And That's Why We Drink - E358 The Frenaissance and the Poopmonger

Episode Date: December 17, 2023

It's episode 358 and despite all of our technical difficulties our husks can still podcast with the best of them! This week Em takes us into the claustrophobic, poop-filled streets of Mary King's Close. Then Christine brings us a big part one in the story of Dennis Rader (also known as the serial killer BTK, but since he gave himself that nickname, we're trying not to give him the satisfaction of using it all that often). Is this the equivalent of a true crime chain email? ...and that's why we drink!Come join us back on tour this coming January! Get your tickets at andthatswhywedrink.com/live

it's christine and her sidekick me it's christine and all the invisible spirits in her room from her pictures hey it's christine and a dried up little lemon it's christine and her baby who if you rearrange letters in her name spells halloween hey okay thank god we finally finished our um our rehearsal for the live show thank you em oh was that it now yeah yeah so you know if you're oh shoot we're recording already well i guess you all got a sneak peek into our live show our live tour oh yeah yeah yeah okay can you imagine if my whole job on tour is to just come out and sing that and then i walk off and it's all you actually that sounds pretty great i was gonna say that's your dream um wow okay that was beautiful

em and i i feel like everyone really appreciated it so yeah well you know i thought i think you of all people probably appreciated it but every now and then you need someone to just butter you up so in case you haven't been buttered recently my little roll um so nice i just want to let you know that you're on my mind at least in four bars or whatever the music phrase is. The kindest thing anyone has ever said to me. Speaking of butter, why don't I eat some snacks? Just kidding. Apparently I keep eating during the episode.

I'm sorry, everyone. Poor Eva had to bring it to our attention and was like, um. And I was like, oh, I know that's me. I'm sorry. I sometimes eat a piece of candy and I just assume I'm gonna be muted but like I guess I guess why would I be mute I don't know I don't know where in my head I decided it was okay to eat candy while we record like seven years into the podcast so I apologize um I won't be doing that anymore I until all of a sudden you're just

I'll know you're not listening to me anymore when you start aimlessly just fidgeting with like a candy wrapper which is even worse to me something i have like such like i just i feel like i always as you know m has m has witnessed something that like rarely people have witnessed it's like when i do notes or when i'm like reading something on the computer i have like this like clicking compulsion you've you've had to go to therapy for it i think or talk about it yeah it's like it's part of my ocd and it's like so unbearable for other people i don't notice it like i don't see it anymore but emma's like what are you doing highlighting everything over and over and over i like i know i know with certainty every single

bullet that you're reading, you're highlighting frantically every time. And it's terrible in a Google doc because I realize other people can see that I'm like just clicking like it looks like I have a computer glitch going on. There have been times where I've been in a Google doc with Christine and I can't even work on my own shit because things are just becoming pink and then not and then pink and then not and then pink and then not. And I'm like, at least it's pink.

That's cute. It's just one of your quirks. But I'm so quirky that sometimes people get mad about it. And I do apologize. And not you. I'm talking about the candy. And I do apologize because, you know, I know that's very annoying. And I know that that would drive me crazy also.

So I apologize. I apologize to Eva. I apologize to Jack, our editor. And I think most of all, I apologize to the Lord our Savior. Oh, fuck. I was like, where are we going here? I don't know. I've had a lot of coffee today. What was your coffee order today? Your flavor? It was made in a coffee pot at my house so it was my home home flavor but what but what type of i don't know what it's called but like what type of was it like a was it just black coffee or was it like it doesn't have a name oh i see it's just a mug of coffee and then i put some of my pumpkin spice creamer in it. So I feel like a little, you know, spicy today. Feeling silly?

I'm feeling a little naughty. I was going to say, as Renee says, a little, being so naughty. A little naughty. Put a little spice, some coffee creamer. That's my, like, thing. I just, I used to go through phases where, like, every few months I would suddenly abruptly change the way I drank coffee. And it was, poor poor blaze would like bring me up a cup of coffee with cream in it and I'd be like I only drink black coffee and he's like literally you decided that yesterday I'm

like I know you also do that to me Christine you do that whenever I have to order you something or like we're all trying to figure out like group dinner and I'm like oh well Christine doesn't eat this and you're like what are you talking about and you say it's my favorite food you literally say it like a mean girl you're like are you an idiot like I only eat that and I was like what the fuck I just spent the last year making a note in my head to not ever feed you that you do it all the time I love to be full of surprises um and so you know every time I ever, I suggest food to you, it is always, I never finish breathing. Cause I'm like, I'm ready for you to tell me it's the opposite.

You know? I mean, usually I eat everything. Like when in doubt, most things I will eat, but coffee creamery, my coffee has been, I used to put just milk, like a splash of milk. Then I was like, blaze, this isn't enough milk. And then I was like, I only drink oat milk in my coffee. Then I was like, I can't stand oat milk in my coffee then i drink black anyway now like a little dash of like a flavored creamer and i'm fucking on i'm on it this has been the pattern for like

over a year and a half so i'm thinking it'll stick but we'll see well you know so i have a complain about on reddit when they're like they just blab on about useless shit no one cares about well where's that person who used to put the time code when we start talking about important stuff you know yeah where are you rely on them um my turn so speaking of speaking of coffee um with my tea i so i've been, at the beginning of the year, or Eva would know, Eva, when did we start doing Supper Club? Just write in, please. What the hell is that?

We have Supper Club every Tuesday night. What's that? That sounds fun. It's called Queer Supper Club. It's where all of our queer friends get together and eat supper together as a club. Oh, fun. I know your F is texting you at a peak no no i'm gonna start texting you tuesday i don't like to leave the house um bullshit this is another one of your things where you're doing that what did you say i know i'm like i'm trying to say the opposite just like

hello we all know you're the queen of fomo with love you're the queen of fomo you would totally what if you were in i think because of the distance you're the queen of FOMO with love you're the queen of FOMO you would totally what if you were in I think because of the distance you're fine with it but if you were in LA absolutely not you would get yourself in your little leather jacket that I know you love so much and your ripped black jeans you would look hot as shit you'd put your eyeliner on and you'd

be like I'm going to queer supper club every Tuesday I'm queer now get out of my face yeah for on Tuesdays only blaze no more blaze you're out of my face. Yeah. On Tuesdays only, Blaze, no more. Blaze, you're out of the picture. And put that black coffee down. I don't want anything to do with it. I think black coffee makes you only queerer.

No? Like in a tough way, like a motorcycle gang way. I feel like the way that I drink coffee nowadays is like such a mom way, you know? Like I feel like it's like a mom thing. I don don't know i just need like that sugar hit in the morning um i will say i've gotten a lot better about my fomo like it used to be bad because i just felt like i don't know i just was like oh no i just felt i don't know i mean yeah i just had fun but at this point i'm kind of over it i think covid really did a number on me in that way where i'm like honestly i don't really need to go do stuff i don't know maybe it's a zoloft that really has helped with a lot of my issues also all right well i only first of all let's make it clear just

in case fomo decides to appear in the middle of the night that obviously if you were here or when you're here you're always welcome i don't assume that i mean it would be hilarious if you were like actively we don't tell you about it i mean I don't assume that that's the case but if it was that would be quite a turn of events well so I only bring it up because I've been trying in the last I feel like it's been the last year but maybe it hasn't been that long maybe it's been longer I have no concept of time anymore that I was going through this thing I've talked about it to enough of my friends that I feel like through this thing I've talked about it to enough of my friends that I feel like I can just say it out loud and hopefully nobody's feelings

are hurt um I've been going through uh what I've been calling a frenesans where I've been breaking up with some people to make room for other people and I'm just re-evaluating my relationships and I was like I really want to have more friends that I'm closer with because I feel like I had a lot of friends that I saw once a month and I want friends that I see often. So I've been creating more standing appointments with friends, which is like the adult way of hanging out with people all the time, I guess. So example is on Tuesdays, I have Queer Supper Club. I love that. And on Thursdays, this is where we were talking about coffee.

This is the segue. On Thursdays, I have a were talking about coffee this is the segue on Thursdays I have a standing tea time with my friend Delaney and she has the by the way shout out she has the podcast self-helpless that's how we met if we're we're on it if you want to start there hey I didn't know that say hi for me I didn't know you guys were friends that's a fun show I really yeah she's one of my closer friends these days. See, now I'm like, now I FOMO because I feel like, man, you're just not like letting me into your life anymore. I feel like I don't know you at all. I'm changed. You're friends with, I mean, wow. Wow. No, I just, you're like a baby bird that I'm like shoving out of the nest.

Well, yeah, I actually, I told Delaney, I was like, Christine out of the nest well yeah I actually I told Delaney I was like Christine's out if you want a moment if you want a chance you can audition now yeah that's fine I mean I get it I uh she we lost touch for a while and we recently got back in touch and then we immediately started doing our standing appointment I love wait where do you go for tea I'm just I go to her house she makes us tea which is lovely and she does we do um an oracle reading every time i'm there what oh now i have so now it's back baby tea and tarot um tea and tarot oh come on this is amazing and so i go every thursday and uh that's you talking about your milk and how thing your flavor has changed and i keep trying so hard

i i love her but she's also like through and through vegan and all of her she doesn't have she won't have real milk in her house which is totally fine but i can't i'm trying so hard to get through it but she'll make this tea that's amazing and then she'll put like she knows i like milk in it so she'll try to put milk in it but it's never real milk and i can always taste the difference and one time she put milk in there that was gray and i was like what and then i apparently that's like baby i think that's what it was but i watched it happen and i was like this is like watching how the sausage is made it's like it's just i mean except the opposite ironically like real milk the way that it's made is so much to be made

it would be a bunch of oats and not like a dead animal yeah but like it was like i just watched someone pour a bunch of like disney grace sludge into my drink and i was like and so um anyway what a long tangent like your calendar just freed up every thursday i mean i wonder what happened i wonder if you just oh shit my phone actually the microphone was on the whole time oh my phone's going calling Delaney no you didn't realize you had a standing call every uh Tuesday at 2 30 um anyway that was a really long-winded way of me telling you the fact that you're always changing your order I and you went from milk to almond milk like I will come and you'll be like thank you and then I'll find out like you haven't had that drink in six months and you'll never drink it again and I'm like but one no no one thing that I really like about you is that you at least remember

something I like because it's not like I drink something and then I can never have it again like I just drink it and then I switch it up but then I end up going back I always flip-flop so sometimes you've given me something that I stopped drinking for a while but it reignited the love and I went back to that so I'm like that grandma who's like who's like Blaze's grandma like oh one time you said you liked Rolos so your entire identity will now consist of getting Rolos for every holiday that's what I'm gonna be can you say that about a million dollars and see what happens or yeah yeah sure I'll uh I'll go to the dollar tree and see where what i can find a million times yeah

i'll get back to you well um anyway christine i know we just did this whole i don't know us talking you know what i don't even feel bad about it about me talking shit about me by the way this is my this is like day after Christine's half birthday. Let's talk about all her many problems. Happy belated half birthday, Christine. Thank you. Did you celebrate today with a big cup of mom coffee? I sure did. And Leona has double pink eyes.

So, you know, life is like when is your baby going to be healthy? Like what's the this is apparently what everyone is like. This is what life is so now it's like oh so wait do you also like i would assume i was just raised by such an overprotective like jewish mom like so you're gonna get pink eye right that's what that means i mean i assume so i'm shocked i haven't gotten it yet it's been a couple days i'm washing my hands constantly which i kind of washing your eyes constantly because like no i'm not touching my damn eyes because i know what's gonna happen if I do um but I am very actively washing my hands and as someone

with as I mentioned already as we both have mentioned already have pretty pretty intense OCD sometimes so you know it's pretty easy for me to get into a mind space of like hey this is the way that you'll fix everything wash your hands constantly so that's what i'm doing and it's it's good it's my brain picked it up easily you know um oh good so yeah you know we're on that on that grind and um it's it's you know it's just uh it's just nice to be here with you and have somewhere to really compartmentalize where everybody knows your name you yeah that's nice christine i'm glad you're here too thanks now let's sit in that until it gets awkward for all of us never mind i couldn't do it um let's see let's see which one of us can't stand it it's both always lose that game um okay so is that

is that why you drink this week or do you have another reason yeah listen everything's fucking crazy i feel like you and i are both you know like a crazy headspace with work stuff we're like overwhelmed the holidays are coming up everyone's overwhelmed you know i did a bunch of like secret santa gifting like there's this great thing called operation santa on usps where you can adopt kids um and families and like you know adopt them obviously like and then mail them to you no mail yourself to their house to say hi um no and then you go to the post office and like you you know they write little letters to santa they get scanned in obviously with no identifying information you can you know buy as little or as much as you want. You can, you know, send surprises and then you go to the

post office. They scan the QR code and mail it for you. So obviously you can't see the address and all that. But I was like, I know I'll adopt like 16 different people. And so I've been just like, why am I, why did I do this on the day where it's, why on this, my day after my half birthday of all days you know I understand I can't believe that Santa would do that to you I can't believe I did it to myself but yeah so here we are anyway otherwise I'm fine everything's okay it's fine we'll be fine and it's fine how are you it's fine it's fine as I'm white knuckling in a room of flames it's fine um correct that's exactly you get it you know okay i feel i'm feeling good i'm feeling i don't know i'm like

that's nice i'm just kidding i'm sorry i i i have like i feel like i'm really stressed for extended periods of time and then i get a five minutes liver of happiness until i'm stressed for a really extended period of time again and right now i'm in the five minutes liver which is nice um and i feel like i've just been between christmas just to like throw all my fucking business out at everybody i'm leaving like halfway through december i'm going home and then like as soon as the holidays are done Christina and I are rehearsing to go back out on tour and then I'm back out on tour so I'm about to be gone for like at least a month and so I'm I'm stressed about that and getting presents over there and the whole logistical kerfuffle of Christmas on top of that I got so many projects here I want to get done but

I need to get them done in like two weeks or else they're not going to be done for a month and two weeks. And so anyway, right now I'm having like a one little one little moment of happiness. I treated myself to some new Pokemon cards. I oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. OK, so I posted this on Thanksgiving. My DMs are going bananas, folks. So tell me everybody's asking if you don't follow me on Instagram, this is not your moment. But for everybody who follows me on Instagram and has been craving this snack that I told everybody about on Instagram. Christine, lean in.

Clearly I don't follow you on Instagram. What are you talking about? Lean in. Come here. I'm just going to lean back because I'm getting nervous. Is my a little too is it on you can you feel it um here's the thing i went to my obviously my aunts for thanksgiving they had this um they had me try these peppers from trader joe's i lost my mind i mixed them up with some salami and some mozzarella it changed my world allison and i can't stop eating them.

I posted it on Instagram and the people who got to see that post, I got a bunch of people sending me videos of them trying it and saying that it changed their life. So for the people who are wondering what the hell this snack is, because every time I post it, someone misses it. You get yourself a Ritz cracker. Ready, Christine? Ritz cracker. Write it down.

That's Leona's favorite food. We buy them in massive quantities. Great. So you're already set. Then. I've got a lot. Two slices. Two.

Of dry salami. A little salami. A little salami. Two slices. I can't eat that. But okay, sure. Can you eat that? I don't know anymore.

I can't eat. I don't eat meat. Oh, right. Tomorrow I'll be like, that's my favorite food. Exactly. sure can you eat that i don't know anymore i can't maybe i don't eat meat oh right tomorrow i'll be like that's tomorrow you'll exactly so when you're in the mood for that you pick up two slices of salami put that on a ritz cracker get yourself a little mozzarella pearl the little balls the ones the ones the container with the juice get the little ball yep okay then go to sherry joe's you get yourself the picante sweet peppers they're red they're full of cream

cheese oh yeah those are good maybe if you're feeling especially naughty do a little balsamic drizzle a little glaze a glaze not the vinegar glaze commit to the bit because it's going to be a big ass bite but you throw all that in your mouth at once oh that sounds so good um you'll be in heaven the end hungry now i'm hungry now and i'm well don't eat anyway you can't eat until we're done because people are gonna hear you this is your fucking fault i'm gonna yell at you now why is this my fault you can yell at me that's okay that's what the whole point of this podcast was to be a sounding board for our lives so rip me up i'm too tired and hungry okay well anyway that's why i drink because everyone needed to know about the snack great cool the one day

year when you're like really into salami you're gonna fucking text me and go that was incredible so i mean i believe you it sounds incredible i just um i just don't have time to go to trader joe's and i just went the other day but maybe i'll go soon okay and maybe you'll also like eat salami again i don't know probably not but the rest of it probably i'll try so okay um now that we've killed 20 minutes what do you say we start a podcast we did we did kill we killed it in the worst way like it's just it's just wasn't even fun for anybody it was fun for me good well congratulations um now i'm feeling really bitchy i don't know what's going on oh do you do we need to sit with it for a second you want to talk about your feelings not even a little bit but thanks for asking just kidding that one was

on purpose okay i'm sorry i'm all done i'm ready for your story and honestly actually you know what i just realized so i'm sometimes so good at compartmentalizing that i forget about the other things that are causing my i'm like really good at compartmentalizing but then there's always this like underlying like emotional dysregulation that happens where I'm like I'm upset about something that's weird and then I'm like oh right no I'm like oh right I compartmentalize that I will you'll find out when I do my story today why I'm like so out I think that might be part of the problem. Are we out of the system again? It's just like one of those like just it's just you'll see.

You'll know when I tell you. I feel like remember in the show Pinky and the Brain when they were like, what are we doing tonight? Brain, same thing we do every night. Pinky, we take over the world. I feel like I feel like every episode I'm like, are you mad at the system again let's get into it yeah well too bad because it's not gonna change yeah i know i know it's just uh i think it just occurred to me why i might be especially like um on edge today okay well i don't know does there should we Should we breathe? How about we do that?

Everyone listening, too, maybe we all need to take a deep breath. So we'll do three breaths. Oh, you know what? Actually, probably I do need to breathe. Okay. Okay. Okay. Everyone get ready for your three breaths of the day.

Okay. Go. Go. Now people are going to be like like stop breathing into the microphone and then the last one now drink some water you dirty little rats let's crack into it it looks like we finally found our opener. Okay.

Welcome to And That's Why We Drink, where we are all relaxed and not thirsty, but we are thirsty for the ghost stories. So here we go. This is Mary King's Close. You put your hands up like I was gonna start screaming or something i'm just like staring at you and all of a sudden you like throw your hands in the air i never know what's gonna get a reaction so i just kind of paused for the dramatics but whatever okay i mean no it don't get me wrong it was extremely dramatic i just didn't understand my part in the whole process but i get it now so um okay great uh

wow cool i've never heard of it okay uh so this is in edinburgh and uh i said that right yes you you sure did last time it might as well have been a laugh track and an angry mob all at the same time because i was a stupid american so anyway this is in edinburgh and uh just getting straight into it um the the land that we're talking about in edinburgh it was um as of the 12th century it belonged to scotland it became a bustling city after the 12th century and then officially became the capital of scotland in 1452 so far we're on a good track i think cool okay um it was a big part of the european enlightenment era but things weren't going that great eventually because as of 1560

uh a wall did you know this i feel like this is probably one of those things that everybody on earth knew and i'm the last person to figure it out in 1560 a 24 foot tall wall was built around the city yeah didn't you cover the wall am i crazy if i did it's this just goes to show you how um quickly things i mean i did i'm sure I've heard about it on a paranormal podcast too, but I thought there was like hauntings underneath the walls. I don't know. I could be wrong. That's what we're talking about today. Oh, okay.

I haven't covered this before. You covered the Edinburgh vaults is what you covered. Okay. And I think in that episode, you talked about the walls. Maybe that's what I'm thinking of. Okay. I was like, please. I just, I checked. I did not cover this. Okay. And I think in in that episode, you talked about the walls. Maybe that's what I'm thinking of. Okay. I was like, please, I just I checked. I did not cover this. Okay. How gaslighting is that, though? I'm like, you taught me about this. You don't know about it.

It was like complimenting me for my like wisdom, but also like so like reminding me that I'm an idiot at the same time. No. Yeah, I know about the wall. You know, I don't know much about it but i do know that it has a like a medieval wall around it or something okay i had no idea about this and i feel like people who um grew up in countries with better education systems are rolling their eyes but you know if you want to feel bad for me and again i chose to be mad at the system today, so here we go. No, I'm just kidding. Okay, so in 1560, there was a 24-foot-tall wall called the Flodden Wall that was built around the city to protect Edinburgh against English invasion. And since the town now could not grow, literally grow, any further than the confines of this wall um since it couldn't expand outward they expanded upward so it's a city that essentially grew on top of itself right um this resulted in many several story tall buildings all cramped next to each other and a lot of the streets because of

that a lot of the streets between the buildings are incredibly narrow because construction was trying to use up as much space as possible they were like just one more inch you'll be fine right so just walk sideways it's fine well i looked up pictures online of like how narrow these streets are and probably not everybody but maybe like larger people would need to walk sideways some of some of them are very, very narrow. Some of them seemed like they were normal street size. I think they vary. But the smaller ones I saw were like two slabs, two tile slabs long.

Like they were like, you couldn't ride a bike down it. It looked like. Imagine having a window right there and you just like open the blinds and there's like another person but imagine you fall in love this is the duality of man this is the duality of gemini or like imagine the horror of seeing someone but imagine if you fell in love okay like how like it would be like taylor swift's you belong with me music video like what wrong? Like a note through the window. Yeah, just except you can just whisper and they'll probably hear you. And like the response to what's wrong is that I'm so fucking close to your room.

I'm like stop that you won't stop talking to me. Okay, leave me alone. You keep putting fucking notes on the window and I feel obligated to answer. notes on the window and i feel obligated to answer um so uh yeah it looked like the streets kind of varied in size but all of them were narrow in their own way some of them were incredibly narrow some were still like you if there was like walking traffic it would pile up pretty quick okay and as new buildings were constructed these alleys became even more winding and confusing because now there were new things put in front of each of the streets so it eventually became like this maze where you had to it feels like in my mind as someone who's never been there

it sounds like you would almost want like an expert guide with you walking down these streets yeah like a an escort i feel like i i mean i'm lost just thinking about it but i mean that's me but i'm sure a normal person could probably do maybe it's not as bad as i'm imagining but um i have already spiraled and decided that it's a lot trickier than maybe it is but like just the just the pictures alone did make it seem at the very least incredibly claustrophobic like it's incredibly tall buildings you really can't see anything other than like what's ahead of you they're very tiny spaces like in a horror movie this would be exactly the alley you don't want to be having to run down or

like get caught in a flood or something you know like you're fucking trapped in there um and because of the town's limited space um because remember it was like just a it was just a 24 foot wall and it's just built around the city if you were middle middle class upper class anything like that it didn't really matter what you were you all lived pretty much on top of each other um which was unheard of at the time because usually the wealthy class wanted to separate themselves from, ew, poor people. Ew. There was one example of a countess who actually lived only one floor above a fishmonger,

which I feel like that's how- Oh, God forbid! I feel like that's how Trey Songz friends describe me. It's like, the countess lives above a fishmonger, you know? But imagine if they fell in love but imagine if i just wrote one extra note about how concerned i am just imagine how romantic the fishmonger and the countess that sounds like uh children's it sounds fairy tale it sounds like the like the first draft of shrek like like a fishmonger in the countess.

It sounds like the random creepy German fairy tale that Shrek was based on. That they had to make child-friendly. Yeah. Certainly sounds like a Grimm Brothers situation. Yes, it does. Brothers Grimm. Brothers Grimm. So anyway, usually the wealthy would be separate from the middle class and lower class.

But, you know, it was that wasn't the case right away. Eventually, they ended up actually saying, like, we can't tolerate these plebes. So we're going to make our own town and we're going to call it New Town. Go figure. Original. Oh, my God. At least come up with something creative. That kills me. Like all the money in the world, you can't pay like a writer to give you an idea like a little spark of creativity okay fine um so anyway while

they're still living in old town um the wealthy tried to separate themselves the best they could but they really didn't have many options so eventually they tried to make gated neighborhoods but the neighborhoods are all on top of each other and right next to each other. So the gates were they essentially put doors on some of these alleys and closed off access to them at night. So only the wealthy could use them. It's like a modern security gate at a cul-de-sac, but. It's literally just like a wooden door with a latch and they said i have the key yeah it was they just decided cool great and um so they pretty

much closed off these narrow streets which let me remind you again these are really limited like pathways to get through like so you're blocking off like access to people's homes i imagine like you're making it difficult at least so these gated narrow streets ended up being called closes so when it's mary king's close that's what a close is oh i see okay okay okay got you because i never knew i literally thought this whole time it was like gonna be a closet or something you're like oh looks like search spelled closet wrong again. Wow, didn't know Saoirse was such a dummy for getting just put a T. Closet.

Well, I've never known what a close was. I've never heard of that. I really didn't either, to be honest. It's one of those words where you hear it and you can kind of smile and nod through it, but you really... Yeah, I feel like if someone said oh you know a close i'd be like yeah and then they'd be like describe it and i'd be like hey what's that over there i'd be like honestly that's a fucking rude question like yeah like why don't you explain it smart ass exactly yeah i had no idea i always thought like a close in my

mind truly was like a like a like a a hill or something like i didn't know so anyway and then i would have said no you explained it you would have said a hill and i've said yep that's what it is a hill and then we would have just believed that for the rest of our fucking lives so it feels like excuse me it's a little bit i feel like but you could ask i what you should have said is like the pun version you should have gone you're close you're close is that does that count no um so anyway man you really got me good there so these gated narrow streets are called closes and into uh into these closes which like it's so wild to think of like that this is what the upper class was doing and they thought they were so much fucking higher and mightier than everybody else um they would dump their chamber pots from their windows into the closes at night

what a fucker i knew they would do something like this this is this is i mean imagine the countess's shit just falling on your head when you're coming home from a long day of mongering fish. It's like I have already a fishmonger and now I have I'm on the poop monger, you know. Right. Like, thanks a lot. You know, I was going to fall in love with you, too. Countess. I was this close until close. You you showed me too much too soon, I think.

So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We got too much too soon i think so yeah yeah yeah we got too much so obviously one of the first problems that people noticed as all the wealthy people and i probably honestly all the people because they're if the rich didn't have toilets i don't think anyone else had toilets either i think everyone was just throwing their chamber pots into the streets at night um and the streets didn't have drains they

didn't have any street cleaning there was no sanitation like laws back then or like a service that could come out it's horrible so there was waste upon waste upon waste and keep in mind this is a whole town within like a literal confined area so very quickly it adds up, you know? Oh, there's like nowhere for it to go. Think of everyone in a 10-story apartment building throwing their poop out the window. That's day one. It's a mess. Day one.

Let alone no one's ever coming to clean it. Yeah. And it just keeps happening. Yeah, that's just terrible. So the waste over time, and I'm assuming very quickly, began to clog the pathways. So now what? Like, you thought you were fancy with your little gated door, and now you got to walk through poop. So good luck.

At the same time, we talked about this in the past, but in this area, the cemetery had become overcrowded. And when it became overcrowded, they started burying the bodies even shallower on top of the bodies that are buried deeper. And so there were shallow bodies and shallow graves in an overcrowded cemetery. And the smell, because they weren't buried far enough, would start to waft out of the graveyard. smell because they weren't buried far enough would start to waft out of the graveyard and on windy days where a whole town made out of alleys that are just like wind like you know what i mean like they're just yeah just they're like the right word is wind tunnels yes um so now you've got the cemetery with like the smell of corpses just blowing through the entire town non-stop and you've got the smell of everybody's poop on the street blowing through on top of that. I'm just, I'll be honest.

I'm surprised anyone fell in love back then. Like this time was at least romantic. I don't know. I'm just keep thinking, like, what if you fell in love with the count? Like you couldn't. You just feel like fucking grossed out all the time. I literally like, I don't i i have thought about that too um i was watching um i don't know like a bridgerton or something like that and just like first just in the amount

of clothes they would make people wear on a summer day and then you are expected to like go bang it out together like that doesn't yeah with no ac i mean you know like i no showers sometimes sometimes a shower work with but like you know i just i'm like it just seems it's amazing that the population is what it is today when like well i guess there wasn't any birth control but i'm amazed people were getting naked with each other like i would i just there shouldn't be this many people today but somehow they just kept popping kids out you wouldn't be like you'd be like not today you know not even i'd be like i don't maybe i've just got too many sensory issues or something or i just like the idea of being sweaty first of all in any context no but also

like underneath that many clothes and then putting my hot sweaty body on someone else's hot sweaty body after they've been in that many clothes and it's 100 degrees outside are you fucking kidding me absolutely i almost think i'd be less like worried about what other people smell like and just be like constantly um like paranoid that i smell you know what i mean like i don't even think i would be like grossed out by everyone else i think i would just be constantly like i can't go around other people i like don't i wonder don't come near me i also wonder if you know i also wonder if bo is like a um uh like i wonder if we're hypersensitive to bo because it's so rare that we smell it but for them maybe they didn't even notice well i just read a post on reddit that said like explain to me like i'm five why we have to take such great care of our teeth nowadays, even though like for most of humanity, they didn't have access to that.

And the response is really interesting because I've kind of always wondered that as well. And it's because, well, one of the reasons is because we eat so much refined sugar nowadays and foods that the bacteria in your mouth are like really drawn to so we just have to like fight that more um but then also it's just like people who didn't have or who had really bad teeth issues just didn't make it very long or you know oh shit yeah yeah so anyway that's i feel like i wonder if the. too is like also a response to maybe the clothes we wear nowadays or like using deodorant that does X, Y and Z. I don't know. Like maybe our bodies have changed over time. I don't know. Maybe.

But also maybe they fucking smelled like I don't. Yeah. I mean, I'm sure. I'm sure. Like, to be clear, they definitely smelled, to be clear. But I just wonder. I can't imagine if you had if you had like I'm this is fully an exaggeration. But for the sake of the story, if you're only getting like a annual shower or like a monthly shower or something.

I don't think there were showers. I'm going to be honest. Or whatever. If you're if you're only washing yourself with like river water most of the time, which has its own fucking bacteria. River water. I don't know has its own fucking bacteria like river water i don't know i think they like boiled the water i mean okay yeah they didn't bathe very often you're probably right on that yes i just i i don't know if i this is as obsessed as i am with time travel i could not go in the past i could not because i'd be like i cannot blend in i will

stick out like a sore thumb and i'm not interested in disguising myself by smelling like a mini deodorant around like what but honestly think about time travel if they came to the future they'd be like what the fuck is that why does everyone smell like linen all of a sudden and and fresh scent what's going on you know they'd be like why does everyone keep walking really far away from me do i smell why is the deodorant sales girl trying to just throw this at me throw this at my body like and i even wonder like if you showed them like a t-shirt and it's like it's okay you can just wear this like you don't have to torture yourself oh i would you know that they would feel so naked you know right without all the layers but also they'd kind of like it i think no i wonder about that all the time because i'm like if there

are ghosts in my house from the victorian era are they like what the fuck are you wearing i mean i'm wearing right now pajama pants with leopard print and like a t-shirt that says momster i'm like are they just looking at me like what the fuck has happened to humanity probably probably i mean they had like fluffy neckerchiefs for sitting at home by themselves like i for like going to bed yeah like they were like i don't i don't know i don't know what the buckles on their shoes and shit and like now i'm like if i even have shoes on it's a good day like so now you've flipped fish my shoes are made of sponge and fishes yeah exactly i have the audacity to say that we've like progressed as humanity.

They're like, seriously, are you sure? They're looking at you and like what are on your feet? And you're like recycled water bottles. You wouldn't understand. So I'm saving the planet. What are you doing? Anyway, so we've really gone off on a tangent. And like I I'm very aware that I've probably said some really uneducated things about, like, the hygiene of several centuries ago.

But I openly say I don't know what I'm talking about here. I don't know. We're just. I'm taking my best shot that it probably wasn't what it is today. It couldn't have been pleasant. Especially when you're trekking through everyone's poop and in your only pathway out of the city, you know. So, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Good luck. Anyway, unless you were super rich and you lived really high up in the towers where you could avoid the wind hitting. Or probably. Oh, the wind. I was gonna say you probably some people probably was were able to get around the transportation by like, I don't know. Do they have other people to carry them or like a carriage i don't know a horse my immediate thought was like a fucking piggyback ride i was like i mean that they probably could have made

that work too but i meant more like one of these like sedan things where you sit on it and they like carry you right i don't i don't think they have they maybe i maybe someone built that just to stay i would have just to stay away from the poop but um i don't i think most people were just raw dogging it on their shoes so gross cool and so if you didn't live high up enough in the towers where you know the wind wasn't hitting your window um then you were living in the thick of it you the wind wasn't hitting your window um then you were living in the thick of it you were smelling decomposing bodies next door you were smelling poop downstairs and uh it was a rough time so the buildings also started expanding because more people were showing up and they're like we don't know where to house these people um they started

turning their cellars into homes so now there's underground homes for the poorer people, which means that you're pouring your chamber pots on the street, which slides down the stairs into their cellar house. I mean, that's just horrifying. You know how, like, in the winter, you're afraid to go downstairs in the city because you'll slip on ice? Mm-hmm. Oh, God. Oof. Oh, God, imagine. afraid to go downstairs in the city because you'll slip on ice oh god oh god imagine

that's rough that's a rough slipping oh no slipping face first oh no m oh no so the royal mile uh is this thing it's it's called the royal mile but it's a historical route through the city um with a number of closes that you can walk through so i think it's it's called the royal mile but it's a historical route through the city um with a number of closes that you can walk through so i think it's like a tourist attraction now in some ways and the closes are usually named which i didn't know this the closes are named after notable people who lived on them so uh like craig's close craig was i guess the most pop Glenn Glenn close yes Glenn was the most popular girl of her close for sure so they were named either after like names like Craig's or Glenn's um or they were named after businesses so it would be like old fish market close can you imagine living on the old fish

market and the fish market gets the name being you don't like what are you doing oh yeah your name's glenn and you're like it was right there yeah it was right there it's right there in all of the puppy dog fur i have in my closet yeah it's so embarrassing um so i i like to want i i don't know this at all but i wonder if there was some sort of um like stereotype at the time of like, if you lived on a close that was named after a business and not a people, then all the people were shitty, you know? Oh, wow. Maybe. Just to like, just to create scandal. Like, you know, I'd be that girl. Like, you're just implanting rumors hundreds of years later. Yeah. implanting rumors hundreds of years later yeah and what are they gonna do about it no i don't i don't know i don't know i don't know but i i like to imagine someone had an opinion and that person

was probably me before i reincarnated over here you gotta bully someone thank you you see you understand so i get it among the most famous of these closes is mary king's close so um which uh i'm trying to see where i talk about how she got her i almost said i've heard of that and then i'm like oh right because you said it 10 minutes ago girl we're here now girl um okay so i will talk about how mary king got her name on the close but before we do my notes are just a little little scattered today. Sorry. Not Saoirse. It was me trying to make things better and then I made things worse. You just changed the word close to closet 80 times and then had to undo it. You're like, oh, shit.

I actually put Glenn in front of Mary King and I almost messed everything up. So already this area, there was a lot of superstitions in the town uh people already had a lot of religious beliefs and there were even like some supernatural sightings just throughout town there was a lot of strange lights especially over their lake there was a lot of strange lights and i only want to put this in because i i think it's like a fun fact is that so people were seeing strange lights over the lake and nobody ever figured out what they were but now people say that it was probably a combination of all the methane gas from the dead bodies and poop and the reduced oxygen from in the reduced oxygen from being in such close quarters in these pathways that you were only breathing in

gas and causing yourself to hallucinate sorry my computer started talking it scared the shit out of me who was it what'd you say sorry i think i hit a button when i was overreacting and it started talking like it was like doing like an accessibility like read the page and it said and that's why we drink and i scared the absolute bejesus out of me. And now I can try to close it. I don't even know what this is. I downloaded the new Google Chrome and I think it has like settings I've never heard of. I'm so sorry.

Is she becoming sentient? Is that what's happening? I see half your face. So, well, I apologize for screaming. That was unintentional. Okay. I got rid of it. Do you still see half my face or all my face?

No, I pull. Phew, you're back. Are you? No, I've left the building, but it's okay. My husk is still here, and my husk can podcast like the best of them, so it's fine. That is fully called dissociation, my friend. I was literally. I know.

My husk can handle it. Why does everyone keep telling me that um yeah that's that's swamp gas right methane uh i think swamp gas is what they like try to say all ufos are um either weather balloons or swamp gas um so that's fascinating and gross isn't it yeah that you can breathe in so much poop that um you just go crazy wait what oh i didn't hear that part what what what are you talking about i thought you meant that the lights were the methane gas oh no that they believe that uh oh maybe that's what it was i don't even remember anymore i've lost spot. You thought everyone smelled poop and went crazy?

I mean, that's also likely scenario. Honestly, I'd go fucking crazy. If you said that, I'd be like, yeah, me too. Maybe I read the notes wrong. I really thought it was like you breathe in the poop and go crazy because like it's enough methane gas from- Wait, read it again. I was listening to a robot talk while you said it really loud in my ear, so I called this.

My understanding, no, no, no. You probably actually correct me before the internet did but um my understanding was that there was so much poop that you're walking through plus the smell of the dead bodies that you are actually breathing in that shit non-stop plus the reduced oxygen from walking in such narrow pathways eventually caused you to hallucinate but maybe you're right where where the lights were methane gas on their own far away and we just also happen to be having being deprived of oxygen by being in close pathways it could be either i missed the oxygen part i'm sure that doesn't help um but yeah i feel like i feel like that that matches swamp gas um it's sort of like where methane i don't know that makes a lot of

sense um for the plot i'm gonna assume both though yeah i like that i mean i'm not calling myself an expert over here not today maybe on others maybe on other things not day um i grew up in the american education system i don't know so maybe i breathe in too much poop no comment so on top of the smells of dead bodies and poop all the time then edinburgh gets slammed by the bubonic plague which we just talked about last week too yep this area got 11 waves of the bubonic plague sometimes these waves killed as much as a fifth of the population at once in just a few months which like how how it i feel like 11 waves where sometimes up to 20 i don't know math that well but like 11 times up to 20 of your population there should be no people left there should be no people

left yeah i mean i'm assuming it was not 20% every time, because that really would not make any sense. No, only once it was up to 20%. Oh, okay. But it's still just like, it's unfathomable. It boggles the mind. It does. Yeah, it boggles the mind. Even after COVID-19, which I feel like we've recorded episodes like this pre-COVID-19 pandemic, and we were like, thank God that doesn't happen anymore.

And now we have a little more hindsight but still it is um it's still hard to believe uh how many people were killed yeah back then yeah well i think last week i already forget the number but it was somewhere between like 75 and 200 million people or something it's unbelievable yeah and by the way speaking of covet 19 i'm not saying we should have done we don't talk about that enough you know i'm not saying i'm not saying we should have gone. We don't talk about that enough, you know? I'm not saying we should have gone as intense as these people, but I am saying overwhelmingly in a general way, I'm very proud of how they tried to handle the bubonic plague at the time. And I feel like we could have taken a page from their book because-

Forget like studying vaccines, like do whatever I'm about to tell you to do. Well, if they had a vaccine back then for the bubonic plague, I would have told them to fucking take it. Let's be clear. But on top of like for the time period and given the amount of people in 2020 that refuse to be actively for the people, you know, with COVID. This is what they did. In Edinburgh during the bubonic plague, they took it very seriously and forced night curfews for everybody

where you could not leave your home. They shut down schools. They shut down businesses. They had 12-day mandatory quarantines for every person who either is infected or was near somebody infected. And they banned people from coming into the town, and if you were caught letting people stay with you that did not live in that town and you might have accidentally created an outbreak, you would be branded. What? One guy who this, I'm not saying this is like the way it should

have been handled, but it does ring true to so many stories we heard during covet of like someone being like oh well you know someone i live with the sick but i don't really want to miss going to the movies blah blah there was one guy who knew his wife was sick and went to church anyway and when everyone found out they hanged him and then there was another woman who brought in illegal imports which caused an outbreak and she was drowned they were not fucking around in like such a serious way yeah um but i guess they were like during the plague you're probably gonna die anyway so like i don't know i don't know what they were thinking but it was they really were not fucking around with panic sounds like full panic hysteria probably yeah um and the plague was bad everywhere but especially in like a town that's nothing but crowded areas and the only place you can get

around is through these really narrow pathways where you're pretty much destined to get infected if somebody else is near you and they're sick so in 1645 one outbreak caused half of the city's population to die holy shit mary king's close was hit especially hard which is why it is now so haunted understood um so i said i'd get back to why we named her why we named the close after mary king so mary king ended up being a clothing merchant, and she was a burgess. So a burgess, I didn't know this, but it was a title that only really important people got, and they held an authority in their community, and they had political sway in their community. And she ended up getting it through marriage.

Her husband had this title, and then when he died he left it to her which i don't know you could leave a title to somebody but that's nice but he ended up like really hooking her up because she became very powerful at a time when a lot of women didn't and her because she was in like clothing and fabrics her whole close her whole community was very vibrant residents and craftsmen and it was a very lovely neck of the woods she also by the way when she was given this burgess title she was able to uh she was given a city council seat which again unheard of for women back then and it gave her the right to vote which the rest of scotland's women couldn't do for another 300 years jeez 300 more years wow yeah so that's crazy the fact that her husband was like i'm not leaving you to dry like you're gonna be fine like that was pretty damn um unfortunately even though she had

this really wonderful community of a bunch of like crafty arts people who all live together in harmony when the plague hit every single person in this close died oh shit some stories say that they actually just closed their close gates door and just locked it and just let everyone die in there which is a rumor is not true um if people were there um and they were sick they would have or if people were left there and were like starving or something like that they would have been given quarantine provisions like everybody else it's so it's not true right um but it adds to the creepiest factor and eventually when the plague left only a few years later oliver cromwell led an english invasion into the city. He scorched the earth, thus killing

all their crops and cutting off their resources. And that's how he captured the city. And then years after that, there were outbreaks of cholera and smallpox through these closes. So just death, death, death, death, death, death, death. In the 1680s, this is our first ghost story. There was a lawyer who moved in with his wife. He moved into the neighborhood that's still called Mary King's Close. And one day his wife was relaxing when all of a sudden she felt a presence near her and she could feel herself being watched by someone. Oh, great. When she looked up, she saw a disembodied head of an old man floating above her chair. That's quite a time to realize someone's watching you

like you know sometimes you're like man i had no idea you were staring at me and like you hope it's like a squirrel or something yeah you're like oh it's just a little squirrel or like a little bug and then um oh just the last well head thank you yeah thank you nervous system for recognizing that and like floating above like is that did you breathe in too much poop air is that what yeah that honestly i'm going back to you breathe in too much poop air? Is that what? Honestly, I'm going back to your old theory about the poop air because that is pretty bananas. Well, apparently she passed out. And then when she came to, she told her husband what she saw.

But of course, he didn't believe her until that night when he was sleeping and he wakes up from a heavy presence in the room and he feels like he's being stared at. And it was no squirrel, but it was the floating head jesus thomas the husband freaks out he starts praying that the head will go away and maybe it's just the atheist in me but the literal religious defiance is so funny here because he prays that the head will go away and instead a whole second head floats into the room okay to be fair you say the atheist in you but you are always the one who says anytime you're scared the first thing you do is say okay jesus come on in so i'm like is this what would happen to m in this scenario our father who are in heaven and now all of a sudden like head twin, head number two comes in. Honestly, if I were praying and, like, something like that was happening to me and then a second head came in, as I'm praying, even further back into my head, I think I would be recognizing that it was overdue.

It was, like, probably earned. Like, you're right. I've never even been into a church. I don't know who I'm trying to kid here you obviously know that um i'm only reaching out to you at a time of crisis and if this is karma then it's karma so anyway uh he prayed the head would go away instead a second one this one's a child's head floats into the room i thought it was funny canceled canceled canceled well i thought it was like meant it's a dead child so i was like well that's upsetting i mean no it was it was just a second

head i think there i think we can still laugh like i know it's like oh great i don't well hang on a second i'll tell you why in a second so then not only there's the head then there's the child's head floating around then there's a ghostly cat who comes through the door as he's still praying for things to go away. This cat all of a sudden shows up like, oh, and I'm part of the fuck you party also. Yeah, they're like, oh, we're partying in here. Come on in. Then a ghostly dog walks in. And then he's praying wrong.

Are you sure he's not reciting like the little old lady who swallowed swallowed a fly because i feel like that this is like he's actually a plot praying backwards in latin it's really weird i think that might be what's going on he's saying a hex and then a pair of disembodied arms just floats on in cool i feel like as disembodied arms what direction are they when they just when they choose to free float on their own? Are they hands up, hands down, to the side? Are they palm out, palm in? Do they have the elbow? Is the elbow involved? Are they kind of like bent and flopping around?

Remember when you asked me if a neck and a throat, like where are they? Somebody like wrote in to me. I haven't even read it yet. I haven't gotten to my DMs. But I saw somebody's like, hey, as like a, I think an ENT or something, like, let me tell you where the throat is. And I was like, okay, good. Next time Emma asks, I'll be ready.

I have to go open that DM. But did they tell you where the threck is? I think, again, you invented that term. I think it makes total sense. And it sounds, it's one of those onomatopoeias where you hear threck. You, it makes the same sound. I hear shrek you it makes the same sound i hear shrek though i don't hear i don't i don't have the same association no because when you hear threk it

sounds as aggressive as the way your threk moves when someone tries to touch it like you know oh sure yeah actually i can yeah okay i get it i do see yeah yeah makes sense i know okay anyway tell the ent i i sent you she'll know what i'm sorry i'll tell them that you're not they're not needed any longer thank you it's like you and your threat can walk right out of our dms with without any information on it um so anyway i don't know what direction the disembodied arms are i don't know if one's being funny and one's upside down while the other one's right side up. I don't know.

However you choose to imagine it is great. Thomas continues to pray and the apparitions all start laughing and dance around almost as if mocking his prayers. It's like literally like something out of an evil Dr. Seuss. It's like crazy. It feels like a cartoon. Yeah. Then he hears a moan out of nowhere and then

all of a sudden they disappear but then weeks later he gets really sick and he starts hallucinating and seeing circles of crows around him and very soon after that he died oh no so that makes me wonder like was this an illness that causes hallucinations? And also, does that mean all the ghosts were also hallucinations? You know, but then like his wife also saw it. Did she also die recently? Wait a second. But what if she saw it, told him about it?

He didn't believe her. And then it was already in his mind as an idea. So when he hallucinated, that's what his brain conjured. You know, rough time. OK, well, there's your first uh ghost story and then i want to say over time more and more people started abandoning the narrow streets especially the wealthy who moved to newtown and in the 18th century now that the rich had left and now it was just ew plebes in the old town they decided that they were going to build a brand new royal exchange

to compete with newtown which i love that they're like we're gonna build a trade building better than the rich which like i appreciate the gusto i appreciate that um so they decided that mary king's close was the perfect spot for the exchange but there were already houses and buildings there and instead of like digging out the foundations to fully get rid of the houses they just tore down the upper floors and built the exchange on top so by putting the exchange on top of the lower floors because remember people started living in the cellars it essentially buried the original underground so it became a street on top of the street.

I understood. Understood. Okay. Yeah. Some people did stay in their cellar homes and like in like the underneath the ground homes, meaning that they ended up living literally underground and would have to take back alleys and tunnels to get back up to the ground. Like mole people. Like mole people. ground like um people like yeah i'll tell them you said that um so in 1902 the last business and mary king's close uh officially closed and that was 150 years after it went underground so there were businesses until 1902 that were still operating underground there and then wow do you know what the last holdout was no i don't know maybe being in a fucking creepy abandoned street by yourself and you know no i mean like what was the store like what was the last oh oh oh oh sketchers i don't know wow they really are the only ones left at

the mall huh yeah that's true so now there's underground uh there's an underground neighborhood which is even more enclosed than it ever was above ground now that it's been wiped out and a whole new street's been put on top and when people live down there illness spread because they spread even worse really because now you don't even have access to open air right then there was a crime issue because nobody could see what was going on down there so it was like the underbelly and free for all yeah exactly so it just got worse and worse and then in there actually was a poet who wrote about the conditions of this underground town and he said the condition of the inhabitants is as little known to respectable edinburgh

as are the habits of moles and earthworms the mole people he gets it you actually nailed it it's like you were the poet reincarnate i mean it's incredibly rude and i wouldn't like come on like just because they're yeah anyway but yes i got you so those who lived and worked in the underground uh close they often reported ghosts wandering the buildings which like i i do wonder as much as i'm a believer i wonder how much of the random sounds they must have heard was just a whole fucking town upstairs you know it was a mole a literal mole a real one i feel like the one that was staring at everyone and then became disembodied heads i just feel like you'd have so many like random things that you wouldn't normally expect in your day-to-day life if you're living

literally underground you know yeah yeah i don't know like moles like moles you know what i've said enough bullshit today you you can go now yeah that makes sense i've got it from here so above ground uh people were still seeing strange lights over the lake and once the last business closed the town was officially abandoned and so now there's like a whole abandoned town underneath and it was only used temporarily again as a bomb shelter during world war ii so that probably added only worse stuff to it yeah in 2003 the mary king's Close and the the closest in general, I guess, or the underground town became its own attraction. But before that, before 2003, which only 20 years ago, people like me in high school, their like favorite thing to do was to go try to explore this abandoned town. Sure, because of course, I mean, I would have done it, too.

I would have totally done it. And imagine if like there was like one like kind of like tall, lanky boy in the corner he was like i already imagined it i'm like i'm not it's i i saw exactly what you're outlining in my like i you know exactly where my brain went anyway oh the way the same reason i started the scrabble squad at my high school you know just like trying to impress a boy who was interested in my friend you know it's tale as old as time trying to impress a boy who was interested in my friend you know it's tale as old as time it's my true life i'll i'll never like it feel it's truly written out of a television series for you to even have the gall to say oh i was trying to impress him that's why i created the scrabble squad i can't imagine a more Tina Belcher experience.

She's relatable. What can I say? Did you have shirts? Can we, can I join? Can I make, I'll make shirts. Do you want a shirt? I mean, you could have joined until you started shitting all over the Scrabble squad and then, and how unsexy it is. And then I kind of changed my mind. Like maybe I don't want you. I don't want to hate her, you know, involved involved what if I told you I knew like a really cool lanky bad boy in the corner I thought you're gonna say a really cool word and I was like actually that might get you in the word is romance my friend and I can get you there so okay you know what I am nothing if not fickle so yeah sure you can come in and by the way i don't know if i've told you this but i really like salami now um it's my new favorite food fuck you i really that the first reaction you just saw was me going is she fucking kidding me you made a face and i was like oh i've i've angered the

beast i'm so sorry uh if anyone's watching youtube go back in time because that was a real reaction of me thinking i'm sorry i literally was flabbergasted i was like maybe it was too niche of a callback did everybody else understand that or was it like what the fuck why would you say that right now like it was perfectly niche but i it really i want you to know that it's actually happened like that so many times where that face has happened so many times where i'm like is she kidding me? Like two conversations ago, she said she doesn't eat this shit anymore. Sometimes I am kidding.

Mostly I'm not. So I'm going to, you know what? If you keep it up, I'm going to call you a really awful word, but I'm not going to say it to you. I'm just going to spell it in the Scrabble Squad. I was going to say, you can write it down next meeting. I'll figure it out.

I like to think that Scrabble Squad has a word du jour, you know? Ooh, yeah, me too what's your word today the word of the day salami i was gonna say salami yeah okay so in 2003 it became its own attraction um but before then people would try to explore it although it was not legal some people could get access down there if you asked in advance. So psychics would go down there. Investigators would go down there.

One psychic said that they actually felt overwhelming hunger and sickness and being cold. And then she actually felt someone grab her leg like a little kid. And she ended up, I guess, seeing the little kid or sensing the little kid um who was such an intense energy she couldn't even go into one of the rooms at first and when she finally did the spirit of the kid said her name was annie and she lost her doll why oh that's terrifying and also very sad so then the psychic so then the psychic came back later to the same spot with a new doll for her and brought her some peace. And ever since then, any visitors will try to leave offerings for Annie. So she always has a doll with her.

Okay. I mean, that's really sweet. Get ready for the word du jour to be a fucking fist fight. Because in 2019, someone thought it'd be funny to steal Annie. The doll. Why would you do that um they sold annie's doll and it has never come back no and to this day staff still even say publicly online wherever they can whoever has the doll please bring it back annie really really misses it and they even say if you bring it to us, you won't even be punished.

No questions asked. We just want her back for Annie. Yeah, if you're hearing this and you know who did it, just say, oh, just go in and say, I found this. I didn't do it. Yeah, I just found this random thing. And honestly, I'd like to imagine that maybe Annie just loved it so much that the thing happened where it magically disappeared from our cosmos and she has it maybe let's go with that can you imagine if she just took her own fucking doll and then i heard so much kerfuffle about it she yeah i was gonna say she sees people like making public statements and she just sits there like she's like oh shit

they'll never know um in mary king's close uh people have also seen orbs on film they've also gotten full figure apparitions on camera in 2005 there was uh one of the professors of edinburgh university uh she came to do an experiment ironically on the supernatural and while she was down there she was getting frustrated that she couldn't do the experiment because she kept hearing footsteps and the sounds of rustling clothing and she thought it was other people nearby but it was the supernatural it was the supernatural it was the supernatural she said from a professional point of view i was annoyed because i thought it was someone intruding on our experiment lol it was the ghost babe they were like we are the experiment. Hello. It's like, we're right here. We're giving you everything you want.

I'm the star. People will see a large imposing figure in this area. And many investigators have gone to EVPs. Some personal favorites are when the investigators asked, are you sick of seeing us yet? And a voice said, yes, I am. It's like, oh, sorry. I didn't know I was supposed to tell you. Yeah.

And then another one someone said would you like us to leave now and then the voice said just get out which i like that i like to think just get out was said with like like a really slow cigarette pull it's like just get out it's like finally a question i can answer yeah yeah um others have claimed to see the ghost of major thomas weir i am confused if major is his name or his title um i'm assuming title but i am too but then he starts being referred to as major and i'm like oh okay then maybe not i don't know remember that time that someone was named welcome in one of your bullshit stories? Yeah, I do. And then I Googled, what does the name Welcome mean?

And babycenter.com said, the name Welcome means welcome. And I was like, thank you so much. This is extremely helpful information. I'm so glad I ran in a circle for however long I did. Thomas Weir. Weird. Weird. Sorry. Weir without their. Weird. Weird. Sorry.

Weir without the D. Yeah. Major Thomas Weir. So. Major Weir is his name. Like, yeah. So that's his title. That's his rank.

Oh, OK. OK. OK. Because, by the way, as a kid, you know, the kids would call him Major Weirdo. Like, obviously. Major Weirdo. okay okay okay because by the way as a kid you know the kids would call him major weirdo like obviously major weirdo but you are such a bully today if it weren't the kids in middle school now that i know it's his rank you know someone in the military hates him and calls him major weirdo major weirdo um others have claimed to see the ghost of major Thomas Weir, who was known to carry a staff with him wherever he went. Yikes. But I guess he also does that as a. So he was a respected member of his

church. By the way, we're ending on this story. And I just want you to know, like, I saved this for last because talk about a fucking crazy ride. I mean, truly major weirdo. So he was a respected member of his church i'm only giving you backstory the point is people see his apparition but just so we all know who he was here we go he was a respected member of his church until one day during prayer he announced to the clergy voluntarily that he was working with the devil he could just he could just not fucking said that and put that in your linkedin don't fucking said that and be fine put that in your linkedin don't take that to church with you put it in your zanga and nowhere else like what are

you talking about nowhere else put it in your away message so people can like question it at least yeah like put it in a like more vague you know it's not even you just like took all the mystery out of it yeah and also like if you you had you had a good situation you were a you had a high rank you were a respected member of your community and then one day he woke up and he said never fucking mind so yeah tells the church he's working with the devil and then he goes oh oh oh that's not all then he goes he accuses himself of bestiality yikes oh what incest with his unmarried sister i love how unmarried is the crime okay don't worry though she's not married so don't worry i didn't i didn't disrespect another man i just slept with my sister um and he also admitted to learning witchcraft sorcery from his

mother so he really just hit all the buzzwords and this is getting weird it's almost like he knew he was about to get caught in something not that bad like maybe he like there was like a cheating scandal and he was like let me just put all these other ones in front of people so while while we're admitting things it was almost like it was like a weird defense where his defense was offense and he was like here's all these terrible things about me for you to focus on so you don't pay attention to the other thing that's the truth that tiny little thing i did yeah um so okay so he says i'm working with the devil i'm into bestiality i bang my sister and my mom is a witch then he says that sounds like

the monty python like your dad is a whatever the fuck then then people try to i love how like that was all way too much for people to process and so they didn't even know what to do and they're trying to save him from himself they're literally like they're like buddy like you just say out loud you're just say you're mentally ill so that way none of these confessions we can work with. Like just say something's up and we can ignore all of it. Just say you caught that hallucinating disease from that guy who saw the heads. Right. We'll understand.

Just say you breathe in too much poop air. It's OK. We've all been there. All done it. We've all done it. It's OK. all done it it's okay also like um like this is around a time period when like they were torturing women to admit that they were witches and then killing them on site for any sink for a birthmark this man stands up and says i am into witchcraft and so much worse and then they're like buddy calm down that can't be real that's not real yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah they're like we know you better than that silly goose it's literally like you don't have a woman's illness

god yeah so anyway just to remind you that throughout history men get away with everything um he said i want to sleep with dogs and my family and they went yeah that's okay buddy what a silly silly goose Just too much poop air. Just too much poop air. It happens. Anyway, then you think, oh, man, that's the season finale material we were looking for. Guess again. Because his sister corroborates the story.

And claims that she, not even like, oh, he's like assaulting me he said she says no no we're we're into it and oh and i have a witch mark on my forehead probably like a wrinkle or something because she's probably 21 and not married oh yeah she's unmarried remember that's the problem she's got a one wrinkle on her forehead sick um and then and then both of them together insisted i mean this has to be mental illness they've been both insisted on being tried and executed like they said they literally that morning they woke up everyone loved them and then by nightfall they were begging people to kill them okay Okay. Then, in the end, the courts didn't want to charge them with witchcraft. Oh, the irony.

Yeah. And then, it was like, we'll find you guilty for other things, but not witchcraft. So they were relinquished of the witchcraft crime, but they were found guilty of bestiality. And that was enough to have them hanged and their remains burned. What? Which, like, I appreciate that they had that kind of guilt i guess but like like you could have also never said anything and gotten away with it so like i want to know what the thought process was there this is so weird at the scaffold for her execution the sister i guess in a blaze of glory, she was like, this is my last time to really like make a statement at her execution.

She says executioner Uno Momento and then takes all of her clothes off in front of the crowd. Just to be remembered. I don't know. I don't know. It all feels really very unstable. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah don't know. It all feels really very unstable. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah.

Something was off for sure. Like what the fuck is going on here? And then on the way to his execution, the major weirdo, he was marched through Mary King's close and they think some of his energy is still lingering around there. So if you ever feel anything fucking chaotic, just know that it might be him keep walking don't look up you might see his head or i don't know i don't know i don't know what the deal is there i don't want to know i don't really don't um anyway so he's probably the the wildest energy you're going to pick up mary king's clothes but visitors visitors in general can take tours of the close today.

And, um, many people have said just like with that psychic, but they feel very cold out of nowhere. They're overcome with emotions. They feel sick. They get really, really hungry.

They see apparitions walking around, going through the walls and down the halls. They get grabbed. They hear voices. And before you do go on a tour, even if it's not like a spooky haunted tour, the tour guides like make a public statement that like don't even think about checking out these narrow pathways if you're claustrophobic. So, oh, OK. Yeah. Good to know. Or afraid of the dark because it's it gets dark really quick when there's no sunlight because of all the buildings.

So great. Anyway, that is Mary King's Close. Because it gets dark really quick when there's no sunlight because of all the buildings. Great. Anyway, that is Mary King's Close. Jeez, that was a fucking journey, dude. I know. I really talked forever. I'm sorry. No, I mean, no. I don't know if only YouTubers can sense this, but we had a couple technical difficulties right in the middle. So it probably just feels long.

It's very fun when people think that uh almost 400 episodes into this we've got it figured out every every day there's a tech issue there's always something always um always okay well um i have uh it's finally time for you to understand why i am in the headspace that i should should we do it crack into it let's crack into the story of dennis raider we're back we we had some kerfuffle some it felt like the universe was trying to shut it down as um we recorded this episode so we took tweets we took a little break um so if you're on youtube and you're like why are they why did they do a costume change um we thought about i have depression and i don't often change

my clothes so maybe i'm wearing the same thing i don't remember you're not anymore you're not i checked but um okay i i was wearing my momster shirt and I was like well you know I could put it back on I don't have any problems with wearing dirty clothes but that just seems disingenuous because we did take a little break and while we were taking said break I um felt really uh like making my own life difficult and decided to keep watching um more information about the topic i'm covering today um and so now i'm coming back to m with a revised you know remember when they would sell textbooks so m earlier said chegg and i said like your seventh edition yeah where they changed the edition just to make you

pay 140 for it even though like they changed the color of the font or something right right right they changed the the history textbook with the white man in an egyptian outfit to a white man in a different racist outfit they've changed the number of buttons on george washington's petticoat well that's kind of what i did here today i'm here with all sorts of petticoats m has heard part of the story and eva said we could throw her under the bus so i'm gonna do exactly that sure apparently you're gonna get the list hang on no m that not that part. That is a whole separate episode. Eva, cut that out. You didn't hear about it.

Eva, cut that out. No, Eva apparently is like new day, new her, and got like a treadmill that she walks on at the desk and then also bought an Apple Watch on eBay and then also decided to learn what Siri does and is. And I guess tried to, while we were recording, tried to text Rachel and like the whole call just like. Interfered with our episode.

The whole thing shut down, yeah. Yeah, so anyway, all that to say, it's a combination of all our faults, really probably not M's, but maybe mine. But mainly Eva's, so. But mainly Eva's, no. But yeah, so if you are on YouTube, you'll notice that our intro and our, are we even, do we do three different costume changes throughout this episode?

No, we're not doing your story again. Oh, right, right. No, but in the intro, we're really talking about how much fun we're having like why we drink no we already did that all that right but aren't we going to be in different clothes than that right now yeah and then and then next week this is a part two surprise everybody no this is right and then next week will be part two yeah but part two we record on a different day oh right shit for a second i thought we were just like like spinning around backstage and doing a bunch of changes what is happening okay basically this episode i forget what's a podcast hang on thank god no one's listening to this right now um anyway yeah okay i'm just gonna tell the story

and um okay m already knows the story because i started it when we recorded this a couple days ago i'm gonna start it over again i'm covering btk okay btk dennis raider ever heard of him he's a fucking terror and he lives in my brain. And I'm so ready to get him out of there. So ready. I'm so ready. Can we all give everywhere where everyone is. Raise your drinks and let's give Christine like a little sip across the globe.

Because she has had one of the worst criminals in her mind for, I don't know, two weeks, three weeks now? No, months now. It's been, I swear to God, I went back. It's been probably like two months, maybe six weeks that I've been working on this. And it all began. Let me blame someone else. It all began when I first listened to the Creeps and Crimes three-parter that Taylor did on BTK. And I was like, wow, this so hard-hitting and so well done

and she was so fucked up by the story that i listened to it and then i got fucked up by the story and then i was like well now i have to cover it so if you wait a few months like did research now i'm covering it and i'm like i know how she feels he lives in your brain it's terrible um and so now that i'm redoing this again it's time to get him out let's fucking get him out okay yeah yep and by that i mean i'm just putting it into all your brains and i'm so sorry but um if you're if you happen to also be a true crime podcaster and you want to report on him yeah you can it's just it's just a chain of trauma between email if you send this to seven people, the girl from the ring won't come out of your TV. Oh, well, but we do. We show up in your TV sometimes if you're watching us on YouTube. In many costume changes, you'll never know. Okay.

I feel like such an idiot. Okay. I'm so sorry, everybody. All right. This is a really long intro into my half of the episode and I do apologize. Okay. So let's just get into it. All right. Let me tell you about BTK. I'm going to tell myself that you forgot most of this already. I did. And you did say that since we've recorded last time, you've done even more research. So there is information that I just- A lot more new stuff. Yeah. So this is actually pretty much a new episode to me. Pretty brand new to you. Okay, great. So the btk killer as he is known otherwise known as dennis raider was a prolific serial killer who was active from the 1970s um which was the

golden age as terrible as a phrase as that is of serial killers uh into the 90s and it was uh dennis raider himself who suggested his own title, which is just as loser-ish as you can imagine. It, of course, stood for his notorious method of murder. You did pass this test last time, but can you tell the people what BTK stands for? Yes, and I'm glad I took a beat with myself because I almost said it really excitedly since I've passed a test and right and now i'm gonna bring it back down bring it back down um btk stands for bind torture and kill that's correct and um fucking terrible we'll get into why but i think you can all guess um so this guy dennis raider he desperately wanted recognition he idolized other serial killers like Ted Bundy.

He really wanted attention. And that would ultimately be his downfall, which I feel like we've seen with other narcissistic serial killers in the past. And he took such pride in what he did, the fucked up things he did. and he liked his own title that he gave himself so much that we are going to call him Dennis Raider today because Dennis probably is like the least assuming it's like the most you made a really good point you made a really good point um the first time we recorded this which nobody else got to hear but um and I know you just said it quickly but last time you kind of lingered on it and I think it's important to mention that, you know, so many people that we cover, one of the reasons that they do it or one of the side benefits to them is that they get this notoriety of, you know, this is what I did to them or they're my victims, not their survivors of what I pulled out. of what bullshit i pulled out and all he i mean he literally named himself because he wanted to be known and so one of the reasons you said last time that we're gonna be calling him dennis is just our own extra version of fuck you we're not gonna call you no the the whatever weird

super villain name you created for yourself yeah like i don't want you jacking off to your own nickname you fucking pervert yeah so we So we're going to call him Dennis. You know what? Just a normal guy from Kansas, Dennis. And Dennis was born March 9th, 1945. And this part is probably one of the wildest, even though it sounds innocuous statements in this whole set of notes, is that he had such a normal childhood that it just does not seem conceivable why he turned into what he turned into so you know that's not a normal thing with these guys right like

there's usually some trauma some abuse no head injury yeah a head injury you know and he's claimed that he had head injuries and I kind of looked into that a little bit. And he claimed, oh, I was dropped on the head as a baby. And it was such a severe blow to my head that I turned blue. But, like, nobody can really for sure say if that's true, A, and B, if that would have turned him into this kind of monster. So beyond that, his family, they were just a regular old church going Wichita family active in the community. One of Dennis's friends from childhood remembered him being like somewhat competitive and could even be, you know, kind of a bully, like a sore loser.

But I'm like, I know many kids, including myself, who probably behaved that way. And, you know, it wasn't a red flag enough to turn my parents into, you know, to put them on high alert. He's just a normal bratty kid. harboring quite a few dark fantasies and this all started when he was in grade school so he and his friends would play cops and robbers or like the even less pc version cowboys you know and they would tie each other up in barns and that is kind of when he first realized that the act of being tied up but more so the act of someone else being tied up and restrained was very arousing to him and i don't know that he knew what arousal was but it gave him you know a funny feeling so there was oh go ahead sorry no sorry now i'm just on my like fucking train to nowhere um i know but for the sake of banter let me i i pulled it and it's it's broken off and the car's like 60 miles an hour hey it's like me on the highway

oh christine too soon i was just for the sake of banter going to be willing to embarrass myself if you were interested oh my god i would love nothing more yeah um. So when we were, when I was younger, like a little kid, we had, my mom's house still has a basement and they have like these load bearing poles down there. And my friends and I also used to tie each other up on the pole. And I don't know what that was about but I also was really into it and like and I I don't know I don't know why because that has for the record I don't know if anyone's caught on to my ways but it has not translated to like adult me but um something as a kid I I don't know what it was but I remember we used to tie each other like statement like I don't know what it was, but I remember we used to tie each other up. I love Em's statement. I don't know if you all have caught on, but I'm really not

that into BDSM in my own relationship. I know someone's got a side comment about being tied up. Since we're there, let me just say I have made a hard line that I'm not interested in being tied up. Here's a main reason

as an adult. I'm afraid someone's going to touch my armpits. I'm like, what if if i get tickled i can't tolerate i don't even want to know about it um well i am sorry that i'm taking my clothes off but it's so hot so here i'm sorry i thought i was wearing christian's shoulders are out i'm sorry hold on let me put on this not while i'm in the middle of talking about like my awakening why am i doing that i'm just so sweaty you wish we were tying each other up to a pole christine i think no we would okay here's the weird thing though as a little kid we i had like a tea set like i feel

like a lot of us had tea sets um in hindsight this is like so foul like bacteria wise because like i don't remember the ever washing them ever but i we used to i had a place a tea set down there we had this like game of chase and whoever lost had to get tired of the pole and then and then we would force feed each other sprite in the tea set and i don't know what i don't know how that. And I don't know what, I don't know how that came about. I don't know why it lasted for years. That was a big game we played. And I also now in hindsight,

I'm like, wow, just think of how many years of old sticky Sprite was at the bottom of that. And we just kept drinking new Sprite out of it. At least it was all chemically, you know, it's just like

that fucking sugar. It was probably not. It just eats away the porcelain or whatever it was yeah you mean the grade one plastic um yeah the made in china little tykes plastic yeah but i remember like one of my friends at the time i had a crush on her and so i would like want to play this game a lot more with her i was like i want to be force fed Sprite. I don't know what my problem was, but. Well, Allison, maybe that's something to try. You know, get some Sprite.

Maybe it'll like spark a new interest, you know? I don't know. I mean, I'm just saying. But as an adult now, I'm like, oh, but like if I can't drink my own Sprite, like it's so, it's so sticky. It's like, ugh. Like sensory overload. Anyway, mom, if you're listening, that's what we did downstairs. Well, okay.

Can I tell you a secret that I've literally not told anybody ever? And I'm putting my sweatshirt back on because the cord of my headphones. Because of the shame. Well, that too. But the cord of the headphones is through the hoodie. Oh, Christine. I know. I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry. You just literally undressed for me to talk about a sexual fantasy and then put your clothes back on. You literally said I wanted to be tied up and then I just whipped my shirt off. Like, what is wrong with me? I didn't do it intentionally. And then I said, story's over and you put your shirt back on. I know. I'm so sorry.

This is like sickening the way I'm behaving today. That was such a tease. Wait a minute. I'm so sorry. Okay. Let me put my the way I'm behaving today. That was such a tease. Wait a minute. I'm so sorry. Okay. Let me put my Ruth Bader Ginsburg's shirt back on. Okay. Okay.

Go ahead. Here's the thing. We played a game where we would have... Okay. This is so embarrassing. I'm sweating so much and I'm still friends with one of these people. So I hope she doesn't hear this this i can't wait to hear it game in our friend's basement where we would pretend to be like the mailman and then the other person would invite us in for tea

and then we would drink tea out of the tea set this seems to be like a weird parallel but with the mailman force feed the tea i they were no but then they would fall in love and then we didn't know what it was but we would go lay down in bed and then the other person would come home from work and say honey i'm home and find a novella what are you talking about find the other two with the tea set scattered about uh and we played this weird like uh adultery game interest adultery fantasy game interesting because if you were drinking tea with anyone else i would also consider that cheating so your um your role play has come to life a few of us turned out pretty gay so i'm like maybe that was what's happening um you know

the people in that group that i recall several you know several i wonder if that was part of it i don't know i'm just saying maybe that was like a gay thing that kids did there was another game i don't know did you play t-set and tie tie you up to a pole or is that just like a fucked up divorce kid thing i think that's an hr problem i think maybe we should never mind don't answer that you're completely right you're m you are 100 right i'm crossing every line today stop did you ever have a role play fan ever tie up children what the fuck stop it christine you can't ask that question i feel like i've lost my damn mind today. I feel like I've really lost it. Like, should we wait another few days to record this? I don't think I can talk about this anymore. Okay.

Shifting gears. Like, there was another game. I don't remember what it was called, but it was something. It was with the same girl that would tie me up and force me to be spiteful. Well, you should check what she's up to today because I can almost guarantee I know. She's still one of my best friends and she's like as straight as an arrow. And I'm like, that doesn't make sense. Are you sure?

Like you were doing some really gay shit. Maybe she was just getting it out of her system. Maybe. If only it were that easy for me. I know, right? That's the thing parents say, right? Like they're just, it's a phase. It was just a phase.

It's a phase. I remember we also, okay, well, I can't even get into that. We... There was a game we would play. It was also... Well, it was also kind of my favorite game because it was like, okay.

You would sit on each other's laps and try to flirt with each other. And like... Now we're one-upping each other's's stories did all kids do this do all kids do like weird fucked up stuff like this i think maybe it's normal i don't know we were like 10 and like the whole thing was like you had to ask a certain question or something i don't remember it was it was um i don't remember the question but you would like sit on each other's laps in a circle and you would try to make the you try to flirt until the other one got uncomfortable and then you won it was like

super weird but the joke was uh she didn't know i had a crush on her and her flirting was i definitely was very comfortable with it so oh you were like sorry i'm never gonna lose baby i won but um yeah it was it was just such a weird game i don't know why i don't know where that came from but okay i'm sorry to say i do have an update eva said i did let my sister and friend lock me in the dog cage part of the car oh my god oh man okay you know what i'm glad you voluntarily gave us some information eva, because I was a little curious. Please, for the record, I did not elicit this information forcefully. Everything's alleged. I don't know.

Okay. So anyway, so far, we played fucked up games. So far, we're very similar to Vck i don't know and that's okay and i know maybe it comes off as um like in poor taste to discuss and laugh about that as as we're talking about the story but it really does go to show and i feel like this is definitely a pattern of this whole episode is that which we briefly discussed last time when siri shut us down, that people like to dehumanize him in a lot of instances. I've listened to, you know, podcasts or,

or documentaries. People have like an inclination, which is totally understandable, but an inclination to turn him into like this inhuman monster creature that we could never relate to that we could never relate to, that we could never understand. And one of the documentaries that I watch, or docuseries, I guess, the woman who is a, she's like a forensic profile, I believe, forensic psychologist. And she interviews Dennis Rader. And she's gotten a lot of flack for this because, you know, like we said, all he wants

is to get his own story out there and he loves to be heard and so it is a little bit like iffy that he's narrating basically this whole docu-series but she makes a very you know um good point to say the reason i do this is because i want to go back and see what this person who's done these atrocious things was like as a kid. So maybe over time we can start to recognize these signs. We can we can act before things get so out of hand and so many people are killed and hurt. And, you know, it's interesting because clearly we do have similarities, as I think most people would hope they have zero similarities with Dennis Rader. But, you know, that's part of why it's so scary is that this is a person you can relate to this is a person

who did similar childhood things as us this is a person who uh could be your dad your neighbor your i don't know accountant whatever it's like the the worst part of true crime is that even the biggest monster in some way is human like there's unfortunately right like yeah exactly we don't like you don't want to relate to them but even if it's something as small as like you both have the same favorite ice cream flavor like there is a human part to each of these people which maybe i think it's uncomfortable because we so desperately don't want to have any any way to relate to a person like this and yet these people do have families there are people who are collateral damage and them doing this kind of these awful atrocities it's

there's people on the other side who you do want to empathize for that happen to know him you know and so exactly exactly and who who didn't realize and you've made this point before in previous episodes too that like you'd like to think that you'd be able to spot somebody from a mile away somebody so sick in the head somebody who did such terrible things but people like this are so good at compartmentalizing at separating their you know day-to-day to day face to face version of themselves, or even at home with family that, that you, his own family never knew what he was doing behind the scenes and how extreme it was. So yeah, I just feel like when we, when we joke about, oh, haha, we did stuff like that, too. It's like, well, you know, a lot of kids probably do. It's

probably pretty normal. It's just that he recalls it like that too. It's like, well, you know, a lot of kids probably do. It's probably pretty normal. It's just that he recalls it in such a different light saying like, that is when I realized, you know, this was a fetish. And guess what? A lot of people have fetishes. A lot of people have exactly this fetish being tied up and it doesn't turn into what it does in this story.

So, you know, there's just so many elements of like, this is a normal guy until it's not until he takes it so far that we can't relate. There's a I think what I find fascinating in that type of, I guess, research that she's doing is where does the nuance become criminal or like where's the red flag almost because like you said a lot of people tie each other up as kids and realize that they've got a thing there and that's not criminal for anybody else so like what where was the line or what was it and what was like the too far what was the line where it said it should set off alarm bells you know what's the sign where it's like oh this is not just normal kids play? We probably will never know. Yeah, we probably will never know.

So that's just kind of insight into where this began for him. But of course, as we know, it just progressed and progressed and got a lot worse. But otherwise, he had a pretty normal, quote unquote, for, you know, as far as serial killers are concerned a

relatively normal childhood um there is another formative moment that he does recall and i think this one is probably a little more unique and a little more um telling but at one point he explains that his mother's ring so she was vacuuming under the couch and her ring got caught on a spring underneath the couch. And she was stuck and she kind of panicked because she couldn't undo. She can reach her hand with her other hand. And so she shouted at him, go get help. And Dennis saw her face. This person who his mother, who is usually in charge, who usually, you know, is is his superior is now trapped and needs his help

and that cemented this response in his mind he froze he felt feelings of arousal he said he realized that her being you know trapped and struggling was really attractive to him really sexually arousing and this terror and her terror and his control was really intoxicating and he did ultimately break from this trance and run to his grandma's house next door to get help but that kind of stuck in his mind and as an example of some more uh when he basically took these feelings and turned them into action items. He had in fifth grade a beef, a beef. Oh, okay. Not beef, a beef with a fifth grade teacher.

And he said, you know, she just had this complex and she liked to push me around. So he went to her house, this is in fifth grade, and began watching her through the windows. Oh my. Yeah, and this for a little bit was enough but eventually he needed more um so one day he brought a rope with him and he tied himself up to the trellis as he watched her and that was the first time he ever came to completion uh and that is by the way i i need to mention this now because i want to get it out

of the way and never discuss it again um he called his his um completion he called it sparky big time of all the things you could call it that's not the most clever um it's just fucking gross and stupid because like, get over yourself. Like he did this through his whole, I'm not talking in fifth grade, by the way, people. I'm talking like as a grown ass adult, he would talk about it and call it Sparky Big Time. And it's like, get it together, fucking guy. Like I am not, I'm not'm I don't understand people naming things. But if you're going to do it, it better be fucking worth it. And like that.

It's not right. It's not even a little good. Like, what are we supposed to do? Be like, good one. You know, like, what's the right? I don't know. Like, here I go. Fake knee slapping like that.

Yeah. It's just gross. Yeah. So people thought of Dennett. They didn't obviously know these things about him or I imagine these are the massive red flags we would have looked out for. But I answered that question that that FBI psychologist was asking. But people typically what's too far? Tying yourself to your teacher's trellis to ejaculate on the floor.

Yeah, that's probably actually. Yeah. Very quickly quickly we figured out that something had already not clicked right around exactly so people typically thought of dennis as just like an average kid and that ended up being almost his superpower because people really couldn't imagine that he this kind of humdrum guy could be something so monstrous behind the scenes. So he lived in Wichita or the Wichita area, at least for his whole life, except for four years, 1966 to 70, when he served in the Air Force. And after he came home from the Air Force, he quickly found the woman he was going to marry. Her name was Paula and they met at church they were actually by all accounts pretty happy together at least you know for a couple in that time period who maybe didn't know

all the secrets of the other partner uh but they seemed pretty happy you know he treated her well quote unquote and he to this day claims i was a good father and a good spouse and like he fails to see that treating someone well and then doing all these other things outside the home doesn't make you like you're still a shitty father because now you're putting your children through what you did outside like he's not extrapolating his yes what is like the cause and effect of his actions. He just doesn't see that. He like considers them completely separate. It's like, well, I made her dino chicken nuggets.

Yeah, exactly. So how bad could I be? And it's like, you fucker. Very bad. And your family does not like you anymore because of that, you know? And he just can't understand it. So in any case, Paula and Dennis seemed pretty happy together. Dennis continued to live a pretty quiet, typical

Midwestern life. It seemed pretty damn normal to his friends and family. But of course, as we know now, Dennis was really living an insidious double life that not even his own wife, Paula, suspected. So early in their marriage, he was already breaking into and entering people's houses. And the catalyst for that was getting laid off from his dream job. He got a job at Cessna, the airplane company, and he loved it. But after only a short while, he was laid off. And he's not sure why to this day. But for some reason, he uses that as sort of an excuse or a reason as to why he started breaking into people's houses. Like out of anger and frustration, he took it out on women who had nothing to do with him losing his job. But for some reason, it gave him a thrill of power and control to invade someone else's space, steal from them.

They wouldn't know he was there. He got off on that. But of course, that would not be enough, you know, after a certain amount of time. So in January 1974, 28-year-old Dennis made the leap, and boy was it a leap, from burglary to murder. One day, while driving his wife Paula to work, Dennis spotted 34-year-old Julie Otero outside with one of her children. The Oteros were a family of seven, including parents Joseph and Julie and their five children, and they had just moved to Wichita six months earlier. Joseph Otero, the father, was outgoing, friendly, fun-loving. Julie was known as a loving parent. She was described as a mother, first and foremost, who prioritized and doted on her children. And looking at her, Dennis said, that's her.

That's my first victim. He was also, unfortunately, particularly interested in 11-year-old Josephine, their daughter. And he later explained that he was, quote, attracted to Hispanic women with their dark skin, hair and eyes. And all the fucked upery aside, this is also a child, an 11 year old. So like women doesn't apply here. But, you know, all of that just to give you an idea of like how his own fucked up mind works. So he spent two months stalking julie and getting to know her routine and finally on january 15th 1974 he made his move now i'm going to tell you his

plan because let's just say things did not go according to his original plan okay so his plan was to attack both julie and josephine because he knew when they would be home. According to the jailhouse interviews used for the docuseries I was referencing earlier, which is called BTK Confessions of a Serial Killer. And I want to point out again to take anything that comes out of his mouth with a grain of salt because he loves to hear himself talk. He loves to create his own narrative. salt because she loves to hear himself talk he loves to create his own narrative but according to his own words his plan was to kidnap julie take her out to his family's barn and basically set up a sort of torture shed where he could you know do perverted horrible things to her and then ultimately hang her this was his oh my god jesus okay i know and in fact he'd actually been working on something called his silo of terror

oh my god what the fuck yeah yeah i i hate to do this to you m Em, but I'm gonna. I have a blueprint, a hand-drawn blueprint. Oh, okay. I do want to see it out of morbid curiosity, but I also have the chills at the same time. I know. It's pretty horrific. Here's one picture of it. Oh, my God. Well, it's pretty fucking detailed.

Yes. Wow. That's a real whole layout. Oh, my God. that's a real whole layout oh my god it's he really thought of himself as some sort of fucking creative genius like biggest eye roll of all time accompanying that because like he is proud of this shit and it's like you what are you proud of this is so fucked up like get a hobby well he did get a hobby i guess so get did get a hobby. I guess so. Get a better one.

Get a different hobby. Yeah. Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. But basically, this silo of terror, he had these blueprints, and he used colored pencil to color code them. Like, it's just fucking stupid. But this was his big plan. It never came to fruition, thank God.

But he'd had this plan in his mind where he would create a silo of terror and it had nooses and one of those medieval torture wheels inside of it in his mind. Not really. him is he had this fantasy where he will fantasize about women being strapped to a train track and getting run over by a train oh my jesus christ and this was apparently part of the blueprint of his fucking he was gonna put a train in there sorry the mountain of tasks it would take to get a train in there learn about are you talking about? How do you stop the train fast enough that it doesn't crash into the other side of the house, of the silo? Like, isn't a silo tall? Like, is it?

I don't understand. Like, is it just on a continuous track, like around one of those Christmas villages, and you just put people on there? Oh, right, in a circle? Yeah. Oh, my God. I mean, I know, like every the logistics are wild but if you if you zoom in which i which i'd recommend you don't do but i'm gonna make you do anyway um if you zoom in you can see the train up top um to the right that's a train i was wondering

what that was i thought it was like a clock tower or something it does look like a clock tower but it is a full-ass train um and the fact that he was trying to build a train station as a hobby is that's how that's how highly he thought of himself right he's like I worked at Cessna for two minutes I can build a train okay yeah I'm an engineer not only can I build the tracks the foundation to put a train on and the train and like first of all and also how are you going to get a train in there without like the town realizing there's a fucking train somewhere where did our train go it's like you it's i i mean like the amount of questions i would have is actually could be its own podcast but exactly and to hear that's what's so frustrating too is like to hear him talk about it in this docu-series where he's like so proud and of course it's

sickening because you're like this fucking guy getting off on telling the story but like there's something about hearing him talk about it and you're like wow he's really fucking delusional enough to think fully put a train inside a silo like he fully is proud of this idea i think that just think this is a fucking great idea and um like was like where was the silo gonna be because you know a neighbor would hear a train through the wall like a train that moves five feet or ten feet or however big and also stops immediately like so that it doesn't crash into their other apartment like it it makes no fucking sense he delusional is the perfect word delusional and to this day thinks that it's such a great idea you know which is like wow he really

has not picked up i like i feel like he i don't have any reference to point at but i i like that because he drew a blueprint of it he thinks he's had everyone fooled like all the other questions don't matter he's like well i sketched it so i don't know what you're confused about yeah i used colored pencil to color code uh different levels the train is looks like a clock tower you saw it so you saw it right we all saw it yeah yeah exactly it's like he suddenly thinks he's some sort of fucking mastermind and it's like okay guy um so anyway we're back to january 15th i tell you that to tell you this is what his quote-unquote grand scheme was for julie this is what he wanted to do i think we were all safe from that plan but that plan was probably never going to happen exactly so january 15th 1974 dennis

climbs over the back fence of the oteros property and he's wearing his air force parka it's filled the pockets are filled with bindings and various weapons he is really nervous because this is his first murder his first kill so he creeps through the backyard and he cuts the phone line which is becomes part of his mo that's when he notices dog prints and he had not planned for the family to have a dog. And he almost backed out at this point, which is like gut-wrenching because we were this close to not even having this whole occurrence happen. But he almost backed out, almost. Instead, when someone opened the back door to let the dog out, Dennis jumped into action and said, this is my moment. So he walked through the back door and he caught julie otero by

surprise as she made sandwiches in the kitchen but it was not just julie at home there was also the youngest child nine-year-old joseph jr or joey who was also there in addition to julie and josephine who he expected and then in walks mr joseph oo himself, the father of the family who's supposed to be at work, according to BTK Dennis's plans. Apparently, Dennis had not done as much research as he thought he had or he wasn't as good at it. Shocker as he thought he was, because it turns out Joseph Otero had actually broken a few ribs at work and he was at home recovering on a sort of workers comp situation. And so he's suddenly instead of two people sort of workers comp situation and so he's suddenly instead of two people a woman and a child he's now confronted with four uh so he's totally off his off his game already right and joseph otero of course is completely startled i want

to also remind everybody this is occurring in the morning this is like 8 a.m so they're just you know the kids just left for school the older kids just left for school they're just having a normal morning let the dog out suddenly there's a man in their kitchen and joseph otero thought at first this was a prank set up by his brother uh oh shit what he what what kind of pranks are his brother i know i i was like oh i wonder i don't want to know what other pranks you guys have pulled on each other like but haha a stranger in my house but i also understand like wanting to like rationalize what the fuck's going on i think because i thought about that a lot it must be shock right it's like how else do you yeah why else at 8 15 in the morning is some rando man, some white bread looking dude just standing in your kitchen saying, I'm here to rob you.

He thought, well, maybe my brother set up this fucked up prank. But of course, then Dennis shows him his gun and Joseph realized immediately this was no prank. Dennis told the Oteros he meant them no harm and he only needed money and a few provisions so joseph said okay okay you can have whatever you wanted uh you can even have our car although there's no gas in it and of course this was all a total fabrication um dennis planned to kill them from day one he was never just planning to get food and money and leave but dennis got off on making people feel safe with him when he knew full well they were anything but safe with him and he also got off on being able to subdue people like this sort of make them feel like at ease like if you

cooperate everything will be fine you know so the of course, thinking they would be spared if they did cooperate, let Dennis tie them up with a rope he had brought. He led them into the bedroom where Julie and Josie sat on the bed and Joseph and Joey sat on the floor. And according to his rendition, at least, at one point the bonds were uncomfortably tight so he loosened them uh he even gave joseph a pillow to alleviate some of the pain in his ribs because he was kind of laying uncomfortably and he later explained to the judge i'm not a bad guy i care for people i'm trying to comfort them

as much as i could i have concerns for people and I hadn't really crossed that path yet where I was going to kill the people yet. So I was still in concern mode. I call bullshit, by the way. I call fucking bullshit, of course, immediately on all of it. Also, like, nothing says narcissist more than like, oh, I went into concern mode. There's no concern mode. That's not a thing. You're right. Yeah, exactly. Like the fact that you think you have to enter a manual mode is crazy like that exactly like and that's something you just enter and exit on command like that's a very clear symptom of not having emotions yeah exactly like he just can't understand what anybody else means because there were questions later um about other crimes he committed where where the the forensic psychologist asks you know weren't you concerned about the kids not in this case a different story and he said no no they were old enough to take care of themselves

and it's like what that's not no christine you don't understand he hadn't entered concern mode oh i'm so sorry we forgot to turn the switch. You're so stupid, Christine. I'm so stupid. Right. I know. So it's just like really sinister. And it gives you kind of an insight into how he thinks he's a good guy, even though he's about to do some of the most unspeakable acts that have fucking haunted me for months.

unspeakable acts that have fucking haunted me for months so once he has tied these people up and he's holding them at gunpoint he claims the realization dawned on him that oh wait they've seen my face i'm not wearing a mask so i have to kill all of them they have to die otherwise i'm i'm screwed my speculation which again which, again, is full speculation, but is just how I feel after reading this 8 million times, is that I think he, as soon as he walked in, saw them all, had the plan to kill them. I don't think he was going to spare them. I don't think he would have done differently if he was wearing a mask.

I think he's trying to make himself look, quote unquote, good in his own fucked up way. Well, he went into concern mode for himself. Yeah, I'm sorry. I think he's trying to make himself look quote unquote good in his own fucked up way. I say he went into concern mode for himself. Yeah. I'm sorry. It's just like I had to kill them because how else would I get away with it? I'm not a bad guy.

Like, you know, you know him with the train. He's all about logistics. So he's got it's like your blueprint. You're a witness now. So the strategy has changed. Everybody understands, he says. Fucking lunatic. So as he later described to the judge, when he came to that realization, and this is blood chilling, he, quote, made a decision to go ahead and put them all down.

Oh. Whoa. Yeah. all down oh whoa yeah and again he sees them as others as animals as not humans as not children he just i'm gonna put them down and he uses that terminology a lot which is so disturbing so this is the part all of the next few paragraphs are extremely disturbing and pretty graphic, folks. So please, you know, be kind to yourself. Skip forward if you'd like. But here we go.

So Rader placed a plastic bag over Joseph's head and tightened it. He then strangled Julie, later commenting that he didn't realize how hard it was to strangle a person as he had only ever killed cats before oh my god as an example he claimed he thought he'd strangled both mrs otero and josephine the 11 year old to death but they both later came to and he had to strangle them again essentially oh yeah my god so joseph the father managed to chew a hole through the plastic bag that was over his head so dennis added a t-shirt and another plastic bag yeah oh my god that ultimately killed him so dennis then went after j Jr. or Joey next. He placed a plastic bag over Joey's head and strangled him as well.

There was a chair found in the room, which police assumed was used by the killer to sit and watch as Joey suffocated to death. But for whatever reason, and this is kind of a pattern with him, Dennis later claimed he was only using that chair when he was subduing joey and he left he didn't sit and watch joey die because that's that would be cruel right that would be cruel that's that's where the that's where the mindset is is so fucked up he he says i wouldn't i wouldn't have done that no no i didn't do that yes i did tie a plastic bag around a child's head and kill him but no no i wouldn't sit there and watch so i don't even know what is to believe because i don't believe a fucking word out of this idiot's mouth but he really does think like that makes sense to people um i don't think i even mentioned this anywhere in my notes so i'll just throw it in here as well he too far so he's i know it's just like oh okay so you have

so we're supposed to think you have some sense of decency then i guess because you won't and he said even serial killers have a line they won't cross you're murdering people's children in the most gruesome brutal way but but rape is too far you know i wish i could ask what his like definition of cruel is because for him because some things he's like oh i wouldn't do that but it's like okay but there's other things you're clearly capable and willing of like and don't even find that disturbing yes like where's your line where's your own line with like what's rape that's his own line he said he would never cross that line too far that's it just that one just that one yeah okay that's why r isn't in his name i guess it's just btk right exactly he's like that would be uncouth it's like okay okay sure whatever you say so the last to die was josephine um

this again please fast forward a few times if you are anybody but em and eva and our editor jack because i'm so sorry but they have to hear this um but yeah folks please fast forward a few times if you don't want to hear this. But yeah, folks, please fast forward a few times. If you don't want to hear this part, it's pretty fucking upsetting. Dennis took a barely conscious Josephine down to the basement. And he decided to he first asked if she had a camera, if her family had a camera in the house because he wanted to take some photos of her. She said, no, we don't have a camera. So he sets up a rope that he hangs from a pipe in the basement. And he is getting her set up to hang her from the rope.

And her last words are to ask him, what's going to happen to me? And Dennis calmly told her, well, honey, you're going to be in heaven with the rest of your family. Oh. He then hanged her from the pipe and pulled her underwear down and uh her body was later found with semen on and around it oh so wait he's not into rape but that but that's okay okay yeah that's it's so there's these imaginary lines he creates make no fucking sense. So, folks, the really gruesome details are over.

It's still obviously fucked up, but you can start listening again as far as the graphic details. Yeah. So afterwards, Rader cleaned up. he took the family's radio and their car uh which was pretty much out of gas uh and he parked it in a parking lot and threw the keys onto the roof of the store uh the two youngest otero siblings got home first and when the oldest charlie arrived he noticed his dog lucky in the backyard which was not normal. The front door was locked which was also unusual so he went through the back and he saw a chaotic mess in the kitchen and his mother was very tidy very kept a very clean house and also was always

waiting with open arms at the front door when he got home from school so he knew something was immediately wrong. Then he heard his younger siblings calling to him saying something to the effect of come quick mom and dad are playing a mean trick on us oh god what what is with the tricks and the pranks i know i know i know and i i just wonder if that's just a way of like telling yourself this isn't real like almost desperately in denial yeah in denial yeah that's what it feels like to me and so he finds his parents strangled in their rooms um he said they didn't even look like themselves anymore oh because of the means of death um he said in an

interview you could smell death you could smell fear i can still smell fear oh my god oh my god i know it like oh wow chilling oh my god his sister carmen later testified that she tried to cut through her mom's bloody gag with a pair of nail clippers because she didn't know how to get it off her face so charlie also said years later when he described this day and you can just see the survivors the ones that Dennis said will be fine because they're old enough to take care of themselves they're so fucked up about this whole thing obviously and he explained my heart just broke that day it felt like somebody had ripped my chest wide open and pulled my heart out my life changed instantly so the phone line had been cut uh so they ran to a neighbor's house to call the police and when they were at the station the surviving children begged police to protect joey and josie from going back to the house because they didn't realize joey and josie were both

already dead and in the house. They only knew about their parents. So the police and a pastor had to come tell Charlie that both of his youngest siblings had been found in the house and had been killed as well. Jesus. So Charlie said at the very least he was grateful he hadn't discovered them because he said he didn't know if he'd been able to handle it himself if if he had seen that with his own eyes so back at the crime scene police noted that nothing of value seemed to have been stolen plus the thermostat had been turned up really high and dennis later explained that he turned the temperature up really high because he wanted to mess up their body heat temperatures and the decomposition which he read in a true detective magazine

oh law and order over here okay yeah right yeah good one so he learned a lot of his quote-unquote ideas and tricks from crime scene magazines from you know those kind of creepy i like how that makes him an expert when like we've read all that so are we exactly like exactly and he just has that complex where he knows what he's doing not so he also did some really bizarre stuff at crime scenes that we didn't know about until later when he explained them after he'd been caught uh like he would get a water glass out of the cabinet drink a glass of water then wash it and put it back in the cupboard and he got all like hot and heavy over it because he was like they would they'll never know that i use their water

cup like his own like in control it's like a moment for himself of like, I'm violating. It feels violating in a very intimate way. Yes. Yes. Intimate. Where like in times of a serial killer in your home, I would imagine you're prioritizing which things would be the most violating, like hurting your body, hurting someone you love. But like the tiny things you don't even have time to think about them violating, like the

inside of your cabinet and knowing like your personal tchotchkes and the things things you don't even have time to think about them violating like the inside of your cabinet and knowing like your your personal tchotchkes and the things that you stuff taking your things like you can never touch that cup again without thinking about him drinking out of it you know yeah and that was his his own little secret that he got off on um he had i guess it's like a feeling of like omniscience like he's like i know i know i did this no one else like a god complex is that what you're talking about wow wow interesting literal narcissist yeah so of course these murders absolutely shook the town of wichita um you know this is a relatively large city but the suburbs had a small town feeling people did not lock their doors this was kansas in the 70s you know uh people felt safe for the most part and police even thought this otero murder could be a drug related hit because

who the fuck would kill two children in such like an execution way like and for no reason like not that there's ever a reason to kill a kid but you know what i mean like there's no storyline they thought maybe there has to be some sort of reason like a a drug hit or you know uh yeah something's something gone wrong with the parents and a relationship with someone else and you know they were completely wrong but they just could not fathom why why else somebody would do this and serial killer the term was pretty brand new i think it came out in 1974 for the first time. It was sort of referenced as terminology. And so the notion of having this deranged murderer on the loose was like unfathomable for most people like day to day, let alone someone killing zero people to killing four. This was like a massive leap. So from the outside, it looked like a total just deranged nutcase running around and nobody knew who it was. Nobody knew why they were doing it.

However, some people actually got a sense of familiarity with. Sorry, hold on. Hello. Hello. Hello. actually got a sense of familiarity with sorry hold on hello hello girl was that harry someone just knocked on my door i'm texting that scared the shit out of me that's it's not it wasn't even a knock it was tap tap tap tap tap ew christine and it was loud enough that place that he didn't he's not up here ew say harry thank you but no thank you okay i'm good right now if you're juniper or harry i'm busy right now thank you okay um but moonshine can come in moonshine will find a way in. He doesn't need my permission. So for other people who witnessed the news of this crime, there was a sense of familiarity about it. And that's because

Dennis's crimes eerily mirrored the Clutter family murders, which also took place in Kansas in 1959 in Holcomb, Kansas. and if you're not familiar this is the mass murder that inspired truman capote's in cold blood so dennis of course had been inspired quote unquote by the clutter family murder he had heard about it on the way to high school when he was 15 and he was in his so stupid his dad's co-workers daughter's car she she was she carpooled with him to school and she drove him to school and he had a crush on her okay so he's sitting there next to her in the passenger seat she's wearing a skirt this is him describing it and he hears the news of the clutter family murders back in 1959 and hearing that story on the radio sitting next to this girl he had a crush on who's wearing a skirt, it was like seared into his mind.

And so as he's older, he's almost like replaying these, quote unquote, inspirational, you know, the things that he's overlapped murder and sex with each other or like murder and arousal. You know? Yeah, exactly. sex with each other or like murder and arousal you know yeah exactly and so that they they they sort of mirrored each other and he was struck by the fact that the clutter family had been tied up with rope and of course that especially piqued his interest and interestingly remember i mentioned he stole the family's car and the radio from their house the two men that murdered the clutter family also took a radio from their home oh okay so he's like playing this weird it's like nothing that he does not like an homage an homage yeah yes yeah and he he really thinks he's like a genius but everything

he does is just copied off other people and not that i'm giving them credit either but it's like he just gives himself way too much fucking credit for being some sort of mastermind you know um so many people at this point truly felt vulnerable for the first time ever started locking their doors for the first time ever uh there was panic in town um people wanted security systems for their houses and thankfully wichita had just the guy because dennis started working for the adt security company that same year that's just fucking great well that's the perfect the perfect not the perfect crime the perfect uh setup for a crime it's it's almost like if you read that in a book, you'd be like, well, that's fucking too obvious. Yeah. That's like a Hallmark movie storyline. It feels too easy. Or Lifetime or whatever.

Of a storyline. Yeah. So he essentially worked as a supervisor and he would oversee the installation of these security systems at people's houses. So, of course, he now had intimate knowledge of different houses, blueprints, how they were secured, how he could bypass them and he didn't necessarily bypass them he just liked to know that he could if he wanted to right the power yeah the power of the omniscience like just knowing in his own mind that he could do it if

he wanted um he claimed later that during these installations he often snuck through the family's things and like you said intimate violations went through their drawers, took home panties, took home stuff out of their bathrooms. He just liked that feeling of power. And what was especially disturbing, as we've discussed many times now, was his ability to compartmentalize. You know, he's the overseer. He's a supervisor at this job. And everyone just thinks he's just a normal dude, right? Like, they don't know he's going in and stealing underwear, putting them in his pocket and taking them home.

This compartmentalization, he actually had a separate word for it because, of course, he did. He called it cubing. Cubing. Cubing? Cubing. And he was the cube. What in the fuck? This is the most delusional man i've ever heard in my life okay so what i'm what why how why what made him the cube what's that mean literally the only explanation i could find which i think is because it's the only explanation

he could give is that he was a cube and he could switch to different faces of the cube oh okay so this is his way of describing like a dr jekyll mr hyde yes which he also used to describe it again okay like he would switch personalities like the yeah like the faces he could switch like he could with a roll of the die or you know he could switch to concern mode or he could switch his on and off you know his his what happens when you when you put the cube point on one finger and a point on another finger you just spin it like that what happens oh god i hope he just he's just topsy-turvy all the way down motion sick i don't know i have no idea because i think he didn't put much thought into it besides no i know i know hard to believe also juniper is now meowing like a fucking maniac so it is him i'm gonna let him in i'm so sorry

otherwise he will just scream the entire time at least it's not walt um it could be harry's like hey leave me out of it i would never disturb you while you're recording i feel like i feel like walt is like i have not been there in a long time. Why am I still being mentioned? Yeah. He's like, well, you think I went to Kentucky with you? He's like, no, thanks. No, thanks. I've been there as the vagabond.

Yeah. I'm a vagabond, not an idiot. Yeah. yeah so anyway he has this cubing fucking explanation for how he's able to hold a job make people think he's relatively normal that being said though it's not the whole truth because people actually did notice some of his darker, not maybe people in his own family, but people that he interacted with on a day to day basis. So eventually he and his wife, Paula, just to give some background, had a son and a daughter, Brian and Carrie. And his daughter later told interviewers that she had a happy, stable childhood and she was really close with her dad or she was really close with her grandparents, or at least she thought she was. She felt like he was loving and caring and a good, stable dad. And that just goes to show, again, like how compartmentalized this man was. I refuse

to say cubing again because it's stupid. So I'm going to say the harder word to say, which is compartmentalized. Sohuh so after killing one of his victims this is just an example of his being so good at compartmentalizing after killing one of his victims while on a cub scout trip and i'll discuss that uh in part two okay this is just an example of how good he was at being said pillar of the community because he's on the way back from this horrible gruesome murder and he has to change in a gas station bathroom back into his cub scout uniform because he's cub scout leader and he's going back to sleep in the tent next to his son so he stops at a gas station a rest stop

to change his clothes and he runs into a fucking state trooper and the state trooper asked him, like, hey, what are you up to? Why are you out and about? And he says, can you tell me what you're up to tonight? And Dennis says, oh, well, I'm a Cub Scout leader. I am, you know, out here with my son. I just, you know, some bullshit. I had a headache. I needed to go get some Tylenol. And the scout, the fucking state trooper said, oh, right as rain.

Go ahead, buddy. You can go. You know? Okay. He was that good at just, he had just murdered a woman like an hour earlier. Horrible. Gruesome murder. And he was just like, whatever.

Just like, so. Don't mind me in the, in the random random rural gas station bathroom changing my clothes in the middle of the night. I may be covered in blood, but you know what? I do have a headache. So which one are we going to take more seriously? Did I tell you about the Tylenol? Yeah. Yeah. So, of course, you know, the state trooper just says, OK.

And meanwhile, he has a fucking. Jewelry box in his car that he had stolen from the woman he had just murdered and he knows if this trooper looks in his car and sees this item he will probably be brought in for something for questioning but he is able to just fucking change his stupid cube up or whatever and pretend like he is just on his way back to see his son for the cub scout troop state trooper says all right off you go imagine that state trooper later when the story came out and he's like mother fucker like i knew something was up with that fucking guy yeah that must be deeply disturbing um his boss was pissed for sure oh yeah oh yeah so like i said carrie described a pretty ordinary childhood

with her dad she said she only caught a glimpse of his dark side once um one night at dinner a family argument apparently got too heated and dennis jumped up and grabbed his son brian by the neck as if to strangle him and his son went like white as a sheet and dennis let go and it was such a fast moment but carrie remembered it being so shocking and out of place that it just goes to show how unusual that was that kind of behavior was to see from him within his own family dynamic like he's doing this in his head he's like fantasizing about it and he's doing it to other people but his to his family that was shocking and seared into their memories it was like he hit it so well it was a one-time thing yeah and like yeah imagine what his son is thinking these days like he's been strangled

by btk like i know yeah and he just has to live with that that's what we were talking about earlier when it comes to like not wanting to humanize a killer but like remembering that there's people on the other side of it like he's got a family members and now have to live with the fact that their dad is a fucking serial killer and like they've been strangled by him and like what does that mean and how far away from and almost snapping was he to dying you know almost worse like they've been like comforted and loved by him you know what i mean yeah like they've been like held by him hugged by him like like they learned safety from him yes yes it's something so twisted where he and he can't even see that in his own head you know in any case that's just an example of how unusual it was for him to behave that way and to

this day we do see him and, and I've sort of presented him as this sort of pillar of the community. But as I also alluded to, that's not really the whole truth because people did have run-ins with him over the years. He, as you can probably guess, had a dangerous sense of superiority and entitlement. And he managed to get a local government job

enforcing city ordinances, like little things, pet laws, trash regulations. And of course, he took this and it went straight to his head. OK, it's like the cliche of the health inspector who takes his job way too seriously, like on Bob's Burgers or, you know, it's like such a cliche. Like he has this like minor bit of power. Give him an inch and he'll go fucking 10 miles. Right. Bit of power. Give him an inch and he'll go fucking 10 miles. And to that end, he essentially held people to impossible standards. He used his position to harass and intimidate his neighbors.

And he especially targeted single women. Wouldn't you know it? He was known to only pass out dog related citations to single women and even would stare into their windows under the pretense of quote monitoring the neighborhood ew yeah like he thought he was being so slick he this is pretty fucked up allegedly even had one woman's dog euthanized for absolutely no reason just because it was a power play and it was i was gonna say it like i don't know why that hurt so much more i guess because it's a dog but like the fact that i mean i mean he was killing people for no reason so what's the surprise that he'd kill a dog for no

reason it's almost like this he felt like gave him the authority to and it did give him the authority to because people were submitting complaints and they were just never looked into right so people were saying this guy is a fucking asshole he's harassing women uh and you know it just never went anywhere and that's what dennis craved of course is this like power over people that they can do nothing about um experts call him a power control killer which is a type of killer uh that seeks opportunities to exert their power over other people for a thrill i think he's probably the most obvious form of a power control killer i've heard of so torturing and murdering his victims uh gave him the ultimate sense of control especially because strangulation uh is such an intimate way to kill someone and gives sort of a sense of connection to the killer between them

and their victim. So it was only about four months after the murder of the Otero family that Dennis targeted his next victim, and that was 21-year-old Catherine Bright. He spent about a month stalking her schedule, and on April 4th, 1974, he broke into her house and lay in wait for her to return home and when she did return home he was not expecting her to bring her 19 year old brother kevin with her but that's exactly what happened okay so dennis comes out of his hiding spot with a gun and tells katherine and her brother that he didn't want to hurt them. He just needed money and a car to get to New York. He then ordered Kevin to tie up Catherine and go to another room, where Kevin, who had also been tied up, began to get out of his bindings

and jumped for Dennis's gun. But unfortunately, Dennis managed to shoot Kevin in the head before Kevin could really fight back. Oh my God. OK. So Dennis leaves Kevin there, then goes to strangle Catherine. But she's fighting back with all her strength. And as he is trying to get her under control, under his own control, he hears Kevin moving around in the room.

Kevin's still alive? He's fucking alive. And so he goes back in and shoots him in the head again what comes back i know comes back to katherine this is what he's been planning all along just to attack katherine so he's like finally i got this other guy out of the way he's strangling katherine and he hears kevin fucking make a run for it. Mr. Shot in the head twice is still alive. He's still alive and he has played dead and then run for the door and escape. Oh, my God.

Has he he he's alive today. He's alive. He's been interviewed. He suffered severe nerve damage and that kind of thing. But he sure did. And of course, probably deep seated trauma, obviously, but he is still alive. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

So he goes running out the door. And Dennis knows, well, shit, because he, ever the victim, realizes, well, now I don't get to spend as much time here as I wanted. He's finally in concern mode. My plans are all going to shit. Finally in concern mode. He's in concern mode for himself again. So he says, you know what? I did a dumb thing and I stabbed her because he said, I just knew I needed to kill her.

So he stabbed her and later claimed, I didn't like to use a knife. I really didn't. As if we're supposed to suddenly feel bad for him. Right. Fucking sicko. Poor poor thing so outside kevin flags down some neighbors they call paramedics but unfortunately after multiple emergency surgeries and blood transfusions uh katherine tragically passed away uh like i said kevin survived with permanent nerve damage and he did give police a description of dennis um and they made a composite sketch which dennis later said actually looked a lot like him and he was really concerned about that but it did not concern mode right it's switching that thing on and off all day long he's cuban cuban cuban you know he's cuban all over the place but unfortunately

did not lead them to dennis So it would be a while before investigators actually connected Catherine's murder to the Oteros because totally different victims, totally different MO, different weapons, you know, it just didn't seem to fit. Police took three other people into custody thinking they were the ones who had killed Catherine and this enraged Dennis because as we know Dennis loves fucking attention okay so he cannot stand someone else taking credit for his quote-unquote work which is still the craziest thing to me I don't understand the narcissist serial killer i need the attention but also if i get the attention i go to jail so it's like well so can't you find something else

to get credit for where people are allowed to pat you on the back you know it's like their fatal flaw you know like they fly too close to the sun so to speak and yeah it's their undoing so of course he can't handle this he can't stand it so in october dennis calls a reporter at the wichita eagle and tells them to go to the public library and there they will find an engineering textbook and inside the engineering textbook is a letter and the letter read i'm going to read just parts of it i write this letter to you for the sake of the taxpayer he's concerned for the taxpayer as well as your time those three dude you have in custody are just talking to get publicity for the otero murders oh i think i misspoke earlier i said that

the three men were arrested for the for katherine's murder i meant for the oteros and that's what he was so pissed about okay Okay. My bad. Okay. So those three dude you have in custody are just talking to get publicity for the Otero murders. They know nothing at all. I did it by myself and no one's help. There has been no talk either. Let's put it straight.

Then he goes on in graphic detail to describe the exact positions and circumstances of each of the family members' deaths. Something only the killer would know and after these graphic details he went on quote purse contents south of the table spilled drink in that area also kids making lunches door shade in red chair in the living room otero's watch missing i needed one so i took it. Runs good. Thermostat turned down. Car was dirty inside, out of gas. I'm sorry this happened to society. Good luck with your hunting. Yours truly, guiltily. Okay.

Okay. So. So he definitely gave enough information to show that he was there. I also like the watch. Works good. Works good. Okay. Thanks for that side comment no one cared for exactly like for what he then added a ps because he can't stop talking ps since sex criminals do not change their mo or by nature cannot do so i will not change mine the code

words for me will be bind them torture them kill them btk you see me at it again they will be on the next victim so this is where he has named himself officially okay and another part of his letter referred to a this is a long ass letter by the way referred to a monster who took him over and drove him to kill he called this power over him factor x uh this was this was essentially a way to compartmentalize or cube from the other side of him like basically deny responsibility saying like no that's not me that's fact so one of his cube faces is factor x basically yes now he's not only naming his whole persona as one shape but he's also picking names for every character picking and choosing and like dumb names factor x okay

but basically this goes to like his desire to figure out why he is the way that he is he has this like drive to figure out what factor x really is what caused it rhombus the cube whatever the fuck it's called it's not me it's factor x um and so okay police decided police decided not to release the letter to the public because they weren't quite sure yet what to make of this they decided to wait a beat they didn't want to send everyone off into another frenzy so they so they waited a beat and they didn't have any leads so they were like let's just give it a minute and you know their advice was basically just be careful out there we'll see what happens meanwhile because of the news of the otero murders and the news of katherine's murder

they didn't know necessarily there was a serial killer running around, but they didn't know that these crimes were happening. And so the demand for alarms and security systems, of course, just kept skyrocketing while fucking Dennis was on the job installing them for you. He knew all the floor plans. He knew what he what he was doing he just fucking loved it he loved being in that power position and meanwhile as he is drawing clients floor plans as he is telling himself you know i could come in here and do whatever i wanted and they could do nothing about it he is fantasizing about what he calls his projects okay so those are people are they people they're people they're fucking people yeah they're people you're on to it um this is basically what he called his targets his intended victims and you know this is just another way for him to like dehumanize

the people that he's targeting, right? But he would stalk them, he would learn their routines, and he would keep folders on their movements, folders on the blueprints of their house, even the ones that he never actually went through with and attacked. But he had folders on these people. Like open cases. Yes, he had like case files. Exactly. And some of the names for them were Project Piano, Project Green, Project Cookie. Like. You know, he thought he fucking killed it with Project Cookie. He thought he nailed it.

And you know what? He actually explained it when he was asked why, you know, why did you feel the need to name your projects he explained well you know people name their oil wells see see he fully objectifies them wow yes yes wow yes he's like you know boats and oil wells they have names and i'm like first of all do they oil wells i guess so boats do but i had no idea about oil wells yeah apparently oil wells do too and he thought what a great idea i'll do that to the people he was like oh well sorry i don't mean to keep interrupting you but like it's just so stupid of like oh well boats have names it's like well people have names like you don't have a great

point you don't have to fucking point m wait what the fuck great point. That's a great fucking point, Em. Wait, what the fuck? Give them names. Wait a second. We already had it. That's a great fucking point. That's so stupid. Oil wells have names. Yes, so do people.

Idiot. People already, they already were named. That's a great fucking point. It's like someone going up to the Titanic and then saying, actually, this boat needs a name. It's like, bitch, she has one. What are you talking about? She has one what are you she has one the queen mary could never she would be like i'm mary nice fucking try yeah yeah i that wow so stupid like that's also that's more info on like his like narcissism of like oh well that's not a name i want

to give them i have to yeah he's like no no i get to name that person not their parents it's like yeah yeah that's a great that would have been if if that interviewer had said well people have names too i would have lost my damn mind i've been like this is the greatest docuseries of all time to just like don't people put him in his place that's a great point um you know what you nailed it so dennis has these projects he even drives around during his shifts with he brings one folder one special project with him every day just to know he has it right because he's like in case he gets bored he's got something to do that day he's got something to look at and he apparently

talked to his projects throughout the day as he drove around town. Like he talked to. Yeah. He's a sicko. So he stayed busy with his projects for a few years. Like he managed to lay low for a few years until March 1977. And that's when he decided to finally act on one of his projects. He tried a couple.

He went to a few houses. He put on a suit. He tried to dress up real nice. Like you're in the 40s and you're about to go on a plane for the first time. Yes, literally. He's like, this is an important day for me. And so he walked door to door. And I say door to door because in a particular neighborhood, he had several projects. Oh, shit. Yeah. And this neighborhood he likes because it was close to the freeway. So he tries one, Because in a particular neighborhood, he had several projects. Oh, shit. Yeah.

And this neighborhood he likes because it was close to the freeway. So he tries one. Nobody answers the door. He's like, dang nabbit. I'll go to the next one. So he goes over to another door. Doesn't work out. Either nobody answers, wrong person.

All of his little projects are falling apart. And that's when he just so happens to spot a little six-year-old boy walking down the road i know it's just so fucking terrible this little boy his name is steve ralphard and steve's mom was in bed sick and had sent him down the road to get a can of soup from the store so dennis approached steve pretending to be a detective and showed him a photograph and asked him if he recognized the woman and child in the photograph we still don't know for sure who was in this photograph all we know is that steve said no sir and continued home unknowingly leading a killer straight to his house okay so a few minutes later denn Dennis knocks on the door, still posing as a detective, and Steve tells Dennis that his mom, 24-year-old Shirley, was sick in bed. So Dennis just fucking saunters on in. He turns off the television.

He closes the blinds. This is when Shirley comes out of her bedroom, and Dennis pulls out a gun. He directs Shirley to put toys and blankets in the bathroom and he locks the three children in the bathroom oh tragically there is a gap in the door where steve who's again six years old is able to watch this entire situation unfold so he watches as dennis brutally murders his mother and he can do nothing about it he's just trapped in the bathroom and of course he's helpless and he feels like he led this guy here right yeah so he's what my god the guilt of that like destroyed him later So he watches through a gap in the door

as Dennis ties his mother's feet and hands behind her back, lays her face down on the bed, puts a plastic bag over her head, ties a rope around her neck. And then, as the siblings are screaming and trying to get out, trying to bash through the window, the man just leaves. And his initial plan was to kill the

children as well but i think they were making so much of a ruckus and this was close quarters with other apartments that he was worried someone would catch on so he just left and steve finally slammed into the door so many times he broke a hole in it and was able to get to his mother he's a little six-year-old boy by the way tiny oh my god so he's finally able to get to his mother of course it's too late um and he said that meant that image is so permanently seared into his mind and he said he just went down a dark path after this he said there are times he just wishes he wasn't alive there are times times he just, I mean, it basically destroyed his life forever. Even when he talks about it to this day as a much, much older man. Oh, my God.

You can just see like how dark this has made his life. Yeah. Yeah. So like Kevin, Catherine's brother earlier, they gave police police a description but the composite really led nowhere and so dennis was scot-free in december of that same year he struck again and this time he spotted 25 year old nancy fox while she walked outside to her mailbox and she would become project fox hunt god disgusting he also had an obsession with the number three and her name had three letters and he had a fascination with words that sounded sort of like sex and that's why he thought fox was the perfect name for his next victim so this guy like

i mean you said delusional earlier but every time you bring up something new it like just really shows you how unwell this guy was for there to like i don't know what the right word is but it's for the people who like i mean who are not well is the the the jumping like the creating your own conclusions and creating your own rules and and thinking yeah it's it's exactly it's like seeing patterns creating patterns where there are no patterns and almost justifying what you're doing and believing and seeing by yeah creating these patterns like if an address had the number three in it which like many addresses have the number three in it he thought it was a sign and

it was the the perfect target of his he just liked to feel like he was weaving this like web you know but in reality he's just making shit up the irony of him thinking that he's like the smartest person in the room when he's going off of like fox kind of sounds like sex it's like yeah you're thinking like a three-year-old what are you talking about has three letters my daughter can figure that out, right? Like, that's not a fucking genius puzzle you've just solved. Right, yeah. But in his head, he's a fucking mastermind.

So, you know, Project Fox Hunt, fucking disgusting. He studies Nancy's routine like he did with his other victims. But this time, he went a little bit further with it. So with the holidays approaching, Nancy had actually picked up a seasonal job at the mall doing sort of like christmas hours and he would stop by her store repeatedly posing as a shopper and asking her innocuous questions just because he could just to like can you imagine like you already have to work like and now there's like this i know like let alone whether or not he's a serial killer like you just you're like

man you just had to be with this guy yeah you just had to be that fucking repeat obnoxious customer and yeah and you know that there's like something weird about him you're like yeah this guy freaks me out yeah like why is he coming to my work so often and then he's not buying anything not buying anything presumably and then shows up in her fucking house a few days later oh my god oh my god yeah he breaks into her house and waits for her to come home and when he comes home this is how he describes what's happening he tells her he is a strange dude yeah that's for sure ding ding ding yeah uh fucking understatement of the century who just wanted to do some stuff to her and would then leave her alone like some sex stuff he said i just want to do some freaky stuff that's it i can't

imagine somebody walking into a room and going or walking into your house right now and going i'm a weird guy but i just want to do some stuff to you and then i'll leave like like hello i can't even imagine like you know he practiced that in front of a fucking mirror too and like that was the best he could come up with that shows you how detached from humanity he is from like detached complete detachment he thinks like that's normal that'll be fine that this will do it yeah and so he tells her that he she's of course stuck he has a gun she's like i don't know what the fuck to do he chats with her for a bit he even lets her have a cigarette and finally because she she really feels like she has no no else to suck go no nothing else to do she finally says okay let's get this over with so i can call the police and she really thinks like

he's just gonna leave her. And unfortunately, of course, that was never the plan. His plan was never for her to survive the attack. And so Dennis strangles Nancy to death in her bedroom and flees the scene. And because she lives alone, normally it may have been a few days before someone realized she was missing or discovered her remains but dennis just couldn't help himself and on the way into work he stops at a payphone and calls the crime in himself i like the it's breathtaking how obsessed with himself he is obsessed with himself yes so he gives police nancy's address and name and informs them they would find her murdered in her home.

Police then play this call for the Fox family, but none of them recognize Dennis's voice. Right. And so for for a look for a minute, they're kind of relieved. Like, at least this isn't someone we know, you know. But then they're thinking, well, shit. But now it's this maniac, like the stranger who just randomly targeting people. It could be anyone. And so, you know, all that to say, he called it in himself on himself. And as for Nancy, you know, her sister Beverly remembers Nancy as a loving, hardworking young woman. Her goal was to start a family one day she was very independent and outgoing

she worked really hard as we've already seen with the multiple jobs to support herself and as much as dennis thought he was some sort of mastermind you know the details of her life tend to be diminished because people are talking about him that's just the way it is unfortunately and in january so the following, 1978, Dennis sent another letter to the Wichita Eagle. This time, it was a poem. Okay. Yeah, that's right. Dennis is a poet.

Because, of course, he's not just a logistical engineering genius. He's also a creative mastermind. Okay. I'm ready for the... Okay. It was a poem. Just hit me with it. I'm just going to read the first line because this poem sickeningly was mocking the murder

of Shirley, the mother of little Steve who had found his mother. Oh my God. Yeah. Because why the fuck not? He who had found his mother so he writes this yeah because why why the fuck not he wants credit for it so he writes a poem and here's how it goes shirley locks shirley locks wilt thou be mine that's all i'm gonna read because fuck you dennis let me guess and is he a rhymer does he think it rhymes he he rhymes and like this is not even iambic pentameter you know you know like i don't know who he thinks he's fucking fooling himself he's like all right you know he thinks that he's gonna be like up there with the big dogs and writing at some point like he really thinks he's just the best at everything he's the best at getting away with things he's the best at writing he's the best

at killing he's the best at strategizing he's the best at fucking building and driving trains i guess like he's really good at cops and robbers he's good at all of it the only thing he can't do is be anything less than number one in his mind that's like it for him okay but this is the best part when he mailed this poem into the newspaper thinking like they're gonna publish this and say we found like the person who killed shirley vyan nope um the mail clerk thought it was a valentine's poem and so they just oh he forwarded it to the classified ads and they just printed it in the classifieds which like enraged dennis that had to tear him up oh because he was like that's not a valentine poem it's not roses are red it might as well be it's it's goldilocks

goldilocks or whatever it was. It's a confession to murder. And they're like, what a dumb Valentine. We'll put this in the classifieds. You know what? I'm so glad whoever suggested that. I like to think that they actually did know what it was

and they were like, no, no, we're going to fucking humble his ass. Like, I was like, you don't get that credit. Oh, I just, I just,

can we just remember him as the really bad poet just to piss him off like like instead of BTK not even Dennis it's just like that guy who like wrote that really terrible valentine was like worse at poetry than like a fifth grade boy who's going through his emo phase you know like it's just really bad yeah so we're almost done with part one here he's pissed off that his stupid poem didn't stir a reaction. So in February, he sends a letter to his favorite TV news station, Cake TV, K-A-K-E.

And this time his letter is a little more direct than his veiled Shirley Locks poem. And in this direct threat, he writes, how many people do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention? Oh, that's pretty damn direct. Okay. That's pretty damn direct. It doesn't even rhyme. How many people do I have to kill? No.

But it is iambic pentameter. No, it is not. It is not that either. How many people do I have to kill? Like, what a chilling thing to say, first of all. And how bold. Like, he's like, like, that's a guarantee he doesn't think he'll ever get caught. Exactly.

He thinks like, oh, I can just keep playing this cat and mouse game and pushing the envelope further and further. And along with this letter, he includes some nicknames. Okay. One of them being the poetic strangler. Okay. So you were fucking onto it. He tried. being the poetic strangler okay um so you were fucking onto it uh he tried he really thought poet poetry could be his new moniker because after writing btk he said you know what maybe

they didn't like my nickname maybe they didn't like btk call me the poetic strangler there's like there's few things worse than nicknaming yourself but to have to do it again because no one's taking you seriously so embarrassing like not that that's the point right but like he's like oh this this one this one's a slam dunk though this one's gonna get you exactly exactly poetic that should let you know that he's so so unhinged so like he feel he thinks he's the best and but he's all like he thinks he's the best even though he's clearly not the best at fucking naming himself but he still thinks oh well the next one's gonna kill you oh sorry you want to say it again oh no i just realized that i said kill you and i was like oh that's not the right phrase oh yeah but then on top of that like it's also like such a sad

insecure little boy thing of like i just want you thing of like, I just want you to like me. Like, I just want you to like like the name that I pick. It is. And it's so transparent. Like we can all see how much attention you want. Yeah. And how desperate you need any attention because no one's talking about you. Exactly. And your poems suck. And so the poetic strangler, the asphyxiator, the garrot phantom, the bonded strangler, the Wichita hangman, you know, he tried a few things. Just imagine going to like the coffee shop and you're wondering what the guy next to you is writing in his tiny leather book. Oh, that's horrifying.

And it's just him writing the asphyxiator with a little stick figure of him. It's like, what's another word for strangle hmm but what was it the grotten phantom what was that the grot phantom which is a grot is that type of weapon where you have almost like a stick lever to like oh rope yeah it's oh that's fucking dark it's pretty dark um so after this list of potential nicknames finally the police were like okay we gotta tell the public because this guy's just fucking amping things up ramping things up so the police finally make an official statement to wichita there is a serial killer on the loose in wichita we have no leads and he is going to kill again and that is the end of part one of the btk killer you mean the random guy who won't shut the fuck up the poem the dennis dennis who's bad at poetry dennis the horrible poet the failure in poetry class um wow good good good research christine i'm so sorry that was so

fucking long thank you yeah um that's beautiful thanks sam i feel like i mean if the police are listening which they're not lol they stopped a lot um i feel like i should try to like vote in like a rule that like if there's a horrible person out there clearly doing things for notoriety that you just name him something awful like just something so obnoxious just to piss him off because i will say i believe that's more of a media angle you know oh? Oh, media, if you're listening? Media, media? I think it's more the media that it picks up the name and then it like spreads, you know,

because it's quote unquote catchy, which is unfortunate. I am very pro never naming an assailant because they want the notoriety and they don't deserve it. You mean like nicknaming them or like naming them? Or even naming them. Like, I mean, if they're on the loose

and you have to know what their name is, that's one thing. But like, especially like within the world of like all these damn school shootings and like they just want their name in the paper or something. Like, I feel like you should just humble the shit out of them where you can. Where you can't, you know? But especially like BTK where he so clearly wanted his name so clearly wanted a name just name him like the annoying guy like

just something just to put him in his place for a second like it's the only power we have just let us have that one percent of power and that's why that male clerk deserves a trophy yes his stupid poem in the class of vines a genius like hang on a second hang on wow that's the milkler props respect yes uh well well done christine sorry that was like the length of an entire episode i apologize i know this is a lot so that was that was very well i think for something and someone so um notorious even though i don't want to give them that that title uh for someone with a lot of information out there that you had to weave through i'm very proud of you so well thank you that's very nice and thank you for

listening to this like one and a half times or however this ended up working out and jack we're gonna probably send you some beer for editing this because it's just like like so much tech stuff happening so much chaos um at one point which i assume we cut out my tummy just said hey gotta go jumping in say my piece real quick so it's just been a lot so i apologize jimmy neutron would say got a blast got a blast indeed uh not to completely steal that tagline but hello um i wow i mean you just wow you just sent me into outer space with that one um so anyway thanks everybody who if this sounded even remotely clean or normal of an episode like even even cohesive at all please thank um eva sersha jack jack jack jack mostly jack for putting this all together and um i'm sorry i'm acting like this is my like fucking tour i

don't know why i'm saying it's like your finale your grand finale i just i feel like i'm just so thrilled to get this fucking asshole out of my head um so so that's all unfortunately for everybody else you can't get him out of your head yet because next week is the second half which we've already second part so and i've already done that research so we're done on that no more i don't need to read about him again tonight i'm done i'm so happy for your big brain fart you're gonna have later um i can't wait well i guess we'll leave everybody perfectly uncomfy until next week. And that's why we drink.