And That's Why We Drink - E429 A Personal Pug Nightmare and a Driving School Lore

Episode Date: April 27, 2025

** Trigger Warning: Child/Infant Death ** It’s Episode 429 and are we well? No! This week Em brings us to the very haunted Cape May, NJ for a quick story on the Hotel Macomber and a couple bonus personal ghost stories. Then Christine covers the absolutely devastating case of the Las Cruces Bowling Massacre, which is truly the stuff of our nightmares. Big trigger warning for child/infant death for this one. And you just might catch us at the next Hoop and Stick Con… and that’s why we drink! If you have any information on the Las Cruces Bowling Alley Massacre please call: 1-800-222-8477. Tips can also be provided online at NMCrimeStoppers.org or through the Crime Stoppers app, “P3 TIPS.” For a list of resources or ways to help those affected by the fires in Los Angeles visit: http://bit.ly/atwwdfirehelp ! Only a few cities remaining for our Pour Decisions Tour! Get your tickets today at http://andthatswhywedrink.com/live !___________________Cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney.com/drink today. Start listening and discover what’s beyond the edge of your seat. New members can try Audible now free for 30 days and dive into a world of new thrills. Visit Audible.com/DRINK or text DRINK to 500-500. Take the online quiz and introduce Ollie to your pet. Visit https://ollie.com/DRINK today for 60% off your first box of meals! #ToKnowThemIsToLoveThem Go to http://quince.com/drink for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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the Miele Forest Initiative. Join us in making an impact today for a better tomorrow. Visit Miele.ca to learn more. Well, shall we? Hello everyone. Oh, hello everyone. Better easier. I don't mean that in a way of life. It gets better. It doesn't get better. It's starting the show

Okay, I think it just keeps it does get are you okay? No, I'm not. Thanks for asking. Hi Sorry, are we well what's happening? No, no, I'm sorry. I feel that I started off with the rough energy So let me start that over. Also everyone Quick question is your microphone connected to this audio? No How about now that's better I'm so sorry. I'm just realizing it. It's fine on the audio. I promise I checked. Okay.

So round four. As Jack says, she didn't check. We are welcome to 429. This episode is sponsored by the world being totally against us because we have tried to do this episode so many times and so many things have gone our way. It's becoming one of those things where I was almost like, should I play along?

When you texted me earlier with that tease of like, are you still not feeling well? I was like, I'm not really feeling well. Should I just say again, let's postpone it? Then I felt everybody on our team go like, we will strangle you to death if you do this. But I was like, a part of me wants to just keep pushing the envelope, you know?

If I didn't care about Jack's feelings, we would have probably pushed again. Correct. Like, a man needs like a day at least. At least a day to get this out. We're like pushing the envelope here with recording. We're back to the old days where we are like, flying at the seat of our pants, you know what I mean?

And we're the hamster on the wheel. Yeah, I'm packing for my flight tomorrow, Em's in a hotel, we have a show, and then the episode comes out in a few days. It's just chaos, but that's, you know, I feel like where we thrive. Well, we were supposed to record like a week ago, and then it just became like a series of unfortunate events. they lost my luggage which had my laptop in it so we

couldn't record then Christine got sick and it's just become it's become um a real hullabaloo over here. Are you still sick? What's the vibe? What's happening? I'm still sick. This is the first day I've this is really stupid. This is the first day I'm drinking coffee in like four days and I decided to fill as I mentioned in the promo We did for our upcoming Vegas show, which I'm so fucking excited for I filled my gigantic Mirage Las Vegas cup with iced coffee today Which is probably the dumbest thing I could do It's the first day my stomach's been like fine in like four or five days and I decided to just fucking

Test the limits I guess days and I decided to just fucking test the limits I guess but yeah I'm drinking this giant cup and that as as we talked about this is what my why do I keep forgetting the name of it iced tea long island iced tea long island I see I'm telling you em I think I've really just I've really drank some before you got here today aged 40 years in the last five days I have so many white hairs. The world is falling apart. Anyway, I'm okay. You didn't ask that. But hello, how are you doing today? Better than you, I think. I feel a bit manic. I'm trying to slow it down by drinking some coffee. How are you doing? I'm trying to, you know, lose the stimulant by drinking stimulants. Yeah.

You get it. Well, I mean, first of all, what was going on? You had a stomach flu? Were you like getting sick all the time? Oh, yeah. I I pooped my pants for the first time in a few years, and that was not fun. Brilliant. Brilliant. I told myself I would not say that on air and then I did immediately. It was one of the first things I said. It happens to the best of us.

Yeah. And yeah, it happens. And Leona had it first. Then blaze normalized pooping your pants. Listen, it's it's it is it first, then Blaze had it. Normalize pooping your pants. Listen, it is what it is people, okay? I'll put it this way, Christine, you're not the only person it's happened to, I'm sure. Thank you so much for saying that, because Leona looked at me and said that you're the only person that's ever happened to.

And I said, stop bullying me. She only knows like four people to be fair, so. I know, that's true. Well, when my time comes, I'll feel less bad. Yeah, exactly. Don't worry about it. It's all, I'll lead the way. But it's just been like, and I was,

we were in Virginia of all places for Easter, visiting Leona's cousin. And I literally slept 16 hours straight, missed the entire Easter. I don't even know what happened. I like slept through the entire, and I was so embarrassed because I sweat through all the sheets because I was had a fever so

in the middle of the night I woke up and like did laundry and like my sister-in-law came downstairs was like what are you doing? I feel like I was just behaving like so bizarrely and strangely and then I got home yesterday and now I have to pack and by the way today this is the worst story I've ever covered today. It's the worst story I've ever covered.. It's the worst story I've ever covered. Yeah, Christine's on a little kick where she says that after every, at the beginning of every show now, because last week, I think... I think maybe it's me. Maybe I'm the problem, right? Like, I'm just sensitive right now, maybe.

I think you just, you're chasing that high, man, and you just keep pushing the limit. I don't know what that is. It's like, what am I doing, you know? Because last week you said it was like one of the worst episodes, or one of the worst stories you've covered. And now this time you're like, oh, no, this is worse. It's can I be honest? It's it's bad. It's so bad. It might be literally this one.

I don't think I've ever had so many. Well, Israel Keys and this one are the most nightmares I've had about cases. Excellent. Yeah. Okay. So how are you? What smoothie did you order? Okay, that's a great question. It's actually why I drink.

Tell me. I'm back. It's also what you drink. It's what I drink and why I drink, which we've never had that combo before. That's really beautiful. Yep. I drink because I'm back in tropical smoothie cafe territory. And remember, if you recall, back when I was home

for like a whole month in December, I finally discovered my smoothie. Oh, that's right, I do remember. And so I finally got to have it again. And I haven't even had a sip yet because I wanted you to be a witness to it. A part of it? Yeah.

I'm so excited. I literally have been thinking about this for the longest time, and I was hungry before we started recording, and I was like, do we think I'm in Trosmo territory? Do we think I am? Wait, what do you call it?

Trosmo? Trosmo, tropical smoothie. I love that. Nobody else calls it that by the way. What's the flavor until now? Until now. It's blueberry bliss, but I switch out the banana for mango

because I don't fucking care. I think it's disgusting to have a banana in a smoothie. It overpowers the entire thing every time. Then I also get extra strawberries. Yeah, okay. I was like, it's either pineapple or mango. Mango, that makes sense. That sounds delicious. It's blueberry, it's either pineapple or mango. Mango, that makes sense. That sounds delicious.

It's blueberry, mango, and then double strawberries basically. It's, I know I'm about to have a ethereal experience. I'm so happy for you. Are you ready? Yeah. Oh, oh my God. Oh my God.

Ah, okay, see? That was worth it. Wow, okay, you know what? I was so afraid, because I was so afraid you'd be disappointed that they put a fucking banana in there Yeah, I really sometimes I've realized recently that I have an issue with other people being disappointed because I started sweating so much and going Okay, don't worry. Just tell em you can order another one if it tastes bad I'm glad it's delicious. I'm so glad it's it's it's exactly what I wanted. I'm so glad. I'm I look, you know, past me was so smart to order this one time. And and then it just stuck with me for the rest of my life.

Anyway, that's why I drank. Also, I drink. I drink about something. I remember thinking use this. Use this for your art. Oh, I know what it was. This fucking dog, Christine. Oh, God. Don't you talk about Hank this way. I had the worst day of my life recently.

I, it was, it probably wasn't the worst day of my life, but this was, this was the first time I've had a depression nap, and in the depression nap, I had a dream where I told myself when you wake up you need to take a Xanax. That was wow and then I woke up and I had to take a Xanax. Do you know what's so weird? My reason why I drank today one of them was going to be that I had a dream last night that I took a clonopin and then I told myself you have to take another one or else you won't be able to sleep through the night.

And then I realized I was out of clonopin and I woke up in panic. So I had a dream also where I was instructing myself to medicate myself. That's so weird. I've never had that dream. So that's very weird timing. This was the first time for me too. Because I think I've had things where I I obviously get like heart palpitations and things. I've noticed Before that if I wake up before I'm ready, I will wake up with heart palpitations. It's very terrifying

Scary and if I'm having a really uncomfortable sleep, like let's say it's like really hot It like and it you know, like how it would affect your dream or like now you're like in a sauna or something I will get heart palpitations because my body's not like regulating. Forget it. So you know, like how it would affect your dream or like now you're like in a sauna or something. I will get heart palpitations because my body is not like regulating. Forget it. So you have to like maintain equilibrium at all times. I mean, that's horrible. So even when I was asleep, I think I was so stressed out about how that day had gone that my in my dreams, I was like, oh, Xanax time.

You need to fucking chill out because your heart's exploding while you're sleeping. That's scary. We both had dreams about our fucking Xanax time. You need to fucking chill out because your heart's exploding while you're sleeping. That's scary. We both had dreams about our fucking Xanax. Like, what the fuck? That's a bad sign. So the reason that I had such a bad day was because Allison brought home a second dog to dog sit, not to foster. Thank God. But for a temporary foster, it seems.

It's this little pug named Peanut. And I, no, I'm sorry. I'm about to- I felt it as it left my mouth, I went, wrong answer, Christine, wrong answer. I'm about to lose a lot of love from the pug people, but I'm sorry, I don't get it. I'm not a pug person.

What? I'm just not. You don't like the snarfing, the snoring? I have, I've never in my life been, I think this is why I had Y needed as annex because I have been constantly overstimulated by the. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, the noise, yeah. Like it's not, I know for some of you,

it's like listening to like a brook and water running over the rocks or something, but like I can't fucking stand it. It made me wanna be violent. I was like so overwhelmed. I was so overwhelmed. I can't do it. And so if you're a pug person,

all you're telling me is that like, I think you're neurotypical cause there's no way that that doesn't over simulate you. It's a compliment then that you're probably like stable and okay. You don't need anti-anxiety medication. Right, you don't have as much sensory stuff maybe, or maybe you have different sensory stuff. Sure, that's a good way to put it,

because it apparently me and Pugs are fucking ops. Like I can't stand this. What does Allison feel? We keep looking at each other like, what's going on here? What have we done? But so we're watching Peanut for 10 days. He means well, he's like, it's not his fault he can't fucking breathe. And that's the worst part is like,

they breed them that way so many times and then they get sick and they have this little short little snouts. It's not his fault that I hate him, but I really just. Wow, that is the most Megan thing you've ever said. Hello. Hello.

Megan has entered the chat. Move. Honestly, at this point. If you have one of those dogs that can barely breathe and it just makes that sound all the time, I give you your flowers because like it's not something I can tolerate. Is that a phrase? I've never heard that before. I hope it is now.

I don't know. I'm not challenging you. I'm genuinely just asking because I say things like the jig. Which one is wrong? I don't know, I'm not challenging you, I'm genuinely just asking, because I say things like the jig, which one's wrong? I don't even know. I literally don't know which one's right and which one's wrong. And you know what's so stupid?

Every time someone says it, because I listen to a podcast and when people say it, I'm like, oh, that's wrong. And then I go, wait, no, that's probably right. It just feels wrong. So I still don't know. At this point, you have ruined me, I also don't know. It's fantastic.

So there's no way to know. That's perfect. I'm pretty sure it started with jig and now I'll never know. No, now nobody knows, yeah. But so, Peanut is like doing nothing wrong, but is my personal nightmare. And so, he's just this tiny little thing who does nothing but just sit there.

It feels like a fucking cartoon, like a cartoon network thing, where it's just this tiny little thing that's just like ruining your life. Maybe one thing, if like I was passing him on the street and we just like, we just walk- Had a little snuffle. We had a moment, like I'd be like,

oh, look at that cute little puppy whose sounds I never have to deal with. But this dog is like living in my house and our house is the size of a laptop. Right, and it kind of echoes in there, I bet you, cause you just moved in, there's not too much stuff, it's just echoing, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so i was already

not loving this after like an hour i was like i'm i have to go put headphones on or something then as soon as we get him of course we find out oops peanut has fleas oh my god what and because h Hank is through a foster care system, we don't have like a vet or anything. We don't have like- You go through the, yeah. So we didn't know if he was even treated for fleas. We didn't know, we didn't know anything.

Oh man. So we were terrified that he was not gonna get fleas. We were definitely worried that like our little shoe box of a house now had fleas everywhere. Well, yeah. So we had to spend the whole day cleaning the house. And then you're traveling and it's like, well, shit. Yeah. Oh my God. Oh my God. We had to bring the dogs to the groomers, but there was only one slot open at two different places.

We had taken two different groomers, which meant one of us, me, had to walk to Petco with Hank. Good. Allison had to take Peanut in the car to another place, which meant then we had to get a car wash because they were in the car. It was just such a nightmare. We finally got that we had to get the house sprayed for fleas. Because I was like, it's in our bed. It's even if it wasn't, I was so petrified. I was like, it could be. And I'm a new dog parent, it seems. So I didn't know what to do. So I was like, let's just get everything cleaned. We'll take both of them to the groomers. Hey, this is where I found out that Hank hates the groomer. Uh-oh.

In a way that like they gave him back in 15 minutes and they were like, we can't groom him or else he'll hurt himself because he's yanking himself off the table. Oh no. And I mean, I should have known because bringing him into Petco, he was doing the thing where he was trying

to put all of his gravity in his ass, so I had to drag him through. He is terrified of Petco, he's terrified of the groomers. And I don't know if he thought like he was about to get rehomed or put back in a cage or something. Dogs just don't like that. They don't like it ever, but some dogs fucking freak out like that.

Thankfully, Gio just freezes. Yeah, not mine. And so it's not, I don't say thankfully like it's just his reaction is he just freezes. And so he's gotten OK with it. But sometimes like they just never get used to it because they fight it. And it's like then they have to go home. So I was I mean, if he wasn't on a leash, he would have bolted into the busy road like he was terrified.

So and also so we were like, Oh, we could get him groomed also flea treatments, all this stuff. No, they were like, you have to do it yourself at your house in a bath where he's by the way, terrified of water. So then I had to give him a bath. And this is where I found out it's not just the groomer. It's like bathtubs or running water at all freaks him out like, no, no to the same level. He... It was after we'd just finally cleaned up the house

from all the flea treatment stuff. We'd just mopped the floors. We had just done everything. It was a perfect house except the bathroom. And I put him in the bath. Freaks the fuck out. I'm throwing him into the wall just to hold him still so I can scrub him. And of course, this flea treatment, you need to keep it in for like 10 minutes on his skin. He's freak, I mean, it was like a 90s comedy where like I fell into the bath with him in all my clothes.

Like then I tried to like get up. Except it's not funny because you have to deal with the aftermath. Oh, I was crying. I was crying the whole time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At one point- It's not funny, yeah. While standing in the bathtub, he, without a running start or anything, I'm standing up it's not funny. Yeah. Oh, well while standing in the bathtub he

Without a running start or anything. I'm standing up. I'm six feet tall He leaps over me at six feet just oh my god rasting I picked him up like I caught him in the air like dirty dancing and I'm just begging and I'm just like, please Hank I've had a really bad day. I've had a really bad day and he's just like squirming and scratching the shit out of me I've got like scratch. I don't know if you can see me. I just had like bumps and scratches all over me. Oh my God. It was a nightmare. He escapes the bathroom three different times, floods the house that we just cleaned. Then, of course, and only the spots with all the electronics is where he shakes

his entire body off full of water. Then I have to grab him and like crocodile hunter wrangle him back into the bathtub to like try to rinse it out. He won't let me rinse it out. He escapes again. I have to grab him and like crocodile hunter wrangle him back into the bathtub to like try to rinse it out He won't let me rinse it out. He escapes again. I have to grab his collar I take him to the yard and I have to hose him down. He's acting like it's torture And then eventually he just dried with some of the treatments still on him And I was like, I don't know if this burns your skin or something, but I can't get it It was sorry like you're not like it was like wrangling the Hulk. It was a nightmare.

So I don't think he's ever going to be clean. We're just going to have to stick with like baby wipes and call it a day. I don't bathe my dog for for similar reasons. OK, great. Anyway, that's why I drink. I take my cat to the vet if it needs to happen. Otherwise, I'm like, I'm not in for that today or ever. I I've never met a dog who hates it that much. And part of me feels like maybe he came from a background where like he was

he's acting like he was drowned or something. Like he's I don't know. Yeah, who knows? I mean, who knows? Yeah. You never know with these like fostered and adopted any dog. It's like, who knows what they've been, what they've seen. That's why I drink because then it took all day to clean everything, then I have to clean it three more times because he kept just flooding the place. And then the whole time peanuts in my ear going, I was like, I have to go to fucking bed. Oh, my God. I mean, the context really does like add something to it.

The context of of the bath and all that adds something to the peanut like stimulation, overstimulation thing. I was so pissed. And so Xanax was the the solution. Anyway, that was the only thing. Yeah. A really long why I drink, but I needed to tell it to somebody. I'm like not breathing now, man. Yeah, no, I like, oh, yeah.

Why do you drink? Oh, thank you for asking. I have so many reasons, but this morning I was trying not to. I'm like really, really stressed about the case I'm covering today. I've just really been having nightmares about it and. It's I mean, we'll get into it, obviously, but I this morning. Well, and then on top of of that which I feel like I've But my family doesn't listen to this show I don't think but there's just been a lot of stuff

internally family wise that has been very very Internal yeah, I don't know how honest we get on this show. I guess we get pretty damn honest I have no idea, but it's like it's just very It's your life and your show. Yeah, say whatever you I guess I can say what I want, huh? It's just very heart heavy I'm in a very kind of a consistent state of mourning right now and it's been very It's just been a lot and then when I'm like covering this case and it's just like fuck my life

I'm having nightmares about that. I'm having nightmares about these people that I'm having a hard time with. And then and then I'm just going to school with Leona and I see two birds fucking. Do you? And I thought, oh, no, those birds are hurt. And then I look closer and Leona goes, what are they doing? And I went, uh-oh, they're playing. The literal birds and the bees. The birds and the bees, happy spring. It's like mid April.

I'm like, wow, okay. So I bring her into school and I go, hey, I'm pretty sure those birds, cause now the kids are looking out the window. I'm like, I'm pretty sure those birds, I just like, I don't care. Having a mating call. Right, and I'm like, honestly, I'm hoping they're doing that kind of play fighting, right?

Right, because you don't wanna see a bird kill another bird in front of children. Exactly, that's exactly it. I was like, I'd rather them be doing something like, procreating in front of the children. Sorry, that sounds so fucked up, but like, then dying. Like something you can justify. Wrestling, right. And so everyone's looking out the window and I'm going,

oh God, and then all of a sudden so everyone's like, I look at it out the window and I'm going, oh God. And then all of a sudden we're all like, are they stuck? And I'm like, holy shit, these birds are stuck together. I'm not even kidding. Like they're stuck. Like their legs are stuck or something. And I'm like, oh no. And so I go outside and I'm already like half,

just not well because of like, I knew we were covering this story today. I've been like on edge about other stuff. And so I'm like already on edge and I go, what should I do? And the teachers like, just go like maybe maybe go see. So I go outside ready to like kind of shoo them. And now all of a sudden I go outside, I look at the window, all these children and the two teacher or the teacher and the teachers

aid are all looking out the window. And I'm just trying to see these birds who are fornicating. Like to stop fornicating. A sitcom TV show. Right, it felt like insane. And then all of a sudden, I'm like stomping around the parking lot

because they're also on the floor of the parking lot. I'm like, I also don't want them to get fucking run over because they're fucking. And so I'm like trying to- Did you pull them apart? I did not touch them, don't worry. But I got, I was like, shoo, shoo, I don't know. And eventually they finally untangled

and everyone started clapping. And I was like, this is the weirdest day. And so then I just, I said, I went to like Iveley and her backpack and I said, I'm gonna go call my therapist. And I just shut the door and I like drove home and I was like, what is going on in the world? I mean, in a TV show where there's an A storyline

and a B storyline, I would be at home falling into the bathtub with the stupid dog. Yes, yes, and I would be yelling at two birds, hitting them with a stick to try and save them from, I don't, what I think is a certain death, but really they're just in love. I have no idea. The whole day just feels weird.

And now I'm here with you and M said, did you bring something to help? And I brought these airheads extremes and I promise I will not be eating them on air. Cause as M said, people will love that. I promise I won't. But I have them for breaks. The only thing worse than hearing a horrible,

violent, torturous murder that you're probably gonna cover is the smacking of an airhead in between words. Exactly, exactly. And I would not do that. So these are for the yappy hour is what I'm saving these for. So anyway, all that to say, it's just a weird time folks. And I don't know what it's like on the listening end because I think in our lives, Em, it feels like things,

I mean, I speak for myself, I don't know, but it feels like things are just like so rapid right now. Does that feel like that for you? Hmm. Or not really. I'm well, I don't know if that's I would say things feel. I'm with you. The energy is there, but I wouldn't. Turbulence is a better word.

Yeah, maybe turbulent. And so I don't know what it's like on the other listening end week to week, because it's like we took so much. It feels like so much happened since we recorded. And I mean, I know it's kind of always like that, but I just I don't know. The birds had to be mentioned. I had to talk about the birds because it was like, who else will hear about this?

Besides my therapist and Blaze and everybody else, you know, and all the children in preschool and all the children. Well, the children, of course they have, they learned something. I don't know what they learned and it was probably, it's certainly something they're going to talk about later in life and then go, wait a minute, Leona's mommy. Yeah. Hang on a second. What was Leona's mommy doing? Like getting involved with those two birds. Well, what type of birds were they since you're into birdwatching?

Thank you so much for asking. Not that kind of bird watching. Yeah, they were, I believe they were robbit. Bird voyeur or something? They were rob. Bird watching. Technically, it feels like it was a threesome you were partaking in today. That's what I'm saying.

I felt like I was kind of inserting myself. I should not have been part of it, but I also felt like nobody else was there to kind of break up the party. How do you think David Attenborough would have narrated that? Oh, wow. And then a stupid human decides to come, you know, out of British accent, but like a stupid human thinks it's her job to interfere with nature and so on and so forth. Yeah.

You said they were Robins. I think they were Robins. Thanks. To be fair, I was more concerned. I was their wings were so intense because they were like either stuck together or that's just how they do it on the floor of the parking lot. I'm not sure. But, um, it was scary.

What if they were having like the craziest, hottest sex in the whole world and you ruined it? And I fucked it up. That's what I'm saying. Like David Attenborough would be so ashamed of me and like rightfully so. Well, I'm embarrassed of you. Does that count? Yeah, it feels, it feels helpful to know that. Thank you.

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subscriptions, saving members up to $740 a year when using all of the app's premium features. So cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to rocketmoney money comm slash drink today That's rocket money comm slash drink rocket money comm slash drink So, okay, I have a really short one for you today. I actually it's like half a page of notes I was expecting there to be like Pretty sure I told him hey

I have to push a half hour because I'm so traumatized by my story. And then I'm just cut their own story in half. Actually, just delete it. Yeah, just delete it. You're sorry. I'm like, I honestly the way I presented it, you're probably like, oh, God, it's two sentences. No, I found a short one because in my head for some reason, I thought that there was like a documentary about it or or like a TV,

like TV shows that had covered it. So I did one that I found a short amount of notes online so I could just do TV coverage for some of it. And then there like nothing no one covered it. I don't know where I got that idea in my mind that so now I just have short notes. So whoops, I'm not complaining because you're going to have to hear a lot from me today and I apologize. Why else to talk for 40 minutes about a pug I don't like, so. Oh my God, sorry, that got me. I don't know why.

Like that poor pug, and we all know it's not the pug's fault but somehow the pug is just like the straw, you know, the last straw. And like, he's doing nothing wrong. I'm sure he's breathing heavier because he's like scared in a house he doesn't know. And he's also like, somebody made my nose too short. Yeah, he's like, the aristocrats blame them.

Yeah. So yeah, it's not Peanut's fault. However, some people you're just born to not love. It's sort of like that therapist thing, Eva and I always try to remind each other, like instead of saying but, you say and. It's not his fault and it's incredibly difficult to live with, yeah.

Yeah, it's just, you know, when you meet people and there's something where cosmically, you were meant to not like each other. You're just kind of at odds. Yeah, yeah, just, you know, when you're, when you meet people and there's something where cosmically you were meant to not like each other. You're just kind of at odds. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's my, my brain and the sound of heavy breathing. So sorry, peanut. And I'm sorry to all the pug lovers who now hate me, but again, uh, you deserve a trophy cause it's not something I could handle. OK, here we go with some short notes. This is the hotel. I hope I'm saying you're right.

YouTube said it was right. Leave me alone. The Makehomer, the Hotel Makehomer. Oh, lovely. It's in Cape May, which is very haunted on its own. I feel about Cape May. Have you been? I've not been, but my best, best, well, one of my best friends growing up. I had a lot. No, I realized when I said, Oh, well, one of them. And I was like, Well, I like to I didn't mean it like that. But one of my close friends in at school used to go every summer. And I remember she'd always missed my birthday because she'd be at Kate May. And she would always write like a postcard home for my birthday. And she'd always be like, one day we'll go together, and then we were no longer friends. She sometimes listens to this podcast,

so hi Emily, if you're out there. And every time I hear Kate May, Emily, I think of you. And how we're not friends anymore. No, and I miss being friends with you. We just went our separate ways in high school, I think. But probably for good reason. As we go on. Yeah, I mean, probably she had plenty of good reason, right?

Don't get me wrong. But yeah, I always think of her with Kate May, but she would go every summer and she loved it. I also really like Kate May. I haven't been a lot, but the times that I've been, it's one of those places where every It's New Jersey, right? Mm hmm. It's in New Jersey. It's considered, fun fact, the country's oldest seaside resort destination. I didn't know that. I probably on one of the postcards she sent me somewhere.

Probably. And underneath it says P.S.'t know that. I probably on one of the postcards she sent me somewhere. Probably. I and underneath it says PS we're done. So yeah, PS you're such a freak. No, no Kate May is my I vividly remember my mom taking me to Kate May one time with her best friend and then the best friend's daughter. So it was the four of us. Um, and it was, and we were all very close. Was it Emily? No, can you imagine? I didn't get invited. You did. No, uh, she was, and we were all very close. Was it Emily? No. Can you imagine? I didn't get invited, you did. No, she was, we like all grew up together.

Well, me and the friend grew up together. But it was really fun. I will tell you my own personal ghost story from Kate May at the end. What? Okay. But Kate May, before we even got there, I think one of the...

I was like 12 at the time, and this was the era where I was not talking to my mom, and not even in a normal teenager way. It still has never actually been discussed and needs to be in therapy. I really cold-shouldered her for a year and a half. I feel like you've mentioned that to me, and I've never really absorbed it.

I don't know what was going on. I wish I could give her the piece of where like, I tell her. Did you journal? No. I just, I think I just fully shut down. In hindsight, maybe there was like some like tendencies going on there that I have yet to still know a lot about. Let's get into it in the Yappie hour.

I can diagnose you. Okay, great. My mom would love that because she's still like, what did I do wrong? And I'm like, I don't know, girl. I don't know, I'm sorry. And she still talks about it sort of like. Oh, it broke her heart, yeah. Oh, I thought you meant like, it's never been addressed.

Like you've never talked about it, but like, you mean you've never like, saw like gone to the bottom of it. I've never saw, we've never cracked the case. Oh, interesting. Okay, okay, we'll talk about it in the app, yeah. We don't have to. We can't, I don't care.

I was 13. It could just be that I was an asshole, I don't know. No, that couldn't be it. So... But I think one of her pulls of why she wanted to take me here is because it's so notoriously haunted and she knew I liked ghosts. So... Anyway, Kate May is very haunted.

I would like to do a whole episode just on Kate May, but I feel like there's a lot of material to cover there. I feel like we could do like a month on Cape May if we wanted to. So anyway, this hotel, Hotel Makeover is a historic landmark. It has an award winning restaurant inside of it. The scariest thing about it to me, five stories, no elevator. Gasp. Firm pass. It was built in 1916 and at the time it was quote, the largest frame structure east of the Mississippi. They always have the largest frame structure east of the Mississippi. They always have an east of the west of the Mississippi.

We don't say that enough anymore. I feel like that was how every story was framed back then. Like I did. And it's like, how do you prove that you can't, which is why it's the best compliment or the best like claim to fame. I had, when I was in driver's ed, my driving teacher was like an old southern man.

And you know how you're in the car with like two wheels and like he can control it from his end. Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. He was like, apparently in case you fucked up, he was like ready to like grab his wheel, like at any moment. And he would say, I got the quickest left hand on the east of the Mississippi. And I was like, what the hell's going on? I know who he voted for probably. And then you drove into a poll. And he was like, why does that always happen?

Sorry, that was not me blowing my nose. That was me coughing. I did hit a poll the moment he gave me a temporary license. Wait, did you actually? Oh, you didn't know that? No, I was kidding. No, I really, like the first time I ever drove. It was my mom's brand new Lexus.

She's like, what did I do wrong? And you're like, I don't know. I was crashing your Lexus. I don't know what you did. It was the first time I had just gotten my permit or I don't even know how it goes anywhere. But I was 15. It was the very... The temporary, whatever. It was the day I was allowed to drive with like people with like adults in the car.

Oh my God. And my mom said, why don't you drive us to dinner? And so we got in her car. Her fault for putting a 15 year old in... Her brand new car? Are you kidding me? She would have been like, why don't you drive? I don't know. We didn't have another car.

But I was trying to park. I mixed up the gas and the brakes slammed it right into the pole. And I was so mortified. Fun fact. Sorry, this is like a whole like episode about my lore. I'm sorry, everybody. But I love it. I feel like it's making me feel whole again. Well, my I was so devastated at the dinner table. I felt so bad and so guilty. I was just like, obviously really hurting.

You felt ashamed. Yeah. Yeah, it was so embarrassing. I was like, literally not even 20 minutes with my fucking license. And my mom said this really pointed thing, and she even said, I want you to remember this conversation. And she said, when I was a little kid, I spilled a candle all over the carpet, and it was a brand new carpet.

And I was so horrified and so upset and so embarrassed and scared that my parents were gonna be mad at me. And my dad sat me down and said, I want you to remember this conversation. Because when I was a kid, I melted crayons on the radiator that we got. And my dad was really kind to me. And it was the only time that he said that I get a pass

because he could tell that I was punishing myself more than he could ever punish me. So this is your turn, Linda. You spilled all over the brand new carpet. It's ruined, but you're punishing yourself more than I could ever do. So I want you to remember this. And this one day when you have a kid, they get one pass.

And so my mom at that dinner at that table said, this is your one pass. You could thank your great grandfather for starting this tradition. And one day if you have a kid and they fuck up really bad and you can tell that they're hurting they get a pass. It's when you stood there with the hose and Hank stared you down and you said, Hank, this is your, sit down, Hank. I want you to remember this conversation. The only difference is he felt no fucking remorse.

Yeah, he was like, honestly, the cycle, the cycle starts now. You can't, you can't win me over with your gentle parenting ways. Anyway, so it's apparently a thing. So to my future kids. Well, now I'm crying already. I was supposed to wait to cry to my story, but that got me. And that's beautiful. I like how-

You said that to me, but that sounds nice. And I'm going to say that to somebody. It's nice. It's a nice thing. Well, I like how one of them spilled crayons and another spilled a candle and I crashed a Lexus. And then you drove a Lex a car and it fell. That, I mean, really, with that progression,

your child is going to, I don't know. Crash into the sun, yeah. I was literally gonna say break the moon or something fucking insane that ruins humanity. Wow, wow, that's powerful stuff. We got through one bullet point, by the way, east of the Mississippi. Oh, yeah, let's get back to your very short notes.

Okay, so the hotel, it really thrived because it was built right around the time that automobiles were becoming popular, so now there's this increase in drivers, AKA increase in tourists, so a lot of people are coming into the area. It may have also contributed to why the place is so haunted because it was one of the first places

to get really popular as a destination resort. So when the Hotel Maycomer was built, it was originally called the New Stockton Villa. And the original owner was named Sarah Davis, who, fun fact, becomes a ghost. While running the hotel, Sarah actually lost her daughter and she ended up dying by suicide. We think at the hotel, Sarah actually lost her daughter and she ended up dying by suicide.

We think at the hotel, although that's undocumented, and this was in the 1930s. And the only other history thing I have for you is today it is a family-run boutique hotel, and during any renovations throughout its years is when activity resurfaces the most. But that's literally all the important bits I feel like I need to give you.

If you happen to work at this hotel and there's like so much more I missed, blame Google. I don't know what to tell you. Here are some of the ghosts. The first one is Miss Wright. Ooh. She's, her name we think is Irene Wright. Before we knew her name of Irene Wright,

people called her the Trunk Lady. Okay, she's like, Irene, get it in your head. She was like, someone get a Ouija board. I need to spell out my fucking name. Oh my God, seriously, something. So she was, this is interesting. Fogged up a mirror, at least. That's a great point, yeah.

Like there should be some way to get her name across. Spell it out in tissues, yeah. Right. So we think, if it was Irene Wright, the story goes that Trunk Lady was a regular at the hotel in the 1940s and she would come to Kate May either with her family or at least her husband for years. It was a regular spot for them. Now there's, what I saw online is that there's a bunch of different versions of this because

it's now kind of a bit of a war. So she either always came to Cape May with her husband or she came with her family. She either always came to this hotel or she would sample all the hotels in the area depending on the time. She would sample them just like do your bop around. But whatever she was always in Kate May and she was a regular visitor. When her husband died, her kids encouraged her

to keep going to Kate May without him. And when she would come to the Make-Home, or she would always stay in what was their favorite room, which is room 10. So she was known for wearing a lot of perfume. She would also bring a really large trunk with her when she would stay. Imagine being known for wearing a lot of perfume. She would also bring a really large trunk with her when she would say known for wearing a lot of perfume. That would be so embarrassing. Like, you know, my friend Irene, oh, the one who wears a lot of perfume, like,

that's just such an insulting thing to be known for. I mean, I get that it's a ghost, right? Like, you can smell the perfume, but it's like, oh, if somebody described me that way, I'd be like, okay, I got to reevaluate. Like, it's like, oh, if somebody described me that way, I'd be like, okay, I gotta reevaluate. Like, it's like the time somebody like talked about my eyebrows and everyone started arguing. And I went, I gotta go look in a mirror and figure this out. You know, like-

I would have just Britney Spears shaved them off and started all over. Right, I almost did. But it's like, so if somebody said that, I'd be like, I got some, I gotta look inward and figure out what this perfume thing's all about. I guess I don't know what the etiquette of the 40s was, but I feel like if you like reeked of a perfume,

it was like having like a signature scent. That's true. And it was probably, I mean, you know, it's expensive, right? Like it's probably like a luxury item. Yeah. I don't know. I think even if I time traveled back to the 40s, I'd go, yikes, that's a lot of fucking smell.

Yeah, I have a feeling, especially when you smell those kind of older ones that are like so musky. It's like, ooh. Part of me also wonders because like, has it just been sitting in a bottle for decades and that's why it's such an intense smell? Was it always super intense? It's like fermenting.

Yeah. Was it always super intense or was that like the thing? I feel like it was because they would just put like, well, I think they're supposed to just put little dabs on. If you were to put on a scent right now, how much and where do you put it? I just go like this. Pshh.

Like I don't have, or I just go on my wrist and do this. I've always heard wrists like behind the ears. Yeah, and then like the neck. And then the neck, the under your ears sort of, where it's like, where it like pulse, where you're like pulses. In my mind, it's so that way when you reach out to hug somebody, you're getting smell

and then smell during the hug. That's so it's supposed to be like, so yeah, so it's sort of wafting from when, yeah, if you like hug someone or whatever, but it's also you have your pulse here and your pulse here and they're warm. And so it's supposed to like, secrete. Yeah. Or like keep the scent longer. I don't know. Like I know when you're cold, you're supposed to run warm water over like your wrists and like here too.

Like pressure points? Yeah, like the circulation is, listen, I don't, what the fuck do I know? I'm not the trunk lady, but I bet she had, she had probably this down to a science. Except, I mean, maybe, I guess depending on who you talk to. I guess so. So she was also known for dragging a big trunk

to the hotel and into her room when she would say, because remember we've had this conversation before that suitcases with wheels didn't exist until like the 70s, 80s. Five floors with no elevator, what are they? She's just making a bellhop carry that upstairs. That's why her favorite room was room 10, which is probably on the first floor.

She was like. Oh, I hope so. I really hope so, because if that's on the top floor, that poor bellhop. Yeah, I mean, I think we said 70s or 80s is when wheels on luggage started happening, but it wasn't popular until the 90s. Which like, how was it not popular? Immediately, that would have been like

Forbes number one invention in 1970. Right, but do you remember as a kid, like we always had those giant duffel bags, like those L.L. Ween giant duffel bags, and we didn't have the giant rolly suitcases until the 90s, so weird. I think I just missed the cutoff though, because by the time suitcases had wheels

was when I was big enough that I was expected to carry my own suitcase. Because when I was a little kid, whether or not I had wheels, I was a little kid, I wasn't I had wheels, I was a little kid, I wasn't carrying my bag, you know? So when you were 28, your mom said, you finally need to carry your own suitcase.

It's your turn. And you said, this one has wheels. Yeah, I did also remember backpacks, we can't even get into it right now. I mean, certainly the backpack, has to be a yappy hour conversation. But the put a pin in that. Well, so she was known as the trunk lady,

which is weird to me that she was known as the trunk lady because she would, whatever. People now hear heavy dragging and they associate it with her, but couldn't it have been anyone who had to lug luggage? Yes, and I also imagine she wasn't the one carrying the luggage. Right?

Yeah, especially as an older woman, who's regularly going here. She would get special treatment at least. I would think that somebody would carry the luggage. Right? Especially as an older woman, who's regularly going here. She would get special treatment at least. I would think that somebody would carry her luggage. A kindly gentleman or somebody, or a staff member would carry it. Well, it's interesting you say that because there is a lot of hesitation

on whether or not Trunk Lady and Miss Wright are the same person. Because she used to be known as the Trunk Lady because people would smell perfume and they would hear a trunk dragging so they would assume it's a woman with a trunk. Apparently at some point someone started working at the hotel who knew the original owners or knew like former employees and said something like oh that's Irene Wright that's Miss Wright so that's how her name gets attached to this Mmm, because he just took whatever information he heard put it with Irene right

But another weird thing is that apparently Irene right didn't have a husband or kids so like I don't know where the story is coming From it's all over the place. I Hate to be so confusing, but I'm just telling you how confusing it was even for me Yeah, yeah, so it's basically like a case of he said, oh, this is probably. It's someone whatever, because we know that name exists. We'll just put that label on this ghost. Yeah, I think she was probably a regular and they're like, oh, maybe it was her because she was a regular and she wanted to stay here.

Like, you know, make up a story like fit the story a little bit. Yeah. So I'm still just going to call her trunk lady, even though it's probably more disrespectful, but it maybe isn't iranian maybe not Maybe it's probably better than giving her the wrong name. I guess yeah Well, some say that this is the most haunted room with the most activity So if you want to get haunted go to room 10 of the makeover and others say that Some people say oh, it's like really haunted and full of activity and really spooky.

But some people like that one room in your mom's house, they say it's the calmest, most peaceful sleep they've ever had. So I wonder if it's like just if she likes you or not. It's the vibes, right? Like you have to be a good fit. So the room is also most active during the summer because that's allegedly when Miss Wright would be there. People say that in room 10, they have felt cold spots.

They've heard voices talking to them. They've heard doors slamming. They've heard banging on the walls. They've heard banging on their door in a hallway where nobody's there. The dresser drawers will open and close themselves. The lights will turn on and off. They'll feel a weirdly uncomfortable

or weirdly intense presence in there. The chairs will rock themselves. And this is the creepiest thing for me, is that the clocks, your personal clocks or watches will either run fast or slow or stop altogether until you leave the room and they'll go back to normal. Eww! Okay, that's interesting.

That goes into some quantum physics shit. Now that I don't like. Yeah, that's time and space. Now that we don't have time for today, but man, do I wanna get into that. The time just stops or it warps in this room. That's fascinating to me. I had the nerve to just think,

maybe we should have like a physicist on and like ask them how it works. LOL. And then they would go, it doesn't. There are no such thing as ghosts. Ghosts don't do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, a quantum physicist might have more to say.

I'm just saying. That's a good point. Okay. Eva, find us a quantum physicist. Thank you. Thank you. So the next ghost is the original owner, Sarah, who died by suicide, we think, in the hotel. People have seen her by the stairs. They've seen her at the front desk. She allegedly plays music for people. She will move your clothes around in the closets, which I guess you gotta kill time somehow. Yeah, just organizing. Yeah, by size, by color. By color.

By what she thinks is ugly. Yeah, you just find some like way in the back and you're like, what is this all about? You see one in the trash when you get back. You're like. Oops, what's this doing here? She makes the lights flicker and apparently they say that her daughter who passed away

is still with her and they hear, people hear children's spirits throughout the hotel. So they'll hear kids laughing, they'll hear kids running down the halls. One investigator got, and this is a quote, an EVP of marbles being dropped and a child's voice then saying, these are mine. Oh, that's so cute. Why is that cute? But half the shit, like 99% of the time when a child's voice appears, we're like, ah!

You know what? I think it's because it's as innocent as marbles. It's marbles. I think it's just like, it's mine, which is like what a child would say, not like, come play with me, you know. I feel like you and I should have like a whole day where we learn the old, what all the ghosts would play back in the day. Like we should play Hoop and Stick, we should play marbles, we should.

I need you to understand, you know, our friend from Libby, Joe. Mm-hmm. So we were on his podcast and what's it called? Professional Book Nerds. And so he just texted me recently and was like, did you know about this? In Ohio, there is like this convention of, like a hoop and stick convention. Did you know about this? Did we talk about this before?

I want you to sit with yourself and ask me, have I not gone and also known about something? No, I would be there. I would have been there. We would have been there. I guess I just wanna make sure I didn't like fugue state, like during my pregnancy or something. We would have taken it over with the,

and that's why I drink, community. This is why Joe texted me. He goes, it's in Ohio. It's called Hoop and Stick Con. It's at Ravenwood Castle, which is like 40 minutes from me, like really close. And he's like, why is this not a thing you guys do? And I was like, I don't know.

But the 13th annual was just held, February 27th through March 2nd. And they were like trying to get sponsors and like all this stuff. Trying to get. I know, I was like, I've never been so offended for no good reason in my whole life. The way that we're about to be their only sponsor

need any idea. And by the way, like we are absolutely. And I want to show you, I was like, it's honestly good at just pass. So we have a year to like prepare, but like here's the picture. I'm going to send it to you because it is just, their logo is hilarious.

It's called the hoop and Stick Con. And guess what, Em? Guess what? Guess what? Tell me. The entire ticket, everything, it's a donation to the Children's Miracle Network. It's all for charity. Like, this is so cool. Hoop and Stick Con. A weekend of board games, role-playing games games and general gaming goodness in a castle. Eight years we've been doing this. Eight years we've been doing this. What kind of nonsense? Why did we go to CrimeCon?

We should have been at Hoopin's stick this entire time. Why did we do anything? HSC. I don't know. I'm so glad that you brought up the... Because I was like, he's texted me that like a week ago and I was like, I have to remember to talk about this. Yeah. So, you know what? And they have an online auction and it's all for charity. He's texted me that like a week ago and I was like, I have to remember to talk about this.

Yeah, so you know what? And they have an online auction and it's all for charity. I'm like, we gotta get on this. This is amazing. Anyway, next year. Hey, are you listening Hoop and StickCon? Do you have internet? How does this work? I wanna be part of this.

Somebody reach out to them now. It's all for children's hospitals. Please help me. Help me be part of this. Anyway, thank you, Joe, for introducing me to this and go listen to Joe's podcast. It's really good. Professional book nerds. OK, anyway, sorry. Yes, who can stick on this? This is happening 2026.

Easy, easy, easy, easy. OK. There's a ghost. There's a ghost of a waitress who choked on chicken bone. Oh no. She is seen floating in the kitchen wearing an old uniform, which is like, I'm calling it an old uniform. Every other website has called it a ragged dress, relaxed. Ah! That's the other ghost who's like deciding

if your clothes are ugly or not. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's like that thing. She's like your ugly little rag, yeah. Like please, check my closet. There's like that thing. She's like your ugly little rag. Yeah. Like, please check my closet. There's so many other things you could change into. But she's been seen floating around wearing her ragged dress. She will also flicker the lights of the chandeliers.

She moves items around in the kitchen. She'll move your silverware. She'll move your glasses. She'll adjust the tablecloths. She's known to mess with the chef's knives. Not something to mess with, girl. No. And she will touch people, and by touch people,

I mean push them near the walk-in fridge. What? Which like feels like, it all feels location-wise very apropos for an old waitress. But like, if you're near a walk-in fridge, tell me if I'm wrong. Isn't it like all waitresses, like they'll cry in the walk-in fridge?

Like, why would you push someone who's already at their limit, you know? That's a good point. Maybe it's sort of like that thing of like, coming through, coming through, you know? And it's like, maybe it's just an old residual, like people bumping into each other and that's just where that happened.

That's a great point. I don't know. I don't know. But yeah, I think you're right. Like that feels like the last place you'd want to be bumped. It's like, that would be my last trough. I'm already walking. Is that the know. But yeah, I think you're right. Like that feels like the last place you'd want to be bumped. It's like that would be my last trough. I'm already walking. Is that the end of your rope? Yeah, you're already like really, really.

Walking here to cry. Like, and I push me. Also in the dining room, people right above them, they hear the sound of heavy, this is a quote, heavy furniture moving despite rooms being carpeted and the furniture being wicker. That is crazy. That's one of my favorites is when you like hear upstairs,

because it feels less threatening in the moment. But also it's like extra creepy when you know like there's nothing up there to drag and nothing to drag it on. Yeah. Like that to me is always so creepy. I love that. And also like that implies,

unless that room above the dining room is room 10, it implies that there's more than just trunk lady. There's trunk people. That's true. There's a whole trunk family. It's like the borrowers, but worse. But so much worse. Yeah, I imagine there's just a bunch. I refuse to believe that there's one trunk lady.

I really think- No, and I feel like they're just lumping everyone together. It's like, no, let them have their individual identities here. And like, what if someone drags while someone else shoves while someone else scoots? And who doesn't have heavy luggage back then? There's no wheels on them. There's no wheels. Everyone had heavy luggage.

Everyone had a heavy rectangle. Yes! And you expected someone upstairs to not- To trunk it along. That's not one woman. That's every single person. Everybody had a trunk. There's also the ghost of an angry man. Apparently they say he's downstairs in the basement. He is called the growler. Ah! Sorry, that was really upsetting. I didn't expect that.

Obviously because he growls down there. He also moves items around or at least that's the sound you hear. It sounds like this whole hotel is like you just hear sounds of things moving. That's kind of what it is. Yeah. The doors open and close really hard. They even slam so hard that the walls have shaken and the beds have rocked themselves. So like off the vibrations of the door slamming so hard. People hear lots of voices. They, throughout the halls, you can hear either like talking all the way to like scream match fighting. Oh no. And nobody's there.

There's apparently the ghost of a farmer that has been seen smiling in the lobby. Smiling. Yeah. I was gonna say at least it's in the lobby and not in your room. But the smiling part bothers me. I don't know. Me too. I don't know what would make that better.

You're right. But being in your room would be so much worse. That's like a serial killer or something. Yeah. Oh, there's a man smiling at your bed. Yeah. With a pitchfork. I don't think so. There's a lot of phantom bangings. There was one story of like super loud banging on someone's door just as they were falling asleep.

And when they went to check, nobody was in the hall. Then there was right when he was going back to bed, there was a second banging. Nobody in the hall again. And then he started hearing the sounds of doors slamming all around him. What are they trying to do? Like just piss him off? Like just keep you awake, yeah.

Like what, yeah, what is the point? Well, the guy found out the next day that he was the only guest in the hotel and all of the employees had gone home earlier that day. That's so gross. It was, imagine, okay, thank God he didn't know that at night though, to know that you're the only one there. I'd be like, a murderer has entered the building.

Like, I'm going to die tonight. That would be my fear. I know I've said it, but like when we covered the Greenbrier Hotel, or I think we did, I stayed there as a kid and I heard all the pots and pans and we were right next to the kitchen and nobody was working. But that's how it must feel where like,

you just hear everything slamming. And it's like, was I crashing your fucking party because everyone was gone and you just wanted to like make all these sounds? But then also in the same moment, I'm like, well, that was really nice that they were going to throw a party. They respected your

room and left your room alone. But I guess not if they were banging on the door. Well, yeah, it sounds like they didn't even let you sleep, though, you know. Maybe they were knocking on the door to invite you to their party.

You know, maybe they were like, come on, join the fun. Maybe the party was happening in your room. Maybe they were knocking on the door to like be like respectful neighbors and they're like, hey, we're about to get really loud but we just wanted to warn you. Hey, do you mind the smell of weed? How do you feel about that?

Do you like sticky carpet full of beer? No? Yeah, what do you think about that? What do you think about me rolling a trunk that's really heavy down the hallway over and over again? Um, also they, there's, there's been EVPs caught all over the place, but one of them was in, I think room 10, uh, the EVP said, we love this bedroom.

And then another voice got caught on the EVP saying, I'm happy to hear that. Oh, so it's like they were having, like they were only having their own conversation about their safe hotel. I wonder who that was. I'm happy to hear that. That must be like a bellboy or a staff member or something.

Yeah, I would imagine it was someone like getting to their room with their luggage and going, oh, thanks, I love the room. Happy to hear that. Yeah. Anyway, that's all for the Hotel Maycomer, but I wanted to tell you my personal story in Kate May.

So. Have I heard this before? I don't know. I'm excited. I don't remember a lot of this era. One, I was like really mad at my mom. Yeah. For some unknown reason that we'll get to in the yappy hour. Second of all, I was closeted about my gender and sexuality, so I was having a Hawaiian shirt era in this moment. Oh yeah.

As most of us have had the... I was gonna say, also that era was hard on everyone, not everyone, but a lot of us fashion-wise, and so for you, especially dealing with that gender stuff, I imagine that was quite a doozy, right? For me, it was just, I was awkward. I feel like a lot of like queer, queer, AFAB people had a Hawaiian shirt phase before they came out.

Agreed. It's like the baggy, there's something about it, you know? And on top of that, when I was younger, I looked like Shia LaBeouf. And so with the Hawaiian shirt, I was just like cosplaying even Steven. Even Steven? I just looked like Louis Stevens all the time.

And to this day, I can't look at a picture and not think that I was just his background actor or something. That's so good. Anyway, so just remember that's where we are. I'm in a Hawaiian shirt, I'm really fucking quiet because of my mom. Picture this, picture this.

Really quiet is hard for me to wrap my head around, but the rest I can picture. I was loud as shit around everyone else, but if my mom was in the room, all of a sudden I would like clam up. That is wild. Yeah, we gotta talk about that sometime. Maybe I thought she was like onto me being gay

because of my Hawaiian shirts, and I just like didn't wanna admit it. So I was just like, I just got really quiet. I plead the fifth. So I don't know the name of the hotel. I'm working off of what I'm trying to like backtrack the information on the internet and what hotel I think we were saying at is called the in at 22 Jackson. Okay.

And I'll tell you why in a second, but we were saying there, I was 13, my friend that was with us, she was 15. Our moms were best friends ever since we moved to Virginia. Can I ask her name? Dwyn. Okay. I think I've talked to her about you. The mom or the...

Oh, sorry. The mom is Dwyn and the daughter is Darian. Okay. I didn't know the daughter's name. Fun fact, if anyone can help me figure this out, I'm convinced that Dwyn and Sarah Jessica Parker are long-lost siblings. Random. But if anyone can help me, that'd be great. Whoa! If you know Sarah Jessica Parker, tell her that she has a sister.

Hey, she's from Cincinnati. Okay, if you can knock on her door. Well, she comes back once. I mean, she certainly doesn't live here anymore. But she comes back every now and then and goes to graders and people take pictures of her. So I could ask her the next time I'm at graders. They're very identical and there's like some story that's Sarah Jessica Parker and like when they both have like a Something about their dad. It makes a lot of sense in my brain and I've been convinced. Listen, I'm convinced they're Weirdly identical off to show you pictures from back in the day. I'm convinced. So, Dwyn is the mom, Darian is the daughter.

I love these names. Thank you. I didn't pick them out myself. You're welcome. You're so welcome, Em. So, I'm assuming we were saying at the Inn at 22 Jackson, we're all staying in like a suite, so all of us could be together. Cute.

But the two of us are like kind of too young to go out and do our own thing But our moms wanted to go have their own separate dinner and like probably not hang out with teenagers on their own vacation. So They decided they were gonna have dinner downstairs in the hotel But we were not allowed to leave the hotel room Do not leave the hotel room and also don't fucking bother us if we find out that you need something We're gonna be mad about it. Like just how just hung around to order a room service or something like that. Uh, I don't remember. I don't remember,

but we were just hanging out up there and I felt like the place was haunted. It had weird vibes, but I was like, maybe I'm just in a weird, weird, new place. As I'm hanging out up there with Darian, I'm, the TV turns on by itself. And I was like, okay, that's weird. So I turn it off. I go and sit back down. The second my butt hits the bed, the TV turns on again. And I was like, what the hell?

That's crazy. So I turn it off again and Darian's in the bathroom and I hear her going like, why are you turning the TV on and off? Like what's going on? And I was like, I'm not doing it. It just keeps happening. And then as I sat down, I was like,

watch, it's gonna happen again. And when I sat down, the TV turned on again by itself. And then she went, that's you're fucking with me because she thought she couldn't see me. Well, that's what happened with us too, at that time, when it happened in the hotel room and you were in the bathroom and you, except I was blaming you and you were like, I am on the toilet. And I was like, well, yeah, well, so ghost. So then I was like, I'm not kidding. The TV is turning on and off by itself. Or I said at the time it's turning on by itself. Then the TV turns off as I said, turns on again by itself, turns off again by itself.

Does this a bunch of times, a bunch of times. Oh, my God. Then she comes out and we're both watching the TV turning on and off. Oh, good. I was going to say, I'm glad she got to witness it at least. It turns back on and we were like, okay, is it gonna turn off again? And we were both looking for the remote, we didn't know where the remote was. All of a sudden all the volume gets,

like you can see it, like the dial on the TV, the volume just gets so loud that we're like, what the hell's going on? And we were like covering our ears. And you can't find the remote? And we couldn't find the remote. I go over and manually turn the TV off and I walk away and the TV turns back on by itself.

And I was like, what the fuck's going on? We were so freaked out by this that we were like, our mom said we can't leave, but we have to go downstairs and find them. So we found them. They were in the middle of, I'm sure, the best gossip session of their life. We had it burning.

Like having their first martini. You're like, ma! Well, we ended up finding out because we were trying to complain about it to the, or my mom were trying to complain about it to this or my mom was trying to complain about it to the front desk. Yeah, like I'm trying to drink my martini and your television is scaring my children out of the room. And they were like, oh, well, it sounds like you met Esmeralda.

Oh, and we were like, what? And apparently Esmeralda used to be a nanny for the original owners of the house. And to this day, she still likes to play with the kids when they're left alone in the rooms. And apparently if you like play board games, a lot of kids have said that like their pieces will go missing or like they'll turn around and all of a sudden like the game has changed

or the cards have moved around. And so using that, I looked up Kate May as Moral the nanny ghost, and it puts me at 22 Jackson. There is lore that apparently this story was made up in the seventies, but I don't know. Something really freaky happened to me there. I was gonna say also, I always feel like

even when things are quote unquote made up, it's like, well, there's clearly some sort of kernel of truth to the activity at least, you know? So whether it's like well there's clearly some sort of kernel of truth to the activity at least you know so whether it's esmeralda or not like clearly there's a pattern of activity that they're talking about or if it's trunk lady or not like who cares it's just like something something well so the next the next day my mom and i went to a gift shop which i'm thinking is what is called today Winterwood. At one point it used to be called Kelty's Newsstand.

But it's a gift shop in Cape May. And my mom and I were in there and I'm looking through stuff and I see this woman come up to me or come up right next to me. And you know like those stands where it spins and there's a bunch of stuff on either side of it. Yeah. Well, I was standing and I saw her spinning it and then all of a sudden as she walked away she bumped into it and all the stuff fell, like a bunch of stuff fell off of the display.

And my mom thought it was me because she turned around and she went, why would you knock all that stuff over? And I went, it wasn't me, it was that woman who just walked away. And there was no one else in the store. I said this. And they went, the store owner went, oh yeah, you saw her, she does that. And I went, no.

And I went, what? So going off of that, I typed in like, Kate May ghost gift shop, knocking shit over. Oh my God, you're like tracing your steps back, wow. And so there is a gift shop there called Winterwood now and it used to be owned by two sisters who used to run a millinery there. And apparently they're still heard causing fucking ruckus.

And they- Yeah, they're like, get these postcards out of here. I'm trying to milliner. People will hear them giggling in corners, yikes. And they'll push books and Christmas decorations off the shelves. So, wow, you saw, so they'll push books and Christmas decorations off the shelves. So, wow. You saw, so you saw an apparition. So I saw an apparition. Yeah. Anyway, those are my two stories from Kate May.

What, uh, what, what did she look like? Do you remember? Or was it just so fleeting? I just remember her wearing a big ass hat, which is weird because actually in hindsight now a millinery, right? That's a women's hat store. I didn't even put that together. I just found out about Millinery like last night. Oh shit. Hmm. All right.

Well, there you have it. There you have it. That's Hotel Makehomer. And that's amazing. And you know what? That gives me hope about our ghost stories because I not hope about our ghost stories. It's a weird thing to say, but like it's kind of...

Validation? Yeah. Well, it's a little bit refreshing to me and exciting because it's like I didn't know this story of yours. And I feel like we've talked about like over and over so many times, like the same story of like me seeing Mr. Whaley at the top of the stairs or whatever. And it's like, and in the past you've said,

I don't think I ever saw an apparition. Now it's like, oh, like this sparked a memory for you. And we're like, wait, you did see an apparition, but like you wouldn't have even conjured the memory unless we were covering the story. So I just, it gives me hope that there are more like weird little memories we'll uncover and, um, I don't know, maybe more apparitions. Maybe along the way we'll find out we've been much more haunted than we think.

Oh, and then it was the journey all and the destiny. Speaking of which, speaking of which, I have a gift for you. Oh, you do? It was when I was in Houston, it Speaking of which, speaking of which, I have a gift for you. Oh, you do? I do. It was when I was in Houston, it was called the Texas Art Asylum. Oh, good. And they had aisles and aisles and aisles of old family pictures.

And I was like, if Christine were here, she would obviously have looked through this. And I still feel so guilty about that one. I think I was like, if Christine were here, she would obviously look through this. And I still feel so guilty about that one. I think I was in Portland or something. I still think about the picture that felt like I was supposed to give it to you and I didn't even remember, frankly. Well, this time around, I walked around, I closed my eyes and I put my hand on it. And I went, I universe give you, I was like, Christine, I just tried to think about you. And I was like, there's there's something here that Christine would be drawn to and would want to take home and take care of.

And so we I have this for you and you get here. It's in the original old case and the old file. And it's this picture. I want to be careful because. But it just I don't know why it spoke out. I didn't is beating so fast. I picked it up before I even looked at it and I knew it was meant for you.

And I don't know why. But then I opened it up and it's a mom and her baby. Oh, my. Look how happy she is. And I said, I said, this this feels like something Christine would take care of. So it's meant to be a mommy and a baby. If anyone knows who they are, we would love some information. But thank you, Em. And look how happy like a lot of times in those photos, they weren't smiling. So it's really cool. They're just so happy. Even the baby's happy. Oh, that's so sweet, Em.

Thank you. And one of my favorite paintings is of a mom and a little baby and it looks really similar. I feel like I'm gonna hang them next to each other. Well, it used to obviously be like pinned or in a portrait or something. Maybe in a scrapbook or something. Maybe, yeah.

And the only name on it is Harris, but I think that's the name of the photographer. Oh yeah, yeah. And the only name on it is Harris, but I think that's the name of the photographer. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And that was in Houston you bought it? In Houston. And it also, it does say Harris photographer, it says Little Rock, Arkansas and DC. Oh, interesting. So maybe Little Rock or something. Yeah. Yeah, who knows? Wow, that's beautiful. Thank you, Em. That's for you when you get here. Mommy and a baby. I didn't mean to steamroll you, but you said like you said something that made me remember. So. Oh, no, please. I don't remember what I said.

I'm sure it was really, really smart and interesting. Yep. So anyway, there you have it. There's a little gift for you when you get here tomorrow. Great. Thank you. I needed that little interlude because I'm about to cry about the story. I'm sweating so much. It's fine. Okay. If you are craving your next action-packed adventure and who isn't, Audible delivers thrills of every kind on your command, from electrifying suspense and daring quests to spine-tingling horror and romance in far-off realms. If you're a new kind of fairy smut listener like me

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don't get me anything. You know, Linda doesn't say that does she? I don't think she's ever strung those words together in that sentence now. She doesn't know what that means. Yeah. I don't think she's ever strung those words together in that sentence now. I think- She doesn't know what that means, yeah. She's, the only thing she's ever said is, now please, please. Yes, more please, more please.

And so anyway, Mother's Day is coming up and every year I'm like, oh, my mother, like, you know, she's like, oh, don't get me anything. But I feel, you know, you have to, right? You don't have to, but it feels like, you know, sometimes I want to, yeah, sometimes you gotta. And so I was thinking like, oh, every time she sees me, she's like, oh, my God, where did you get this band again

for your Apple watch, which I'm like showing right now. And it's this it's beautiful stainless steel bracelet Apple watch band. And I bought it from Quinn's and I was like, I don't know if it'll fit right. Whatever. I have worn it every single day since I bought it. I wear it on stage.

I wear it constantly. That's what I'm getting her for Mother's Day. Don't tell her. You name it, I wear it on stage, I wear it constantly. That's what I'm getting her for Mother's Day. Don't tell her. You name it, Quinn's probably has it, and my mother has maybe already owns all of it. I actually don't know, I didn't ask. But the best part is all Quinn's items are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands.

Again, don't tell Linda and Renata about that. They don't need to know. So thanks God for Quinn's. Thanks for making Mother's Day just a tad bit easier. Yeah, thank you so much. And on behalf of my mother, who's also giving Quince things, thank you in advance. Thoughtful, timeless, totally her, shop Mother's Day at Quince. Go to quince.com slash drink for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's

quince.com slash drink to get free shipping and 365 day returns quince.com slash drink. and 365 day returns, quince.com slash drink. Okay, okay, okay. Wow. I don't even know how to begin. This... Start with the title. Is sick. Okay.

I today am covering the story of the, tell me if you know about it, the Las Cruces bowling alley massacre. And I think the fact that people don't, including myself, don't really know the story is also very like. It's just really adds a layer of like. Darkness to it, because like, how do people not know about this? It's almost like how is this not talked about more

and how is this not more infamous? Was it it was not within the last 10 years, right? It was not. It was in 1990. OK. Yeah, I would. Because unfortunately, we live in a us Americans. We live in a world where there is a massacre every fucking day. So I could see it getting mixed in the shuffle with that. But yeah, if it was a standalone moment in the 90s, I'm surprised we don't know more about it.

It was a huge, huge deal at the time, especially. And I think it just sort of faded away. And I mean, who am I? Right. I'm just like a podcaster. But I think it just hit me so hard that I really started digging into. Well, we'll get into it but I it's just one of the cases that I really like

took and Ran with and like really tried to dig into Cool. Okay, and it did a number on me. Um So let's get into it 1990 I also like I know we we give the blanket trigger warning usually of just you know true crime has all sorts of of course Horrible and dark and triggering topics this one especially just has a kind of a lot of different things But especially to do with children again And so just a warning if you are not in a good headspace for that this might not be the one to listen to

So 1990 Las Cruces, New Mexico, it's a pretty small town with about 62,000 residents. And like any good town in the 90s, it has a poppin bowling alley. And this is the place to be. The manager of this bowling alley, the Las Cruces bowling alley, is 34 year old Stephanie Seenak, and she's the manager. Her dad actually owns the business and we'll get to him in a minute. His name is Ron. But this place is located downtown. It's being

managed by Stephanie, daughter of the owner. The Bowling Alley had a full kitchen and a chef. So basically this place is like a one-stop shop. You go all day, you can play with your friends, your family, you can eat, you can play arcade games. They've got it all. A one-stop dream shop for a parent. Especially for a parent. And it's very 90s, right? Like very arcade, very classic, just kind of everything you'd want in a family-friendly

situation. And get this, they even have a daycare built in so that if the parents come with the older kids or parents are on a bowling league, they have a literal daycare area where- So smart. Yeah, where these employees take care of the kids. It's really cool. And so more than 100 members of a local bowling league gathered there every Monday.

This is the hotspot in town, especially for bowlers. And business was really, really good. The guy who owned it, I mentioned him briefly. His name is Ron Seenak, and his daughter is the manager. Her name's Stephanie. And he had recently sold his home on a golf course and for some reason moved into the bowling alley. I don't really understand why the business was going well. I don't know if he went in there for financial reasons,

if he moved in there to be like close, if he was just in between like houses. I don't really know why he moved in, but what we do know is he had recently moved into the bowling alley and technically lived on the property. It's like a caregiver. Yeah, sort of like a caretaker, but like.

Caretaker. But also like not really because he just owned it but he didn't actually work there like he just lived oh that is interesting yeah and and on top of it being his literal home like he lives there at this point the bowling alley was his family's business so maybe that's why right like he wanted to be you know in the action his daughter like I said Stephanie whom I mentioned earlier she's the manager and two more of his adult So maybe that's why, right? Like he wanted to be, you know, in the action. His daughter, like I said, Stephanie, whom I mentioned earlier, she's the manager, and two more of his adult children also worked at the bowling alley.

So early February of 1990, Ron is out of town. He's golfing with a friend. And if there's one thing you need to know about Ron besides that he lives in a bowling alley is that he loves to golf. Okay. This old man loves to golf. Now, according to Ron, he rarely traveled and any traveling he did do was to go golfing. And that is where he was. He was on a golf trip. Meanwhile, back home in Las Cruces, February 10th,

his daughter Stephanie gets to the bowling alley early to start her shift as manager and they're getting ready for the day. It's a Saturday morning, so things are gonna be popping, right? On a Saturday in the 90s at the bowling alley. Another employee is there too. This is 33 year old Ida Holgen. She is the cook at the bowling alley and she's there prepping the kitchen for all the things are going to be serving that day. She used to work nights but she had actually changed shifts like very recently

because she wanted time to spend with her mom playing bingo in the evenings. And so she changed her shifts from evenings to mornings. Now back to manager Stephanie, she had actually brought with her to work her 12 year old daughter, Melissa Repass. And Melissa, she didn't always go to work with her mom, but sometimes, especially on a weekend,

she would go to work with her mom because she worked with her best friend, 13-year-old Amy Houser in the daycare. So it's kind of cute. So the mom's the manager, then her daughter and her daughter's best friend, like, watch the little kids in the adjoining like daycare room. Now, as I go, I have like some visuals here. I didn't know the best way to do this.

So I just have them on my iPad, but I just want to give you like a, just a, to give you an idea. This is Melissa. She's 12. Okay. Okay. Cool. This very nineties, very nineties. This is her best friend, Amy. Nice 90s. Very 90s. This is her best friend Amy. Nice. 13. And they arrive with Melissa's mom to work in the children's, what do you call it? In the daycare. In the daycare.

So Melissa was meeting Amy there. And meanwhile, Amy's stepdad dropped her off. And on the way, her stepdad asked her all about what was going on with her life because he'd been out of town for a while. So he was dropping her off. He took that time to ask her about her day, ask her about her friends, her schoolwork, her life.

She and her stepdad were really close. He dropped her off and he remembers very vividly saying, I love you and her turning around saying, I love you too. Now we've got 12 and 13 year olds, Melissa and Amy, Melissa's mom Stephanie and the cook Ida, that's who's there right now. The next to arrive is 26 year old Stephen Turan. And he worked as the bowling alley's pin mechanic.

And so he arrived at work at 8 a.m. His wife Audrey had a class that Saturday morning and she didn't have time to find a babysitter. So he thought he would just bring his daughters to work. They're six and two. And he thinks, oh, well, I'll bring him to work because, you know, Melissa and Amy will be there doing the daycare and that's great.

So here's a picture of the Teran family. So that's Stephen in the back and then his wife and two daughters. And his two daughters are six-year-old Paula and two and a half year old Valerie. So the plan is just the girls would spend the day in the daycare. I mean, it's a Saturday at a bowling alley. How fun would that be?

You get paid as a 13-year-old to babysit at the bowling alley with your friend? It's perfect. Also a dream when you're 13 and you work where you're going to play, because as soon as you're off your shift, you just get to go to the arcade or eat a pizza or go bowling. No, and they even talked about that their mom gave them some dollars to go to the vending machines and pick what snacks they want. You know, like that fun stuff from being a kid that was like what makes your summer break or your Saturday so fun, just those little things.

And so they're looking forward to a fun day. They're all they all arrive. Steven arrives with the two girls planning to put them in the in the daycare, in the childcare center. So early that morning, Stephanie's brother, Steve Sinac stops by and he's the other son of Ron, the golfer and the owner of the establishment. He also had a class on Saturday. So he wasn't actually going to work, but he had left his backpack at the bowling alley

the night earlier. So he arrived to pick up his backpack on the way to class. And when he arrives, he notices there are two men standing outside near the building. And it strikes him as odd because it's so early on a weekend day. And he's like, what are these two grown men doing here?

But they're kind of out of eyesight, out of eyeline. He gets a look at them, but he doesn't really pay too much mind. But when he went inside, he realized that the door was unlocked and he told his sister Stephanie who was managing that day, hey lock the door I didn't bring my keys so can you please lock up like I don't feel comfortable having all of you here with the girls and everybody without

the door being locked anybody could just walk in. So on his way out he reminded Stephanie you know lock the door she's like yeah yeah reminded Stephanie, you know, lock the door. She's like, yeah, yeah, I'm busy, you know, and he goes on at around 8 a.m. Melissa and Amy, these are the babysitters basically, told Stephanie, Melissa's mom, that they're hungry for breakfast and Ida is still prepping the kitchen. So Stephanie gave the kids a bunch of quarters to go find snacks from the vending machine. The girls walked to the lobby, got their snacks. They're just like giggling and having fun. On their way back to the office,

they encounter two strange men. The men were both armed and one of them directed Amy and Melissa back to the office at gunpoint. Oh my God. The second man found Ida in the kitchen. He snuck up on her from around a corner, put a gun to her side and said, this is a holdup, come with me. He forced Ida to the kitchen. He snuck up on her from around a corner, put a gun to her side and said, "'This is a holdup, come with me.'"

He forced Ida to the office and told her to get on the floor with Stephanie, Amy and Melissa. So all four of them are now helplessly in a corner as the captors are searching the office for money. And now they're all cooperating. They're saying, hey, here's the money. There's a safe there, take what you need. And all that mattered in that moment to them was to stay calm,

because their kids are there, they're trying to just cooperate and be as, just not provoke these people whatsoever. But the men kept searching for something of value. It was like they couldn't find what they were looking for. And these women are like, I don't know, like, look in the safe, look in the drawers, you can have whatever you want. But they seem dissatisfied with what they're finding, which is, by the way, thousands of dollars in cash and checks.

Yeah. So what are you looking for? What are you looking for? Exactly. And then Stephen Turan walked in. Stephen Turan, he's the dad that I mentioned earlier with the two little girls. The pin mechanic. Exactly. And he walks in. He is 26 years old. He served in the National Guard.

He recently earned a degree in criminal justice and was planning to become a police officer. So normally this is like the person that would handle this situation. His moment. Yeah. But he has two little girls with him, right? And he's a very serious man. He's a kind right? And he's a very serious man. He's a kind person, but he's a very serious man. And his friends and family described him as like very stern,

like pretty militaristic in like the way of like manners and, you know, like sit up straight, that kind of thing. He walks in, he sees what's unfolding, these two men, and he has a six-year-old, his two and a half-year-old daughters. And of course, there's no way to challenge these men without putting his daughters in harm's way in addition to all the other people in the room. So when they tell him to get on the floor, he does, and he tells his daughters to do so as well. Then suddenly, apparently unprovoked and with absolutely zero warning the men start shooting and

the entire incident unfolds in a matter of minutes and I know I mentioned that Stephanie arrived around 8 a.m. Right before 8 30 a.m. It's not even 8 30 a.m. Yet a 9-1-1 dispatcher answers a call from Las Cruces Bowl and There's a young girl on the other end of the line and she says her name's Melissa And she said we were all shot in a holdup all of us were hurt and she sounded like she was in pain I mean you can listen to and there's a documentary that I'll mention later that was made in 2010

That's that I think that's what really f'd me up. Like it was the dispatch call. Not not necessarily this. Well, that too, but the whole documentary because it's so they use the 911 call, but they also have so many crime scene photos. They go into very specific, gruesome detail, and it's it's really hard to to watch and listen to. But so they play the whole call almost,

it's like excruciating really. Because she's just says, hurry up, hurry up, right? And they're like, how old are you? She says, I'm 12. And she's very calm and she's describing what's happening. And the dispatcher is a little bit like, well, okay, honey, what's going on? She says, I'm the only person awake.

And he's trying to understand. He says, what's going on? How many people are hurt? And you just hear her go, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. And he says, seven? And she goes, seven. And he says seven and she goes, yeah, and I was shot too. And he says, you were shot too.

And she says five times. Oh my god. And this man is like, totally like, okay, okay. Like, you know, they're on the way. Please just like stay, you know, you're okay. We're gonna, you know, doing the usual like, breathe, you know, trying to get her through it. And you can just tell he's like, I mean, you're okay. We're gonna, you know, doing the usual like, breathe, you know, trying to get her through it. And you can just tell he's like, I mean,

you can't hear it because he's a professional, but like, you can just imagine. No one's not rattled by that. No, right, exactly. And I mean, later on in the documentary, he comes on and he actually, he and Melissa reunite in the documentary after like decades. And he just can't stop crying.

And it's like, he's like to hear a 12 year old on the line saying, you know, help me, somebody shot me five times and my mom and you know, it's just, it's just so, and my best friend. Not to, you know, obviously bring up the state of the nation these days, but I feel like if you're a dispatch person, you're almost like, it's the gun violence. It's almost like, it's... The gun violence is just like... It's more expected now. I mean, back in the 90s, it was like, just Columbine, you know?

Right. So I feel like it was even more... I don't want to say more jarring. You know what I'm saying? Maybe shocking. It was less anticipated than what you might expect as a dispatch caller today. I don't know. No, I can definitely see that,

especially in a small town, right? Where you're just like, apparently there had not been, I think the previous year, there had been maybe one death or something like that in the whole town. Like in the whole year. And then this happened in February. So it was like something that they couldn't have even remotely prepared for.

So I mean, Emma just gets worse. So they're on the call and he's saying, you know, hold on. They're coming. Keep talking. Keep breathing. They're coming. And she goes, you need to send the fire department to. And he goes, what?

And she goes, oh, they set the building on fire and he goes to get rid of the evidence oh yeah and he goes oh my god well is there do you smell smoke and she's like yeah we're about to be burned and he's like there's a fire there right now and she goes yes I see the fire it's right next to me and I can't move there's a fire and so now this it's just like these people shot up everybody in the building and then set fire to the place and so you know of course police officers paramedics arrive the dispatcher asked if she could smell smoke she said yes it's right here it's going to burn me and it's going to burn everyone in the room if you don't get here.

Now, she didn't even know if the attackers are still in the building. And when police arrived just minutes later, when they're calling her to come out, she's just too scared to even move. She's like, I don't know who they are. I mean, she's in shock. I was going to say, I can't imagine the adrenaline that is just keeping her surviving in that moment. And then I imagine once you hang up the phone, it's like I've done everything I can't imagine the adrenaline that is just keeping her surviving in that moment. And then I imagine once you hang up the phone, it's like, I've done everything I can.

Now I'm probably feeling all the pain. Now I'm realizing it. That's it. It's like now I'm seeing all the people like it's not just counting objects, it's realizing I'm surrounded by seven people not waking up. People are probably already catching on fire if the fire is that close to me. It's like that, like that adrenaline rush of taking action. And then when you're done taking action, it's like the come down of now looking around exactly and actually absorbing what happened.

Petrifying. Petrifying. And she could barely get off the phone. And when they play it, it's just so sad because you can hear the dispatcher say, she goes, you told me to stay on the phone. And he's like, I know, honey, but you have to go to the police. They're here. It's OK to hang up. You can hang up now. And she's like, you told me to stay on the phone. And he's like, I know, honey, but like, you have to go to the police.

They're here. You know, it's OK to hang up. You can hang up now. And she's like, are you sure? And he's like, yes. Like, she doesn't know what to do. Now, get this. She had learned about 9-1-1 the previous week at school. Like she had never heard of 9-1-1 the week before at school. They had done a session on 9-1-1. And she said, like to this day, she's like,

it must have just been somewhere in my head because she just picked up the phone and dialed. Newly in your brain, yeah. Newly minted information. Like she said, if I didn't know about that, I don't know what would have happened. I don't know if we, anybody would have gotten out. We do know what would have happened.

Well, we probably know exactly what would have happened. Right, because she was the only conscious one if she hadn't known what to do. And it's just so scary. So she was too terrified to even hang up the phone and go to the police. But finally, the dispatcher convinced her that she was safe and that she needed to hang up and escape the fire. So she followed the instructions and she described how to get to the office so the police could

find her back there. And when they found our 12 year old Melissa, she's still on the phone, she's been shot multiple times, she's surrounded by fire, there are six unconscious victims laying around her. And like I said, she had just learned about 911, so she's just in total shock, she doesn't even know how she managed to get to this point.

With the dispatcher's insistence that she needs to get to this point. With the dispatcher's insistence that she needs to get away from the flames, she hangs up the phone and she runs out of the room, and despite the bullet wounds. She flees to the parking lot with an officer where she sat in a police vehicle until paramedics arrived. They rushed her to the hospital. And when first responders went inside the building, they found the other six victims.

They brought them out of the office before triaging them to get them away from the fire. Ida woke up briefly when a first responder asked for her name. She gave her name. And apparently when she heard her own voice, she felt shocked she was alive. Like she heard herself speak and was like, I can't believe I'm alive. And she heard herself speak and was like,

I can't believe I'm alive. And then fell back into and lost consciousness again. Sure. She was wheeled to an ambulance. Meanwhile, this is where I just like, so Steven who had brought his two daughters in, his wife Audrey, she had been in class that morning and she had been growing increasingly nervous at the school nearby. She and her classmates had heard

sirens flying past their school that morning. And it's such a small town where one person dies a year. Like what's all the sirens? It's like what could have, there's an emergency, right? You think like what are the odds? But also yeah, it's a small town, like, I don't feel right. And when she called the bowling alley during a break between her classes, nobody answered. So she's getting just more and more nervous. When she goes to lunch, she catches the end of a news report

that seven people were shot, but she doesn't hear about the bowling alley. And so she just is like getting uneasy, uneasy. She doesn't know what this shooting is about. Like best case scenario, it's probably someone you know or someone you know knows. Yeah, or at least someone in town, which is like still scary.

Like a spree shooting is scary, whether you know, you know, especially when it's nearby. And so she's really on edge. So she doesn't hear any more details. She goes back to school. She calls the bowling alley again, no answer. And she and her friend just made up their minds

to leave class and drive to the bowling alley. And another classmate says, Hey, I just heard there was a robbery at the bowling alley. And Audrey knows her husband and two daughters are there. Let me just get this. Yeah, get the, just to really break everyone's heart. Just to really show, yeah, just to show what's going on. So Audrey, she is, she knows that Stephen and her two daughters are at the bowling alley.

And so she panics. She goes there with a friend. She rushes to the scene, police stop her in the parking lot and she tells them, Hey, my husband and daughters are inside. And so they sit her down and they say, we have something to tell you. Your husband has been shot. And she of course breaks down, but she says, can I just have my girls, please? And, you know, she's waiting for them to bring the girls. They say, hang on. The officers come back and they say we have something really horrible to tell you six-year-old Paula has been pronounced dead at the scene as well and uh just because

it's worth sharing this is a photo of Paula at age six and uh her mother was told Paula has been killed so So when Audrey asks- Where's the other baby? Where's the other one? Their two-year-old Valerie, they say you have to get to the hospital. She's in critical condition. So-

Oh my God. She is about to be rushed to the hospital, of course, praying the whole way there. Meanwhile, Amy, 13-year-old Amy, her mother, Gloria Woods, is also rushing to the hospital. She worked as a baker at a food warehouse and another employee passed along a phone message Amy, 13 year old Amy, her mother Gloria Woods is also rushing to the hospital. She worked as a baker at a food warehouse and another employee passed along a phone message just saying something bad happened at the bowling alley.

And all she knows is that her daughter's there babysitting today. So she's she doesn't really know much more than that. But that's got to be like such a gut punch feeling. And so she tries to return the call. No one's picking up at the bowling alley. So she and her friend drive there and the police, she tells the police my daughter's inside and the officers, you know, it's a small town. They know her and they say, Gloria, you have to go to the hospital. So they're on the way to the hospital, both Gloria and Audrey and separately, and they rushed to their respective daughter's sides at the

hospital. Gloria arrived at the room of 13 year old Amy, her daughter, and she was told that her daughter had died. When Audrey arrived she saw a priest in the hospital room and she knew immediately something was very wrong and a social worker was there as well and they told her two and a half year old Valerie was also dead. So Audrey wanted to know, I also have just like another little picture of Valerie at that age, two and a half, just to give you an idea of like what kind of person would, you know, shoot a toddler in the head. So she gets to the hospital, this there's a social worker and a priest, and they say, like, your your whole family has just been killed. Good morning. You know, you went to class and now your husband

and both your daughters are dead. So Audrey asked whether Valerie died on the table or if someone had held her in her final moments. And they told her that after a medical team spent 45 minutes trying to save Valerie, a nurse hugged her to her chest. And Valerie, she was conscious also through a lot of it and was just scared and didn't know what was going on. They said she was just calling for her mom the whole time.

It's just horrible, I'm sorry. But they said that they spent 45 minutes trying to save her and then a nurse just picked her up and held her for a while. And she just like it clung onto the nurse's neck until she passed away. And so this woman had just like lost her entire family in one morning, like in just one morning, her whole family's gone. And so Anthony Turan, which is Stephen's younger brother, this is, this would be Audrey a 19-year-old brother who was in college, and he was just like having a lazy Saturday morning, 19 years old. He hears something on the radio about a shooting,

but he doesn't hear the bowling alley part, so it doesn't really strike him. But so he gets a call a few minutes later from the hospital, and he didn't even put it together that it had something to do with this shooting. He'd kind of overheard on the radio. He arrives and he sees Audrey crying beside a priest. And he thought, like, maybe my brother's sick.

You know, like, what? Or maybe my brother's been in a car accident and he's on... and he needs surgery, right? And he arrives and his sister-in-law tells him, your brother and both nieces are dead. Someone murdered them. And he became so overwhelmed with rage and his sister-in-law tells him, your brother and both nieces are dead, someone murdered them. And he became so overwhelmed with rage

that he punched a hole in the hospital's wall. And Audrey's first instinct was to go and take his hand and try to make sure it wasn't hurt. And he said it so shook him out of that, like, anger, that angry daze almost, that she, having just lost her whole family was like trying to bandage up his hand that he was like no I need to rein it in and like be there for her like get myself in check you know and be there for her and

he said later in an interview my mind changed instantly and I realized I needed to be there for Audrey and support her. And he kind of just like reined it in and got it himself together. Meanwhile, this news is spreading. The victims are learning about this. There are some survivors, Melissa, who made the phone call, Stephanie,

Melissa's mother and Ida the cook. They're the only survivors. Authorities scoured Las Cruces for any signs of the murderers. It's just so out of left field that this would happen and that a bunch of children would be killed. It's just so jarring, especially for a town where, you know, one murder occurred last year. It's like, it's just completely out of the ordinary.

I mean, the extra twisted part too, is it's not like it was a random facility. It was a family-based institution where everyone is hired through family and friends. And it's, you know, given the state of the world, it is one of the last standing third places where people could all go and socialize. And so it's a very communal area. It's supposed to be safe, right? It's like for families,

it's children are being babysat. It's games and fun. Yeah, that's such a good point. It should be like a fun, safe, happy place. And so as all this is going on and police are trying to get as much information as they can, Steve, the one who stopped by for his backpack, he told police about those two guys he had noticed in the parking lot. And he said, I saw these two guys. It was a little weird, but I didn't know what to do. Like they were just standing there. I didn't, you know, I'm sure he probably kicked himself later, but like, what's he going to do? You know, they're just standing around. And when he describes this, these two men, police realized the description's pretty similar

to what Melissa described. So they're thinking, yeah, these are definitely the same guys. Sure. So the dispatcher asked Melissa whether they were white or black. Melissa said black. But then once she was safe

and had time to give better details, they kind of like got more into the nitty-gritty and combined with Steve's descriptions, they were able to actually create like a much more specific report and the police determined they were looking for two men who they described as, whom they described as Hispanic, who were not black but had dark complexions. It was believed that one of the murderers was a young man following the lead of an older man so it's sort of like that criminal minds trope of one man is Like kind of in charge and the other ones the follower. Yeah, like persuading the other one into doing stuff They might have been in their 20s and 40s respectively was the guess I

also have pictures just so you know of the mug shots and I'm gonna get to those at the end because there's something I want to add to that as well. Okay. But we'll get to those as well. For all these pictures, we'll put them on social media because it's worth looking at just to kind of get an idea. So police set up roadblocks at every route out of the city and they even brought Steve to one of the roadblocks to see if he could recognize anyone. You know, coming through,

there were some people coming through who had $12,000 in cash on them. So they brought Steven in to see if like these had it, these were the right people, but they weren't a match. And yeah, he took a look at them and said, none of them match the description of the people I saw this morning. And honestly, the descriptions of these two men, like matched a lot of people in New Mexico. It wasn't that unusual for someone to have dark complexion and be in his 40s, you know. Yeah, he looked like a human being. Oh, OK. Exactly. And so it's hard. It was hard to even narrow it down. And so they wanted to make the most specific composite image that they possibly could. And that's why at the end, I really want to get into that

because I think this is where technology is really changing the game. Authorities first created computer composites, but then when someone hand sketched the drawings, Steve felt they were much, much more accurate. He actually said they were dead on when he looked at them. He said those were the two people. The likenesses were so close,

he said it gave him chills to look at the images. So they get helicopters, they're canvassing downtown, they're searching for any witnesses, they follow leads across the country as far as Florida, but everything is a dead end. Days, weeks, months pass, no new suspects. Tips continue to come in, they go nowhere. Investigators review the case again and again.

They're just thinking, this can't be a robbery gone wrong. Like, what the hell? You know, it just doesn't make sense. Especially when they were like, they were mad about not being able to find something. Something, right? Cause they were like, the thousands of dollars wasn't enough.

It's like I feel like they were told by someone, oh, you know, they've got this. Item here, like the rumor is in the back room, they've got this one. Like they were clearly looking for something specific. Now, do you know why I maybe mentioned that Ron lived on the property? Oh, OK. I don't want to. This is all very alleged because, and not alleged even, it's just a theory

because people wonder and we're gonna get into it, but people wonder about whether something shady was happening. And that's kind of why I say, I don't know why he was, quite frankly, I don't know why he was living on the property. If goodness was going so well, you know, it could have been a perfectly normal reason, but it's like, I don't know why he was living on the property. It could have been going so well, you know, it could have been a perfectly normal reason. But it's like, I don't know. It's just worth noting because.

Because he could have had something personal hanging out. Who knows? Yeah. Or he could have been mixed up in something and like gotten people involved. You never know. And so we'll get to that. But essentially, they're thinking this can't be a robbery gone wrong. These men shot seven people execution style. Like seven people that- Who were all willing to just lie there and not cause harm. Yes!

Who were all cooperating. And we have three people who survived and said, we all just sat there and said, do whatever you need to do, take whatever you want. And they just shot all of them. I mean, multiple times. And it's just abhorrent. And it's multiple times. And it's just abhorrent. And it's like, of course it's all abhorrent,

but then to hear that a two and a half year old was shot in the forehead, she was shot in the forehead. And her mom still talks about, like her mom is interviewed in this documentary, and her mom talks about like that image of her where she kind of has those big eyes. And she's like, I know she was looking up at this person and they put a gun between her eyes and shot her and she was alive for however 45 more minutes looking for me you know and she

said when they asked what do you think happened in those last 45 minutes of Valerie's life and she said I think she was really confused and I think she couldn't decide she was like I don't think she couldn't decide if she wanted to go with her dad and her sister or if she wanted to stay and help me like on earth but she said she's like I just know that she couldn't decide between like staying and helping me like get through this or going with her dad and sister and she said that when later the doctors told her, told Audrey that Valerie would have been a quadriplegic.

And she said she thinks her daughter just said, like, it was too much for. It would have been too much for my mom. And so it was better for me to go. But like, just hearing her talk about like the 45 minutes where she couldn't decide whether or not to stay and it's like she's too. Yeah, it's it just kills me. It's just like people are evil. So people in the community are just horrified

because it's one thing to obviously shoot anybody, but to shoot a two-year-old in the head for no reason is just insane. And then a six-year-old, 12-year-old, 13, I mean, four children, like, what are you doing? And so it's just horrible. Anyway, it seemed unlikely that these two burglars would just shoot a toddler for like a couple thousand bucks.

You know, it just didn't, it didn't add up. And so, you know, investigator had to start thinking like maybe this was premeditated or maybe this was personal. And the facts were that the men didn't wear masks, which was also unusual for like if you're just going into Rob place, right? You don't want anyone to see you. And so not wearing a mask almost implies like you wouldn't leave witnesses, you know. 100 percent. And so it seemed also that they knew the bowling alley,

they knew where the office was. So it's like they had either cased the joint before or they had been there before, you know? Yeah, which wouldn't be hard because if everyone's going in and out there all the time, you wouldn't even notice. Very true. On a busy day, 100 people at a bowling league,

you just pop in, do a little tour. In the 90s, going on a Friday night and like, yeah, it seems like everyone in town knew someone on a busy day a hundred people at a bowling league you just pop in in the 90s going on a Friday night and like Yeah, it seems like everyone in town knew someone on a bowling league, you know, exactly And so it's it's not like a exactly it's not a hard thing to suss out Especially if you know maybe that they don't lock the door, you know If you keep an eye on it for a couple days realize they don't lock the door so Weirdly enough. They also left several thousand of dollars,

several thousand dollars just laying there. So it's like, what is the point of this? Like, did it get out of hand? Like, did one of them go rogue? They were definitely looking for like drugs or something else. Like it feels like something more, which I don't think. Maybe it was the guy who lived upstairs, but also like I'm imagining like every 90s, 80s show,

I feel like there was a guy working at the bowling alley who was also like the local drug dealer. So like it could have been. Please hear the next bullet point. I'm not even shitting with you right now. Okay. Journalists asked investigators if the attack was drug related. They asked if the murderers had escaped South of New Mexico. They asked if someone in the victim's families knew the murders. A police captain said to one reporter, everything's possible because they had like no clue.

And the truth was that, well, we'll get to the drug thing in a moment because I do sort of have like a little bit of info for you on the guy at the bowling alley who may or may not be doing some illicit activities. Uh, but other than that, they had very little to go on. They had rumor and they had like a couple of witnesses who were obviously deeply traumatized and the fire itself had also badly damaged the scene. They had to put the fire out.

It got rid of a lot of evidence and DNA in forensic investigations was very new technology in 1990, so that was not necessarily a priority. Investigators said they were analyzing evidence collected at the scene, but they were also relying, they needed someone from the public to come forward with something bigger to push the case forward, and they were just hoping somebody would. And of course with no answers, then that's when the rumors about like, what could have happened, who could have been involved start growing. And here are some examples. You know everyone's pointing fingers, everyone's saying like my theory is this or that guy was always shady or what have you, which is why I'm

like a little hesitant to kind of be too blase about Ron and all that. But it's worth mentioning tube lase about about Ron and all that. But right. It's worth mentioning that Stephen's brother, Anthony, the one who was just infuriated by this whole thing and, you know, was there was the punch, the hole in the wall then, and then tried to protect his sister-in-law. He was really, really strong in his conviction that the bowling alley owner, Ron Sienak knew the murderers. That was what he believed.

Okay. Meanwhile, Ron's son, remember how Ron's kids all worked at the bowling alley? Ron's son, RJ, who's Stephanie's younger brother and Steve's younger brother, worked at the bowling alley bar and people claim that he used to purchase cocaine at work from sellers he met at the bowling alley. So that really just goes exactly to your point of the 90s and the bowling alley. And it was always like the bowling alley or the roller rink or something. The roller rink. Right.

There was always someone who knew someone who was who's just kind of like around a little more serious than the roller rink. Yeah, totally, totally. And yeah, weird, weird, very 90s vibe to have like a kind of sinister underlying to all of the fun. But also if it is like a communal hub, third place, like everyone, including the people who are selling weed or whatever, are probably going to be there. Right. It's like if this is a small town

and hundreds of people are going here and teenagers and whatever. So I will add, this is also just rumors and this is discussed in interviews, but there's no real evidence that the son of the owner was buying cocaine. It's just what people claimed. Well it's a rumor. It's what people said happened, but we don't have any real proof of this because, of course, he denies it. Right. Rumors spread that the murders

murderers were actually there to steal drugs like you had mentioned, which were supposedly hidden somewhere in the bowling alley. And, you know, my thought is to like, of course, it sounds insane to shoot a bunch of kids, but it's like if you're looking high out of your mind on meth or something and you can't even think straight and you're like looking, you know, who knows what you accidentally trigger yourself and go off like it's not a mind of a rational person as far as I'm concerned, you know, or somebody who's, I mean, even whatever. Okay. We'll get into it. So,

rumors spread that perhaps Ron, the owner, is in some sort of illegal business. He always kind of had some people like side eyeing him. Of course, he claims, nope, this is just a family run business, family friendly, the end. And some people believe the attack was orchestrated to seek revenge against him for some slight or to send a message and scare him. But like nobody could prove any of that. And I mean, for what it's worth, amidst these rumors, Steve said, this is the brother, Steve said it was painful for his family to be continually accused of being somehow responsible

when like his own sister and niece were almost killed, which is a fair point, right? Like they were traumatized by this as well and deeply affected uh he struggled to make sense of the the shocking violence like he even said why on earth would you walk into a bowling alley without a mask on to rob them and then shoot everybody like even he said it makes no sense and it has nothing to do with our family so it's a lot of like rumors and speculation because there just weren't any other clues. mm-hmm. so I will say there's some stuff that Ron did that I

felt was a little weird. he... do you remember the day of the week that this attack occurred? no. it was a Saturday because it was like a big busy day for the bowling alley. it was a Saturday morning. Well, this is of course national headline news. Like this is huge. And Monday morning he reopens the bowling alley for business. Whoa. And he goes, well, I didn't want to disappoint the bowling league. It's really important to them.

They really wanted to bowl. I would argue they're already disappointed. Like they're already disappointed. Yeah. They're already feeling things. Disappointment is not maybe even on the list. Basically, the community was like, who wants to go there? I mean, he goes, he goes, well, you have to understand, like these people, they want to bowl.

And I went, OK, hello. What the fuck is wrong with you? Like it's their therapy after children were just shot in the head there. Like, it's not it's not therapy after children were just shot in the head there? Yeah! What are you talking about? It's not like I'm blaming you for doing anything. I just think that's a fucking asshole thing to do.

Like oh, half your staff? It's just not a reading the room at all. No! And it's also like a fucking... Complete lack of just... well, consideration, but compassion is like... Compassion, yes! It's like how horrible to be like the family member and find out two days later, like open for business.

Like, do you really think people are in the mood to bowl right now? Yeah, well, apparently they were. They just fucking opened up and everybody came back on in. And it's like, hello. That's so weird. So the whole town, I kind of, it's side eyeing. I'm like, why anyone? I wouldn't want to be on the premises where like children just died. I wish I could.

Yeah, I want. Yeah. Wow. What a shocking statement. And call it crazy. Right. I wonder. I don't know. I don't know. I can't explain it. He was like, oh, well, it was a really they had a important tournament. OK. Like you couldn't like push the tournament. You can just move it. Hello.

I'm pretty sure everyone would understand. Like and I don't think that makes him guilty. I just think it makes him an asshole. So I was like, what the fuck? Yeah, no, I don't I don't I don't think he's guilty either. I think he's just like we're not being sensitive to this. No, he's not being sensitive at all. And honestly, it struck me at like your own daughter was shot

and your granddaughter was shot and almost killed. Your granddaughter was shot and almost killed yesterday. What are you doing? It's so weird to me. It's so weird to me. And I just had to say it. Anyway, everyone was denial. Sorry, sorry. No, I mean, it could be and you're right. It could be something. Maybe he's on the spectrum or something and he doesn't even realize how off putting this is like maybe, you know, there's so many things that could be true. And I can see it also looks like an ass hole. We move to. Yeah.

And it looks bad for sure. It's like his lawyer really should have said, don't fucking do that. You know, someone should have gone to him and someone should have said, don't do that. Yeah. And that along with like, he's living there and he sold his house. I'm like, what is going on? If business is so good, why is he having to sell his house and move into the bowling alley?

Like, I don't know. Something just strikes me as so weird. Something's happening in his personal life outside of this. Yeah, whether it's related or not, something feels weird with this guy. I don't know. So yeah, everyone who was involved that day, and even people who weren't involved,

but were just in the community, were trying to figure out, pointing fingers, trying to figure out what had happened, but there was no solid lead whatsoever. So fast forward, the one year anniversary of the attack, they hold a memorial mass at the local Catholic church. The community prays for answers. Another year passes, local media does another big shout out

about it, hoping for some traction, nothing. Ida, who was the cook, her recovery was really an uphill battle, as I can only imagine. Sure, yeah. Would you even wanna work there again? Oh no, she never stepped can only imagine. Sure, yeah. Would you even want to work there again? Oh, no, she never stepped foot on the property again. No.

Yeah, how could you? Okay. How could you? And she, after six months in the hospital, she did years of rehabilitation. She had brain injuries. I mean, these people were shot multiple times and in the head. According to her husband, Raymond, she'd walk up to a water fountain, but she forgot how to turn it on. Like she had to work on so many just basic things to try and

get back to some sort of normalcy. In 1999, nine years after the attack, Melissa's mom Stephanie died of complications from her injuries. And Melissa talks about her mom. It's very touching and hard to watch Melissa talk on the documentary because she's the one who called 911. She was 12 to this day. In the documentary, which was made in 2010, she was in her 30s. And she talks about just how she still has,

she's like, maybe someday I'll process this. She just is so- and if you don't that's fine I mean exactly come on like I hope I hope I hope for healing right but it's like no there's no timeline on that you know I can't even imagine and and the way she talked about her mom she said her mom was always just this bright fun sp person. And then after this happened, her mom completely changed, was just very down, always. Yeah, I mean, can't blame her. No, no.

And she said her mom was never the same. She was always hypervigilant. She had severe PTSD. And so Melissa said, you know, she also lost the mom she knew. She, of course, lost her own innocence. She lost her best friend. She watched two babies get killed in front of her.

Just all really, really horrific stuff. And so Melissa's mother died in 1999, which was nine years after the attack. But, you know, Melissa kind of said her mom was really never the same after the attack at all. More years passed and then the media kind of moved on, right? Like things happen, bigger things happen, more mass shootings happen. Just the news cycle continues. And in 2010, finally, a filmmaker named Charlie Min released a documentary called A Nightmare in Las Cruces. It took me several days to watch. I'm not usually that shaken by the true crime shows or genres or whatever, but this one was especially tough because of course, it's children.

A lot of crime scene footage, a lot of detail about the actual deaths and it's not necessarily my... I had to skip certain segments where I thought it's too much. So just a warning if you're... but it is on... it's on most... you can rent it on most YouTube and all that. So the media largely moved on. This documentary comes out in 2010 and it's this big thing. They're hoping this will renew interest in the case, perhaps encourage someone to come forward.

Nothing happens. These people go through this big documentary. It's a big production. They, I mean, this woman, Audrey, has to rehash The death of her entire family again She holds up a little bathing suit that she says her sister got for her daughter And she said her daughter was obsessed with this little like polka dot bathing suit. She's like she wore it every day

She was obsessed with it And she said I I like to show it to show you how small her body was. Like, this is what somebody did. This is who somebody killed. And she holds it up and it's like, I mean, it's like 12 inches tall, this teeny little thing. And she's like, this is how big she was. And they just looked right in her eyes and killed her. And it's just horrific.

I mean, it's really, it's a really tough watch. So I just, just heads up. So this guy, Charlie Charlie Min he had never stopped thinking about the Las Cruces incident since he first heard about it in the news and he really wanted to hopefully encourage people to come forward but nobody came forward and each year Las Cruces authorities make statements trying to get people to think of anything they can. And yet nothing has happened. And on the 30th anniversary, which was February 2020, friends and family gathered

for a candlelight vigil in the parking lot of the now closed bowling alley. Ida, the cook, did not attend because like I said, she never went back to the bowling alley. It was too hard for her, but her husband went in her place to honor the victims who didn't survive that day. And when journalists asked him about Ida, he said she had found happiness in her first grandchild, discovering what she felt was a purpose for her survival and recovery. And it's like, you know, meanwhile Audrey has lost everybody. It's just like, how do you find purpose? I don't know. Audrey and the trans reminisced on Stephen, Paula, Valerie. And this two months ago, February 2025 was the 35th anniversary of the case.

Les Cruces authorities once again made a public appeal for any information. Stephen said, it's been hard getting harder just to keep up with this every year. Hopefully someone gets over their fear of these guys and decides to come forward. And what they're saying is like, somebody must fucking know these people. They don't keep their mouth shut. These people are. I mean, they're shooting up children. They're not rational people. They're going to they're going to talk.

Somebody knows some. Yeah. But also, like, for all we know, like they the next day they died, like, and then it just went to their grave, like, or they went to jail for a completely different thing and no one's, they're not out there for people to be looking for. I know, I know, I know. But it's like, if you see the,

it's like there has to be some connection. They're so cocky that some, they had to brag to somebody. But it's also like why in this town, you know, they must know someone, either related to Ron or related to the bowling alley, related to the town. Let's say it was Ron and drugs or something.

Like it's not that, there's no way Ron only had two enemies and both of them were willing to shoot people. Like there has to be a range of gray. A bigger, right? Like doesn't have to be more connections here somewhere. Even if it wasn't Ron, but just like an employee or say it was like somebody in town gave a false tip about the bowling alley. Like somebody must have known.

And the reason I also am just so confident about that is that there's something about these mugshots, especially when Stephen said, oh, oh shit, that gave me chills how spot on it was. I'm going to show the mugshots now. That is the end of the story of the Las Cruces bowling alley massacre. It's one of those that is just so shocking to me that you don't hear about, you know, much because it's like the number of children alone. Like it's just such a shocking, shocking story. Before I show the mugshots which I have like not mugshots I'm sorry before I show the composite sketches I want to add that tips can be

given anonymously to Las Cruces Crimestoppers you can call 575-526-8000 and I would like to show you some of the composite sketches, because something about them, I was like, I feel like I know those guys. And I don't mean it in a literal way, like I know them personally. It just, something about it, I'm like, someone knows these people. Familiar relief evil, yeah.

Yeah, it's like something is just freaking me out. I need a better picture because these ones are... I had a whole document, sorry. This is the end, I promise, but. No, no, you're... Okay, so it's kind of hard to see. These are the original hand-drawn sketches of what these men looked like.

Their their age progressed. So, OK. The ones on the left are the originals, the are the originals. The ones on the right are what they are presumably looking like nowadays, or at least not nowadays, but like, you know, progressed into the future a couple decades. And then what I found, which was so interesting to me, there's this website, this this company, I think they're out of Sweden, I hope I hope I'm getting that correct. AI witness report.

Now this is crazy. I've never seen anything like it. Can I share? I don't know how to do this. Can I share my screen with you real quick? This is a website called AI witness report. What this person does is they take AI or they take old sketches like this and then they create like AI composites of what a photograph of this person would look like. So it's an even more like realistic photograph than just this drawing. That's awesome. Isn't that unsettling? Yeah and the worst thing too is that the only people who could confirm if this is even more accurate are people who shouldn't have to ever look at this face again. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. And so look at how they do this for all of these different unsolved cases. And it's even really, really old ones. There are some that are from, I mean, I'm talking like Jack the Ripper or like middle age, like 1849, like some really, really old ones that- What's this website called? So it's called AI-Witness-Report.com and they have an Instagram as well.

But here are these two guys that I wanted to show you. These are the two. On February 10th, 1992 armed robbers entered a bowling alley in Las Cruces, New Mexico. During the robbery, they shot seven people at point blank range, including a two-year-old and a six-year-old girl. Five of them were fatally wounded. And here are the two men. These are the original pictures that were drawn

and that gave chills to Steven, who saw them in the parking lot. And so they were so, so spot on. And this is the younger one on the left and the older one on the right. And now this person has created these kind of, and you can almost, you can slide the sliders to look at the AI version of them. But I just think that's so incredible. Like what a cool use of, you know, learning. STEM. Right. Yes, exactly. Let's. Let's give a round of applause for actually using AI for good for once, you know?

But it's just, these pictures just really got me because it feels like if somebody knows somebody that they might have had an inkling about and then look at this photo and go, oh, that looks awful like him. Yeah. It just feels like there's too much there for it to not be solved. And it really kills me that this woman, her entire family has been just completely obliterated

violently and she has no idea who did it. And also I bring this up every single time when people get away, but like imagine the paranoia of the survivors of like, are they gonna finish the job and like, nobody's gonna know. The trauma of just like living with that constant fear over your shoulder, like, are they after me? Poor Ida, like, I mean, even-

And by the way, she was an adult, she was 33. That's how old we are. Like at the, you know, it's like looking at all the children, of course, it's like deeply, horribly traumatic. But then you think even the adults were 26, 33, like they're not, you know, not that anyone is at an age where they can handle a mass shooting, obviously.

But it's like, wow, these- But in my mind, they're like, they're grownups. And like, to me, yeah. They're grownups. And it feels like they're grownups. And then you're like, no, that's like if we were standing there, like no wonder. I mean, it's horrific.

But the paranoia too of wondering like, are they people in our community? Am I driving past them all the time and they know that I, they shot me and I just don't know. I just thought that that would eat me alive. And that is why I want these photos to go out everywhere. Please, let's get these photos out. I just want to figure out who the hell. Shot a two year old in the head and a six-year-old. I mean a two-year-old like to hear to hear the girl describe it on oh my god

it's so horrific to hear Melissa talk about by the way what also really upset me is I was going through and I was putting together the faces and names of all these people, especially the kids putting them all. And the number of sources that spelled their names wrong, I just found it weirdly insulting. I mean, it rubbed me the wrong way. And I don't mean to be that stickler person, but it's like, it just, I find it to be shitty.

I'm not sure it's like at least honor who they were. It's shitty journalism. I'm sorry. Like you can look at literally you can look at Valerie's gravestone and see that her name is spelled differently than every news article writes it. And by the way, her gravestone has Ernie from Burton Ernie on it. And it makes me just want to cry. But Melissa, her name is spelled like a little differently. It has an extra I in there.

Not a single, not Wikipedia, not a crime junkie podcast. Nobody fucking spelled her name right. And it like fucking pisses me off. Like she's still alive. Like come on, just spell her name right. I don't know why that bothers me so much. And I'm not trying to target anybody in particular. I'm just saying the only people I found that spelled her name right were the documentarians who knew her personally and the Las Cruces, the local newspaper. Everybody else spelled it wrong and it just really irked me

and I just wanna give her like so much strength and love cause she's fucking fighting out there, man. So that is the case of the Las Cruces bowling alley incident. To just lose like a 13 year old, a two and a half year old, a six year old, the innocence of a 12 year old, who lost her best friend, her mom,

just watched the most horrific thing unfold. A mom losing her entire family in one fell swoop. It's just all extremely like a dad trying to protect his kids and then having to die with them all at the same time. Who wanted to be a cop? Yep. It's just all is so... It's just nightmare fuel. I've really just been

fogged by it. Yeah, it's been haunting me, honestly. But I really love that there are things we're doing now like these AI kind of, you know, creating like more photo realistic versions of what people would look like. And hopefully that can help in some way. So we'll post those as well.

And please, please, if you have any connection to the area or know anything, take a look, see if you know anything. It really kills me that this mom has no answers. But that's the story, morning glory. Well, if anyone would like a ice bath from that and something refreshing to listen to, instead you can go over to our Patreon and I don't know how to transition, but-

I'll do it. I'm gonna, my therapist told me sour candy can help reset your vagus nerve. I don't know if she's just saying that to make me feel better. She just wants to eat a sour candy I'm gonna she gave me a warhead one time and it like broke my brain and she said see and I went I don't know What I'm supposed to see but I spit it out Anyway, so that'll be $300. Yeah, that'll be $300 I'm gonna be eating my airheads and trying to recover from that. And you know, we're gonna chit chat. We'll probably talk about Em's childhood trauma

and why they didn't speak to their mom for a year. I'll probably cry about something again. And that's it. So see us on patreon.com slash atwd podcast. If you're sick of us, I get it. We'll see you next week. And if you want to come see see us live we'll be in Vegas and we'll be a lot more fun I promise that's mostly ghost stuff we're not gonna bum you out on on tour so this is why we focus on people wonder why it's mainly paranormal it's because otherwise audiences leave feeling like this yeah I tried that it didn't it wasn't cute for anybody so we do ghosts on the tour come Come see the Ghost Show and it's at andthethoedrink.com slash live. And that's why we drink.