And That's Why We Drink - E359 Secret Society Bullshit and Paranormal Rejection at the Front Desk

Episode Date: December 24, 2023

It's episode 359 and we've gotten into crypto... cryptozoology that is! This week Em takes us to Norwich, England to cover the ghosts of the Augustine Steward House. Then Christine brings us the heavy part two of her Dennis Rader series. And did we say "no comment"? We actually mean "here's our comment"... and that's why we drink!Come on tour with us this January! Get your tickets to the very last leg of the On the Rocks live show at andthatswhywedrink.com/live

sorry i try to link it up with the video recording no oh okay well i don't know i don't know but you did a great job three two one go and every time i feel nervous about it. I don't know why. Hi, everyone. Welcome, everybody, to Christine's Nerves. How are they today? Are they at a usual sky high or is there anything that you had a surprising look? I don't know if you can tell.

I'm so sweaty. My palms are so sweaty. I'm just, I don't know, Em, because they're always sweaty and i'm always nervous i know but like is there anything particular today that's got you bugging out just like life you know am i right or am i right no you're right you're right you're right for sure right um let's talk about you how are you i wasn't prepared for that on my own podcast um see now you know how it feels you know i'm a little pissed oh okay so i got myself some pokemon cards i don't get them often anymore because now i have to get the expensive ones and right you've upgraded i've upgraded i've gotten all the cheapos and now i'm like oh shit now i gotta now i've committed so now

i have to start kind of getting the expensive ones but like there's expensive like there's like hundred dollar cards and there's also like thirty thousand dollar cards those are not the ones that i'll ever be getting i to, to me, a complete deck is once I have everything, that's like a, basically like a hundred dollars or less. Like after that, I'm like, ah, maybe for like a, like a treat myself day, I'd do something else, but I, I don't, I can't justify it. So, um, but I'm a little pissed. I was onbay no i wasn't on ebay i there was a certain card i wanted i found it on mercari have you done mercari oh yeah that's where i buy some nice squishmallows okay so i found a pokemon i really that's like my backup place because i feel like a lot of people

there kind of throw cards on there and it's like they're just cleaning out their brother's closet and I actually really like it because sometimes people don't know what they're selling and so it's underpriced which is fun and now that I've said that I can never use Mercari again for anyone else who's like collecting cards um and I found this card it was uh like a first edition in really good condition and it was exactly the card that i needed to finish out like this one chunk of my set and it was underpriced it was like i mean it was still incredibly expensive for what i'm willing to pay it was like 120 dollars again it's a card i am aware that like i feel grossed out with that But it was 120 when anywhere else online, they start at like $600. And I was like, oh, I was like, I feel like I could justify that with some girl math.

Like it's like it's basically free. I mean, I feel like you're saying it's crazy, but like, I don't know, like shirts are 120. Like it's not like everyone's listening. Like, holy shit. You know, I mean, I think if it's something that you're like collecting them and investing in them i don't see it as like personally if you were like oh i just threw spent thousands on pokemon cards i'd be like whoa well personally i like i get weird about it like i'm not even i don't even really i'm not totally concerned about what other people think about it. It's more like I'm very, also I'm dating probably the most like practical,

money smart person in the entire world. And so not that she's openly shaming me, but I do know that we operate very differently. And every time I'm really proud to bring something home, I could see it in her eyes. She's like, why on earth did you do that? So I think it's starting to eat at me where i'm like i know where 120 could also go but anyway so i found this card i've been wanting it for a long long time it's been like a it's been a thing

i've had my eye on for probably since we came back are we left from tour um it was uh it was a uh it was a clefairy a clefairy and it was there's certain ones that are like misprints and they're the really expensive ones because they're even more rare because it was only one batch of them that stamps yeah and so this had like a random like dot on it i know it's so unless you care you it doesn't make sense but there was like um there were two different misprints and one of them i actually truly just owned and somehow kept in good condition from childhood i like found it in my own original deck and i was like holy shit that is the dream and there was another one and i wanted to have both the misprints so i anyway um the reason i'm mad is because i go on mercari i see this thing that is like you know under underpriced i buy it

and then the next day i wake up and it's supposed to be shipping and i'm gonna get all excited and it says refunded and i went why and there i was like looking through like my history to see if there was any messages i missed like if i was supposed to like fill i don't know fill something out i have no fucking idea and um and it just there was no reason at all totally refunded and i went that's weird so then i go back on i'm like i guess i'm at square one i'm just gonna go look around i go back on ebay and home, I guess, wasn't expecting any. Someone must have told him like, oh, that's actually really expensive. Yeah.

Refunded it. And then the exact same person with the exact same username was on eBay, not Mercari. He got wise. He got wise. He was selling it for $700. Oh, gosh. Motherfucker. I was like, who told you in the last 24 hours who told you who was in

my way who the f told you anyway so um that's that's actually quite upsetting i'd be i'd be upset too i yeah it's a it did hurt close so anyway i'll find her i'll get her i mean maybe he won't sell it for 700 and then he'll be like damn it all right i guess i should just go back to the oh and then someone else gets a free like for the same price i have no like you know on mercari you can like put like a tag oh i save like it'll it'll like notify you so you can swoop in if it comes back you know i love a swoop i love just gotta swoop you gotta christine do it you don't have to tell me twice here i go here i go here i go swoop swoop i think you mean shoop shoop no i meant swoop swoop oh i thought you meant the song shoop where she goes

here i go here i go i know that's the joke i said you gotta swoop. Here I go, swoop. You make me wanna swoop. That was hilarious. It was a good joke. I just, it really, I'm the only person who missed it early on. That's all. Thanks for making me feel better.

Are you having a good day? This doesn't feel like you are. What's happening? No no everything's happening i you know how i was covering btk last week well do people know that i assume they know that weren't they listening to it oh yes okay am i wrong no you're right you're right okay my brain is apparently in another dimension that's all uh are you going backwards and i'm going forwards that would be fun um oh we can benjamin button from different directions and then we'll kiss and i'll all right i'll be the elderly lady who kisses you on the forehead when you're an infant that'll be adorable it'd be be adorable okay sorry keep going i'm sorry no basically we had to have uh as i was working on part two

we had to have our security system come out and repair it because it wasn't working so i'm doing my notes and there's a person in like i mean i'm not gonna go into details but like they're our security system is malfunctioning and they're in our house like and they go what's your passcode and i'm like should i tell him i don't know should i tell him i don't know it's almost like you need to like change it before he gets there so you don't have to tell him your actual one i thought that too i was like is there a way to like i don't know i just was so paranoid because i'm like man this is really weird like i'm doing these notes about how uh dennis raider was a security salesman and installer and now there's one right in front of me it just felt very odd and then today we had people come inspect the heater

and apparently our heater is leaking carbon monoxide and holy crap leaking it into the house thankfully but they're like we you have to sign this waiver that we told you not to turn on the heat and i was like okay they're like you can turn it on because it's like 30 degrees here. But make sure you have a carbon monoxide detector. Yeah. I was like, mother effer. And they're like, it'll be a month before the park comes in. Of course, nothing's covered. So in the dead of winter.

Excellent. Right. Several thousands of dollars upon thousands and thousands of dollars. Oh, that's so many Pokemon cards. I know. So you know what? thousands of dollars so um so many pokemon cards i know so you know what um it's just one of those days um where everything just seems to be like malfunctioning and i'm like but why now why of all days right now i don't know you must have done something really rotten in another life

i must have and honestly um i'm fortunate you know i'm sure people who lose heat and can't afford to repair it that's that's its own issue i'm fortunate that we can you know uh pay for the parts and all that but like oof it is a doozy of a price um it hurts it hurts so that's what's happening um anyway i'm just and then i'm just i'm just still dealing with the sickness baby sickness um still what's the oh yeah uh blaze just texted me four seconds ago and said her fever is 102.7 uh she's really out of it and is just laying there on the couch so things aren't good. Help me. But I'm fine. It's all fine.

I'm just so tired. But you know what? I'm fine. Thank you for asking. Do you have room today? This is like such a privileged question because I am childless. But do you get to nap at all today? Is there like a wiggle room where you could find nap time?

Well, no, because you could find nap time um no well no because we record during nap time but no i mean like can do you get a nap time i know but like i could nap when she naps you know like i say but it's since we record but it's fine because i can't nap anyway as you know i don't know how to so it's honestly for the best if you've got a kid i guess because i think i'd accidentally just just fall asleep and then yeah it's happened you know set in the world i fell asleep on the floor of her uh nursery last night and woke up like why am i so uncomfortable oh i'm on the wood of the floor and i'm old now so it hurts oh god well and then she goes hold my hand and i'm like okay so i just put my arm in and then lay there and fall asleep um do you need anything you need

um a compliment do you need to take three breaths you do three breaths again no you don't want that you know what let's do three breaths again. Yes. Okay. Okay. Ready, everyone? Everyone listening, we're all doing our weekly three breaths because I know you're not breathing any other time. Okay. Ready? Go. imagine if jack just wasn't paying attention thought that was just like dead air and just cut it all and everyone's like huh that's weird and now if you have water by you this is your weekly reminder to drink some water, you thirsty little rats.

Have a sip. I have my, Blaze got limoncello water. Oh, oh my God. Some lemon themed to pep my spirits up. I love when you feel peppy. I wish, by the way, I had a de-peppy. Oh, me too. That has caffeine.

Oh, wait, maybe I'll text Blaze to bring me some caffeine. Yeah, that'll, that's certainly the pep you're looking for. I don't know if your uncaffeinated drink is going to give you anything. I just went. What? I'm sorry. I went to text Blaze. I'm like half, I'm like a delulude today.

I'm like half alive, but I just went to text Blaze. I'm like half, I'm like a Delulu today. I'm like half alive, but I just went to text Blaze and I accidentally clicked M, you know, because you're on the brain. And I just like scrolled up without thinking. And the last three things you sent me, you sent me a picture of you at age 10, wearing a hat with a picture of you on it, on the basketball team. Then you sent me a picture of the word team spelled out in Scrabble letters and said, I bet you would have made flyers like this to recruit people to your Scrabble squad. And then the next link was from 3.42 a.m. And it's a YouTube video called,

it's a YouTube video called, when you have to finish your homework in less than one hour this playlist is for you have you listened to it it's just incredibly it's like old old like old opera music but it's like all very like it's like a man in like a old ass da vinci painting of like the last supper like i don't know what's going on it's very very um like fast-paced opera music so it's like oh i see i see it's like tension is building because homework is due it's a lot of i just love that at four in the morning m sends me like hey your homework's due in an hour here's a playlist what do you think i'm doing right now it was me literally doing my notes for this uh at three in the morning and going this is how i feel right now and so i was

just listening to uh i was just listening to a bunch of clamor i don't know what else to call it but it was it's clamor that's a good word for it like looking at the picture i'm like it looks clamorous you know not glamorous but glamorous by the way that hat i'm that's the other reason why i drink because i've been trying so hard for weeks now for people who don't know if you follow me on instagram i mentioned it a while ago but if you don't this is your first time hearing it i used to be on the ymca basketball teams when i was a kid one of the things that you get if you have been on a rec team a lot of times they'll give you like your own like stat athlete card like oh you've got your own picture of you on a basketball card when you flip it over it says like your height and your weight and everything

apparently when you're younger you can when you get these cards you can also purchase additional merch with the picture you got it's essentially like your ymca yearbook picture on the team and you can get other merch with that picture on it um so apparently at some point i was eight so i was not in charge of the catalog at the time someone in my family bought me a hat with my basketball card on it so i was going through pictures recently and i found a picture of me wearing a hat of me and then i thought to explain this to me before like without all the context and i was just like what are you even like there's a picture of me wearing a hat with a picture of me and i'm like what is what are you what are you so now my new my new plan is to take that picture and put it on a hat

and then post a picture of me wearing a hat of a picture of me wearing a hat of a picture of me wearing a hat of a picture of me yeah and that's like all i want and m somehow thought that was gonna be like after we recorded last time m thought that was gonna be a clearer story for me to understand but now that i kind of get the context um i really adore it and i don't even need the hat i just want the picture i want the trading card of you i do have a trading card left i can give you hundred dollars oh never mind i would pay for free on mercari to get that card i was gonna say i paid six hundred dollars and he said oh i have one and i'm like i'm not giving you six hundred dollars i think i've got one in my

like my memory box I've got quite a large memory box I need you to understand that I would pay I would seriously pay big bucks for that and um also I love that like I imagine most of us from the 90s kind of remember at least maybe it was just my mom but uh I would always be like can I have a hat and a thing and like my picture on something else and she'd be like absolutely not like we're not have a hat and a thing and like my picture on something else? And she'd be like, absolutely not. Like, we're not paying $40 for a baseball cap with your face on it. I just love that some kids out there did get to have that experience. And I'm like, man, the fact that it's still not in your possession is so tragic. Truly, I have no idea what happened to it.

And I don't. It was not of my choice because I remember loving the shit out of shit and i thought like truly i thought the girls were screaming for me without they are now everyone looking at it is going holy shit that's amazing so if i ever if people can hype me up one day when i do get this hat of you know the whole thing i would really love to see some people go a little feral in the comments just yo i'm hyping right now but yeah you guys come on step it up just because like you know middle school me i really thought like this is what's gonna get me my first date and obviously that is not how the story went so anyway i'd appreciate it appreciate it to heal some old trauma. That'd be nice. Okay. I'm so deep in brooding.

I'm such a bad boy. You don't understand. I love that my trauma is like, I didn't even get a hat. I have worse trauma if we'd like to unpack that separately. But I will say, looking back at me, I was like, go for it. Take it. I don't care. You can wear that badge. You mean worse trauma than the hat. Yeah.'t worry i think we all believe that i don't think any of us that i just

i remember i don't think any of us have that kind of experience as the worst i remember and if we do good for you i remember being so confused why it it wasn't the conversation starter i thought it was i remember so vividly and now now i feel like at this point i'm bold enough to just go up to people and be like this is unhinged but this is probably the best thing you'll see all day look at me and my hat and look at the hat take a closer look oh oh what's that you see it's me again i almost think that there's just an edge of irony to it now though you know you're like i recognize how silly this is i feel like back then it was like no this is just badass and maybe that's why i didn't hit as hard as you thought panty dropper yeah i thought it was like yeah yeah i feel like

maybe now it's like wow this is quirky and goofy and we can all appreciate the style of the 90s but back then it's like that hat was playing the long con it was like one day it is gonna do magic for you today not that day i hope so anyway that uh that's another reason why i drink is because getting that hat has been so damn hard to build because there's so many colors on it so sorry there's not a lot of places that do like iron on or heat press for a hat. So anyway, we'll figure it out, folks. Christine, I have a story for you. Thank God. Was that not fun?

None of that? Okay. No, I mean, what I meant is I need a distraction from everything else in life. So please regale me. If that hat wasn't a distraction, I don't know what to tell you. This is not going to do it then. I know, but I felt the conversation dying down and I thought, oh no, oh no, the darkness is creeping back in. And then you said, oh, I have a story. I said, oh, thank God. I'm here to save the day. Pull me back from the brink. That's right. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Keep saying things like that to me. My eagle will go places. I will. to me my my eagle will go places um okay so i have a story for you super short today um compared to my usual stories but i thought it was uh i don't know not totally silly but a little silly if you're feeling up to it um especially since your story i'm sure will give us all every sort of heebie-jeebie so yeah let's start with the softball you know so this is the augustine steward house i know you won't know what that is but i'll give dramatic pause anyway wow yeah so first thing i gotta tell you about this place because i gave it a little quick google search she's crooked as hell this house is bent like she's got i don't know someone has to get someone has to do an x-ray on her she's looking rough um house yeah you say it you tell them christine wait can i see a picture could you say i'm sending you a

link right now oh good good is it like leaning tower pisa level or is it no but she is like a little bit of a head tilt she's definitely judging you oh oh that that actually gives me a headache weirdly it looks like an optical illusion it does i think i feel like i need to be like squinting at it uh you know what maybe she's not a head tilt but she has a hand on the hip lean oh that's that's a better way it's sort of just like a lean you know yeah she's swaying she looks like a tornado's coming through but it's actually a still day she looks like she's had a couple white claws um without eating breakfast she She looks like Christine at CrimeCon 2018.

Yeah. Okay. Well, actually, that would be the leading tower of pizza is the more accurate depiction of what I look like at CrimeCon, if we're being honest. But this houses me on most other evenings. That was a deep cut. I'm sorry, Christine. Oh, there's photo evidence on Instagram. I'm sure people have witnessed it. Not a single picture where both of your eyes are open.

No. And usually I'm behind the bar where I'm not legally allowed to be. So it was an interesting time of our touring. Well, so anyway, this house, I don't know anything about construction. I don't know why she's tilting. I don't know what the deal is. I think it's just over time. Maybe things are not as sound as they used to be. I don't totally know. But I would be worried.

I mean, it's in the middle of a pretty walkable area. You'd want to hire a really good, what do you call it, a house inspector before you get in there to just really check the foundation on that thing i yeah i'd like it to be like a a marvel where like it actually is built perfectly sound it just looks funky but i don't think that's what's happening that's probably doubtful um i would definitely like at what point how far does it have to lean before people start getting worried and like they call it a contractor you know i worry that it's gonna lean by like half a degree every year and people aren't even gonna notice until it's sideways and they're like wait a second is it always like this it's like wait a minute when the wind blows it blows yeah um so anyway she's crooked i wanted to get that out of the way now because it was my

favorite little fact about her um and this house is in norwich in norfolk uh england um and it was originally built for can you believe it augustine stewart uh as the augustine i can't i can't believe it who is augustine stewart you might say uh well the three-time mayor of Norwich and a merchant and you know what really grinds my gears Christine I can't stand how many goddamn times when I'm talking about something from yesteryear and people are a merchant that's so that's like I feel like that's like people today without a job saying they're an entrepreneur it's like just tell me what you do. I'm over it. You know, I'm in Bitcoin. You know, I'm a Bitcoin merchant. I'm in finance.

I mean, I like by finance. I mean, I like look at people on TikTok and finance, but I'm in finance. I'm in crypto. And by that, I mean, cryptozoology. I listen to it. That's why we drink. That's about as far as my crypto. Wait, can we all start saying that now?

I love that. I'm in crypto. I love it. Let's do it. We're in crypto. This is a crypto podcast. Imagine a shirt or something that says I'm in crypto and like it's a coin with like a big foot in it.

Wait, I need to make sure that doesn't exist. Eva, write that down. Write that down. I'm in crypto and it's a cryptid situation. Oh, I typed in I'm in crypto and now the internet's like, you are? Well, your ads are gonna change i'm like no the algorithm's like i've been waiting my whole life for this um anyway so augustine steward was a merchant use your imagination um so then records say this house was built in 1549 yaosa and she's been leaning ever since um but parts of the house

are also said to be have to have been built decades earlier so some of the house could be from like the 1400s whoa and there's been additions since but i guess the her bones are pretty much from 1549 no wonder my bones are crooked and I'm 30 years old. You know what? You make a great point. That's what my back would look like today getting out of bed. So yeah. Also before anyone asks, I'm 32.

Yeah, I know. Don't remind me. But your brain doesn't know that, which means we're in dangerous territory. It's bad news. doesn't know that which means it's we're in dangerous territory it's a bad news today this house is one of the most photographed buildings in norfolk and i wonder if that's because of her her little lean um but also a fun fact here is that this house still has part of its medieval undercroft and honestly as an american that's the first time i've ever said the word undercroft it is apparently for people like me who don't know what that is it's a cellar used as like a

storage room a cellar used as storage room okay so a basement got it okay yeah see that's what i'm thinking too but now i'm gonna start calling the basement the undercroft because i'm never going back especially your basement your the basement the undercroft because I'm never going back, especially your basement. Your basement's an undercroft. Oh, sure. Yeah. If there was ever an undercraft. Is that what it is? Croft. Under what? Oh, OK. I'm thinking. Oh, OK. Laura Croft. Undercroft. OK. Got it. But yeah, your your place. I mean. No comment comment. Well, actually, here's my comment. I was going to say, no comment, bullshit. Here they go.

If you were to ever find yourself in a place that does not look like a residential home in a suburban neighborhood, you're probably in Christine's Undercroft. It's really scary. It looks nothing like the rest. You come upstairs and the sun hits you in the eyes and you're like, where was I? You're like, where have I been? It's like a totally other land. It's crazy.

It is. It's a scary place. Gio loves it down there. You know who's going to love it? I say it every time, but it's going to be your kid as a teenager. She's going to make that place the party pad. And I'm going to help her, by the way. I will be the person who designs it, it up makes it clean for her i'm gonna be like that weird like hippie hollywood relative who has a really distant

relationship but i come in and just really wow you and then i disappear and everyone's like how are you related and then leona's like i don't really know they just that's a secret sometimes it's a secret i would say i would like give the answer in riddles i'd be like follow the attic and down to the undercraft i'd regret asking yeah it's like never mind i actually don't care um so the house sits on top of an alley and this alley is very appropriately called tombland alley oh my god laura croft tombland alley undercroft tombland alley did you just game the system what just happened i sure gamed it hard yep that's what i did i'm in the main frame folks okay i'm in the main frame i'm in the undercroft it's called tomb land alley tombland tombland i don't know how it's actually pronounced it's spelled tombland and it comes it's before they're so it ends up

becoming like a a very haunted place but at the time it was named that because that was old english for like an open area and it was just describing the spot a thousand years ago it was just an open land open open space okay um and this alley sits on a former road that ancient romans used to occupy england so if we're thinking like how far back do the ghosts here go you know ancient ancient rome um wow and uh below the alley there's rumors of there being a plague pit where there was a mass grave to toss in victims of the plague when burial demands got overwhelming and they didn't have time to handle one-on-one cases oh no um so it actually ended up being incredibly appropriate and i like to think they were originally going to put the plague pit somewhere else and they were like i know a place

with the perfect name for that shit we gotta let's redo all the logistics oh never mind sorry that would probably also serve leona's hangout spot yeah leona's cool kids club you know my my hangout spot we called it the kids club that's probably what most kids call their hangout just saying mine i don't know i'll have to show you pictures one day when i find that other picture of me and my hat when the picture of me and my hat and the picture of me and my hat there are pictures of the kids club and it was official we had a test i'm not saying yours wasn't cool i'm just saying i think kids club is a pretty um christine i know exactly what we're to do for our after chat today.

What? Okay. What? This is so humiliating. Oh, great. Okay, I'm in. I'm taking one for the team. This is actually probably the most embarrassed that anyone's ever going to see me on this show.

I'm trying to figure out if I even want to talk about it. So the kids club, it was a real thing it was a um it was my mom's way of trying to give me a distraction during the divorce and she was like pick a room in the house turn it into whatever like wild shit you want it was essentially my pre-troll hole and um we had a slide in there we had icicle lights everywhere we had a secret entrance we had like all of this stuff in the basement we even like had like a lock on the door and it was password protected this room and like the password protection was a nine-year-old just saying like a silly word on the other side of the door but um i was really we loved the kids club there was four of us as founding members and all of us got together on the weekends and hung out in the kids club.

And we made this test for, because other people were like, uh, we told people at school about the kids club and they were like, I want to join. And I went, you got to pass the test first. Cause I had heard somewhere that like initiations were important. Um, and I have a copy of the test here and it's really really really stupid and also like it's so obvious like any therapist could take one look at it and go you clearly didn't want anyone to ever pass this test what the fuck is it you're like you did not want to share your kids club with any other kids i wanted it to be like club 33 elite like you just can't get in like it's like i wanted it to be the

new skull and bones and i was like oh my god even at age like eight you were fucking whatever age this was you were already in your secret society bullshit i know so i have i still have a copy of the test i will be fully embarrassing myself by reading aloud the questions to you but i get to take the test i get to take the test i get to fail out of kids club and not to say i'm not trying to like make it that hard of a challenge for you but nobody's ever passed the test i was gonna say i already know i listen i'm excited to get rejected from kids club that's gonna be on my newest resume you know i feel like that's an honor i can't wait to achieve it's about to be a real embarrassing after chat after this so if anyone is not part

of patreon yet please go join and then you can listen to me we're gonna be the kids club rejects and we're gonna make an even cooler club that m can't join you know what i mean oh that hurts my feelings and i deserve it i deserve it just kidding i'm just kidding you can enter the at the end of the disney channel episode you you get to join we join we merge our clubs together that's how this all ends you know happy ever after yes it's a double kids club yeah that sounds good that's well the first i have to take a sip of my own medicine so um and it's bitter to be honest it's not good it's not good where were we tombs and plague pits so uh so anyway below so we're talking about let me just get my facts straight again um we were talking about the augustine steward house and it sits on top of

um tombland alley tombland alley which had a theoretically or the rumors say that there was a big plague pit down there because we've talked about it for like the last several weeks everybody but uh the bubonic plague hit england wouldn't you know it she's back she's back uh and so in this area specifically in norwich, 76% of the population was wiped out. I gasp every time because every time I'm shocked. I just don't know how else to react. No, I keep bringing it up and I'm still blown away every time. But I think the number was like out of 25,000 people that lived there, only 6,000 people remained.

Jesus Christ, that's crazy it said that um the graveyard on tombland alley uh had to be completely raised to make room for new plague victims so i'm assuming that means like they had to put bodies on top of bodies or i honestly don't know i don't know what that means but it sounds bad um doesn't sound good bodies and victims nothing good can come of this raise a graveyard for more bodies yeah so this is the protocol at the time uh because remember i told you a lot of places were really strict about the bubonic plague and like like they were just like murder you literally there are you went to church you asshole we're hanging you outside jesus christ they were not fucking around they were like do not get us sick and you know be with the people not with yourself so um anyway so they took it very seriously and they had this protocol, at least in this area of England, that if there was a wave of the plague coming through, if people died in a house, the house would be boarded shut for 40 days.

Oh my God. they would uh paint a red cross on the door to warn people like get the fuck away from this this has been infested and don't come near this house um the house was then reopened and cleaned out after the fact but items had to stay even longer because at the time they really didn't know what was causing the plague and um and so they were just kind of guessing they were like maybe it's still sitting in furniture and it's like still sitting in carpet so it was a lot of guesswork but they'd board up the place for 40 days and i guess let it simmer down and then they would reopen it and clean it out and then certain things that were more absorbent i guess so wait did the person okay i'm such an idiot sorry i was thinking this whole time they

left the body in there but you're saying they took the body out and then closed the house took the body out and then closed the house got it okay i'm like the smell must have been terrible okay i understand they took the body once they once they had on record that a house had had a death they would remove the body and then they would do this whole thing the cross thing on the door is creepy as fuck like that's very biblical yeah and i wonder like when i hear cross especially painted red i think red cross and it looks like a plus sign but do they mean religious cross i don't know uh they probably just meant like a red x or like a red cross i they probably didn't mean a religious

one i don't know i don't know. Maybe someone. Stay away. Oh, oh, like an X. Like an X, yeah. I mean, I don't know. I don't know why I say this with such confidence. I'm pretending like you're my time travel escort. I have no idea. I love when you pretend like I know what I'm talking about in your story. It makes me feel really smart.

Christine, I think you're so smart. And this is just a moment where you deserve a compliment. it makes me feel really smart christine i think you're like i think you're so smart and uh this is just some this is just a moment where you deserve a compliment in general i think you're so smart so when you say historians are like let me just step in here because christine's full of shit i'm also the person who thought i was going to tell you about the back rooms and then taught you like intergalactic space so yeah but like who. Yeah, but like who can do that? Only M. No, only neurodivergent people with a 3 a.m. hyperfixation.

Who listen to like opera, like high sped opera on YouTube. As I'm like becoming Yildirgras Tyson overnight. Jesus Christ. So anyway, they would reopen the house, clean through it. And in the 1500s, this was 1578. The plague came through the town once again.

And there was a big kerfuffle about it because the queen had recently been there. And a bunch of I know the queen had come and that also brought in a lot of tourists. So it created a bit of a scandal of like did the queen fucking bring us the plague like it's like or did it was it visitors but like someone from the outside came in and did this to us so uh this event is often blamed on the the event of the queen coming is what's usually blamed on the next outbreak which lasted through the summer and the last family to live in this Augustine Stewart house, they, because I think after this family, nobody else lived in the house. So, yeah, OK. So in the 1500s, the last family was there. The plague is going on. And one by one, everybody starts dying in this house. And there was a mom, a dad, and a daughter.

And the daughter was a little girl. So, and then I guess maybe there were some other people. There's different versions of the story where other people were staying with them. But one by one, people stop coming out of the house every day and people notice. And it's assumed that they all died in their home. Okay. So authorities come in to do their whole protocol. But something gets mixed up in the messages where they thought the people who bring out the dead had already shown up.

And they, as you predicted it started boarding up the house with the bodies inside oh shit okay as you said it i was like motherfucker christine i'm so sorry i'm sorry oh no so as you thought yowza the smell had to be crazy it was three decomposing bodies for 40 days right it was over a month right and so authorities show up to reopen the the building which i can't imagine their conversations on the way there of like oh well at least it's clean now and it's like actually has it's so much worse they're like it's so weird the we get, the worse it smells. That doesn't make sense. I know. So they're opening up the house.

They find out, holy shit, there's two bodies on the floor in this house. And it's the husband and the wife. Ooh, on the floor. They go up to the bodies. And they realize that the bodies have large human-sized bite marks in the bodies and they realize that the bodies have large human sized bite marks in the bodies oh no when they go up when they go upstairs and they end up finding the little girl's body because she also ended up dying in the house they find human flesh in her mouth and this is when they realized that she was still alive after her parents what the fuck and this this is the the main version of this story that that people fucked up is that she got boarded up inside the house and was probably too small or maybe weak from the weak from

something and she couldn't call out for help or nobody heard her while they were boarding up the house and she got stuck in there with her dead parents and ate them fuck what the fuck another version of this says that uh there was actually still a bite of human flesh stuck in her throat and it's assumed that she actually just died from choking and never actually had any signs of the plague. She just died consequentially from that. Great. Cool. There are less horrifying versions of this story, but the main one people have heard is the cannibalism one, because of course. Yeah.

Some people think that what's even eerier about this is that when the plague, when people would get the plague, it was common that they would end up getting buboes, which was essentially like limp, swollen limp notes. And the girl didn't show any of those, didn't show any signs of having gotten the plague it's almost as if she lived with two people who died from the plague and somehow didn't catch it apparently for centuries there was actually a very few people who had a genetic resistance to the plague and it's thought that maybe she was one of them and she only died from starvation or choking on her parents fucking horrible choking on her parents okay that's the world's worst sentence like bar none bar none um another version uh is that all of them were still alive while boarded while the house was getting boarded up but they

were all weak from the plague and couldn't call out for help and so they watched themselves get bored and in and then they starved to death okay great so they're just all fucking terrible it's like the titanic when they all just kind of start holding hands and just look around you know it's just like this is our fate i guess yeah another version is a young woman uh who was either boarding there or worked for them in some way she was also sick in the house and she starved to death alongside the girl and now both the young girl and that young woman are said to haunt the space so you could you have two chances at seeing a ghost i don't know where the hell the parents went but people have not really seen anything of them. Ooh. So anyway, both the young girl and the young woman are said to haunt the Augustine Stewart house as well as the nearby streets of Tombland Alley.

The whole area is just known to you have a chance at seeing either of them at any moment. And the girl appears in the alley a lot. She appears in the house. She appears in the graveyard at the nearby church she really seems to just be like the damn council woman she probably gets she probably first of all she deserves to be second of all i feel like she can finally get out of the house so she's gonna get out of the house you know i feel like that's i also feel that way of like well fuck why on earth would i keep staying here but also why would you keep staying here you know anywhere just go girl be free go go be free

um she is often seen in ragged gray clothes and her legs have faded away below the knee so it looks like she's floating a lot of the time she is also known to in the house specifically to open and close doors move items around and makes people feel like someone is standing way too goddamn close um which i love that she's just like on your ass like for no reason like in everybody's business now that the plague is over and she can now that she can breathe near you and not worry about getting the plague but yeah she's apparently all up on you it's like you could be anywhere in the cosmos and you're picking right next to my fucking face right by my face um the young woman is also

said to be wearing gray she is known as the gray lady hey and she wanders the alley for eternity yikes i can't imagine um one time she was seen entering a church and then she made her way through the entire church and exited out of permanently locked doors to go back to the alley oh god so there's no there's no way anyone else could have opened the doors but they saw her I don't know if she opened the door or like walked through the door, but she did it when no one else could. Oh, I see. Okay. She's also known.

Well, I'll start here that the house has lived many lives at this point. It's been a coffee shop. It's been a bookstore. It's been an antiques shop. I mean, it's hundreds of years old. It was even recently an escape room. It might still be. No way um and one

of the rooms was based on the ghosts of that house which i love shut up that's crazy that's actually terrifying to be in a haunted house playing a game about the people who died there yikes it's like it's the fun version because i think this part is a little uh tasteless but i've heard of like houses that where people have been killed. Then you host murder mystery parties. That's so good. That's not the vibe I want. But I love an escape room about ghosts because it's a fun thing about an alleged thing.

You know what I mean? Right. True, true, true. It's not like we're joking about the murder. Ha ha. It's like, you know, this is the lore of this particular. Ghosts might not even be real. So this is all probably fine. It's not like we're joking about the murder. Ha ha. It's like, you know, this is the lore of this particular. It's like ghosts might not even be real. So this is all probably fine.

It's a better. It's definitely a better angle in my mind. Yeah. It reminds me a lot of the Alton Towers that we talked about a while ago because they had a roller coaster. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

They had a roller coaster about the ghosts that haunt that. Yes. Yes. That's pretty cool. I love when people own it i you know what i you know what i'm wow i'm just so mad at everyone today christine whoa whoa you know what gets me you know what what gets you what grinds your gears gets me it's when we stay at hotels we stay at quite a lot and i look them in the eye and i say that's right you tell me is this place haunted

and then i even tell them and i go ask them ask them ask them ask them but tell them i didn't tell you to and i'll even say i'm like by the way if the answer is yes that's a good sign for me like you're not gonna scare me away we're not gonna like leave right i'm not hoping you'll say no i'm hoping you'll say yes like just lie to me just lie like and they'll go they'll be all fucking fishy what was the one what was the big fancy beautiful one uh with the butler the fister yeah was it the fister which is weird isn't that which is like yes it's like notoriously haunted and they're like well we can't say anything we don't know and i'm like that by the way sounds like anything that's a guilty fucking

omission like that's probably why like i mean listen I'm not down for anyone losing their job they probably have to say that they probably wish they could tell you you know but I've been like just blink blink just blink at all breathe what if they worried you're a secret shopper a secret hotel guest and you're gonna like report them to management yeah I'm like i'm like intel and i'm like if you blink you're gonna get fired we by the way we look like the least qualified like we roll in in like crocs and like whatever the fuck they're they definitely don't think we're like secret shoppers but no but we're that's the point though is that we're hidden so exactly maybe we're so unlike what they're expecting that they're like we don't want to tell these bozos anything about these i feel like i just i hate i hate when especially like the fester when it's notoriously haunted so like how dare you it's like we all know we all know one thing if i write an article

about like the hilton and like like it nobody knew of it as like this big haunted place if i was like oh i've heard it's haunted by like a random source yeah it'd be one thing if they were kind of like oh i don't know i don't know about that for me but if a place is on listicle after listicle of like top 100 haunted places on and you've done research on it personally yes i'm like don't please like do not patronize me like at least say you've heard about the ghosts like now you sound like me don't patronize me i know there's a ghost here i think it's also because anytime i've asked that question it's always to someone at the front desk who's a man and i'm like you have to be kidding me like i yeah why did i even waste my time asking you why would i waste my time on you a man unless you're the butler my digital butler who brings the digital butler who brought you a simple text

and now the second you said the one with the butler, I was like, oh God, the chocolate cake digital butler that Em found at the fistic. Em recovered nicely when that was an option. Em recovered from the rejection at the front desk pretty quickly, so. I did. Well, I think they probably,

maybe the digital butler is like their big red nuclear code button of like, uh-oh, someone's mad. Emergency, bring them cake. Send them the butler. Okay, anyway, so I don't know how we got there. But I certainly don't. Okay, so I'm about to be done here, but I just want to say in 1973, this area,

oh, because it was a bunch of places and then escape room and blah, blah, blah. In 1973, it was the like uh visitor center like tourist information spot and during this time a visitor said oh i just saw like a lady in gray in the alley and people lost their minds it hit the papers and uh people began speculating who on earth is this ghostly gray lady and people thought maybe it was augustine stewart's house maybe it was one of his wives throughout his life maybe it was a nun at the nearby church or at the graveyard who like was on her way home maybe it was the steward seamstress um apparently they have

seamstress um they don't know or she could be like a border she could have been someone who is not related at all and through like the blueprint theory maybe she lived there before they did or was on the property in some way maybe she's a roman maybe she's an ancient roman um trap traipsing on through yeah and she's just invading the city um with their little gray dress she was on her off day she was just frolicking um in the 80s and 90s there was a nightclub next door to this place and the dj heard some weird noises and ended up finding a woman dressed in gray and he tried to talk to her but she ignored him and left the room and when he turned to look at her again she was gliding away and had no bottom half uh-oh yikes uh the when i think about myself

in that situation i my first thought would be like oh i need like they're falling i need to help and it's like i don't know why that's my first thought but i feel like i feel like everyone else just kind of stays stunned i would feel like oh there's clearly air between you and the floor you're about to timber like i'm gonna get you no but but no because you wouldn't see their legs right i think i wouldn't even notice the no legs i think think I'd be like, you're midair, which means you're going to hit the ground. But your head's still at a normal height. I don't know if I have more than a split second to think about logic, but I am just trying to bond with you about what my experience would be. I believe you.

I just am trying to understand. I think I'd try to scoop her up. I wouldn't even realize that she was not fully there. Oh, okay. I'd be like, look out and then you know how i feel about torsos so i just can't even wrap my head i'd be like out of there out of there i understand i probably like maybe me too but also maybe i don't know what i would do i do think if i saw you would be heroic thank you and try to catch her i would try and you know what i'd end up just traumatizing

myself because i'd be like she just evaporated in my hands what the hell was that you're like i tried to save her yeah um so anyway people are trying to figure out who she is people have have all these theories but nobody really knows they're the only main lore people hear about is that she was in the steward's home around the time they also died right and since a lot of the population 76 of the population or something went away it's a good guess that she died from the plague but to this day tourists and locals still report seeing the gray lady and the little girl near the augustine steward house also in the general tombland alley and the girl seems to be more of Stewart house, also in the general Tombland alley. And the girl seems to be more of an intelligent energy because she's like opening doors

and playing tricks on people. Whereas the gray lady has always seemed residual, like on the blueprint, on a blueprint. So anyway, those are the two main ghosts of the area. And that is, that's the Augustine Stewart house. Man, I just just wonder good job first of all but i also just wonder when it's something like oh we don't know who this lady was or what her deal is like i just so want some psychic mediums to come in and like figure out why this

woman is playing this route over and over you know what i mean like where's chip coffee see i'm not i i mean obviously i'm very uh pro medium psychic all this stuff but i do wonder how do we have so many ghosts that we don't know anything about with so many people who have an ability i like i don't not in a judgy way i just i try to wrap my head around like how many ghosts are there i feel like every place i've ever covered is we don't know but someone had to have been there that could have gotten some intel maybe they don't want to tell you you know maybe they don't want to tell me or maybe psychic mediums just haven't opened up there you know they're just like maybe she's like a brooding teen she's like don't look

at me don't look at me you know she like just doesn't even she doesn't want the attention but she kind of loves that she's the main character and like that's all she passed she and she's thinking don't turn around don't turn around or you'll lose it don't turn around you'll lose the confidence i do think that like there has to be one ghost out there who always dreamed of being the main character and now every day people are like desperately searching for them. Like now it's in the newspaper, you know. It's like you made it, girl. Girl, good for you.

Good for you. Anyway, yeah, I don't know. I don't know what her story is. Very good. I mean, that was one of the most upsetting things I've ever heard about that child eating her parents. But, you know, the rest was great. Just a fun urban legend there's no actual evidence of it but that's what the kids say it's what the kids at

least we can say to ourselves you know what maybe it didn't really happen that way exactly spare ourselves the nightmares but unfortunately i'm gonna bring you more nightmares because we all know why we're here to why we're gathered here today to celebrate not love hell hell um we are doing dennis raider part two i would like everyone who has not heard the first half to please listen to that first because you're not gonna understand i mean you're gonna understand but and maybe take three more deep breaths because yeah first of all take a breath second of all take a sip of water third of all go listen to part one first because you're gonna need it okay let's just dive right in the last thing let me see what was the last thing i talked about um i don't know. I talked about the poem he wrote to the newspaper that they thought was a classified Valentine's ad. Yeah. Shirley locks or Shelley locks.

Yeah. Shirley locks. I see. You got it. Got it. Nailed it. And he was angry that his letter didn't stir a reaction. So he wrote a letter to the news saying hey how

many people does a guy have to kill around here to get my name in the paper or some national attention uh so really just playing is like showing his hand that he just wants attention um and he also with that suggested a list of potential nicknames our favorite being i think the poetic killer or whatever something that made zero sense something that was not clever um so after that um the police warned the public that this man was dangerous there was a serial killer on the loose and he would strike again and it seemed like dennis's reign of terror uh suddenly abruptly. He went quiet for eight years. And let's get into part two now.

So after killing Nancy Fox in 1977, 1979 dennis actually attempted to find his next victim who was 63 year old anna williams 63 has he done this to someone older before um i don't believe i believe this is the oldest uh that he has targeted so far was he i don't mean to um immediately jump in and take away you answering things. Okay. Does he have an age preference or is it just like any one? So he definitely targets women first and foremost. But as with the Oteros, he will actively kill people who are also just there like collateral damage almost right um but the

sexual thrill he gets from uh binding and torturing women and seeing their fear um and children i will say because you know from josephine otero who was 11 and he claimed claimed, oh, I like women. I'm attracted to women with brown hair. And, ugh, God, sicko. So this is the first 63-year-old, but he does have quite a range of ages that he targets. But typically the main target is women that he believes he can break into their home. Okay. If that makes sense.

Yes. So he targets 63-year-old Anna Williams. He broke into her house while she was away at a square dance. Wow. I don't know why I didn't see that. If it weren't so sad, the comedy just writes itself there. I know. It's like, I don't know.

It's just one bright spot in a terrible whole story but anna was running late he knew she was supposed to be coming home because remember he stalks his victims he knows their routines and so he's lying in wait inside her darkened home but anna is running late she actually had stopped to visit her daughter on her way home and this is as far as we know the only time this really happened he got impatient and just got up and left oh so by the time anna came home that night she went to bed like normal had no fucking idea that a serial killer had waited it's one of those moments we're like it's one of those moments where now every time i'm i feel safe i'll be like

but was i did i already do that but yes i think that's very relatable it's like i feel comfortable what's wrong yeah yeah so she had no idea a serial killer had been hiding out in her house waiting for her until roughly two months later when dennis mailediled Anna some of her own personal belongings that he had taken from inside her house. Ew. He still found a way to be so violating. Yes. Yes. And also now she has to panic about like, unless he wrote a note that I don't know about. It's like now she has to be paranoid about like, was this from like three days ago or a year ago? Or like, does he come here regularly? Was this one time? Is he here right now? That's a good point.

Like it's the, it's, I mean, the same type of energy of like, if you come home and someone broke into your house and you're like, it could happen again. Are they still here? Are they still here? Yeah, exactly. So talk about chilling. He sent her her own belongings from the house two months after he had broken in i presume two months later maybe because then enough time has passed that probably there's no evidence they can really find you know like his fingerprints are probably wiped off or whatever might have been there is he put some distance between it but along with the items he also sent an Anna a special poem. Oh, for fuck's sake, what? God, I'm already mad.

And he sent it to the media as well. The title of the poem is, Oh, Anna, Why Didn't You Appear? Oh. It's fucking creepy as shit. So I'm going to read it to you. Oh, Anna, why didn't you appear? Twas perfect plan of deviant pleasure so bold on that spring night my inner feeling hot with propension of the new awakening season worn with inner fear and rapture

my pleasure of entanglement like new vines at night oh anna why didn't you appear? Drop of fear, fresh spring rain would roll down from your nakedness To scent to lofty fever that burns within In that small world of longing, fear, rapture, and desperation The game we play, fall on devil ears Fantasy, spring forth, mounts to storm fury Then winter, clam at the end Oh Anna, why didn't you appear? Alone, now in another time span, I lay with sweet enrapture garments across most private thought.

Bed of spring moist grass clean before the sun, enslaved with control. Warm wind scenting the air, sunlight sparkle, tears and eyes so deep and clear. Alone again I trod in past memories of mirrors and ponder why for number eight was not oh anna why didn't you appear the end so he did he did up his game from the last poem of uh yeah roses are red violets are blue but there were a lot of spelling errors in there i will say i'm sure he nailed spelling propension and entanglement. Entanglement. But that, oh, I see.

Okay. I don't know exactly what he said. I feel like if I read it, I could dissect it a little faster, but that was a lot to process. Yeah, yeah. It's a lot of, also it's a lot of just like blabbering. What? Are you kidding me? I know.

I know. Hard to believe. I did hear him say like she was supposed to be number eight. Does that mean he's admitting to seven deaths? I believe so. Yes. Okay. I believe so.

I'm terrible at math. So I, but I believe eight minus one is seven girl. I know, but I'm saying I'm terrible at like going back in my mind and adding up all the ones that we've covered from last week. I'm like, I know what a minus one is. I did just say, does she's supposed to be eight. So there's seven.

And you went, I'm really hard with numbers. I don't, I'm sorry. I meant like, I don't know if there are seven. Cause I'm trying to remember like how many there were in each. Because, you know, I got you.

I got you. With survivors and all that. But I'm assuming this was admitting to the eighth. So, yeah, very disturbing to receive this in the mail and think, oh, good. This man was waiting for me in my home while I was at square dancing one day. Yeah. So another person finally, thank God, has escaped his wrath. But he mails this out.

And of course, the media gets a hold of it. And at the time, Wichita only had six homicide detectives. And a retired detective later said in an interview, we looked at the boxes and boxes of evidence and thought we're never going to be able to get through all of it so it just felt like such an uphill battle so they followed every lead they had but continued to come up with nothing and in 1979 two of those detectives were actually promoted and because of that they were taken off the case so whatever like tenuous grasp they already had on dennis

was now even more tenuous was slipping okay so Okay. So years passed and Dennis was quiet, but detectives and the public alike, you know, lived with that constant knowing that the serial killer was still out there. Even if he wasn't making headlines every day, he was still lurking. And so people still lived with that fear. He was still lurking, and so people still lived with that fear. Then in 1984, a new task force formed to tackle the case, and they called themselves the Ghostbusters. Okay, sure. Let's see where it takes us. Okay, no judgment. So the Ghostbusters organized all of the evidence in the killings and eventually gathered DNAna samples which at the time was a promising new forensic technology god if only they knew how tremendously helpful dna evidence would become i mean i'm sure some people knew but i'm sure there's some like newspaper articles

where people are still a little afraid of like advanced technology sure they're like i don't know this thing's just gonna put names on they're just gonna pick a name and you'll be a killer they're gonna clone me and i yeah yeah i'm sure there was a lot of that definitely um but they were able to at least get a few dna samples um which was great news but you know they still were in the 80s. There was still not much they could do in the way of getting a profile, as far as DNA profile at least. In April 1985, Dennis killed again for the first time in like eight years. So the better part of a decade, he has been laying low. He tried with Anna, but obviously, thankfully, that didn't happen so as far as we know he killed

again for the first time uh since the 70s so 53 year old marine hedge lived in the park city suburb of wichita incidentally a few doors down from dennis raider and his family oh okay so easy target yes but also really tougher target right yeah because she's right down the street and knows you you know but also well yes also i imagine the cops are gonna like knock on every door and be like do you know anyone who didn't like exactly it feels like you're just like honing in but is like his mo not to be like so narcissistic and one thing he can get away with it but two desperately wanting to like be involved in this crime and like you're right you're 100 right and also like desperately loves the feeling of like being someone well being someone that like people trust like his neighbor who sees him every day and then like turning on them and making you know what you know

it's the perfect setup for him to bring the the party to him gross but i don't know the another phrase for that but he because he knows that now he gets to sit in his own home and neighborhood and hear everyone around him talking about it for the next few days yeah you're on to it because that is definitely what happens like he has to be eating it up like he finally gets to and for for being so rejected the first time from the newspaper where nobody talked about it he thought it was going to make waves like all there are all these times where like it fell flat for him and he's like if i game the system and i literally bring the death here nobody can talk about it.

Yeah, you're forcing your family or neighbors to discuss it right in front of you. Exactly. That's a really good point. So Maureen was a very kind woman. She was a widow. She shared the block with the Raiders for 30 years. So he's known her for 30 years. It's basically like an acquaintance like a like a

like a neighbor that you are familiar with you know yeah i would say they're friends but they're friendly definitely constant and yeah and his kids also knew her and we know this from his daughter carrie who has said you know we would wave hi to her every day when we passed on the sidewalk. Like, we saw this woman all the time. So sad. It is. So on April 27th, 1985, Maureen was eating dinner with her boyfriend, and then they decided to play bingo throughout the evening. Precious.

The whole time, they were unaware that Dennis was already inside her home. Oh, fuck. I don't know why i didn't see that coming i know but it's every time it makes my blood run cold so there's a website called survivingbtk.weebly.com that um does a really good job outlining all the different um different victims and how Dennis Rader went about each of these crimes. So I'm going to paraphrase from their site because they just put so much detail in. So basically, here's how this timeline went down. Dennis Rader, his son was in the Cub Scouts. He was at a Cub Scout camping trip. Some say meeting, some say camping trip. But most sources I've heard was a camping trip. And he told everyone he had a headache.

He needed to go get some medication. So he left, went to his car. He was near a bowling alley. So he went inside the bowling alley, bought a beer, swished the beer around in his mouth, and then spit it out. Purposefully spilled some of the beer on his clothes. He wanted people around to see him drinking a beer, like I guess as an alibi. Okay. So he poured it on his shirt.

Next time I spill on myself, I'm'm just gonna say it's my alibi i don't know right right right okay he then because his car was parked there he then called a cab pretending to be drunk and told the driver to take him home to park city because remember he lived there once he got to the neighborhood he got out of the cab and instead of going home, walked to Maureen's house. He saw her car and assumed she was home, so he cut the phone line like usual and he quietly opened her back door to sneak in. Now, what he didn't realize is no one was actually home at that point, so instead he waited in her bedroom until he saw a car pull into the driveway. And that's when Maureen and her boyfriend walked into the house with big plans to play bingo, you know. So Rader waited in the bedroom closet until 1 a.m. when the man left.

Wow. What the hell happened to his kid at the Boy Scout situation? He just told them, I have a headache. I'm going to head out. Oh, right, right, right. Okay. they just assumed he went home i guess i guess and you know if if as i'm quite positive it was a camping trip his wife thinks he's at this camping trip right the campers think he's at home you know so he waits in the bedroom closet until 1 a.m so that the man leaves and marine goes to sleep he then comes out of hiding turns on the bathroom light jumps on top of marine and chokes her to death once she had died he dragged her body outside into the trunk of her own car he then drove to the church where he was council president

and because he was council president he had keys and was given full access to the church so he put black plastic over the windows of the church so no one could look inside he brought her body to the basement of the church uh and photographed the body in multiple different poses before putting her body back in the trunk of the car and dumping it in a ditch along a dirt road near their neighborhood so maureen was discovered eight days later on the side of the road she had a pair of knotted pantyhose laying nearby um despite the pantyhose which dennis had actually used in previous murders uh investigators did not immediately connect marine steph to btk because his mo was not usually to remove people from their house after killing

them um so he he had changed things up and this time he changed things up again because he did not take credit for this crime he did not write to the media to take credit probably because like you were mentioning it was so close to home you know it's a much riskier one this time so he I feel like that was a negotiation with it was yeah it was a negotiation with himself of like I'll bring the story to me but I have to be even more discreet than usual or something. Yes. There's a bigger risk involved. And interestingly, like you had mentioned, you know, people in the area were totally beside themselves, including his own young daughter, Carrie, who was petrified that their lovely, sweet, friendly neighbor had just been brutally murdered. And it's, I it's i wonder sorry i keep interrupting

you it's so fucked up no no i is um does he ever say anything or does anyone say anything about like how was he aware of the trauma he was gonna put on his kid and he like almost even liked having the power over her or was that something he hadn't considered and he was like oh fuck i didn't realize that i'm hurting you know i don't know because he lies a lot about how he's actually a decent guy and so i don't really want to take any of sure that you know as truth necessarily but what we do uniform his daughter is that she was so petrified that she was you know she started having nightmares she talked to her mom and dad about how scared she was and they both reassured her and said you are safe here and her mother even told her your father's right across the hall no one can hurt you oh and he told her i'll keep you

safe you know hugged her said nothing's nothing's going to happen to you. And he probably believed it. He thought, well, I'm not going to hurt her, so she'll be safe. In his twisted mind, that's probably how he rationalized that he was a good dad, you know? Right. That's a good way to look at it. Because I, yeah, I was like, he didn't even, I wonder if he even considered his own family dynamic of how like his selfish. I mean, there's other words to describe it, too. But on top of it, like how selfish this was of like you really wanted people to talk about you and talk about this murder and you want to bring it close to home. But did you consider that like your own home life would now like shocker be affected by this? So I don't think he really cared. I mean, he was like, you're fine, you're safe.

And he knew he wasn't going to kill her. So he thought, well, actually, you know, you're in good hands, unfortunately, under our roof. I think that must be the way he, you know, explained it away to himself because he really does think he's like a decent guy at the end of the day, which is disturbing. So in late 1986, Dennis started stalking his next victim. And that was 28-year-old Vicki Wiggerly, who was a married mother of two. this victim by parking across the street during a lunch break and hearing some piano music wafting through the air toward him. And he walked past her house and noticed that she was playing the piano and he felt like she was almost performing for him. And he spent a lot of time planning and fantasizing about this attack. I know I mentioned it, I'm pretty sure last time, but he had these projects, quote unquote, that he would take extensive notes on, have that, you know, lay out of their house. He would plan, he would name them specific things,

like quote unquote nicknames. And this was one of of his projects and so he fantasized for a while about this about attacking her and then on the morning of September 16th 1986 Dennis decided to pose as a telephone repairman at the Wiggerly house and Vicky let him in to repair her phone line of course as he is quote-un, repairing her phone line, he cuts the phone line. Of course. Unbeknownst to her, which is at the time was a method of disabling the alarm system. Doesn't quite work that way anymore, thankfully. So he cuts the phone line and he attacks Vicky.

Now she fights back and she scratches and bruises Dennis, but he ultimately overpowers her and he strangles her to death and then takes the Wagerly family's car. So Vicky's husband, Bill, was on his way home for lunch and saw his own car driving away from his house. Oh, God. But he noticed that the driver was not Vicky. So immediately he's like, something is up. Oh, God. Mm-hmm. So immediately he's like, something is up. Right, right, right. Dennis ditched the car in the meantime and escaped, and Bill got home and found his two-year-old son just sitting alone in the house.

Oh, God. He's looking everywhere. He's like, Vicky, where are you? He can't find her. It takes him a while he eventually looks around the bedroom and she had fallen on the other side of the bed like were you glancing in you wouldn't see her and he he finds her there having been strangled to death of course he calls calls 911 she's rushed to the hospital and later pronounced dead again investigators at this point failed to connect vicky's murder to the notorious btk killings and dennis again did not

take credit for the murder so bill wagerly her husband was instead named the prime suspect of his wife's murder oh god okay i feel like i just keep saying, oh, God. Oh, God. I know. But talk about, like, a rough turn of fucking events. You find your wife murdered in your house and then, you know, understandably you're looked at. But now you're the prime suspect. Yeah. Plot twist. So, yeah. It's not good.

Vicky's and Bill's two children basically grew up listening to classmates say your dad murdered your mom you know and they didn't know any better like they just didn't think about had to live with this fear that like their own father might have done this um and he also failed to polygraph tests which there's a reason polygraph tests are not admittable evidence you know in court because but it also to some people does look fishy it looks fishy so people remained convinced that he had murdered his wife and they didn't have enough to fully charge him um but they refused to clear his name so that's why these rumors kept spreading and the children went through a whole lot of hell because many of their classmates their

friends weren't even allowed to hang out with them because local parents thought bill was a murderer like a violent murderer and teachers also believed this and spread rumors in the schools so brandon who was two and the one who was home when his mother was killed later remembers his grandmother telling him at one point that she that she had thought btk killed his mom but oh really a little kid he didn't know what that meant so he just kind of lived with this weird lingering fear you know like his grandma just offhandedly saying like this man murdered your mother so for nearly two, this accusation would hang over Bill Waggerly's head and follow the whole family wherever they went. In early 1991, Dennis picked his final victim, as far as we know, at least. On January 19th, he left another Boy Scout meeting and unceremoniously

threw a cinder block through the sliding door of 62 year old dolores davis's home wow he obviously frightened the shit out of her and he tried to calm her down by telling her that he just needed to tie her up while he stole some supplies in her car but he wasn't gonna hurt her and so he said if you comply i will leave you alone and you know he loved to do this to play to people's uh naivete or not even naivete but like trusting nature i guess so he tells her this she you know sort of has to believe him what else can she do and he ties her up and strangles her to death He then put Dolores's remains into her car and hid her body at a nearby park. But he later returned to her house in his own car to move her body and hide Dolores under a bridge, which is where she was eventually discovered.

And then just like that, he stopped killing for years. There was absolute silence from the notorious serial killer that hunted wichita and according to the fbi during this time he was engaging in quote autoerotic activities as a substitute for his killings so he did a lot of guilty um no it was more well i don't know if it was i don't think it was really guilt necessarily but um i mean my guess and this is a total guess but my guess is that he's now aware of all the dna that's going on you know yeah maybe he's trying to lay low because uh his way uh what he's doing at this point typically is he is binding himself and putting women's masks on and tying himself up and taking photographs. And that's kind of his fix, so to speak.

He wears women's clothing and a mask. And the photos are frightening because these old timey masks are so creepy oh really old creepy like porcelain masks oh porcelain oh shit i was thinking like a bdsm thing i don't know if it's porcelain but it's like like a phantom of the opera yeah yeah sort of i don't know i'm gonna send you a photo because it's really scary oh it's worse than i remember like a masquerade mask is that what it is okay did you watch mind hunter because no one of the scariest is that he's featured pretty heavily in that series which is really good folks if you haven't seen it um but i'm gonna send you a picture of

like how they did it in the movie or in the show it's really scary i just want to warn you eva if you're listening jump scare alert okay just be aware but this is how they portrayed it in the movie and it's almost exactly what the actual oh fuck me is that the creepiest thing you've ever seen do you know what that is that's the that's like the purge masks oh god i knew it was something bad here's um an actual photo of the mask um that they found and this was found um i believe near i believe near vicky's body it was found near one of the bodies um so he had left it there yeah he had left it there and uh it was collected as evidence ew and it's like people colored it's's like, it's not even white. It's like skin.

Yeah, it's actually like really, okay, there's one more. I mean, I don't even know if we can put these on Instagram because there's one more that's really scary. But this is kind of, I mean, I'm going to show it to you. Eva, don't look. Don't look if you don't want to look. This is an example of the type of photos he would be taking of himself okay uh so this is him uh in a mask and wig and bindings i'm laughing at our nerves like it's not funny but like that really is so scary like oh my god

oh my god so then he would like go to town on himself with this like he was like all right like truly everyone's got honestly that alone it's like fine you know whatever you tie yourself up man you go for it yeah have a good time women's mask like fuck yeah but it's like knowing that this man did this to other women and children and yeah well do you know i mean that's what makes it so fucked up obviously what freaks me out a little bit and like not you know please understand where i'm coming from because the words i think i do i'm pretty sure i do um it seems like he's i know you said he was wearing masks at the crime scene too is like maybe as a way to disguise himself but here it looks like he was no he did not wear matt he did not wear masks he put them on the women um he either put

them on the women if he put them on himself typically but he would occasionally put them on the women um when he was like posing them after they were dead as like okay part of his fantasy i guess my first thought when i see this picture is that he's using the mask and like dolling it up with makeup and everything to try to literally look like a woman so he can imagine it's a woman so he could still get off to it okay that's why he's doing it on himself. Yes, he's reenacting. I don't know if he had like a cross-dressing thing or something too. You know, I mean, I think it's maybe a mix.

But all we know essentially is that he's sort of reenacting the crimes on himself and almost imagining as though he were his own victim, as if he were a woman. He would wear a pantyhose. He would tie himself up. He would wear this mask andose he would tie himself up he would wear this mask and a wig um and there's something about just old-timey masks i mean guys

picture like those old-timey porcelain dolls with just creepy faces like it's it's an upsetting mask like in and of itself whether it's a serial killers or not what i think also really bothers me is that as i'm looking this up there are are a lot of people on Reddit who sell like replicas. Ew. Which is like, stop that. Yeah, I'm not for that. Also, one of the things I don't like about this picture specifically that you sent me is that, I mean, he looks even more evil because the eyes are totally black. Yeah, the eyes are, the eyes.

And also it's like really eerie too because he like if he's trying to replicate one of his victims and that means i'm looking at essentially what his victims exactly it's so many years because it's like that's what he was doing to people that's what he wanted that's what he was fantasizing about and that's what he's actually doing to people um can you imagine like like his kid walking in though and seeing him taking pictures like this, it'd be like. I know. Like, how do you even explain that? How do you. No clue. I don't even know.

I mean, that goes right back to the compartmentalization of it. You know, like. Yeah. He could be doing this in the basement and his family thought he was doing taxes, you know. Right. Right. It's just really.

Crazy. So I show you that just to give you an idea of like this is what he did to get by almost during the times that um i think you're dead on that he discovered that dna was becoming a real thing that's my guess that's like my gut because it doesn't really strike me i mean even he admitted it earlier like serial killers cannot change their mo or stop themselves you know or even that like i feel like i feel like serial killers like their usual in general mo is that eventually they get bored of the level they're at and keep getting worse and worse and worse yeah and this is a de-escalation because

now he's not hurting anybody he's doing it to himself i know i'm sorry sorry i'm muted um but no like i feel like he's at least d it's de-escalating because now he's not harming anybody he's now only focusing it on himself as a way to look at pictures and he's not doing anything active like it's it feels like there's there's no going backwards unless something is scaring you right yeah yeah and the only other thing that people point to is that he was really busy you know with with his job with his kids and i feel like we have also seen that with serial killers where the times when their children are young or they are they their partner gives birth or what have you tend to be quieter um like almost like they're too

like literally too busy to go on these sprees um so that that that's the other thing that people point to because he was now working as a compliance officer for local government. He had two kids at home. He was volunteering with the church, with Boy Scouts. People think he just kind of started getting in the routine of his life. And for now, these autoerotic photos were enough for him. And so he just laid low. And I mean, again, this is not proven, but it's my guess that he probably also was like, oops, sorry. He probably also knew like, oh, other people are getting caught like other serial killers that I've looked up to are getting caught with DNA was too busy because I think it's a lot more time efficient to drive to someone's house, kill them and not even worry about cleaning up the dead bodies than to do whatever this is of like. Yeah, it seems it's getting outfits together, putting the makeup on, putting the hair on, getting yourself situated in a chair, especially if you're not setting up a camera as much of a thrill for you as actually doing it to other people.

You know, like if that's not getting your rocks off in the same way, then like, why, why deescalate? He's totally doing a plan B because something was going on. That's my feeling. That's kind of how my, my, how I understand it. I mean, obviously I'm no expert, but, um, it just kind of makes sense to me. Um, but so now we fast forward essentially to January 11th, 2004. Oh, and i want to be clear too we don't necessarily know he didn't hurt anyone during that time it's just what he's been linked to didn't happen in that time span so there could be other people and might well be other people and during so btk what did he this it might be a stupid question at the end of two whole episodes, but like, what was his main method of torture?

I mean, not that this isn't fucking torture, but like, usually when I think of torture, it's like additional intense, severe pain. I thought about that as well. And that's why for the longest time, Em and I had even talked about like, I mean, there are a couple of stories we don't want to cover because they're just too much for us at a certain point in time and um the toy box killer is the one i just don't ever want to go near um and i thought this would be one of them as well because the torture element is so hard for me to deal with in stories like this but i think the btk i mean from what i've gathered or at least when i've mulled this over because i've had the same question as you i almost think because he came up with all those other nicknames that it didn't necessarily even like the wichita hangman but he didn't really

hang people he only hanged one person so it's like it almost feels like he's just kind of finding words that he likes or that sound good together in his mind. Maybe it gave him wiggle room to. To what was the word you just said to escalate? It gave him room where maybe. Yeah, maybe that was part of what he thought would end up happening. And oh, another important part to this as well um with the i'm not sure if i mentioned this in part one but when the oteros were killed um remember how i said he wasn't he hadn't realized how difficult it was to kill somebody until he was doing it when investigators

came upon the crime scene later it was believed that he had been resuscitating the family and then strangling them again into unconsciousness as a torture tactic but in reality they found out later that it was only because he didn't realize how hard it was to actually kill someone and so his victims kept waking up and he he he said i was was not doing that intentionally. I really was just trying to end their lives. I'm just trying to kill them. OK, like, I know. I'm sorry. I'm not that bad of a guy. Right. So even then, it's like the torture might have made sense to people back then. But now that he's explained that wasn't intentional, then I don't know where the I mean, of course, it's all torturous in the way that he's sexually assaulting and murdering people but other than that yeah torture doesn't seem to really it's not the kind of torture that you expect with a serial killer i guess you know right so anyway um All we know is at this point he is laying low. On January 11th, 2004, and now this is 13 years since Dennis's last known murder, the Wichita Eagle ran a story about the upcoming 30-year anniversary of the Otero family murders and the unsolved BTK killings that plagued Wichita. And Dennis read the article, and as he's reading the article about himself, and I'm sure jacking off or whatever he's doing,

he discovers that someone is planning to write a book about his murders. Oh, shit. Okay. Imagine his delight. Delight and fear all at the same time. Yeah, it's almost like I imagine there was a thrill and also just like a shit because he was not happy.

He wanted to be talked about, but he was not happy that this would be told without his own input. I love that all of a sudden he knows what consent is. Right? He's like, you can't do that. He's like, I want you to talk about me, but I don't want you to like pry, Jesus.

Yeah, but this is my business you to like pry. Jesus. Yeah. But this is my business. Stay out of my business. And he wanted the story to be as accurate as possible. He's like, if you're going to write a book about me, it's going to be accurate. You're going to know why I chose my victims, how I operated. how I operated. And he felt such a sense of like pride and ownership over his despicable acts that he didn't think anyone else should get a right to tell his story except him, which is basically what you're saying. He was like, you don't have consent from me. It's like, well, well, well,

well, in that case, what do you complain about? It's not like I'm strangling you to death. Yeah. Yeah. Here, I'll mail some of the things out of your underwear drawer back to you, asshole. But OK, sure. I don't have your consent. So Dennis was also, in his own words at this point, bored, which makes me think he was really intentionally laying low because he had apparently long considered resurrecting BTK. And now that the 30 year anniversary was

coming up he's like okay it's my time to shine again baby so he decided to you know uh boot up the old i don't know what the old uh thing is ropes the old poetry typewriter i have no idea but he decides he's gonna get back on his old game. And he also knew that authorities and the media believed that BTK was either dead or in prison, which gave him like an edge because they didn't think he was still out there active because he had seemingly vanished, which usually means that the perpetrator has been arrested for another crime or has died. the perpetrator has been arrested for another crime or has died. But no, he wanted them to know he is still out there living his life.

So in March, he mailed evidence to the Wichita Eagle of Vicky's murder, including her driver's license, which he had stolen, and a photo of her body. So that's a startling thing to get as the journalist at the Wichita Eagle. Yeah, can you imagine? 30 years after the Otero murders, now you're getting, he's like, I'm back. Yikes. So also remember, Bill Wagerly is still,

in the eyes of the public, guilty for killing his wife. Oh, right. And it's been a long time 30 years was the otero i believe it was god uh 20 years 13 no 20 years 14 years i think i think a decade and a half a long ass time yeah yeah it's been a while um and so he's finally exonerated among his peers bill wagerly and in may uh of that year dennis sends a letter to a local television station called it's spelled k-a-k-e cake cake tv sure uh and this letter is so fucking stupid. I'm sorry.

I just can't. I just had to go look up like the actual contents. I just knew it would be stupid and it sure is. Okay. Because he decides he's going to start helping with the book writing process. Okay. Okay. That's all I needed to hear.

I know. Well, I read that and said, I need to know. It's like, what a martyr. He's going to be helpful. Thank you. About his own experience. Yeah, exactly. So he actually apparently was a fan of Cake TV. He watched their morning show every day. So he decides they're the ones who are going to get his special letter, which is, by the way, full of chapter title ideas for his autobiography. Lucky them. Here's lucky them.

Here are some chapter titles. Are you ready? Okay. A Serial Killer is Born. Chapter one. Chapter two. Dawn. Chapter three.

Fetish. Chapter four. Fantasy World. Five. Chapter three. Fetish. Chapter four. Fantasy world. Five. The search begins. Six. BTK's haunts. Next is PJ's, which is how he abbreviated projects.

Because at first I thought, oh, jammy jams. No, no, no. Fucking PJ's means projects. Does he think it's spelled pro space jecks? I mean, probably BTK does. Remember, BTK doesn't know how to spell. Dumb space ass. Okay. It doesn't make any sense. Dumb space ass. What a DA, you know? The next chapter is called M-O, all capital, M-O hyphen I-D hyphen ruse. All capital M-O hyphen I-D hyphen ruse. Now, BTK's choice of M-O I-D ruse probably relates to his use of fake IDs, such as like the telephone company employee ID he had referenced in the past, as well as his M-O.

And in all probability, he used these like fake ID badges or whatever to get into people's homes and that was his ruse so to speak so that's probably why he named it that then he's got hits treasured memories final curtain call dusk and then the final chapter is called

will there be more you know he thought he fucking ate by putting dusk when he put dawn i was about to say do you think you know he oh fuck yeah he went that one's gonna give him chills and like you know i think here's my here's my um being able to see right through him i i think um but first of all my first thought was just write your own fucking book you clearly want to be a writer and then in my head i was like he does want to be a writer he really wanted poems to be like part of his thing he really like so i think he's a great writer so i think he first of all he wants notoriety wherever he can get it he wants to be talked about he wants to be in control

but on top of that like it must have been a real threat to him for a different writer to say oh i'm going to take control of your story and the one thing he he wants to always be in charge of is like in control of the narrative and now someone's literally going to write a story and be in control of a narrative on top of him and and he knows that that will that book will do well for a writer that isn't him. And he probably feels threatened with his identity as a writer. And he's like, well, let me step in and let me be the writer before you get the chance to be the writer. Like, I think his world is actually being a lot more rocked than we're aware of.

And I think you're totally right. Like, this clearly shook him. Like, I imagine when he read the article, he was like, oh, yeah, they're talking about me. And then the thing about the book probably sent him over the edge. Like, no, no, no, no. That's too far. That's my story. And speaking of his writing, I want to also add that I misspoke and gave him too much credit because the last title was not will. I thought I made a typo. No, no, no. He made a typo. It's not Will There Be More. It's Will There More? Question mark. Oh, Jesus. Okay. Which, like, you can't even write your own chapter titles right.

I feel like this is definitely, like, we're saying, like, he's probably totally shaken by it. But it's purely for ego. Like, imagine a really bad person also just wants to make it in Hollywood. And then they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. We've seen your audition tapes, but now we're actually going to have someone else star as you in a movie about you. And you're not even invited to try out for it. You know, that's how he sees it. He would literally like he would fucking blow a gasket.

Oh, and he did. He really, really did. He said he he was like i'll write it better so he wrote those really shitty chapter titles and sent them in i guess trying to impress everybody and but it didn't stop there he also sent a page of like the fake ids he had used and he sent a homemade word search puzzle along with this chapter title list it's literally if we're still going with the hollywood um yeah analogy it's like she finally like i'm thinking about like this this actress who desperately wants to make it but she's like not good enough to play herself in a movie about herself she she found a way to sneak onto the the stage she's finally like she's just trying to make it as like a background character in her own movie and so now she's finally like she's just trying to make it as like a background character

in her own movie and so now she's like baking cupcakes for the main character who's going to play her like she's kissing ass being like what do you need from me what do you need from me how about i tell you how about i help you with your character how about i help you blah blah blah just so you'll so maybe i'll also you know get invited to the right carpet it's like yeah it's like shut up like first of all like i love that he's fully unraveling at the thought of not being in control i love it no you're 100 right and it's to the point that he's so unhinged that he his word search which by the way the words to search for include prowl details and fantasies and none of those he spelled right i'm sure

probably not so like no one won the word search yeah uh but at the time investigators didn't even realize that dennis had put his street address number and his own last name in the word search as like a secret oh what a good secret oh yeah you fooled me yeah so the numbers 6220 were in there and R-A-D-E-R Raider. So they didn't know because they didn't know who he was. So it's like they wouldn't have known. But he thought he was so clever, you know. Yeah.

But as he described it when he sent this to, I mean, he really, like you said, thought he was doing them a favor. Because he considered the TV station Cake TV his friends he he really felt like he had a kinship with them and um every night that they would report he they knew he was watching um there have been one of the anchors was like genuinely she was really traumatized by the whole experience this gives me chills uh at the end of one segment the anchors made um one of the anchors the one that i mentioned made an offhanded comment about having a cold. And two days later, a postcard showed up from BTK saying, sorry about Susan's and Jeff's colds. Ew.

Christine. Like now they know he's watching them every night and is like making taking notes. And she's a young woman. Like, oh, my God. like making taking notes and she's a young woman like oh my god and one more thing i want to add when i watched this uh anchor talking about how traumatizing this whole experience was he once went on a tour of the tv station with a tour group and got to watch a live news broadcast and they didn't know that he really likes this news station until i know i know until they they went back and looked at the logs and dennis raider

once ages ago had been on a tour of the tv station just too close too close so in june he sent a letter to the police. Then he started leaving packages in public places like libraries and grocery stores. So this is now just like a game, right? Like he's playing his own little scavenger hunt. In the packages were trophies of his, which were stolen items from victims' houses. And in January 2005, a letter to the police led investigators to a Home Depot, of all things, where Dennis had left a message in a cereal box in the bed of an employee's pickup truck. Oh, OK. And the joke was like serial killer, serial ha-ha. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. I know it probably goes above all our heads because he's such a fucking comedic genius. This is where I need you to pull out your classic. I'm just a little confused.

Can you explain it to me? I'm sorry. Can you explain it a little slower since I'm apparently too stupid to understand you? I'm such a dummy. I'm so stupid. Yeah. So the message in the cereal box asks whether BTK could. This is. This is great.

this is great he asks police whether btk could relay messages via a computer floppy disk without being traced and he said if that is the case i want you to run an ad in the paper that reads rex comma it will be okay and then i'll know i can send you information via floppy disk and you won't be able to trace me and so the police ran a classified ad in the newspaper that read rex it will be okay contact me p.o box first four reference numbers at 67202 and that was how they said here this is where you can send your floppy disk guess why he named himself rex first of all because he thinks he's a big big scary dinosaur but because it's three letters and it sounds like sex oh right oh god okay um another disturbing thing that just because rex yes sounds like a dog's name um he also called his down there sparky is's huge i'm not sick i don't even know what to say with

that that was just it's not even that sounds like it's like a really bad joke that you're like really out of touch uncle would try to make and everyone would just sit in silence and be like what did you just say what the fuck is he saying what am i supposed to do with that i have no idea what to do with that it's just i don't like it that's i can tell you that no no it's very bad um so that's what i don't even know why you would tell people that like just keep that to yourself you know yeah it's not even like if you're gonna tell people what you called it you better have a fucking kick-ass name like that's the yeah you better be proud i guess he was proud of it it's really stupid i just thought of that because of rex you know um so okay never mind keep going sorry run a uh run a a classified that says uh

rex it will be okay here's the box. Of course they're fucking lying. Like, what does he think? He literally thinks they're going to be like, oh, shoot. Yeah, we can track you via floppy disks. So I guess you better not send one. Like, what kind of moron thinks like, oh, they'll tell me the truth. He really must. I mean, he so so far, though, has like really played into people's naivete.

So maybe he. That's fair. Thought that like, oh, well, everyone's stupid compared to people's naivete. So maybe he. That's fair. Thought that like, oh, well, everyone's stupid compared to me because I'm a big fat narcissist. You know? Yeah, this is where it shows like this is where he really starts to unravel because of how full of himself he is. Because, of course, they're fucking lying. And then Dennis mails them a fucking floppy disk in February and investigators just open it up, check the metadata and see that there's a folder called Christ Lutheran Church and Park City Library with fucking Dennis's username as the person who had accessed it last. Dennis from Christ Lutheran Church. The irony is that he took a 30 year break because he was scared of the new technology and the new technology won

as soon as he went back into it as soon as he went back into it which i feel like everyone listening if there is anyone listening under the age of 20 is like what is that i know but at the time it was like oh you're scared of like advancements and like it still kicked your ass five seconds into you trying anyway. Dummy can even do your own research to determine if someone can trace a floppy disk. So anyway, the investigators simply searched for Dennis at Christ Lutheran Church on the Internet and Dennis Rader pops right up. He's the church's president and uh they're like ding ding ding that's probably our guy so they contact the pastor to ask who used the church computer and they sent a list and dennis raider for sure was on it so dennis became their prime

suspect for obvious reasons but they decided the best step was to link him to the dna evidence that they had preserved from the 80s by the Ghostbusters task force. Remember them? Actually, you know what? I said I would wait to see how I felt about them by the end. Go Ghostbusters. I know, right? It's like, okay, I see you. I see what you're doing here. You know what? You've won our hearts by the end. And I'm proud of you. So they saved all this evidence and they were like you know what we want to match him to the dna but we don't want to go straight to dennis because if we say we want your dna like he's gonna know sure that we're on to him obviously and they didn't have

enough evidence to outright arrest him without that dna match so they were kind of nervous because if they quote-unquote trigger him and and say like yeah we're on to you by getting his dna sample they're worried he's gonna strike again and like just you know go on another spree so they didn't want to reveal their hand so instead they decided to seek out a familial match and see if they could link his dna that way they discovered that dennis's daughter carrie this is where it's a little dicey recently underwent a pap smear at the hospital okay and so the hospital turned over a sample of her dna under a judge's order from the procedure which in my mind is she did she had no idea about this i find this pretty um oh shit okay yeah pretty um invasive and violating yeah violating violating is the right word was this because back then like the

rules were still being like created about dna and so i think a judge just said yeah get the dna and they said okay and nobody my first thought was do the law and order thing where you give them a can of soda when they drink it. Now you've got their DNA. I know. Right. And like nowadays, you know, they're often just following them through the mall and getting their trash out of the right, getting their P.F. Chang's out of the garbage, you know. But basically they got the pap smear, which seems, again, very invasive. And she didn't know about it until later which was upsetting um but lo and behold they got a match uh to btk's dna so on february 25th 2005 detectives finally took dennis raider into custody and they said would you be surprised to know that the father of your daughter is BTK? Because of the DNA family match.

And after a short silence, an FBI agent in the room said, tell us who you are. And Dennis said, I'm BTK. You got me. Dusk. Dusk. Will there more no that's my answer the chapter just goes no fucker never again so of course at this point ding ding ding they got him time to unravel decades of this man's fucking despicable acts and a search of his house

revealed some disturbing things these aren't necessarily like crucial to the story but i just find them so disturbing that i'm gonna include them um one thing they discovered was a stress ball in his house you know the brand life is good that was like big in the 2000s um and everyone i mean i don't know everyone had a t-shirt, I feel like, from vacation with like, life is good. Yeah, I definitely did. But he had a stress ball that said life is good. It turns out he would use that at home to strengthen his hands for strangulation. Ooh, life is good is like, we do not condone this.

Yeah, I know. And it's like of all phrases to have on your wife is good taking lives so they also found of course meticulous notes of his past projects um a lot of those he kept at work his pjs i'm so sorry yes and um they basically had to go around telling people hey you were gonna be a victim of btk like he had his eyes on you or he had already targeted you like he he was writing about your daily routine which is just chilling um just bizarre like he he had all these unfinished quote-unquote pjs you know that he had never really gone through with and they had to go around and tell people like i mean good news bad news yeah but it's also like if he

was trying to like not he was still on his hiatus of killing maybe like all he had left was just observing people and he got really weird maybe he was just doing the the like stalking part yeah it was like all he could do that was left yeah that's probably true so the arrest went public the following day which i imagine i i don't totally remember i vaguely remember this time but i was not in my true crime era yet um the arrest went public and authorities told the nation they'd finally caught btk who again they had assumed was either dead or in prison and they'd never know um so of course a wave of relief passed through Wichita. But people who were close to Dennis and considered him a friend were shocked.

We talked a lot about the, you know, compartmentalizing of Dennis Rader and BTK. And he pulled that off in a lot of instances. So Paul Kars... What? Try again? I'm so sorry. And he pulled that off in a lot of instances. So Paul Karlstedt, who knew Dennis for 30 years, could not believe, like he just could not reconcile that these were the same person, which must just be the most trippy feeling. Like, how do you trust yourself after that, you know? the most trippy feeling like of you how do you trust yourself after that you know and he had known dennis for 30 years and he just could not believe this man could do something so terrible he said we prayed in church for a conclusion to this crime spree like while dennis was in church with them so like dennis is praying with everybody like but he loved that he

got off on that of course our prayers were not answered in the way we expected them to be answered but they were answered yeah that's one way to put it okay sure um when detectives broke the news to dennis's daughter she could not believe it was true she began reading and she had actually heard of btk but she's like i just didn't really know much about it like even growing up in the area like she was off at college at this time but she said like she didn't even pay this btk story any mind she just had heard of it never was interesting to her never really thought much of it and went off to school and then all of a sudden they're like oh yeah that serial killer everyone's talking about that's your dad and um she tried to go online to like read about what he did to almost reassure herself that like maybe she can rationalize it.

Like maybe her dad's not as bad as everyone's making it out to be. And of course, the tales of fucking horror that she started reading online were just beyond anything she could have predicted. I mean, imagine even seeing like the picture of him in the mask and you're like that's my fucking basement like that's not my dad that's i know it must be so mind-fucking to be like how is that my father and also like this um i don't know what to make of the information i'm just putting it out there that i'm noticing my brain going to she, those kids who had to grow up being bullied by everyone thinking like your dad's a killer, your dad's a killer. And like they grew up with like this whole journey of trauma to having to deal with like wondering every day if they should even feel safe with their dad.

And I'm noticing that she's having a different experience where she didn't get to she didn't have to deal with that. But now as an adult, she's having this like crazy reckoning. Yes, she's having like such a reckoning of like, how do I reconcile having a happy, safe, loving father with this? Which we talked about last week a little bit. I don't remember if it was while recording or just like between us but like the humanizing a serial killer is yes in a lot of ways is very um controversial but important also to like remember that like even if you don't want to humanize them humanize the fact that there are people on the other side of the narrative that are being affected in all sorts of ways and that's just two ways that children are fucked up now

we're like oh completely we're like there's two kids who like had an innocent father and instead of having getting the space to grieve their dead mom they had to be living in fear of their own father and and getting bullied for it their whole lives and there's a whole other story now of someone who literally lived with a serial killer and had fear growing up because she knew there's a serial killer in her area then kind of forgot about it and then now finds out her father's the one i mean like it's i think that's one of the reasons why you and i encourage empathizing or showing compassion in some way to even the not the worst people, but at least the people affected by their actions that did love just to at least relate

to them in a way where it's like, oh, this isn't some inhuman monster. I mean, it is in a way, but like in another way, it's just the guy next door. It's just someone's dad. It's the president of the church. It's the Cub Scout leader. Like it's the pillar of the community. You know cub scout leader like it's the pillar of the community you know it's it's not just this monster that none of us will ever encounter it's like these people are real and they're out there unfortunately and so you know if we're going to talk about them

at least we should know you know not everyone has like a radar that they can sense who's a serial killer who's not even as much as much as we try to think we'll know if we come across somebody like that um yeah you know some people that's their gift they're good at hiding that part of themselves and she's talked about carrie has talked about telling her own children like having to explain where their grandfather is yeah like why they don't really talk about him like you know they kept saying what did he do what did he do to go to jail and she's like i just had to find ways to discuss like how honest do you want to be and like also if you don't tell them the truth then just does he still have power over you by making you lie to your kids like yeah yeah so it's at least when we um try to somehow humanize people every now and then it's mainly it's for me it

mainly it's to at least remember to show sympathy for the collateral damage in their life which is people yeah yeah and to keep everyone on alert that like these are real people like they're just everyday people they're not just like these larger than life yeah someone drinking you know drinking beer at the bowling alley it right be the serial killer exactly exactly so it was a really hard thing really hard and i think she's still uh struggling with you know reconciling those two parts of her life those two parts of her father um meanwhile others who knew dennis like for example the women he harassed in the neighborhood the woman whose dog he had euthanized for no reason the men who witnessed him behave this way did not really agree with this like all-american

guy you know they they knew all along that he was an abusive man and abused his power um and so they kind of were like yeah that actually doesn't surprise us as much as it surprises everyone else but in his interviews you can just feel how much dennis loves talking about himself it's disgusting he was so self-involved he wanted to tell people what he did he wanted to analyze why he did it very ed kemper vibes like let's talk about me for a while let's psychoanalyze. Well, also to have like 30 or 40 or 50 years of your life that you never got to talk about. And now someone's sitting across the table from you. Right. You haven't even journaled it. You know, you now you finally get to just spit it all out. It's your first person

you get to say it to. Yeah. Yeah. And they're listening intently. So despite all this, Dennis tried to enter a not guilty plea in April after waiving his right to a preliminary hearing before trial. I mean, this is how narcissistic this guy is. But Dennis's defense team knew there was overwhelming evidence against Dennis, and they didn't have solid support for an insanity plea. So in late June, Dennis surprised the court by suddenly pleading guilty to 10 counts of first degree murder. During sentencing, he stunned the court with graphic details of his crimes. And I've listened to a lot of this retelling. It's very long, very in-depth,

deeply disturbing, especially because his tone is so calm and matter of fact. It's almost like he doesn't feel at all affected by them but he's sort of like let me think did i find her with a this kind of knot or this kind of knot you know he's talking like like he's describing what he had for breakfast this morning you know like was it was it that was it do you think he was her first since you've heard it do you think he was like he knew what he was doing and he was eating up the fact that he knew his behavior and the way he was handling it was terrifying people no i think he just wanted to tell the entire story from beginning to end really he just had

no idea that it was even fucked up the way that he was talking about it wow no no i don't think it fazed him i think he genuinely just said you know what you all deserve an explanation here it is and everyone was like yeah you're really talking about this like you're describing the baseball game you know it just so graphic and it definitely doesn't match the tone um but you know what do you expect from the guy who enjoyed doing it? I wonder if I wonder if he I mean, do we I don't know if you know why he all of a sudden changed his plea to guilty. But part of me feels like he was like, this is my opportunity. Like I might I'm already going to jail even on a on a plea charge like I would be going to jail. I might as well take my five minutes of fame and get on a literal soapbox and just be as detailed as i possibly want and just finally get to tell my story i think a major

part of the switch was because his defense team said like you're not getting there's no way out of this like you're not getting a sanity plea there's so much evidence like you're going to prison and yes he probably then thought okay well then I want to tell my side of things. And this was his chance. And he did. He went over every single case that we know of, at least. And meanwhile, victims loved ones like the surviving Otero children who were now adults had to listen to Dennis describe how he chose his victims, how he killed them them including their little sister i mean just so fucked up he described their last words he described the the things they said to him as they were dying um for example the otero's mother said uh said may god have mercy on your soul and that was the last thing she said to him and And the oldest son, who had been dealing with this trauma forever, said that was at least like one glimmer of like comfort to him that his mother was strong enough to say that as her final words. But I mean, still, this is after decades, the first time he's hearing what really happened to his family. This is after decades, the first time he's hearing what really happened to his family.

So despite all this, Dennis then asked for forgiveness from the victim's families. He believed he deserved forgiveness. He said, the dark side was there, but now I think light is beginning to shine. And finally, a final apologize to the victim's families. There's no way that I can ever repay you. Of course fucking forgave him because like get out of here uh there was no capital punishment in kansas when the crimes were committed so he was not eligible for the death penalty and at 60 years old he was instead sentenced to 10 consecutive life terms for his crimes and to serve a minimum of 175 years before the possibility of parole. So in the following

years, as you can imagine, interviews, books, documentaries, this guy was everywhere. They interviewed him so he could share his own story, always what he wanted, you know, a story from his mouth. You know, it's it's a hard one to justify because on the one hand, it's like, you don't want to give him the credit of like reading his own testimony of what happened. But on the other hand, it's like a lot of the detail and information is from him, you know? So it this ego he has that is fed by people obsessing over him him and his crimes calling him btk he loves talking about his thought process he loves mulling over why he is the way that he is uh he like interviewers basically ask him to, you know, share his side and he just loves it. He eats it up.

So in 2016, Catherine Ramsland published a book called Confession of a Serial Killer, The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, the BTK killer. And the book description says through jailhouse visits, telephone calls and written correspondence, Catherine Ramsland worked with Rider himself to analyze the layers of his psyche and now he's getting this book deal he's always wanted he's telling the story from his own dumbass mouth but in 2019 dennis's daughter carrie published her own book and that book was called a serial killer's daughter my story of hope love and overcoming um so this was all A Serial Killer's Daughter, My Story of Hope, Love, and Overcoming. So this was all very controversial because you can imagine why. Those interested in the case and topics like what happens to a serial killer's family in the wake of his crimes, you know, they loved this book and believed Carrie was a victim herself and deserved to share her story. But then other people felt like this was just another pr piece for the raider family um you know for example carrie describes being caught off guard

at sentencing when the prosecution further describes details of dennis's crimes and she wrote they checked with the victim's families before proceeding but the prosecution didn't check in with this family the eighth family i found out later that others had come to the defense of our innocent family asking if there was an actual need to do this wouldn't it embarrass my family further shame us hurt us no one asked or warned us it was coming and i feel like i can see both ways of that it's like it's not necessarily about you guys right now because he is finally getting justice for the brutality and just the horrors that he did to these families and these children. But also, of course, it's not fair to you either. You know, this isn't like you didn't do this.

This is not your fault or you're doing and you're suffering, too. It's hard. I don't know. I don't I don't think there's an easy answer i just i think i don't think there is either or like you said earlier you know did he know what position he was putting his family in obviously he didn't or he didn't care um because he really put them through hell um but that you know that's as far as i can say confidently how i feel because i don't quite know know, because I do believe she was a victim in her own way. But I just don't think there's an easy answer as to like what.

What we're supposed to do about it. I don't know. I don't know. what we're supposed to do about it i don't know i don't know so she was also criticized uh for writing that she has never read the statements by the victim's families because they were too hard for her to read also don't know where i stand on that um this is a lot i can see both sides of that for sure right it's like there's so much grief and trauma and she's raising her own children and it's like and also like you don't like you don't want to nobody knows the experience of having btk as your father other than her and like yeah she's maybe she really

just doesn't want to hear what her dad did to people and like she can still have sympathy for them i don't know i don't know i don't know it's hard because then on the other hand it's like well then you should know what he did but it's like but you can't force her i don't know it's a very weird icky feeling i don't i don't i honestly don't think there's an easy answer you know it's like yeah it feels gross to judge her on that it's like i think she if she gets a pass like i think that's a fair pass like i mean i right like i'm like okay i don't think we should maybe linger on that too much i don't know i mean again you can't force her to read it but i can see why people would be upset that she hasn't fully acknowledged all of what he did i don't know i mean i'll just tell you what other people feel so you know readers ultimately believe carrie is

right to her grief and trauma of course but so many interviews and documentaries focus on dennis and his words and his feelings and his backstory that it sort of felt like oh god the media is now prioritizing another person instead of the victims families you know what i mean like i think people just were frustrated about that but of course people were still sympathetic to carrie and her family's grief because what a shithole they found themselves in all of a sudden um did she keep a relationship with him and when he went to prison it took a long long long time and she finally wrote him a letter and um he responded and she said they've had like a tenuous back and forth.

Okay. Over the years. Yeah. So the 2022 Hulu miniseries BTK Confession of a Serial Killer once again put Dennis in the limelight featuring interviews with him so he could share his side of things like he always wanted. He's still alive. He remains in prison. In August, he made headlines for the first time in years, having been named the prime suspect in two cold cases, one in Missouri and one in Oklahoma. There was 16-year-old Cynthia Kinney, who was last seen at a laundromat in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, before she vanished in 1976. And recently they reopened her case and investigators realized the building across the street was having a new alarm system installed right when she disappeared. Interesting. It seems Dennis was a regional installer who may have

worked in the area occasionally at the time. And he also included in some of his writings, the phrase bad laundry day. Ew. Yeah. Yeah. And she was last seen at a laundromat so he's also being investigated for the rape and murder of 22 year old shauna beth garber her body was found two months after her death in 1990 in mcdonald county missouri but police couldn't at the time identify her and she became a jane doe when shauna was seven years old she and her five-year-old brother Rob had been separated in foster care. And Rob said, growing up without her, there was always just a hole in my life that I couldn't fill. So as soon as he was 18, Rob started looking for his sister. When he got married, his wife made it her mission to reunite her husband and his sister, which is really sweet.

Of course, it didn't end very well. suite um of course didn't end very well in 2021 investigators used dna to finally identify shauna as the unnamed jane doe that they had discovered back in 1990 and rob said it was devastating just to find out that she'd been sitting in a box for 30 years and he's been out there looking for her thinking she's alive somewhere and they're going to reunite. Terrible. So Shauna's death seems to also match Dennis's profile, but there really is no public evidence confirming this link yet. Dennis's daughter, Carrie, is actually actively working with investigators to follow these leads. So she's also like actively trying to help police put keep her dad in prison and answer questions they have. So at least, you know, she's on board in that sense um and she said if my dad has harmed somebody else we need answers yeah so i feel like if you're her honestly there's probably no winning like there's probably no way

to win in the eyes of the public you know what i mean like it's gonna be you're gonna get criticized whatever you do. If Dennis was indeed involved in these two cold cases, investigators hope to finally bring justice and closure to the families by finally, you know, getting some links, finding some connection. Regardless of who is guilty, Rob hopes the new attention on his sister's case will find some answers. He said somebody knows something and maybe this will be what they need to bring them forward. And that is the case of Dennis Rader. The end. Sorry, I promised I'd do it last time.

I know that was kind of like taste, not tasteful. I'm sorry, but I know now it feels like we're clapping yeah that's how it as it happened I went I don't know about yeah it almost feels like hmm maybe we're clapping for it that it's over and that it's over yes there's there's some closure there well you know also um round of applause to you because that i know that was um a topic that you've been thinking about for like almost 400 episodes so i know we almost thought we were never gonna do it and then i found myself just in the rabbit hole well you did a very good job i know that was a lot of um pressure on you and it was a lot

of research for both of you and it was a you know i'm very proud of you did a good job thank you em that's so nice i'm i'm excited to have a beer with you during the after chat for my little mini fridge because i think i need one i'm like man now it.30. I'll go make myself a little quick mocktail as I'm talking. Hell yeah. And just before I forget, is there, oh, topic request, which maybe I've asked in the past, but I don't know. I would love for you, maybe this is like too small to be an episode, so it could be an after hours or after chat. After hours? I don't remember what we're doing. I never remember what we're doing. this is like too small to be an episode so it could be an after hours or after chat after hours i don't remember what we're doing um i never remember what we're doing is uh is if you can

explain the like the sentencing stuff because like the fact that like he got like a minimum of 175 like who what calculator did that like who what what lawyer said i think that would be i think is that too overwhelming like that's the there's no real like are they just arbitrarily picking a number because like in my mind it's like if it's if your minimum sentence is uh 175 years how is that any different than assigning him 5 000 years like i don't get it like he's already gonna die in prison the charges like how many charges there are how many crimes he's found guilty of what the level of those crimes are then they add up and then a judge weighs in i mean i don't know i'm no lawyer i think uh i think even lawyers would

have a very hard time explaining that process. Um, well, if you ever want to make it up and just like spew bullshit on me, I'll happily, I think I just did make it up. So that's what, that's what, uh, after hours is for, where it's, it's not taken seriously. You just kind of give me your best guess. We just kind of bullshit our way through it. Yep. All right. Well, I I'll'll see you over there i'll have a mocktail in hand and uh we'll we'll do some some after hours so if you want to come hang out with us and hear us chit chat you are welcome to on patreon and i'm gonna take the quiz that's why we drink