching someone else watch paint dry... and that's why we drink!

hello happy halloween well when people hear this it'll be like the end of november or something oopsie but for us it is the day after halloween so we're having the scary blues or whatever it's called for halloween the scary orange and black it's the worst scary sundays of uh or monday blues of the year because it's on a wednesday but yeah i can't even roll reversal um i uh yeah i'm feeling real down i feel like the last i'm feeling down but also up because both of them are tied to the fact that like the last month or two have felt so overwhelming and like yeah especially with allison's double birthday with halloween and we always have things going on on the weekend so we really don't get to relax and it's like i'm just i'm very glad that we're going into this era where like i have to do less but i'm also now

getting that sweeping depression where it's like like um like burnout or something so where you're crashing sort of yeah i've been like i've my adrenaline has been i've been running on steam for the last two months and now it's just like okay goodbye it's uh it's that that crash i feel like you have to be careful because that's always when i get sick like when i'm finally let go of everything. And then it's like, ah, oh, my fever is back. Ah, chew. Yeah. Ah, chew. Oh, ah, chew.

Fuck my life. I felt a little tickle of something yesterday. Oh, no. And I went, get it the fuck together. And I just. Into the mirror? Or at your throat? I just thought it like in my brain.

I see. I was like, you can't possibly feel this way. You can't possibly do this right now. So I'm intentionally hydrating, which, by the way, get fucking drinking, you filthy little rats. Cheers. And taking my vits, my my mints and sips. Good for you. Good for you.

And I'm not preparing for the worst because I am refusing to believe I could get sick, but I am just having a lot of situational awareness around that. I get it. I totally get it. Well, Liana has 103.4 degree fever. Shoot. So you will be sick. So things are, you might be if you come anywhere near her since you apparently didn't get any of the toddler diseases.

No, she's like really fucking sick. And we thought it was just teething because she keeps like pointing at her mouth and saying it hurts. But then she got this like raging fever the day before Halloween. And so yesterday. The last scare of it all.

Oh, it was a treat and a trick. It was not a treat. It was just a trick. We just dressed her up. We gave her Tyl um we we just dressed her up we gave her tylenol we dressed her up very briefly like let her sit outside with us but it was like 40 fucking degrees let her kind of run up and down in tuberculosis world you did the right thing that's right yeah get some fresh air sit her on an adirondack chair uh just let her let the snow blow over her um as her lungs are fixed you know and healed um

yeah so we let her we let her roam around a little bit just like get the feel for it she was on fucking cloud nine we have a new halloween fanatic in the house her name is leona despite the 103 degree fever she was like fucking rallying like she really nailed it and she was a dino rancher and um Giovanni was a dino so um it was a delight to to see that but then she went inside to watch dino ranch and sleep um so um precious and also like mother like daughter because if you had a raging fever and should be hospitalized, that's your prime time to go. Let's hang out in the city. To put on a fun hat and go outside and talk to the neighbors.

Yeah, exactly. Let's actually eat a shitload of candy. That'll be good for me, right? She had her first Snickers. That was something else. That was a life changing moment. I could tell. You saw the twinkle in her eye ignite i saw the chocolate

all over my pants when she wiped her hand on me um yeah it was a it was a great time i do have one exciting reason i drink which is that um i got hit on by a woman and it was incredibly exciting and blaze was like oh okay i appreciate that blaze just let it happen he was like this is a moment he actually got hit on a man by multiple men that same night so i was like you know what are you swingers at this point what's going on i mean maybe i don't know um no we were we were at this party and uh it was just a halloween party like a couple doors down and um the I don't I'm trying to I don't want to like triangulate anyone but a lot of the neighborhood couples came by and stuff and um Blaze and I did a gender gender bender um Taylor Swift costume where it was his idea before anybody's like why

are you making him wear makeup I didn't know know such thing. He came downstairs and I said, where did you get that? He said, your sink. And he had a red lip on. And I was like, I don't even like that lipstick. So you can keep it, I guess. He's having his moment. He is. You know what? Just another reason I love Blaze. That's a man, by the way, when he's like, I don't even need you to say anything. I'm putting this lipstick on. I don't even need you to say anything. I'm putting this lipstick on. I mean, he came downstairs. And at first he thought that his costume.

So my sister had brought some stuff from where she works at Adidas to like help him with the costume because he was wearing like a red. I was Travis Kelsey. He was Taylor Swift. And when she bought the stuff for the costume i also threw in like my order i wanted some bicycle shorts like some biker shorts and blaze thought those were part of his costume so at first he comes downstairs in like a tank top and like women's volleyball shorts and i'm like what are you wearing with red lipstick i was like this is a really weird moment and my mom was there and she was like okay sure i guess this is what's happening i feel like renata was like, this is a really weird moment. And my mom was there and she was like, OK, sure. I guess this is what's happening. I feel like Renata was like, you know what?

They've been married long enough. It's time to get a little weird. We saw this coming. Least surprising turn of events, I guess. No, but he yeah. Then I was like, those are not those are mine. You can put on pants like normal pants. You can put on jeans.

And he's like, oh, thank God. normal pants you can put on jeans and he's like oh thank god so anyway we went to the party and he had his like little tank top on with like his jacket over his you know arms so like people were already eyeing him whether it was just like what what's going on here wearing lipstick or like oh i'm into that so he got hit on a few times times. So then when a Rosie the Riveter asked me if I was single, I was like, maybe. What's it to you? Who wants to know? Yeah, yeah.

And Blaise was like, oh. Come on. We're all on the edge of our gay little seats. You got to give us the details. Were there smize? Was there, did she close on in? What was the line she used? Well, like we were talking. Rosie the Riveter, did she make you feel her muscle that's a good one yeah um no we were talking about our animal totems

and oh my god okay well that was her sign that you were gay so i know she was like i'm closing in now i was also wearing like a football uniform was dressed it was halloween is such a scary day especially for the gays it's like really it's so confusing it must be i can't imagine and then i was like uh i just was totally and belated started laughing and i was like oh boy um no she was delightful um and then she was like oh i'm going camping this weekend okay okay i know and she's like i'm gonna do a spell while i'm camping wow she really was dropping every fucking hint she could to you she was like do you want to see my subaru or not i'm so stupid i was like wow camping that sounds terrible oh my god anyway it was fun and i felt very i almost texted you and eva that night but i was like i'm gonna announce this on the

podcast to m to get their reaction um live action you know very very excited for you i thank you don't think i got hit on even by my own girlfriend so bear i'm very living vicarious through you so yeah you know as a parent i'm like i take these moments and run with them you know it doesn't happen often but um you gotta i hung out with people on halloween who i think might have been gay i couldn't totally read the situation uh was it me and blaze because we were sending all sorts of mixed signals yeah there was a guy in lipstick he looked fabulous i just didn't really know what was going on there though um no we we hung out with um one of my friends invited us over to walk around their neighborhood and see the halloween lights but

it was like way too overwhelming and like oh it was just because it wasn't i thought it was going to be like a friedrichsburg virginia house with a cul-de-sac and like some cute little lights i forgot that i live in fucking los angeles oh right sure like home of special effects and props and like hired help and everything for everyone's mansions because they they took us to Toluca Lake which is like for people who don't live in LA Toluca Lake is where a lot of celebrities live to be honest I did not know that oh okay so yeah it's right next to Warner Brothers like on the other side of the gate and so that's where I lived no I'm just kidding it's it's right on the other side of a studio lot so it's really easy commuting for accessible

it's out of the like hustle and bustle a bit yeah and it's like like steve carell lives there like a bunch of anyway so um there was just too many fucking people like and i know i have like crowd anxiety but this was like i mean it felt like we were at disney world like you couldn't walk on the sidewalks we walked with a group of it was like seven or eight people and we kept getting lost from each other because there's so many people um we couldn't walk down the road and then cars were trying to get through and like these we were just going to look at lights but there were kids they're actually trick-or-treating and i was like and there was lines as long as like if you were at Universal waiting to get on a ride.

There were lines around the corner to get candy from like the coolest looking houses. Oh, my God. Can you imagine you get up there and they hand you a dum-dum? And they're like, you get one. Like, I'd be like, Steve Carell, I'm calling the police right now. corral i'm calling the police right now there was um there was like and because it's hollywood and because either they can afford it or maybe they work like behind the scenes and do this kind of art for their job the houses were incredible i mean there was like a harry potter themed house and someone literally built a train someone built a hogwarts express a like a real sized it looked

like they bought a train and put it in their backyard they probably did it was and then they had like a projector playing harry potter on the garage door they had like all this stuff there was another one that was like all pyrotechnics and their roof looked like it was on fire and like that's a dangerous thing game to play in los angeles i know fake fires there was just i mean it was very, if I were the only one on the street, I would have been blown away. But so many people being there was kind of. I feel like that takes away from the magic of it.

You're just like. Yeah. It felt suffocating. Sensory overload. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And also like the people we went with, like brought their dogs.

And so I was like, oh my God, now I'm worried about losing the dogs or the dogs getting in fights because everyone had their dogs out. So anyway, I appreciated Allison and me making an effort to do something on Halloween night because usually we actively stay home to avoid traffic. So this was last night, like Halloween night on Tuesday. Halloween night. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That's hard when trick or treaters are out and about like you're not getting far. It was it was. Yeah, we the last time I went out on halloween night in la was when we first moved here and i didn't know how crazy the traffic gets and then after that i never i oh it's just like a reason to stay home you stay like this was hunkered hunker hunker bunker down yeah so anyway it was uh it was us making an attempt to do something and then we realized we won't again so well to be honest like i am now so thankful based on that story i live where i do because

oh by the way a podcast listener came and said hi oh god at your house yeah terrifying and she goes i live two blocks down and And I was like, oh boy. Well, don't tell anyone what you saw today. I know, right? I was like, okay, let's take a photo together, but like away from the number sign on my house. Face the street. All it takes is one person

to just, I don't know, just say, I know where she lives. You know who you are, my friend. I can also release your address. I don't know what that'll do but I but I know it I know it so I had um we were very nice and they were carrying wine I should have known I should have seen them coming a mile away carrying wine with the like like the lid you know that's a good time it was I was also carrying that outside so I was like we we meet at last um there were two people that used to live in my apartment building who were big fans

and i was always like please don't tell anyone oh god yeah it's kind of funny because you're like oh hey like we're pals and it's like oh wait but also don't announce where i live i'm like we're pals in secret we're pals in secret yeah i hope you don't turn on the podcast, like turn against us and then like use your knowledge for, you know, I know. Um, yeah. Anyway, that was my Halloween. I'm sorry. Your kid's sick. We were like really grazed past that. Is she okay? I don't know. She's, Blaze just texted me and said her fever's back. We thought she was better, but it's now at 1029 so we're like trying to trying to keep an eye on it i know nothing about babies obviously i say that every time but i just want to remind everyone before they ask why i asked such a stupid question but go ahead is she i'm sure i already know she's talking some is she

talking entirely now fully fluent talking uh she's like chattering. Is she talking entirely now? Fully fluent talking? She's like chattering a lot. She chatters a lot. We can understand her and she definitely can tell us like what is going on or what she needs or, you know. Like can she communicate what hurts right now? We keep asking and she kind of points in her mouth. So part of me is like, is it her throat? Like I'm not sure if it's her throat or her teeth um maybe it's everything that poor maybe it's both yeah exactly

i don't really know um but it's tough because that means she's not going to school so we're home with her all day watching dino ranch but you know there's worse things in the world so yeah how big is she now when she's standing next to you, where does her head go? It goes wherever she wants to wipe her chocolatey mouth on my pants. No. I would say like. And you do the same to her. So shut the fuck up.

Yeah. I started it. You're right. I don't know. Like my mid thigh. Oh, she's a big kid. That's not a baby anymore home size probably wrong yeah i know she's and she talks so much she apparently went around for trick-or-treat and like we just went to like two houses that we know and um she was like she said trick-or-treat thank you i love you

and they were like we love you too. She just likes reasons to talk to people. So she just. That's lovely. On and on and on and on. Yeah, she's very fun. But she is not feeling so well, unfortunately. Well.

Well. Sorry to hear that. Hopefully your tickle in your throat doesn't expand to anything worse. I'm forcing her out of the building she's not allowed to stay so she's okay good right you had to talk with her i forgot she's gonna fucking relax yeah um okay good good good okay well is that why you drink your poor uh that and my newfound um prowess in the oh gay dating field you know even though i'm not acting on anything but you know short-lived it was short-lived it was exciting for a minute and then we walked home and went straight to bed so i was like wow you know what that was a win um it wasn't the most exciting experience of my life but i felt like a boost yeah it was it really was and i wasn't even wearing a red lip blaze was so i'm

like wow you know i'm on fire um anyway so yeah that's why i drink thank you for a good reason to drink i um that's i guess that's why i drank because I was a little overwhelmed and now I'm ready to just not have anything go on in my brain. You are like in a dark ass you look like you're in a void. Like you've put yourself into a void. I know. Sensory deprivation you know. It's because all the Halloween

episodes are over. That's right. But I thought about putting another backdrop on and I could just go back to my old school like Captain America shield I don't know what I'm gonna do yet I haven't figured it out but I do want to do something transition as well which is why there's just like empty bags of chips and a broken ring light and you know I'm in a transition state as well thank you that makes me feel more seen because every time I come on here i even this is where i sit for my therapy and every time she's like what does this mean it's like are you like blink twice if you call somebody where's all

your stuff are you just kind of have you been robbed are you in a sensory are you in a hunker bunker it does i just feel bad i don't want my i feel like my last backdrop was a little too much and so now i'm trying to like but now this is like way too little so anyway we'll shop we'll find the medium around we'll find it it's not today though um but i wanted to tell you oh last thing i know i'm so sorry we're already like hitting 20 minutes i wanted everybody make it 20 let's commit it's been 18 let's fucking commit speaking of my therapist um who we love she's a delight um the lovely people who sent us our tarot decks as we've discussed in the past um i mentioned it to my therapist and now part of my weekly work is that her and i pull a card together from our and that's why we drink tarot deck.

Are you kidding? So I just wanted to thank everybody who was involved in creating that. Because she also likes to find out what the card is because she likes to see the art. So is it just like a lemon every time and you're like, motherfucker? Even worse. time and you're like mother fucker even worse the last time i pulled a card and it was someone whoever drew this card um whoever like literally illustrated the card it was a picture of me in my clown uniform that's right then i had to confess to my therapist that i have gone to clown college and that really derailed us so she's basically just having like her own

she just now she knows that these things she knows that if i pull enough of these cards it will probably pull a lot of context from my life i was gonna say she'll get to the bottom of it eventually once you hit all the cards yeah it was it happened to be on a day where we didn't have a lot to talk about and then i mentioned the cards and pulled the one of me in clown college and she was like well i guess we've got something to talk about now all right we're locked and loaded baby i can't wait till you just keep pulling cards of me and she's like, well, I guess we've got something to talk about now. All right. We're locked and loaded, baby. I can't wait till you just keep pulling cards of me. And she's like, OK, that seems to be your problem. You need to get her away.

Our happiest cards are demons. I totally see why you've got sleep issues. No, that's my coworker. Oh, OK. A lot is coming together here. OK. So anyway, I wanted to thank everybody who was involved in the tarot deck. And you are now somehow additionally part of my mental health journey. Healing and inner child.

Yeah. Congratulations. Okay, the story I'm covering today, Christine, I think you'll like it. It feels like a classic and that's why we drink episode. I feel like me as a person, I'm becoming the beginning of a website for a recipe because you know how like at the beginning. Oh my God, where you have to scroll to recipe. Otherwise you never ever get there. You can never just see the recipe.

I have to like give it an intro and I'm noticing that in myself recently, but I also like learn what herbs you're growing in the garden before we actually get to your rosemary chicken recipe yeah so if you would like to scroll down to the recipe or skip 30 seconds you can do that but i feel like this is a classic and that's how we don't get a lot of these anymore so um i i i'm bringing it back old school with an old school penitentiary. Yes. I love these. Love these. Love these. Love these.

All right. This is the old Idaho penitentiary. Dun, dun, dun. Thank you. And all right. So let's do it. It was it's in Boise, Idaho. It was open for just over a hundred years it was 101

years old when it closed and over the years it housed over 13 000 inmates and just over 200 of them were women whoa that's a twist it opened in the 1870s y Yowza feels like forever ago. It was. And Idaho was just a territory at the time. It was not part of the union. It was very much. Think about Idaho wasn't part of the U.S. It was very much a lawless frontier land.

You would have eaten that shit up. Love it. I was probably there. OK. Right in Idaho. that sounds right so either i don't know there were different sources but the two with the most likeliness is that they created a jail because either a prison was needed since it was such a lawless land or they were trying to join the union and one of the requirements to be a state was to have a state prison. Oh, okay.

I was going to ask with the lawless land why there was a prison. Right. He's like, well, that's not very lawless of you. Sounds pretty lawful. Okay. So one source says that the jail started as a one-cell house which you know i love a one room anything you sure do but it was a one-cell house and i feel like that's kind of on brand for a lawless town it's like if we need a prison here's a room how's that yeah it's like when they used to

just like toss like billy the kid in and like chain up his hands and be like i'm gonna hang you later um but i'm gonna go get a beer across the street it's like what kind of exactly ruthless lawless places is aha i'll put you in here grab a drink and if you're gone you're gone don't go anywhere okay i'm trusting you i'm trusting you with this key so the the one source that said it was a one cell house then says it just built upon itself over time it does feel like that's probably the story it feels very on brand and it was nicknamed the old pen and uh the original inmates that i feel like this is kind of classic of a lot of jails but the very original inmates had to help build the prison walls and like i just can't imagine having to construct the walls that like and building behind the walls like just knowing that as it gets taller you get more trapped that's like its own mental

torment it is it feels so chilling i don't know there's something like so extra sinister about that you would think i don't know you you have a loose brick right that's what i'm saying every time i'm like they must be keeping a close eye on these folks because otherwise you'd think why don't i just no more on these few bricks we'll just poke them out yeah jenga and you know yeah i i wonder if they're being like closely monitored but i don't know but also like yeah i wonder how that works because does that mean for every inmate there was like a sheriff holding them with chains and having to watch them like think about literally watching dry paint dry like that's watching somebody else build walls like you might as well watch someone else watch paint dry is basically what you're

doing you're literally watching someone else stare at the wall well uh apparently they were involved in building the prison's walls by mining for rock at the nearby quarry the whole place was built with sandstone so um and before the prison expanded it said that there were no separate cells um so that means men women and children were all locked up together yikes yikes the youngest person ever housed here was in 1912 a like 10 or 11 year old kid was in jail and again two different references tell me that he was either there for stabbing his parent or stabbing someone threatening his parent so like it's oh shit two very different stories it doesn't matter which one it is we're gonna put you in jail either way yeah no winning in this case um so the jail opened

in the 1870s but by 1906 they clearly saw that the women needed to be separate from the men locked in a prison all day wow um so moment of silence for all the women before 1906 who had to be locked up with them um and it was just kind of like this ramshackle cell that it was kind of like out of um immediate urgency that they put the women in a different area. But then a few years later in the 1920s, they actually officially built a women's block. Oh, okay. The cells did not have plumbing. So you can see where we're going here.

I guess there was plumbing as of the 1920s, but I don't know if that means toilets. I only saw pictures for like sinks and showers and it sounds like they were very um it was the norm there to not have a toilet but to have a communal honey pot aka bucket that was cleaned once a day why you gotta call it a food item and like they i guess the word honey has been a reference to poop for a long time since we think like honey dippers are still like the people who clean the I've never heard that in my life oh really never what is it a honey dipper I don't know if that's even the right word for it but it's a person who cleans porta potties I had no idea that's what I've always

heard that was um one of the jobs that people always put when you'd play M.A.S.H. Oh, my God. Of course. I can't believe I didn't know that. Like, that's so. Oh, I guess because you're like scrubbing. Like, it looks like one of those honey dipper thingies. Like, yeah.

Putting the tube in there or whatever. Yeah. I actually don't know how they clean a quarter body. I mean, I don't either. Let's be honest. I actually don't know how they clean a port-a-potty. I mean, I don't either, let's be honest. I am looking up honey dipper.

A worker who collects household sewage from sewage tanks. Okay. Okay, hey, all right. Wow. Apparently gets paid pretty damn well. You have to. Give me that mash answer any day. If you do a job nobody wants, you get paid a lot so yeah and it's got someone's got to do it um anyway honey pot that was uh the bucket the name for the bucket that they would all

use together and clean once a day i wonder who pulled the short straw and was the honey dipper du jour um each time but the so in the 1920s it sounds like there was its real first genuine general expansion um on top of building a woman's block and in and putting in plumbing uh the prison also built a dungeon yay so yes in 1923 they built something called the cooler. Oh, my God. That's so scary already. The cooler. God damn it. Which I don't know why they called it that because it was their version of like solitary confinement. But I don't know what the cool part was.

I wonder if it's because it's in Idaho and it's probably just fucking cold down there in a dungeon. Is it? I don't know anything about weather in the Midwest. I mean, it gets if it helps. it was 40 degrees last night here in Kentucky. So I imagine, I think Boise gets pretty damn cold. It looks like it is currently 45 degrees Fahrenheit on November 1st. So if that tells you anything, I don't know. You know what?

Your guess is as good as mine because really there was no context. context it was just called the cooler and i expected to be like a torch device what if it's like maybe like a cooler like oh you have to cool down you have to get in the cool i love that that would be their thinking it's like time out why don't you chill out we have just the thing it's called the cooler i wonder if it was called the cooler because i later we talk about the the conditions of the jail and a lot of people said it was too cold in there well okay i think that answers your question my friend that might be it um so in 1923 they built the cooler and it was for solitary confinement it was apparently meant for two people max but up to six people would be crammed in there yikes um also it's not solitary confinement if there's six people okay guys like that's not how solitary confinement works so i'm also confused by this because there's three

different types of solitary confinement or there's three different names for three different areas where they put people away for solitary but all of them are really small and all of them cram way too many people in there so i don't know the difference between them except like they're just different versions of the same bad um because three years later they created something called siberia um which was apparently even worse solitary confinement and there were 12 cells that were just about the size of a twin mattress. And they would cram a bunch of people in there. It was long enough for one person to sleep, I guess, in it. But they kept putting more people in there.

There was no light. There was no water. There was no plumbing. There was no furniture in these cells. They would feed them essentially gruel three times a day. They had to use a communal honey pot. And they were only given an hour a week outside of these cages to shower. That's disturbing. bang there's also something called the hole which is the same concept where 68 people would be in a space where only one person should be um and it said multiple inmates were crammed into all these spaces sometimes kept up sometimes kept there for up to a year but the average was 30 days

so you're still kept in there for a month jesus um by the way you've been blurry for like five ten minutes i just haven't i didn't know whether to say anything. And then it's sorry, everybody. Not coming back. We can delete that if you want. If any. No, you're good. If anyone was wondering, your glasses were just smudged. That's all. Yeah. Clean your damn glasses. That was really dirty and gross of you. So like you should clean them better. Okay. sicko um but yeah so they were just stuck in there for at least a month sometimes up to a year it was very horrible um a lot of people went insane in there a lot of people died by suicide in there um imagine that and then your your co-bunk mate or whatever dies by suicide and you're in there still for oh gosh so dark and also i mean like think about the people who would like what if you put two violent inmates together and they're going crazy? What if one of them killed each other, you know? I mean, I'm sure it happened.

The conditions were very brutal, very inhumane, especially with ventilation, sanitation, and overpopulation. The facility was built out of sandstone, like I said, which made extreme temperatures feel even worse, both hot and so if it was just chilly outside it's now freezing if it was a little warm it's an oven uh the facility also their conditions were just super unbearable that inmates from the very beginning began protesting the first protest was in 1935 it It was in the dining hall, and it sounds a bit like a food fight. It was just dishes and tables going everywhere. And in 1952, there was another protest that turned into a violent riot, which created thousands of dollars of damage. In 1966, there was a peaceful strike by 300 inmates, which I didn't see coming. Oh, it's like a hippie era

they're like let's try a new tactic yeah love man love in 1971 though things shift gears and it's a very violent three-hour riot the prison is looted and in a lot of areas it's caught on fire um there's 25 000 worth of damage at the end and two inmates were shivved to death another i'm so sorry was sexually assaulted to death i don't know how else to put it oh no no no no um he was cornered in the shower by several people oh god oh god oh god um two years later was another incredibly violent riot and uh it caused four times the amount of damage so a hundred thousand dollars in damage four buildings caught on fire the dining hall and the chapel were completely burned to the ground um and that was the last riot because that one is the one that uh caused the

prison to close okay i was like are they not getting the message like every time this happens they're like anyway let's go back to how we were doing it before i they i literally the fact that they closed the place instead of just gave people some better conditions is crazy to me yeah they're like yeah fine if you're not gonna get in siberia again then right i guess we're done here if you don't want to share the poop bucket then i guess i don't know what to do um shut the whole thing down so in general about this place there was uh house number five cell house number five or they would call it five house that was max security it had the most dangerous inmates it also had death row and an execution chamber there were 10 let me make sure i get these numbers right apparently at the time in idaho there were 11 people that were sentenced to death 10 of them were killed here oh wow of the 10

who were killed here six of them were killed in the garden or which originally had gallows and then they built like a beautiful little garden wow i was like the garden what a nice euphemism for the gallows yeah and then the rest of them were killed in the chamber is this like a gas chamber a noose oh okay so they're still hanging them just yeah inside they just built a space outside they They wanted the garden. Yeah, they were like, we need some time to commune with nature before we end your life. Sure. Other deaths on the ground included murder, suicide, industrial accidents, old age, illness. And in total, somewhere around 120 to 130 people died in this prison.

Jesus. Some of these dangerous inmates that lived here were, I'll give you four examples. In 1905, there was a guy named Harry Orchard, and he killed 18 people, including the governor of Idaho. Okay. Big fucking big crime. Yeah, I imagine that didn't go over quite well he became one of the oldest inmates here and spent 45 years here before dying in prison jeez in 1921 there was a woman named lyda southard who poisoned her entire family including her four-year-old daughter for life insurance oh shit um then there was douglas van vlock who von vlock who stalked and kidnapped his ex-wife um then while fleeing he killed two cops and then shot and

killed his ex-wife oh he was captured but on his execution day, he ran from the cops, ran through the prison, climbed up three tiers of the jail cells and jumped to his death. Oh, my God. And then the last one is in 1956, a guy named Raymond Snowden, a.k.a. Idaho's Jack the Ripper. What? I got to look into that. what i gotta look into that he uh was arrested because he was out at a bar and he got really aggressive very quickly with a woman and when she rejected him he pulled out a knife oh shit and he stabbed her at least 30 times oh my god cutting off her nipple and severing her spinal cord oh you know i hate that oh god oh god he was hanged in the gallows but the floor when the trapdoor dropped his neck didn't break and

he suffocated for 15 minutes until he died fucking hell dude what is this guy's name edward snowden no no raymond snowden right i'm sorry not to be confused with uh okay wow i'm gonna have to i just bookmarked that because i'm gonna look into that later yeah yeah yeah um so those are just some of the people who were there um and like i said in 1973 there was that last riot and it destroyed too much of the property. So the inmates ended up being relocated to other facilities and the prison closed. It sat abandoned until it opened as a museum. And that's where it is today. I wanted to end the history part of this on a fun note, which is that in 1952 on Memorial Day, an inmate smuggled a kitten in his pocket into the jail.

Somehow the guards didn't notice or let it go. And the inmates all named this kitten Dennis. Oh, Dennis the kitty cat. And guards let the inmates keep him. And he brought morale to the prison and all the inmates took care of him. And he served for 16 years. I'm going to cry. You know that.

You know I'm going to cry. That is so sweet. Dennis the Menace. Dennis the Menace. He's so sweet. He's a little jailhouse cat. And when he passed, the inmates had a funeral dennis and they were allowed to make a plaque for him at his burial site see that's how you should be running i mean you shouldn't be running

in prison at all let this is story for another day but like come on i mean that's much more effective right to like yeah i mean they got and nowadays they've got like you know therapy dogs and yeah yeah yeah i feel like that's really actually shown to be i don't know uh yeah rehabilitating yeah rehabilitating yeah to care and love for something you know for everyone in the community to enjoy the same thing yeah yeah sure um yeah so dennis the kitty cat and he was very loved, and that's all that matters. So now I will tell you the ghosts. So this is one of America's most haunted prisons. Even when the prison was in use, inmates claimed that the place was haunted.

I was going to ask about that, yeah. That always freaks me out. It's really trippy. In the garden where the gallows originally were set up, there's apparently a male presence. People have seen a spirit there wearing prison-designated gardening clothes, and he's seen taking care of the plants. Oh, that's kind of nice, I guess. I like that he's not being fucking bothered. He's like, here are my plants. Yeah, at least he's outside in the afterlife, like, again, communing with nature.

Yeah. Spirits are also most active in this area around 3 a.m. People have seen moving cold spots even when it's a hot night. People hear screams and laughter in the garden. And then people have also felt uh there is one reporter who came there i guess for the ghosts or for the history of this prison and they got a really weird light in the garden and pretty soon after that all of a sudden this reporter started having a really bad headache like someone was pressing on his head oh so they took a

picture of him and there's a weird orb hovering above his head at that moment oh so like someone was like squeezing his head or putting their fingers in his eyes or something yeah that's you know i'm expecting when there's a ghost like something to touch my back or grab my hair or something like a light graze or a breeze poking my eyes is fucking like a cheap shot because like hello that's not fair i can't see that coming you know i mean literally literally um but yeah i feel like there's just certain things that even like no matter if you're see-through or not like no one's no groin shots you know like off limits you're right yeah there should be like an unspoken rule here yeah you can possess me but don't touch

my eyeball like jesus you can haunt my nightmares and cling to my soul but don't touch my eyeball yeah exactly yeah so in five house which also had death row in it allegedly this is the most haunted and the most active which i think all of us saw coming people can hear moaning in there like moaning and groaning people feel dread like they're in danger people get overwhelmingly sad which makes a lot of sense people hear someone gasping for air oh jesus so they think that might be raymond who suffocated for 15 minutes people see shadows by the noose batteries will die there's still a noose there's still a noose sitting there yes i don't like that which zach bagans loved playing with by the way okay well no comment uh there's weird lights in the area

one person actually was in the execution chamber um and heard the door slam outside and then every light on the second floor went out oh geez oh ew in this area people also hear someone kicking and whooshes of air as if something's falling oh no people um in general in the prison hear whispers talking screams running knocks cell doors slam uh someone running their hands on the bars like hearing the echoing of the bars talk about like a chilling sound i I know. And banging on pipes. People see flickering lights. They see apparitions. They see shadow figures walking out of cells.

They see weird lights and pictures, orbs and pictures of a solid black figure. And sometimes people have looked into solitary confinement and seen a solid black figure sitting and then stand up and walk towards them. No! People have felt, like I said, unexplained sadness and dread. They have gotten shoved. People have felt fingers run through their hair. And another investigator actually got a picture of an orb as her battery drained to zero on all of her equipment, but caught an EVP right before the machine died.

And the voice said, I'm here. Thanks. We noticed. You killed all of our equipment. Yeah, thanks a lot. Deactivated alarms go off on their own. Breaker box switches get toggled with and doors will deadbolt themselves from the inside. So nobody can get in when they try to open up the next day

that's cursed that's horrible i don't know what this means but the ghost of dennis the cat appears i was gonna ask i don't even know what that means but maybe there's little meows maybe you just hear like you're like that's a good that's dennis yeah It's also like if something's rubbing up on you, you hope it's a cat. You just got to tell yourself, oh, someone's pushing my eyeballs in. It must be the cat. Please, God, I hope it's a cat just playing bakery with my eyeballs. Yeah.

It's just kneading, playing. Yeah, exactly. Making bread in my eyes. Yeah. So in block two, there's apparently a spirit of a large man named big louis i love that of course he likes to shove people he also likes to bother mediums um i like that he just likes to bother them he's like oh here they come it's like i'm not gonna cause any big problems but i am gonna fuck with you back of my bullshit speaking of mediums uh the guy that died in that riot who like really

violently died in that riot apparently mediums can still see his residual energy replaying his death oh no oh no oh no i can't i can't even that i can't even imagine being the medium and witnessing that that's traumatic in and of itself i would think um in siberia people get touched grabbed they see apparitions one medium said that an inmate still sits in his cell can you imagine after dying you still feel trapped in jail yeah because we always say the worst is if you are still stuck at work but stuck in prison is arguably way way worse than all of the above did he just like feel safe there or does he think he like can't go anywhere and like it's really a life sentence is it a choice yeah it's hard it's or

is it just like residual i don't know um one of my favorite things that a medium talked about with this prison is that uh harry orchard one of the not so great people that stayed here. And then a woman named Cora, who we think was Raymond Snowden's victim. Oh. The two of them didn't know each other as far as we know in life, but the two of them love talking to the mediums and showing around the prison. Great. So now they're buds is what we're saying

they're buds i mean they're not like they're not related to each other but i guess she found somebody else who's not as terrible as the guy who killed her and the two of them apparently always pop in and out with mediums and are very excited to like share information about the jail to the mediums oh so this is not sorry so this is not raymond snowden it's the victim the victim and then another random guy i mentioned oh harry orchard guy okay harry orchard was the guy who killed the governor got it okay he and cora are are like tight apparently got it okay okay i understand i thought you meant like the two no no no okay got it got it got it um yeah two random non-related she's there i don't know why either but i mean maybe because he was like her killer was so let me take a look at where he

ended up i don't know but mediums say that they are very eager to host whenever the mediums come in um harry especially is the unofficial guide and he will pop in and out of investigations just to chime in whenever people have questions great um it's like dude get away from me uh investigators have spoken with another inmate named jake who really likes the flashlight method where if you unscrew it just ever so lightly then he can play yes or no games harry also will infiltrate this game and say sorry jake i'm ready to talk again harry you've had your you've had your moment come on honestly if you're maybe if he's still stuck in jail he's just excited for any conversation fun field trip the same team that heard from harry and j Jake also got a picture of a dark shadow, a dark shadow figure in the corner. And people, including Zach, have gotten dark shadow figures with a hood over its head like an executioner.

Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Speaking of Zach, let's do it. So this was one of his very first episodes. I almost feel like I've seen it, but like he's probably done so many jails. It might not be the same one. But part of me is like, that sounds familiar. Season one, episode eight. So eighth episode ever. He was not peak Zach Bagans.

No, not yet. He wasn't committed fully yet. He did do a few things into his fullest form i will say the main thing that happened in like zach bagans behavior that was telling you it would only get worse from here is that um he goes up into the the hills to get an aerial view of the prison before they investigate and there are a lot of rattlesnakes out there oh god and he is fully panicked because he hates snakes oh i didn't know that he's terrified every day every step he takes he freaks out and points

at the ground and goes nick nick nick nick look look look and fully panics is there a snake and when he does that or is it like oh no there actually are rattlesnakes okay so he's actually seeing them he's not just freaking out every time like a leaf falls or something no but that would have been funny no he's actually fully seeing these snakes that is scary i'll give him and yet for someone who's so scared, he sees three. And after the third of after three times of losing his mind, he decides that he's going to face his fears. And he grabs a rattlesnake with his bare hands. No. What kind of moron?

I mean, come on. You can't. Come on. He then drops it out of fear and runs away. And then he says, this is Indiana Jones. Do you want to suck the venom out of me? Wait, who is he talking to? Maybe us, but also Nick.

I'm so confused. This is Indiana Jones. Do you want to suck the venom out of me? Zachary, this is not Indiana Jones. Also, want to suck the venom out of me zachary this is not indiana jones also stop touching the snakes you fucking dummy he grabbed it with both of his hands and then i'm so scared of snakes and then literally pick it up like that that's bullshit i don't know what he was trying to do there but not what i would have done that's for damn sure first of all going uphill i wouldn't have done that.

We wouldn't even be there. Okay, let's be real. Whether or not a snake was there, I would have, if I heard, let's climb a mountain to get an aerial view, I'd be like, we've got drones for that. Next. Right. Drones are there also. Also, the hill is the snake's house. I'm not going in the snake's house.

They can have their house. I don't want it. That's why I don't touch oceans because that's the fish's house. I hate fish. Why would I go there? Can you imagine if I'm like, I hate fish. I hate fish. And then I grab a fucking shark.

Like what? And like bite it or something. You're like, oh, I hate fish. Here, let me pick it up and throw it at Aaron. Maybe that'll help. And then I say, this is Indiana Jones. Suck something out of me. By the way, after he ran away away which is the best part he's like

runs away and then says this is india it's like okay either you're gonna be badass or you're just gonna be a he made half a decision and then the rest of that kind of fell but he was probably hoping the editors would cut out the part where he dropped it you know but yeah and then the editors were like good i don't have to do anything you say yeah we're only eight episodes in yeah we don't know the power you will the stranglehold you'll have on the travel channel someday so um the only things they caught was a shadow was seen moving around erin and then something grabbed erin it was a snake i'm telling you i now i'm just convinced aaron's gonna get bit by one of these fucking snakes just be so poetic um here's a super fucked up thing of course of course zach put aaron in the shower where that guy was violently killed sexually i mean okay not tasteful is that what you

were gonna say me too yeah i think i was gonna say that but in a not tasteful way so let's just say not tasteful not tasteful uh he said oh that sounds terrible guess where i want to put aaron now and then he literally locked him inside and then left so um there was a dark mist near zach's arm uh as he felt something touch him and then later there was evidence like picture evidence that there was something there. There was a convincing shadow figure they got on camera. But other than that, they really didn't really catch too much. The snake thing was obviously the most incredible. They had to keep it in.

There really wasn't enough content. Yeah. So the last thing I'm going to say is, like I said, 1973, the riot made the prison close down and it became a museum. It is now on the National Register of Historic Places. They offer several tours and well, several tours. They do guided and non guided guided and self guided tours. They also have a gift shop.

You know, I love a gift shop. Yes. And Christine, I have to end on this. Tell me. yes and christine i have to end on this tell me the museum now does a lot of um i guess fundraisers charities events um i assume to get some sort of money to help preserve the the prison they host art shows they do film competitions and a personal favorite for you me and everyone listening is that they host their annual Dennis the Cat Day. Where it's always celebrated the week of May 26, which was Dennis's birthday.

His birthday! And he would have turned 71 this year. My sweet senior purr buddy his birthday party always has every year food trucks drinks pet vendors limited dennis the cat merch a history presentation on him and a prison pause scavenger hunt stop and to attend you must donate pet food which goes to the humane society and boise's no kill adoption center oh my god it's perfect i just got goose cam i am getting goose cam again that is the sweetest thing i ever heard um i'm googling that can we go in may yes if someone does actually work at this penitentiary if you

wanted to send us dennis the cat merch i would lose my fucking brain please i want to go so bad um wow i hope they sing him happy birthday every year yeah what a fun birthday party and they and they bring like his his plaque is still there where he's buried so people will go over there and leave him treats and flowers i like to think that some of the you know um inmates come for the party you know and just like cheers to to dennis yeah i hope dennis comes i he's probably like um i'm really busy i actually have a lot of friends in the afterlife he's like 71 years i still don't have a concept of a birthday so this makes no sense and he would just leave he would probably only give a shit about the random bag in the storage room. The treats and stuff. Yeah, yeah. The bag.

Yeah. Anyway, that is the old Ohio State Penitentiary. I thought it was Idaho. What did I say? Ohio. I think that's a different one. I was looking at you and said Ohio. That happens a lot.

Old Idaho State Penitentiary. Wow, Em. Oh, my God. I can't get over it, Dan. First of all, I can't get over the fact that there was still a penitentiary you haven't covered um so i know thrilling and uh wow um dennis just really stole my heart his little potty oh gosh i can't anyway if you ever end up in idaho for some reason i hope it's may 26 and i hope i'm ready i'm like are there flights to boise idaho i don't know maybe i drive there oh i just

want to dennis the cat shirt so bad i want to see how far cincinnati to boise is let's see um oh okay it's only 28 hours oh hey great okay that doesn't cool that's way you know i'm not good at geography i did not know where idaho was i am a piece of shit i'm looking at it like huh that is not what i expected i thought it was closer to like the dakotas i don't honestly couldn't tell you. I know. It's literally right by Oregon. Like anyone listening who is not from the U.S., you're right. The education system has. You're right.

I'm proving it. Drastically failed us. Yeah, I'm proving it right now. If you needed proof. Yikes. Embarrassing. Anyway. You nailed it.

There you have it. Good job. Good job. Good job. Well, I today have a story that I don't know if you'll let me you won't like it, obviously, but I also don't know. I has, you know, it's a bummer. But I also wonder if I feel like I was trying to decide whether or not you liked the unsolved stories. But I think you said no. Right. You're not into the unsolved stories because it doesn't provide any closure or answers is that right it's it's one of those mixed bags where like i can appreciate that i can theorize and not feel like i'm pointing fingers at anyone and right right

right or i can i can point fingers at everyone and and there's no way to know right right right yes and i also feel like part of it is the allure of the mystery, right? Like you're like, I want someone to solve this. I want to get answers. But then there's also the frustration. Yeah, of like, well, shit, now what? You know? And I do like to cover them for that story as well just because, I don't know, in case on the off chance somebody happens to have some relevant information, like it's a call to submit what you know.

Yeah. See something, say something. So for what it's worth, I'm covering a missing person today. I really had to hide myself from going, yay, because I heard it. I heard it. It's not good. because I heard it I heard it but it's not good uh yay to the mystery that allows me to critically think and try to come up with the answer that nobody's figured out yet yeah like that's the other thing about mysteries like yeah I always it's like there's got to be a little pinch of

narcissism to me where I'm like I'll crack it like I mean nobody else human nature right it's like oh I'll solve the puzzle and it's like oh right nobody else has been able to but i'll do it sure thing yeah yeah yeah um no i think that's definitely just human nature but i basically saw this story on an episode of disappeared um on discovery plus uh sickeningly one of my comfort shows and mine's to catch a predator don't worry okay there you go see listen we all have our thing um and this is the disappearance of kimberly avila avila avila i'm pretty sure it's avila so this is an episode of disappeared i literally messaged our researcher sersha immediately and was like can we just put this on the docket and sers'll watch the episode two and was like uh i'm doing the notes now when i was like okay like let's go let's let's fucking nail this let's solve let's solve it

oh lord um and i want to point out as well because this is a story of a uh a trans woman but uh her her family off so we're going to use she her pronouns but her family often uses uh interchanges between he him and she her because uh she identified as gender fluid and said she was completely happy with uh she her they them he his so it was sort of like some people have given the family shit for using different pronouns, but like that's how she was comfortable at home. And so we are going to use she her pronouns, obviously, because we are not in that place where we can just decide the waters. Yeah, exactly. Not our place. So that is just a little like heads up.

So that is just a little like heads up. So if you do go watch the episode after this, anybody just, you know, then you can be aware that like she was very she was perfectly comfortable with the kind of interchangeable pronoun. Sure. She's giving JVN energy. She's giving JVN. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So we are going to Brownsville, Texas, and this is a city on the border of Mexico.

It's roughly got a population of 190,000 people or so. And according to a news anchor in the Rio Grande Valley, or is it Rio? Well, it's Rio Grande in the U.S. I imagine it's not Rio Grande. Rio Grande. That sounds even more American somehow. Rio Grande. Yeah, because only half of it feel only half. Yeah. Yeah.

So Derek Garcia, he's a news anchor down there. And he was kind of a talking head in this episode. And he believes that because the town has such a strong root in Catholic culture, especially being so close to Mexico, root in Catholic culture, especially being so close to Mexico. This can make it pretty difficult for people in the queer community, because obviously Catholicism has some pretty conservative values. And so according to the Human Rights Campaign, Texas itself, this is probably not surprising. I might not know where Idaho is, but I do know that Texas is considered a high-risk state is, but I do know that Texas is considered a high risk state for LGBT community members because of hate crimes, the sheer volume of anti-LGBTQ plus bills that move through here every year, legislation, et cetera. You know, it's not really news to us.

So finding equal housing and employment opportunities can be a huge hurdle for people, especially transgender people in rural areas of Texas. So people also, as you know, many of us or at least, you know, many of us can be sympathetic to. I'm sure some of our audience has also experienced this, just this fear of being rejected by their family members for coming out. And many are rejected by their family members for coming out and many are rejected by their family members for coming out but you know for what it's worth that was not the case for kimberly she was deeply loved and cherished by her entire family which i feel like is a story we don't often find in these crime cases either do you know what i mean like yeah it's just it's just i feel like there's a um a lot of people we talk about are isolated in some way and yes yes yes but this time around they at least had she at least had a lot of things going for her with the 100 unconditional support yeah no and and that's why i think this was such a striking story like it it turned kind of a lot

of these stereotypes on their head on its head on their head um and so on her head yeah who's to say right no um and so yeah that's kind of what struck me about this uh her family just adored her and at a young age they noticed you, you know, she liked to do traditionally more girly things like playing with dolls, dressing up in her mom's clothes. And before coming out as trans, her family said, you know, they thought she was gay, which is I think often like, right, like a transitional thing. Trying to find yourself. Part of the pipeline, yeah. Right. It's a pipeline trying to find your identity. And so they thought she was gay and they loved and accepted that and said like they would not have changed a single thing about her.

It wasn't even like a question in their minds, which is great because I imagine that made it safer for her, made it feel safer for her to, you know, continue that journey. Sure. So Kimberly was extremely close with her sister Yvonne and their youngest brother. Now here's where I'm getting another hole. So his name is N-O-E. And I have been watching like a million YouTube videos trying to find the right pronunciation. I've watched some of the weirdest, most random vloggers and mariachi bands on YouTube trying to figure out how to pronounce this name. And so, of course, I've gotten three different pronunciations. But the one I'm going

to go with is know it like no, no, no, no, no. Okay. Because that seems to be the most commonly accepted pronunciation. Some people just said no. I would have thought no. Maybe no or no-a, no-ee. Some people said no-ee. And so I think it's just kind of one of those like lost in translation type things where they probably get used to hearing all sorts of different pronunciations. So I'm going to say no-a because that seems to be the most commonly used pronunciation. I apologize if I am butchering anybody else's name out there. But Noah, the brother, Kimberly's younger brother, basically said he never imagined wanting anything else for Kimberly except for her to feel like herself and feel like as at home with herself as possible. like as at home with herself as possible.

And so when she grew up, she began dressing in, you know, more feminine outfits to go out on the weekends. She would wear wigs and makeup to tie her looks together. She loved putting on makeup. And her sister Yvonne said that's what made her happy, so we accepted it, which, damn, you know, I wish more of the world worked that way. I know. This is the, like, picket fence family. Totally.

I wish everyone, everyone like would look to for wholesome values agreed a hundred percent and the fact that it's in like rural texas is a wild thing to me but also really a special thing i feel like that's got to be i don't know and i just want to know their story like how did you get there how did you how did you all get so accepting you know um so her sister Yvonne you know said that's what made her happy so we accepted it and according to Yvonne Kimberly identified as gender fluid like I mentioned earlier um and Kimberly had once explained it to her sister as I'm one person here and then the other when I'm out there so just kind of you know going back and forth between those identities. And Noah remembers Kimberly as an amazing brother to him at home, an amazing sister to everyone she met.

And when she was born, she had actually been named after her father, Ramiro. And so she was Ramiro Jr. And so when she came out and chose her name, Kimberly, she still identified with her birth name and told her sister during the week I'm junior on the weekends I'm Kimberly so was which I just love how like they just let her find the right balance of all this you know yeah um I think that's pretty special so Noah said their father Ramiro was an old school macho type uh who supported kimberly with the rest of the family despite being like that traditional patriarchal kind of dude which i also find just like totally incredible yeah especially because he's like so super masculine yeah you would think that he would have some sort of additional problem

to it yeah you'd think it would be at least a struggle or like an uphill battle or a learning curve or redefining masculinity and femininity and especially with the name you know being and i think that's a testament to the fact that she chose uh to keep her birth name um it's also probably such a testament to like considering she was named after her father like i think that speaks for itself, too. Yeah. So her father, Ramiro Sr., told interviewers, He is my son, and one never turns his back on his son. One has to take care of his children until God our Lord takes us. I was never embarrassed of him being that way. So with so much love and support, you know, it's easy to understand why people who knew Kimberly described her as a bubbly, happy, just like vivacious person.

She loved music. She loved putting on makeup. She loved going out dancing whenever she got the chance. She had one friend named Samantha Rose Montemayor Morales, who is a community leader and activist in the area. And she actually works with trans-led organizations. an activist in the area and she actually works with trans-led organizations and when she met kimberly at a club and noticed just how like upbeat and happy she was uh she said kimberly was just described herself as being honored to have such a loving family and like have such a strong support system behind her which i imagine being like a community activist and like meeting

someone that must be so refreshing to like meet someone in the trans community who's like I have like the best life ever you know I mean I'm sure that's not to hear that yeah I feel like that's not the norm for you know reasons we all know um so I just think that's I don't know I don't know I just uh that just struck me so Kimberly of course didn't have it perfect because just because you have a family who's supportive does not mean everyone around you in rural Texas is supportive of you yeah unfortunately I wonder if she got some sort of like false impression of the world or something. And yeah, it's, it's almost hard to know if, if that had an influence on the way she perceived, you know, everybody else.

Yeah. I wonder, I wonder how that, how that works. I mean, she definitely faced plenty of bullying growing up. Um, whether that was because people thought she was gay, whether that was because, you know, for whatever reason, there was a bullying growing up as she grew up um and then discrimination in public as well and her brother would sometimes witness this uh when they were out together and he said kimberly was very blunt and very open and was not afraid to be herself and like face up to the closed-minded people in town especially because she i know which is so so great

um but also takes a lot of guts and i you know i think it's just having that support system behind her she felt safe enough to you know confront people who were being discriminatory so now we fast forward to may 12th 2017 and on this evening kimberly's extended family is visiting from Mexico and they're all spending the evening together. And it is a Friday night and Kimberly decides she wants to go out. So late that night, she's getting dressed up, dolled up as usual, and she asked Yvonne for a ride downtown to go clubbing. So Yvonne was worried because it was already 2.30 a.m. It was now early Saturday morning and she was like, can't you just go out tomorrow instead like it's already really late i don't want to drop you off downtown and you know wonder when you get home and uh yvonne remembers that her sister could be

sassy sometimes and kimberly just kind of turned to her and said look at me i didn't get ready like this to stay home like yeah girl i can't argue with that you know yeah that's a great argument it's like um like the only good argument take one look in this direction and tell me if i look like someone who's about to go to sleep yeah do you think i put false eyelashes on for bed yeah yeah she put on a couple of falsies so super come on xenon energy all the way is what I have to say. Yeah. So Yvonne was like, fine.

You know what? You make a fair point, I guess. So she tells her family, you know, we're going to head out. I'm dropping Kimberly off downtown. And they got in the car. Kimberly's all jazzed up, like listening to pop music. They're dancing in the car kimberly's all jazzed up like listening to pop music they're dancing in the car but when it's sort of like as yvonne is approaching the bars downtown with um kimberly in the passenger seat she starts to get this just bad feeling which always gives me chills when i

hear that because it makes you wonder like is that your intuition or is that like something paranormal like is there something subconsciously that's like nagging at you you know or do you just have like your your book that you're always promoting it's like it's like is there some sort of subconscious situational awareness you're having that you that your body's trying to tell you but like you're not consciously picking up on yeah that's what i what I wonder. And so I think either way, that's such a powerful tool. And like, I know, I'm not. A gift of fear. A gift of fear by Gavin DeBecker. Thank you. And I'm not, obviously I'm not blaming Yvonne by any means,

but I'm just saying like, stories like this always get me because I think, you know, how many times do we ignore that feeling and say, oh, come on, I'm just being dramatic or I'm just overthinking it. And so it's just a good reminder, you know, so she said she just had a bad feeling. And as she's dropping her off, she actually circled the block three times trying to convince Kimberly to please just come home and not go out that night. And either way, you know, nothing Yvonne could do. Kimberly insisted on going out and she saw a bunch of people out outside the bars and she was like, look, I'm safe. It's fine. You know, there's plenty of people out here.

I'm not alone. So she insisted and Yvonne dropped her off and went home. And Kimberly told her, I'll be back later this morning. And so Yvonne stayed up and waited. But of course, she knew something was up she just felt weird like she couldn't fall asleep and of course we know um with hindsight that Kimberly did not come home that morning or at any other point in time so brother Noah woke up and his mom told him that nobody knew where Kimberly was. And Kimberly did have a cell phone, but it wasn't connected to data. Like it wasn't connected to a phone line.

She just used it mostly to take photos and, you know, just have on hand. And so there was no way of reaching out to her, which especially in 2017, like that became a huge hurdle also for law enforcement. They're like, we can't track her. We especially in 2017, like that became a huge hurdle also for law enforcement. They're like, we can't track her. We don't have her like latest activity on her phone. It's just, you know, pulls a huge puzzle piece out of the equation. She'd always said she'd always come home when she said she was going to come home. Like she wasn't the type to, you know, be out and come home two days later and say, oh, sorry, I never touched base. Like that just was not her nature.

So even though she didn't have a phone, the fact that she was nowhere to be found was extremely concerning. Her mom called Yvonne every hour asking, you know, is Kimberly there? Have you found her? Is she home yet? And Yvonne just had to say, no, I found no sign of her whatsoever. And so they know already that something is terribly wrong and I imagine with Yvonne's like gut feeling the night before this has got to be just like a sucker punch like shit you know I just can't imagine her like her

guilt of like oh I should have I should have I should have because like again like what are you gonna do right you can't like forcibly restrain her from going out if she wants to go out she's an adult you you know. So, yeah, I imagine that's probably a very push and pull type of feeling. So Yvonne is, you know, going around. She's calling the hospitals in the area, wondering if like maybe she ended up at a hospital and hasn't been able to reach out. No luck. Nobody's seen her.

And so as she's kind of doing this like canvassing, she notices a police officer stop nearby. So she just goes straight up to this guy and she says, you know, my sister Kimberly is missing. I can't find her anywhere. And another fucking plot twist in this story, police say we have to file a missing persons report right now. Oh, wow. Again. I fucking didn't see that coming. Totally a plot twist. Like, that never fucking happens what section of

texas is this hang on like where are we and should we all just move there i don't know are we in twilight zone comma texas like everyone is unconditionally supported and the police are on it tztx that would be by the way which is just the best airport airport code ever uh anyway so yeah it is very shocking um just only because like we have to cover so many of these stories where it's like you know as an adult who's missing it's very hard to get that missing person's report filed in a lot of cases uh because you know a person can leave if they want to of their own volition but this case was different and the officer just said you know, a person can leave if they want to of their own volition. But this case was different. And the officer just said, you know what, we got to we got to get on this right away. So, you know, for what it's worth, thank God for that. And, you know, this is another statistic, like the opposite of a fun fact, as we always do. Latina trans women are disproportionately at high risk of suffering violent crimes, not only compared to cis women, which is obvious, but also compared to white trans women. You know, there's that racial component

and ethnicity component that definitely puts her in a higher risk category. And, you know, basically, I'm going to outline all the reasons that this is such a plot twist to us, like why it seems like such a plot twist. And that's because only about half of these kind of crimes are reported because survivors are often ignored by the police and or and or experience even more violence, sometimes even at the hands of police. And with that being said, you can understand why this was so reassuring to the family that Brownsville authorities like immediately took the report seriously. Yeah. And because of that, the family was optimistic that they would find her pretty quickly. And the officer told Yvonne, you know, you can meet with a detective on Monday.

And in the meantime, you can do your own searching. And so the entire Avila family went downtown on foot to search for any signs of Kimberly. They went so far as to look in trash cans to see if maybe like something from her purse had been dumped out or if any sort of sign that she had been on a certain street. They looked everywhere and they spent hours searching every street, every alley, but they found no, not a single sign of Kimberly. So the family went home and they just waited to meet the detective because it really was all that they could do. They also began reaching out to news stations, trying to get Kimberly's face and information out to the public. And the local media began

airing the story, trying to, you know, get as many tips as possible. Yeah. Wow. Monday rolls around and detective Melissa Gonzalez tells the Avila family that she is on the case and would update them with any information as it comes in. And the department immediately sets up a hotline for tips and announces a $1,000 reward for information that would lead to Kimberly. And what we know is that she was last seen near a bridge that crossed the border to Mexico. So. Oh, shit. OK. Immediate red flags. Right. Like that's if she's missing. she was last seen near a bridge that crossed the border to mexico so oh shit okay immediate red flags right like that's if she's missing that's not good right by the border that's an alarming uh thought that would complicate things a lot a lot exactly and the buildings near that bridge to add to the fear uh for the family is that the buildings near the bridge were mostly

abandoned um and so this is like already a very uh desolate area oh my god yeah so on top of the desolation of course because there's not much going on there are almost no street lights um very dark and if she had been abducted there know, there might not be a single person who witnessed this happen. So they start watching video footage at the international crossings from the night Kimberly went missing to see if she had crossed into Mexico, but they could not find any video footage of her. Sure. Because Kimberly's phone was disconnected. Of course, investigators couldn't follow like the normal leads of, you know, who was she calling or who was she texting or who was she Snapchatting? There was just no way to specify her last known location. And, you know, just based on that, it was like dead ends everywhere that they looked.

Then investigators got a tip that Kimberly was involved in sex work downtown. got a tip that Kimberly was involved in sex work downtown. And this is another like relatively common thing in these types of situations. Trans women often find more stable income in sex work than they can elsewhere, especially if they face like the kind of uphill battle and prejudice that they do in like a traditional, more traditional workspace. So according to the National Library of Medicine, because transgender people face discrimination on a systemic, more traditional workspace. So according to the National Library of Medicine, because transgender people face discrimination on a systemic, institutional, and interpersonal level, many transgender women view the sex work industry as their only viable career opportunity or option. And Yvonne actually said she didn't deny that Kimberly was a sex worker. She's like, she wasn't totally, you know, shaken or shocked by this

information. But she also said that was a part of Kimberly's life that she didn't know much about. Like she didn't she really didn't have any details to help further the investigation. But essentially, police now knew that this makes Kimberly's case that much more high risk because you're a sex worker on top of all this other discrimination that already puts you in a scary place. And somewhat more complicated too now because it sounds like, oh, well, we don't know the whole picture then. That's exactly true. You're right. It's like she has this huge supportive family who's looking for her, but if they don't know all the details exactly of what she might have been doing that night or who she was meeting because that was like a part of her

life she kept separate now it makes more sense why she might have been more like aggressively trying to leave the bar because maybe she had an appointment and now like who's that guy or whoever that could have exactly you know who was planning on seeing her could they have heard her yeah and it's like all these like what ifs? What if we had asked, you know, who she's meeting? What if we had asked like where she was going? Which bar? You know, it's so I imagine that was really frustrating as the family to like have that big gap, like that big question mark. And just like to add worse to worse, she's now exposed to more dangerous situations that could have ended in more violent ways. So police attempted to question other sex workers in Brownsville for leads, but they had no luck. I mean, I imagine, you know, we've all seen SVU where the cops try to talk to the sex workers. And they're like, I'm not saying shit. They're like, get away from me

you know and so generally uh we can all understand why uh sex workers don't often seek assistance from authorities because their work is criminalized and so uh they're often dismissed if they try to make a report i mean we've seen stories where sex workers are raped attempted murder even and they go to the police and police threaten to arrest them for participating in sex work. So it's like a lose-lose, right? So, you know, you can imagine that this was not the most fruitful of searches for police, like interviewing other sex workers. Makes sense. Yeah, exactly. And so at the same time as Kimberly's disappearance, Brownsville police had actually recently arrested several sex workers downtown.

So now there's already this like big built in tension. And like, do we think sex workers are going to talk to police now? Hell no. Right. Like, yeah, especially they know the risk here. Yeah. And so this tension is like already at a high. So they just did not really get anywhere with this. No one was willing to speak to police in case they got in trouble, arrested or even ended up in Kimberly's situation, which they didn't know, you know. Because also like we've I mean, I've seen SVU and a lot of episodes are like the cop is the one who is going. How do you trust that person? If not only are they could they arrest you you but the cop could be the one that's you know doing stuff to sex workers and getting away with it because no one's going to talk to

sex workers exactly and like who's gonna who are they gonna believe right you know and so i can understand completely their their refusal to participate in this um but thankfully you know the avulas kind of know that and so they were doing their own kind of investigating on the side, their own work. They were putting up posters every single day after she went missing. And the poster featured Kimberly in two photos, one where she wore a more masculine style as junior and the other, the more feminine Kimberly identity. And that way, you know, depending on how she was presenting, that somebody might be able to recognize her either way. I love that they were doing their own work. They were like, you know what? I don't know totally if I can trust the cops. So here's what we're going to do. They're like, we, you can, okay, cops, you go talk to the sex workers, but like, good luck with that. But then so are we. But then so are we. Yeah, exactly. So they, you know, they've been around the block. They know

how this works so they're putting up their own posters they're interviewing people on their own um unfortunately they are already facing like extreme just assholery from people the posters were getting torn down graffitied burned and only her posters not the other ones okay so you know it was unclear whether this was involved with like had anything to do with kimberly's actual disappearance or if these are just like discriminatory assholes you know it could be both either um but people even followed yvonne and her family uh in their cars as they were putting up posters and like watch them harass them. Just God, just dicks.

Right. Like and it's unclear, like if they even knew what had happened to Kimberly, like maybe they were just. They just thought it was hilarious to like. Like it's a funny joke. Right. Ha ha ha ha ha. So police actually did end up following up with one person who was caught on camera drawing on the posters. Oh, yeah. But it was just a dead end, some asshole, you know,

got in trouble for that. But that's it. It wasn't he didn't have any real leads, you know. So, of course, the case essentially went cold. There were no new leads or tips or signs of Kimberly. It was like she had just poof, you know, vanished into thin air. And the Aviles began to lose faith that this investigation was going anywhere, that police were getting any headway on this. And it seemed like they were kind of letting Kimberly and her case fade away as in the police so that they could, you know, move on to other other things. And Noah said, I want to think that maybe they're just incapable and they can't say it. Yeah, honestly, his response. He's like, I think that's kind of where my head's at. That's a good place for your head to be. Maybe. I don't know. Yeah. If they're hitting a roadblock, like hitting a brick wall, I mean, maybe they're not

telling you, but maybe they've just run out of options. Yeah. So in 2018, which was the year after Kimberly vanished, a tip came in from a reporter who runs an online news source and blog, and he had actually recognized Kimberly from the posters and the reports on her disappearance. And actually many people recognize her because she was such a social person and such a, you know, bright personality. People actually knew her as a regular at a lot of the bars downtown. And so this reporter did some digging and was able to gather stories from witnesses in Brownsville and was able to put together a timeline that led up to Kimberly's disappearance. Oh, OK.

Which is great. I mean, that's more than they had before. You know, it's at least a big step in the right direction. And from what this reporter was able to gather, this is the story of Kimberly's evening. So she was having beers in a bar with a man that she hadn't ever met before. So someone she didn't know. And he was said to be involved in a criminal group. At last call, they left the bar together, the two of them, and started walking down the street. People heard him loudly demanding something from Kimberly, and it might be,

some people thought maybe he thought she had stolen something from him that he wanted back. So he was loudly demanding something back from her. He was loud enough that it actually woke people up who were living on that street and oh shit in bed and so it woke people up and when they looked outside they say they saw kimberly with this man then a car pulled up to the sidewalk and kimberly was shoved into the car oh god okay before the door closed and the car sped off into the night so and that was the last yeah that was that was the last anyone had seen and like that must just be like a stomach sinking feeling to hear you know yeah so the witnesses apparently some of them actually recognized the man but they refused to name him because

they were so afraid of the repercussions of naming this person um and the reporter believes it's likely kimberly was taken across the border into mexico by this man and i mean that would explain why the trail just stops and like the leaves just go completely cold so this reporter went to police with this information but he never heard anything it was sort of like police were like okay thanks and never really followed up and it turns out the brownsville police never actually reached out to the police in matamoros which is where she would have been taken over the border and they never contacted police there which is a huge bummer because if something if somebody had found kimberly deceased in mexico for example uh and it was a jane doe brownsville police wouldn't even be able to like identify if that was her because

they never even asked oh that's such a good point i wouldn't have even thought about that it's like man that could have been really really a big break you know and like sure it's just one person saying it but also it's not just one person it's a reporter who's diligently interviewing witnesses and like building a case it's not like just some rando tip from anonymous you know so it's just a bummer like i feel like that could have been something but whatever uh eventually another tip did come into police um but weirdly this is where things are a little bit odd so apparently the caller hung up before police could get as many answers as they wanted and so detective gonzalez asked kimberly's family to please hold a press conference in their house in june of 2019 and bizarrely which is the part where i started rewinding when i was watching

this episode because i'm thinking okay they're holding a press conference to say what and it turns out they didn't know the police basically said we're not going to tell you what they think someone would like come to their press conference or would tune in or something i think what they wanted was for the family to say to almost make an appeal to the caller and say please call back we know you hung up but like please call back but the family didn't know what the hell the caller had said so it's almost like police were kind of withholding that um and saying here hold a press conference this, but we're not giving you any more information. And so the investigators, basically all they said was that the tipster and other people in the community were choosing to not come forward with relevant information. So it must have been good enough information to warrant a press conference because they instructed Kimberly's family to basically make this plea to to call

back for the tipster to call back and yvonne in the press conference said you had a reason to call that day and give the information you gave which by the way they don't know what it is i'm begging you to call back so they're just hoping like hey hopefully maybe maybe this someone will leave the right person will even see this yeah that right person will even see this. Yeah. That right person will even see this. And so nothing happened. They heard nothing more. And police never told the family what the caller had said, which is just wild to me. So, you know, as you can tell, authorities started off strong and now it's like they're just kind of backing off and becoming more and more evasive. off and becoming more and more evasive and then things just go even worse because in 2019 they held a public vigil for kimberly and the county district attorney called for justice for kimberly

but as he is making this speech with the bereaved family behind him he says we are looking for her killer oh yeah and kimberly's implied she's dead now right and kimberly's mom like basically collapses like this is something they had never heard before and so the family is just like in total crisis mode all of a sudden and it's basically one of those situations where you can hear the crowd like mumbling like did he just say killer you know like reporters are like wait do we hear that correctly did the family know that so you know the family's thinking like did dude have they known she's dead for a while yes say anything yeah yeah what do they know that they haven't told us they're keeping us you know stringing us along so the police like i said never indicated to the

family that this had changed from a missing person to a homicide. And they had never told the family that they even suspected Kimberly was dead. So if this was the tip that came in, it was never communicated to the family. And so Yvonne said both of her parents just immediately started crying and other people were kind of like trying to get to the bottom of this mumbling and confusion. And so the family thankfully had an advocate who approached the chief of police as like literally live as this is happening and is like what is the district attorney talking about why did he say killer and the police chief is like i don't know and he went up to the district attorney whispers in his ear literally the da puts down the microphone in the middle of his sentence and leaves and gets in his car and

drives away he's like i made a big he's like i made a fucking boo-boo and i'm not gonna own up to it fuck you all see ya oh my god wow and just leaves and so reporters are like fuck this they follow him right like he gets good okay good hey answer the fucking question what is going on so they follow him all the way back to his office where he slams the door locks it and refuses to comment and they're like what the fuck is going on so now the family's in turmoil like give us answers this da is being like a real dick and nobody knows what's going on and he later explained that he had gotten kimberly's case mixed up with a different victim so oh my god bullshit which if that's even true then like

fucking own up to it and apologize to the family you dipshit that's why i think it's bullshit i think he's just like trying to save face somehow i think he had a some somehow was tipped off in some way or knew something for a long time and it had never been publicized. That's kind of the gut feeling I get. And then he got caught. I think that's where my head went as well. If it was a genuine accident, he wouldn't have walked away in the middle of a press conference and driven away and then locked himself into a room and then refused to say anything. I mean. That wouldn't have happened. The fuck? Yeah i mean that wouldn't have happened the fuck yeah so that

wouldn't have happened that's kind of what i think as well except you know i understand also the families want to like believe she's still alive so it's like and they still don't have details on that so it's like how can they trust that that's real information if god it must just be like it added a whole another layer to this nightmare for them basically because now they're now there's like a hint that she might have been killed but they're not sure and they don't have answers oh my gosh as of june 2023 like a months ago, the family still knows nothing. There's no information, no leads, no clues. Yvonne has said it's been six long and very painful years. We still don't know anything.

We still get the same thing from the police department. We like to throw silver lining in every now and then. In the wake of Kimberly's disappearance, the Brownsville LGBT plus community created an official task force, which actually advocates for the safety and needs of those in the queer community, especially in cases like this where they're like maybe missing or have been involved in a criminal incident. And so, you know, Yvonne said Kimberly would be thrilled at how the community has kind of changed for the better, has progressed, has advanced. But, of course, also wishes like Kimberly wasn't the cost of this progress, you know. Sure. And so the family speaks on Kimberly anytime they can to keep her story alive. And the hope is that somebody, the right person will, you know, find the courage to share information or maybe a light bulb moment will go off. And maybe they will be able to get some answers. There is a $10,000 reward and people are encouraged to share information about Kimberly on social media, via podcasts, what you, just to keep her story and her face on the public's mind. I mean, we'll definitely post her poster, both posters on Instagram.

And anyone with information on Kimberly Avila should contact the Brownsville Police Department. You can do that at 956-548-7000 or you can call Brownsville Crime Stoppers, which is 956-546-8477. And one thing I also want to point out, which like I don't think I mentioned very often, is that you can leave an anonymous tip. So like if you're ever like kind of fearful of identifying yourself or what have you, there are ways to leave anonymous tips. Good point. So that is an option if you're uncomfortable, you know, with them knowing who you are or why you have this

information. So in June, Yvonne shared a simple plea. This is, you know, the six year anniversary of her disappearing. She shared a simple plea. She said, we miss her a lot. And if anybody knows anything, please just know you can call. That's all we ask. And Kimberly's father said, I would like to tell him if he is seeing me, blessed God, to come back home, that this is his house and it always has been, that we are eagerly waiting, looking forward to seeing him again. I ask God that he lets me see him before I die. Oh, my God.

That's so sad. And that's the story of Kimberly Avila. Oof. Terribly sad. It's just like you just think how many amazing, amazing things she would have been able to do in this world, you know. With the amount of support she had, the amount of confidence she clearly had. Yeah. Loved her sass in the beginning.

But, I mean, just to be able to hold her head up high in an area that wasn't, you know, meant for people like that in whatever way. Yeah. She could have done some real damage. She had a lot of power. Yeah, you just think like the star power. Yeah. You just think like the space she could have made for people who don't have that same support system and that kind of thing um so it's it's all in all um pretty pretty tragic but there's still hope you know um

maybe we'll find her maybe she'll come back home yeah we can only hope and that's why we drink indeed indeed geez i sometimes i wonder if we should just end the podcast after i say the last terrible thing and let everybody else figure out a way to make themselves feel better and just go straight into yeah just here's a song bye we're like that fucking district attorney i'm just like running getting in the car and driving away let's go lock ourselves in our room and fuck you guys yeah i'm sorry i made you all feel like shit now leave me alone i like relate to that behavior so much even though i totally don't condone it and i think it's so fucked up what he did but i'm like i do get that like sudden urge to be like oh i made a big mistake i'm gonna run away and no one can see me if i can't i mean your whole job is to bum people out so it's no

wonder your therapist has always got like a super bill ready to send you so help me i need to get the tarot deck out and like uh read a little yeah tarot make myself feel better do you want to pick a card today actually yeah let's do that m that'll be a fun little ending okay watch it you pick the card i'll do the shuffling but you pick the card it better not be like death or hermit or no no okay i'm shuffling and then whenever you say stop i'm just gonna pick the one on top stop okay the three of pentacles and again it's me as a clown no i did not pick you as a clown that's ridiculous what is what does it mean can you google it real quick yeah yeah pentacles okay so it is an encouragement that you are on the right track oh this is from bitty tarot.com but hey that's no as you just said that you've um

you have a constant fear of ruining people's days you're on the right track so i am good for me i'm on the right track um it's it says oh the three of pentacles shows a young stone mason working with his tools on a portion of a cathedral i'm like does it or does it show m on a unicycle dressed as a clown i'm a stonemason what the fuck are you talking about stonemason working on a cathedral good for you m you tell yourself whatever you need yeah circus will be held in there yeah this circus tent it's it's m's cathedral you know um wow so uh this is a really long article so i'm not going to read this whole thing. But basically it says, your hard work, dedication, and attention to detail will not be going unnoticed as the three of pentacles represents achievement, recognition, and rewards.

Oh, looky. That was probably the best card you could have pulled then. Okay, sure. I'll take it. That's a big pat on the back for you, Christine. Thank you so much. That's a big pat on the back for you, Christine. Thank you so much.

If anyone wants to listen to us keep babbling, you can head over to Patreon for our after hours. And I've got something prepared for us, Christine. We had it prepared the last time we had an after hours. And I think you just forgot what we're going to do. But I do. I 100 percent forget. So I can't be surprised. I did not. You i do i have 100 forget so i can't wait to be surprised i did not you're gonna be very excited i can't wait and that's why we drink