Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Armchair Anonymous: Home Intruder

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

Dax and Monica talk to Armcherries! In today's episode, Armcherries tell us a crazy home intruder story.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dan Shepard. I'm joined by Michelle Padman. Michelle? Mary Kate and Ashley Padman. Mary Kate and Ashley Padman. Today we have a scary prompt home intruder. This made me scare.

Yeah, there was a lot of screaming, trigger warning for your ears safety. There was a lot of good cautionary tale in this. Yeah. If you want to get neurotic, this is the episode for you because I've tightened things up. Yeah. Please enjoy Home Intruder. All times. Come and go. Take them slow. You got to know I'm going to keep shining. Hello. Hi.

Is this Julia? This is. You're in some kind of recording space? Where are you? I am. I'm at my office, actually, and we have a local podcast. Oh, perfect. Incredible. I love these sound deafening boards behind you. They're very attractive. It's a very old building. The walls aren't really close. closed in, so we had to make it soundproof.

Where in the country are you? I'm in Ohio. Oh, wonderful. What's your local podcast about? So I work at a marketing agency. Our co-brand is called the Blaze Network, where we talk with local business owners about marketing, HR, all things, business. So the podcast itself is called the Torch Talk.

Oh, cool. And are you in Cleveland? No, Amish country. So I live in Worcester. I spent a lot of time around the Amish as a kid in Southern Michigan. A lot of horse and buggies around. Always dodging the horse and bunnies, the bikes, the scooters. And do you have any wooden furniture in your home crafted by the Amish?

I do not. But very popular, right? Yes, yes, very popular. And I do want to say you guys are our inspiration for our podcast. We are not experts. I'm like, okay, well, Dax and Monica, they do this. Their setup is like this. We need to be looking at them.

Oh, that's flattering. That's lovely. Okay, I would not want this for you. You're a very sweet person, I can tell already. but you had a home intruder? I did. Your prompts for this month were stalker or home intruder, and I was like, hold my beer.

I've had boats. Oh, no. So this actually took place in Maryland. I'm originally from Maryland outside of Baltimore. In 2016, I lived with two and their roommate, so it was three young girls. We were all early mid-20s, and we just moved into our new apartment in the August.

So right before school started, my one friend was a teacher at the time, started noticing cigarette butts. outside of like our patio. So we were on the ground level of apartment complex. So we had a little like bar top table out there, noticed a bunch of cigarette butts. We're like, that's weird.

High school kids must be hanging out here. Maybe they were here before we moved in. We didn't notice it. Kept happening. Bottles, cigarettes. Fast forward to October, Halloween weekend. We wake up Sunday morning, open the blinds and see women's underwear on the door handle and semen on the door.

Oh, my God. Okay. Now really quick, obviously, you're D-Doo's seen-it-Semin because you saw fluid plus undies. Right. Ew. That's weird. So we call the non-emergency police number. They come out.

They're like, this is something you see in the movies. Laugh it off. Don't really do anything. Then leave. So we're like, all right, let's remove the underwear. At first we thought it was kids underwear because it was very small, but then it was Playboy bunnies on it. We're like, no, this is just small.

Oh, wow. So clean up the window. Really quick. There's three of you. How do you decide who has to clean it up? Whoever's got the highest threshold of gross. Yeah, I don't remember who cleaned it up. I would probably say Emily was our mom there, so we probably had Emily.

I'll tell you to remember if you were the one that did. I would just break the window or door. Just get rid of it? Yeah. I don't want to touch that. A couple weekends go by and then not the underwear, but every weekend we wake up, there's semen on the door. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

We'll call the police. They come. Don't really do anything about it. then leave. We start to get blinds up so they can't see through. We've noticed, too, that he's unscrewing the light bulb outside of the door so that, like, he can see in, because it's right into our living room. Then we're like, well, we're going to catch him. Like, we try to stay up at night. You know, this is after we come back from the bars. We're like, we're going to catch him tonight. Of course, those are the weekends that he doesn't stop by. Or if we have, like, people over,

he's clearly watching the area. Are you comforted at all by the fact that it's happening on the living room window and not one of the bedroom windows? A little bit. So we don't even really think of that. So there's like definitely heavier blinds in the bedrooms. Then we're like, we're going to get cameras. Of course, we can't afford like outsore night cameras. So we're like, we'll just catch them one night. So then we get a really big curtain hung up because it's those plastic blinds that, you know, they just like break through. So probably it was about February. We noticed the next morning that the stool was screwed up close to the window. And there is now like a ball penis imprint on like the top higher on the willeting. So like he's trying to like peek over the blind. Oh, my God.

And he's rubbing his genitals on the glass and leaving a mark. Okay. You said you moved in in August, so you're not five months of this behavior, yeah? So that time we called the cops again, because we had to just stop calling the cops at that point because there was nothing that they were doing. So then the cops come and he tells us that we were being dramatic, that it was dog slobber, that was a big dog print. And I was like, sir, we are all adults. We know what semen looks like. We know what a penis imprint.

It's very clear that this is on the door. So then after that, I was like, okay, we're done, call the cops. They're not doing anything. So then in March, so it's three roommates, Emily and Miranda. Emily's out of town for the weekend. Miranda's out that night. So it was Sunday night. Emily has like a little small rat dog, RIP Clyde.

So I was at home that weekend with the dog. Sunday evening, I take Clyde out, let him go to the bathroom, come back in, shut the back door, lock it. I'm in the kitchen. He is freaking out. growling at the back door. Oh, here we go. And I was on the phone with my boyfriend at the time. Now husband, so I was like, what is this dog barking at?

So I'm like going out, open the windows. I don't see anything because it's dark at that point. Like I try flipping on the lights. It's not turning on. So like I'm putting my face up against the window, like trying to look out to see what he's barking at. And then it dawns on me. Like, oh my God, he's standing on this other side of the store right now.

And my face is pressed up against it. And he turned the light off again. That's why the light switch is not working. and that's what he's barking at. So I freak out. And I'm like, what do I do? And he's like, well, hang up and call the cops. And I'm like, no. So I hang up and I call my little sister. She's like, get a knife and call the cops. Is your boyfriend back in Ohio still or something? He was in Missouri at the time. So then I call the cops. They come. They look around. Don't see anything. Did like a canvas of the area. So then they leave. Emily comes back home. Miranda's still out that night.

So Miranda doesn't come home. We go to bed Sunday night and then I wake up to my lights being turned on in my bed. room and I like wake up and the guy is creeped down by my bed by my dresser trying to like creep towards my bed so I'm like who are you like what are you doing and he keeps telling me like be quiet be quiet and I'm like no who are you like I'm half asleep I'm like did Miranda come back with people is he looking for the bathroom because my door's right by the bathroom so I was really like what the heck and then he just kept walking towards me like telling me be quiet and what did he look like how old is he he was like in his 20s I explained to the office is that he looked like a douchey soccer player

because he had like the track pants on, spiky hair, and he was like kind of short. So then I started getting mad because you woke me up and you're telling me to be quiet. And then I start like waking up more and realizing what's happening? And then I'm like, okay, what would Olivia Benson do? So I jump out of bed, yell to Emily.

Call the cop, somebody's in the house. So he yells like, no, runs out of the bedroom. I run down the hallway after him, like to chase him out of the house. Emily, I see her kind of open her bedroom door and then shut it and lock it. So I always give her crap that she locked herself in her room. He runs out of the apartment.

I lock the door. Get the phone from Emily because she's on the phone with the cops. I tell them somebody just broke in. So the operator like stays on the line until the cops get there. They're there for hours. Scanning, doing the fingerprints and everything. At that point in the timeline, the big curtains had fallen off because we don't know how to use drills and find fingers.

They can hang the curtains back up. They like put a chair underneath the door. to block it. And we had those metal handles, but they're apparently useless. They're hollow aluminum and can be really easily maneuver because it's a sliding glass door. So that's how we got in. Yeah, he kept like jamming the door until he could break it open. And Emily said she heard something that she thought it was just Miranda coming back, being drunk and just loud and stuff. We always blame it on Miranda. So the next morning, we call our apartment complex, we're like, we are moving out of this apartment. This has been happening for months. We're not on the ground level

anymore. So they wouldn't let us break our lease, but they said they would move us. So that day, we all call off work, we're packing up the whole apartment to move buildings. And as we're going like back and forth out the back door, our neighbors to the side is like, what was happening last night, we saw a bunch of police activities. So we tell them, you know, somebody broke in. And I was like, have you noticed anything? And then she yells up to the person that's on the balcony above her. And she's like, oh, yeah, haven't you said you saw some guy hanging around here trying to break into their utility closet. And she's like, oh yeah, someone's been here trying to get into your guys utility closet for like weeks. I'm like, why wouldn't you think to talk? Yeah. Oh my God.

So then the lieutenant comes over that day. I blast him. Like, we've been calling you guys for months. You haven't done anything. You laughed at us. You told us we were being dramatic. And he's like, I'm so sorry. We're going to take this really serious. They have the crime scene that comes out the next day because there was cement on the door from a few weeks before that we just got tired of cleaning it up so we kind of just like it looked it there turning into like where birds hang out literally so they come and like scan it and stuff and then we move buildings and then the building that the apartment complex moved us into the back door was broken that was going to get fixed so then my boyfriend ends up coming out because he coached football so he was on spring break

so he came out and him and miranda like taped up the whole back door with hardboard with like one little peacle. So we just locked out all of our doors and windows. So we moved apartments, never heard anything out from there. I moved to Ohio a year and half later and they had reached out to me, said they think they caught them. They wanted me to come testify. But they gave me like a date range.

And I was like, I can come testify, but like I need to know what date because I have to travel back from Ohio. And they're like, well, unfortunately, he broke into a lot of other places after yours. So we have on their people that can testify. So I didn't have to go back. So I never knew what happened to him. Did they send you a picture, though? But before we moved out, I ended up getting a dog, like in the next apartment complex that we moved into. So me, Miranda, and my dog were all out in the common grassy area.

This was June. And I saw him cross the parking lot and walk and just deadlocked, like made eye contact with him. And my dog, he was a 12-week-old puppy. But he got up and stood in front of me and just growled at the guy the whole time. And Miranda was like, that looks like the guy you described that broke into the apartment. I was like, no, that was the guy that broke into our apartment. And that was like the last time I saw him. Oh, my God.

Do you think he lived in the apartment complex? Yeah, that's what they said that he lived in there. So, yeah, he was there watching us the whole time. Ew. So now we all sleep with Baspire door. I always tell my husband, I'm like, I'm sleeping on the outside because you're in hard to sleeper. Like, I don't trust you with the next person breaks in. I'm going to be up and ready again.

Just waking up and seeing so. Oh, my God. No, that is. I mean, thank gosh you have roommates and they bring people home. Someone was better that at first you thought, oh, some dude came back. back from the bar and can't find the bathroom. Like, that's a little better of a thought than, oh, my God, there's a man in my room that's come here.

Yeah. How did you sleep that following night? We didn't. So we were in the living room, like, we brought our mattress out in there. We watched Imper's New Group. Actually, we watched Marend Hood, too. So, like, we just stayed off the whole night watching that. That was our show of this season.

We all slept in the living room together for probably about, like, three weeks. Oh, my God. This is terrible. I hate that one lone idiot man. can cause this kind of ruckus and damage. God damn it, guys. Let's get it together. Oh, horrible. Horrible. I'm glad he was caught. I want to know what his ism is. You know you're leaving your DNA everywhere. Right. He was not very smart. Right. And he didn't have gloves on when he was in your house, I presume? Nope. Well, hopefully between the fingerprints at your joint and the semen on the thing, he got removed for a period of time.

Yeah. I never know what happened. Like, after they went to court and stuff, I didn't have his zesman. named Look It Back Up. But that's my story. Wow. Wow. It's heroin and I hate it. I didn't like that at all. But we are happy to talk to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then if I can shout out my brother and my sister, like, we're all armcherrys. I told them as soon as I submitted my story. I was like, I just submitted it. And then when I got the email, I like called them before I opened it up like a college acceptance letter. So I can read it together with it. I was like, you have to answer my video call. That's so sweet. Well, a family of geniuses, clear. Clearly. Yeah.

All of you like the show. Oh, we're flattered. Well, Julia, a lovely meeting. Thank you. You guys as well. Okay, take care. Hello. Hi, Kelly.

Where are you? Okay, well, I'm from Whittier, but I live in Huntington Beach, but I'm not Huntington Beach, if that makes sense. You're not there currently, or just you're not a Huntington Beach person. There you go. Because for the non-Californians, if we had to do a stereotype, very associated with UFC guys and that kind of vibe? Nazis, yeah.

Oh, wow, yeah. Okay, Nazis, UFC fighters. I am not bad. Well, we appreciate that about you. It's a shame because it's such a cute little beach town. I know. I hate to have to give that disclaimer. Sometimes the few, you know, they spoil the whole basket. Okay, so you have a home intrusion story.

I do. 45 years ago. I was eight years old. I can remember it like it was yesterday. I can smell it, I can see it, I can hear it, I can taste it. We used to spend most of our time in Mexico. We had a house in Mexico that we were building, not extravagant Mexico, Baja, California. We were motorcycle, dirt bike, water ski people.

And so we were always coming and going. And we got home that night about midnight. In Mexico or in Whittier? We got home to Whittier about midnight. I pulled the trick that all kids do where you fall asleep in the car so your dad has to carry you to bed, which is the move. And I was not a small child, so props. my dad for carrying my heavy ass to my bed.

And then 3.30 a.m. happens. And I hear my mom scream. There's someone in the house at the top of her lungs. And I used to be a sleeper that, like, you could drop a bomb in my room. I would not wake up. I immediately just panicked and froze late in my bed. And then I hear high-pitched, like, that kind of breathing. And heavy, heavy footsteps.

And it's my naked dad jumping. jumping out of bed to chase this dude through our house. Oh. And he's nude. He's sleeping in the raw. Always. We're naked sleepers. My mom woke up because our dogs used to sleep at the foot of their bed.

And our girl dog who liked no one, she did a little growl. And it woke her up. And the guy was at the foot of her bed with a ski mask and a pinlight in his mouth going through my dad's fucking pants pockets. No. What? So ballsy. Just like with them sleeping right there?

We must have been so tired because my mom could hear. anything while sleeping. So Chase ensues, he goes out the back door and mind you, this is 1980, we don't lock the doors. You don't want to be rude. Yeah, that would be rude. Yeah, that would be rude. We want you to break our shit to get to ourselves. You want to be able to yell, come on in. So they run out the back door and the guy goes over the block wall into our neighbor's yard.

Well, mind you, my dad, naked, he grabs the guy by the shirt and gets pulled over the wall and scrapes from tip to tail, from nose to ankles. And when he landed, he landed on his knee that he just recovered from blowing his knee out, and he blew it out again. So meanwhile, I'm still frozen dead in my bed, just panicking. And next day I know, I look up and I see something standing in my doorway, and I'm like, oh, my God, it's someone else. Well, unbeknownst to me, my aunt had made me a clown costume for Halloween, because it was Halloween. It was auction. It was October 31st that day that happened. And I was supposed to be going to school.

We're in my fancy clown costume to go to our little school parade. Well, she came over while we were gone and she hung it in my doorway. So I would see it, not knowing that we would not be awake and that we would get robbed in the middle of the night. What if the robber had screamed as he saw? Like a home alone situation. Yeah. If I saw a fucking clown hanging, I would be. Oh, shit.

I robbed him the wrong house, man. This crazy clowns in here. Yeah. So I look up, see this person in my doorway, panic. And then the next thing I know is I see another silhouette with a giant ass knife. Well, it's my mom. She raced in the kitchen and got the biggest, baddest knife we owned. And she was clutching that thing, ready to get anybody that was getting at her baby.

I jump out of bed and she grabs me. We go to the kitchen. She makes two phone calls first to my papa, her daddy, and then 911. No one calls 911 first for a reason that really does not compute. You. Papa showed up before the cops and he was armed to the teeth. That's why you call Papa first. He has no other calls.

You're right. But most of these stories, people are calling people far away. Yeah, they're not going to give any help. Luckily, Papa was only about a mile and a quarter from us. Did Papa have to confront naked father?

I guess Papa probably doesn't want to see son-in-law naked. Oh, no, he's seen it all. We're that kind of family. Okay, okay, that's fine. So Papa shows up. We meet him in the yard. My mom's got that death grip on that. knife and he shows up and he's ready to rumble. He doesn't know who he has to get, what he

has to do. By the way, my dad, we don't know where he is. He's gone. My mom's standing out there. She has chonies in one hand and a butcher knife in the other because she knows my naked dad is somewhere in the neighborhood. He's going to need to put some slacks on. Cops show up. I think two cars, maybe three. They all get out and they see my papa there looking like Rambo, just ready to rumble. And they see this woman that's like panicking. And it took four cops to pry her fingers off that knife. She was not letting go with that knife. And she's trying to explain to them, I don't know where my husband is. I don't know what's happening. And then we see this zombie-like creature running down the middle of the street covered from head to toe in blood with his knee popped

out a joint. So literally like a zombie running down the street and it's my father. And the cops freak. They all draw their guns. And she's like, no, that's my husband. That's the victim. Yeah, exactly. The naked bloody guy. He runs right past the cops, jumps in his van, and hauls ass. He's going to go find these guys. He's like a hound dog. Oh, he is on the scent.

And so it turns out, we never found him. But it clearly was not one person because when we got back in the house, the cops went with us to look at all the stuff. They'd taken TV, stereo equipment speakers. My mom's purse, which that's another part of the PTSD that kicks in. So they had her purse with, you know, mom wallet back in the day. day, 900 pictures in there. Yeah. So for like six months to a year, every time we went anywhere, my mom was like, that's the guy. Like she just knew. Like, we don't know what they look like. He had a ski mask on.

And so that was like the trauma that stuck with me forever. And so until the day that I met my husband, I woke up every single night at 3.30 a.m., like in a panic sweat. Man, wow. It just doesn't go away. Now it's in my. DNA to like panic every night and have an anxiety attack. Yeah, so we never found the guy. Luckily, none of us were hurt, but that was a day that clowns became one of my biggest fears. And so that's my little home and trooper story from 1981. The thing I'm distracted by, which is not relevant at all, is simply that's another unique thing about the 80s is we too had someone rob our house and they stole a TV and jam boxes. Back in the 80s, a Zenith TV, like a council TV, that thing was

$1,100. They used to be such a more significant chunk of your income. Now everything's free. No robber is stealing a 60-inch TV. They can't resell it for anything. To mention the fact that it probably weighed 500 pounds. That's what I'm saying. How did they get those TVs out of there? I was impressed, actually, after I thought about it was like, how did they get all of our shit out there without us waking up? And where did it go? I mean, they must have had a U-Haul truck in the front yard. I don't know. But you could have never predicted that the end of this kind of theft would be that just everything. got so cheap that it wouldn't be worth it. It's just such a bizarre outcome. Like, people just don't do that. We have a photo. This was literally the 24 hours before. Now, this gives you a little idea of my family. That's my crazy dad and my mom and me in the middle. You're on a three-wheeler. This is so 81. That was my three-wheeler. Was it a Honda? It was. That is so cute. And then the next year,

I rolled over on that thing, fell into a trash pit and cut open my wrist. So that was also another little trauma. My daughter's got a beautiful scar on her knee from off-road adventuring. You collect receipts, as I say. Those are all stories for the future. Well, Kelly, you're delightful. It's such an 80-story, a naked dad climbing the fence. I don't think men try to fight the intruders anymore. I think that's passed mostly, too. I don't know. I know. I don't even think it was in his mind to even think to not chase the guy. What if he had a weapon? I know. You don't care about that. You're naked. Let's go. Let's go. Well, Kelly, I'm glad you made it. Dad's kind of a hero in this story. He hit legend status for this. He's still a legend.

It's going to be 78 in eight days and still kicking ass doing all the dead things. Oh, I love it. Fantastic. Well, have a great summer. Enjoy that beach community. Don't get beat up in a cage match. We won't. I don't go to the beach at all in the summer here. We go northern California. All right, guys. Thank you so much. Take care. Bye. Bye. Tell me about this shirt. I actually just got it on a recent trip to Paris. I'm going next week. I'm so excited.

Are you? It was incredible. I was there for Fashion Week. So beginning of March, it was a dream. Oh, my God. Where did you get it? I want to talk to you about shopping. There was an incredible consignment shop that we found on the first day.

I was actually there. I worked at a consignment shop. And our boss took us. It was a dream. Oh. And we found another consignment shop. And it's where I did all my shopping. Well, for the listener, your shirt, if I had to give it a title, if it was hanging in a museum, the name of the shirt would be, fuck you convention.

Because you've mixed leopard print and plaid, which I think is a no-no in fashion. No, there's not really no-noes. Yeah, there were. They were like, you can't wear this kind of pattern in stripes. I know. But if you had style, you can get away with anything. Okay. I'm so sorry.

Yeah, I'm glad we talked about this. Yeah. I thought leopard and plaid didn't go together, but now I see they do. In my opinion, plaid, is. neutral. Yeah. And where are you at, Molly, in the country? I'm in Canada, on the West Coast.

In BC? Victoria. Oh, great. Okay, so you have a home intruder story? I do. This happened February of 2020, so right before the pandemic. Bad year for you. Yeah, 2020 was in your year.

It was about 8 p.m. in the evening. So not in the middle of the night when our imagination typically thinks. these things happen. My husband was putting our eight-year-old to bed and our two upstairs sleeping in their crib. And I was at our dining room table doing my evening ritual of puzzling, drinking wine, and listening to my true crime podcast. Sounds like you got a really dreamy husband. He's like, hon, go ahead and drink some wine, listen to your true crime podcast, build a puzzle and I'll put the kids to bed. This sounds like you got a real winner. I do. He's the best. even though bedtimes were a tricky time for us.

We typically traded back and forth, but this was his night. It feels like a wrestling match. Like, okay, let's do it. Exactly. Our dining room had a glass two-way swinging door between our dining room and our kitchen. And I was at the dining room table with my back to the glass door. And actually, to note, earlier in the evening, I had clocked that our back door was unlocked and said to myself, you know, I'm going to let the dog out again before I go upstairs. it after I let the dog out.

Victoria's a very safe city for the most part. I grew up here and my parents never locked the door when I was growing up. So I'm sitting, doing my puzzle and all of a sudden, like, not a sound happens, but I just had that spidey sense that like you got to clock your surroundings.

And I turn around and there's a strange man standing in my kitchen. Who's looking at you or back to you? He's facing me. I clock immediately. This guy's not looking anywhere. He is under the influence of something. He's kind of staring off into nothingness.

I can tell immediately. And as I'm processing this man, there's a door between us and four feet at most. What's he look like? Caucasian, maybe 20s, smaller. He's an addict. He's skinny. He's not in full way. I clock that immediately.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He doesn't look healthy. No. As I'm processing what I'm seeing, I watch. him look at the counter and pick up the chef's knife. Oh my God. Oh, boy. And at this point, I start running through the house screaming. My husband hears he's fast asleep in our kids' bedroom. Her bedroom is on the main floor, which is where I am. He comes out. He has no idea what's happening. Now you have two disoriented males. Exactly. I scream at him. There's a man in the

kitchen with a knife. He runs one way and I run the other. This is the last I see of him for a while. Oh. I grab my daughter out of her bed and haul her up the stairs. I grab my baby out of their crib. I just close us because I don't have a lock on my onsuit in our onsuit bathroom. And I call 911. I have my phone, thankfully.

I didn't know this. But when you call 911, you don't necessarily have your phone call picked up immediately. Oh, it's so annoying. actually. Sometimes it just rings. There's not a dispatcher available to take the call, I suppose. This felt like it went on for 15 minutes. Of course, I'm trying to stay calm. My two-year-old is fast asleep, hasn't woken up,

but my 8-year-old is clocking what's happening, and I'm really trying to stay calm for her. Finally, somebody picks up the call. I tell them that there's a man in my house with a knife, the address, all those things. I don't remember what other questions she asked me. But I do know that even though the phone call took a long time to go through, there was already cops in our neighborhood.

And they got to the house really quickly. I was only on the phone for like two minutes before she said there was somebody at the house. That's comforting. But then as I'm still on the phone with her, at one point she goes, ma'am, you need to tell your husband under no circumstance should he ever go after the perpetrator. I'll be sure to tell him that later tonight. Yeah, exactly. This is over.

I'm going to go interrupt right now. Hey, P.S. Don't chase this guy. Yeah. After a few more minutes on the phone with her, I hear somebody come up the stairs. Of course, I know the cops already there. I assume it's going to be someone I want to see. But there's still also, when you're hiding, I don't know who's coming through the door.

It was my husband who came and grabbed us. And we come downstairs. And there's 10 cops in my house. And I immediately go, where's the dog? And they're like, there's a dog in this house. Because that's actually usually something that they want to know before they come into a house. And I said, oh, yeah, we have a 110-pound Catahoula American Bulldog Cross. Oh.

Guard dog. Nobody has seen or heard from her. Well, where was he at the job when this guy first came in? What was he or she doing? Exactly. My husband, Logan, immediately runs outside thinking in the commotion, maybe she left, followed him out the door. One of the cops asks me to step into our spare room with him to get my statement. Turn on the light in the spare room.

I still have my kids clinging to me. Our dog is on the bed shaking. She doesn't respond to the large men in uniform. I've never, not again, not before that had ever seen my dog like this. And Logan comes back in the house and closes the door. And that's when she gets up and starts barking. Not helpful. Weird.

How do we explain this? She's a coward? I can tell you. She knew she fucked up. From that day on, she was alerting us to every minute thing that happened. Trying to make up for her failure. Absolutely. Wow.

So she was there for the whole thing and just stayed quiet on a bed, shaking. Yeah. Okay. So she gets a D. A D for dog. So when you finally heard from your husband, what was his interaction? Did he interact with the guy in the kitchen? Oh, yeah.

He ran at this man. He tackled him, smashed his hand to get the knife out of his hand, picked him up, and carried him out of the house. At that point, this guy got up and started running. And this is when the dispatcher scolded me because my husband ran up the street after this guy and tackled him to the ground. Luckily, the cops showed up just then because my biggest fear was actually that my husband was going to hurt this guy. In my mind, that was kind of a worst-case scenario. My husband is going to hurt this man. God forbid, he kill him in self-defense and protecting his family,

but, like, we're not recovering from that. Yeah. Nobody was hurt. The guy, his name was actually Cody, was arrested that night, and was actually only in jail for not even 24 hours before he made bail. We did press charges. It went to court. He was charged with breaking and entering and brandish.

a weapon. It was a really sad story, though. He was put up to it. He was an addict. Was he there to rob? Probably get money for drugs. Yeah. It actually just made me feel sad for him. It was a relief to know there was no intent. He just tried my door and it happened to be open. Oh, wow. What was his sentence? Frumation? I think so. Actually, to be honest, I didn't really follow it. This was the biggest surprise to me. And after all of this, I immediately get on the phone with my therapist going I've just experienced trauma. I need a session ASAP. We got to process this.

I get to my therapy appointment and I'm like, yeah, like this is traumatizing. I'm going to be traumatized. How do I deal with this trauma that's going to happen to me? And she's like, going to happen? And I was like, well, I feel fine right now. But like, this has to be traumatizing. And she asks me, what would you have done differently given the opportunity to relive this experience. And I go, well, I protected my kids. My husband protected us. No one was hurt. He was arrested.

There's absolutely nothing that I would have done differently. The dog needs therapy, but the other than that, other than that, other than that, pretty good. Yeah. It was a great lesson in remembering how trauma works. And then it's not something that happens to you. It's something that happens in your body as a response to something. And it really wasn't a traumatizing experience in the end for any of us. which is great. It was a crazy thing that happened. Yeah, I've heard a great saying someone talking about, don't mind for trauma. Don't be trying to find it and dig for it. You'll probably get some. You'll come by some honestly. Yeah. Well, Molly, you have a very Scandinavian response to this whole thing. It's very like, I get it. Life is complicated. People have struggles. Sometimes they end up in your house and that's part of doing business on planet earth. So it sounds like as good of a version as you can have, really. Kind of, yeah. Well, it was very nice to meet you. Yeah, very nice to meet you. Enjoy that

beautiful Canadian summer. Really nice to meet you both too. All right. Take care. Have a good one. Lynn? That's me. Hi. Where are you, Lynn? I'm in Illinois, outside of Chicago. Oh, let's go, Rob. Yeah, what part? Originally Downers Grove. I know Downers Grove. That's not far for me. That's where our story takes place. Okay, I just want to point out that your surroundings currently, are so immaculate. I would love to be invited into your home. It's so clean and orderly. Anytime my daughter would love it. Okay, so you have a home intrusion story. Well, not exactly. It wasn't an intruder. My husband actually let her in.

Oh, okay. Well, set the stage for us. And by the way, we're not strict. So we don't care. It could be anything for us. Okay. So it was Thursday, 2008. 2.30 in the morning. My husband's leaving for work. He was a commercial garbage man. He's backing out of the drive. And there's a person there. So he stops. She knocks on his window.

It's a young woman. She said she needs help. She needs to call her dad. Can she use the phone? So he brings her in the house. He comes down, wakes me up and says, hey, Lynn, you got to wake up. I let this girl in. She's got to use the phone.

I got to go to work. And he leaves. Oh, boy. Oh, no. 2.30 in the morning. 2.30 in the morning. So I get up, I go upstairs. Here's this young girl, woman.

She has a cammy on. What's a cammy? Like a tank top. Yeah, skinny straps. Okay. Yeah. Her underwear. Oh.

And a towel from my utility room ripped around her waist. No. Swear to God, nothing else. Wow. I'm kind of impressed your husband got right out of there to go to work. Yeah. It's kind of a feather in his cap that he didn't want to help her make the call.

I look at her from her fingertips to just below her elbows. her arms are covered in blood. They literally look like if you dipped them in a bucket and then pulled them out. So we go in the utility room, we run the water, we're going to clean this all up. She starts telling me that her husband is a Downer Grove police officer trying to kill her.

And she just needs to call her dad so that he can come get her. So we have a daughter. She's 17. She's asleep on the sofa in the family room at this point. This girl's cleaning up. We call her the bloody lady because you never found out of her name.

The bloody lady. No, the bloody lady is upstairs cleaning up. We got a fun sneaker. We got a home intruder right now. Yeah, you got someone in your background. That's my daughter. The once 17-year-old? Yeah, so I go get her some sweatpants, my beauty and the bee's sweatshirt, some socks.

I take them up. In the meantime, I grab band-aids, neosporin, vaccine, anything that we might need. I get upstairs. She puts on the clothes. We go to the kitchen table. At this point, all the kitchen lights are on. It's like 240 in the morning. We are lit up like you cannot believe.

Outside lights on for her dad, haul lights on. I mean, you could land a plane. I was like, okay, we need to shut some of these lights off. So we start bandaging her up. Stuff is on the table. I start shutting off all the lights. I tell her, call your dad back. Tell him to call us when he gets close.

I'll put the light on. So I'm shutting lights. daughter comes up, she's like, what is going on? I said, you know what? I don't really know. So take your phone, go in your room, lock the door. Yeah. I don't know if her husband's going to come looking for her or what. I really didn't want to be in the middle of this at 240 in the morning. It's also very complicated because you can't call the police in theory. In theory. If she's to be taken at her word, the bloody lady. All of a sudden, I look out and I look across the street. I see movement. I turn to the kitchen. I said, do you and your husband have a dog?

She starts coming into the living room. She goes, what kind of dog? At this point, a flashlight from across the street shines into our living room. I said, get down. And I flew into the hallway. The flashlight gets closer as it's coming in through the living room window now. So I hightail it into the hall. I assume she's, you know, behind the island or in the utility room.

I'm not sure. Lynn, can I ask one quick question? Sure. Were you getting a sense of her at all during this process, like that she was delusional or normal? Are you assessing whether she's crazy or not? She seemed like something was going on and I just need to call my dad. Yeah. Was she upset?

Yeah, it's like she needed to call her dad and she needed her dad to come get her. But not in a crazy way. No, not at all. So the light came in the living room. I fly around the corner. we're kind of just waiting. We don't know what to do. You know, you're just sitting there. I could feel my heart beating in my ears so loud. And then I hear voices around the back. And I hear this is the house. There's medical supplies on the table. I crawled to my daughter's room down the hall.

I'm like sticking my lips underneath the door, very quietly saying, call 911. At the same time, they're banging on the front door. And I'm watching the front door. It's like literally moving in and out. There's voices in the back, voices in the front. All of a sudden, my daughter comes out of her room. She goes, here, you talk to him. She called 911, stated her name, her address, and said, somebody's trying to break in my house. You need to send the police.

The first thing was, are you sure you're not expecting someone? What? She was like, for the love of God, it's 245 a young. Probably not. Then it was the police are at your house. And she's like, these are the wrong police. And they were like, open the door, let them in. So she gave me the phone.

So they're like, open the door, let them in. And I was like, no, I don't know who this is. We just kept arguing. So I got off the phone. I opened the door. There was an officer standing at my door. There were at least four squad cars in front of our house like a movie and so surreal. Yeah.

So he steps right in right away. And he's like, where is she? You know, and I was like in the kitchen. So he started. barating us. My daughter was out of her room standing next to me, and he's like, you didn't think to call the police. And I was like, not really. She needed to call her dad. That was fine by me. She said her husband was a cop. Like, no, she wanted to call her dad. That's all we were doing. So they were just jabbering at us. We felt like criminals. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why are you interrogating me,

hot shot? Right. So they're like, you know, where is she? So they go in the kitchen. She's gone. Oh, no. Oh, boy. My AT&T cordless phone. gone. I was like, oh my God. Well, she left it in the utility room. The cop found it. He goes, there's blood on it. You probably want to clean it up, put gloves on. I was like, thank you, asshole. Yeah. They were in for a while. Then they were outside. When they did come in, we heard they had a walkie-talkie thing on their shoulder. And one of them came across that said, the ciberis is cleared or secured or something like that. Well, the ciboris is one of those romantic getaways, you know, they have swimming pools in the room, and it's pretty gross.

Oh, it's like a name of a hotel for honeymooners? Well, it's like just a romantic, you know, who knows? Just for fucking, yeah. Like a motel. Yeah, okay. Just like quickies. Yeah. And it's like a block away.

So it made sense why she didn't have any clothes on. Oh. So before they left, the cop set, or one of them, it wasn't the same one. He said she was on drugs. Her husband isn't a police officer in Downer's Grove. over anywhere else and then they left. Had they caught her or we don't know yet. She's just gone.

They said that they got her outside. She's in custody. So then everybody leaves. My daughter and I take our phones. We go in my room. I call her out of school. I call work. I tell them this horrific like the bloody lady would do.

And the police came. They were assholes. Obviously, you know, we tried to go to sleep and we were like, it's not happening. So we both got up. She went to school. I went to work. 9, 10 o'clock in the morning, I was. It's like, oh, my God, she's going to get home from school before my husband or I get home from work.

And who did we give instructions to? Was it her dad? Was it not? Somebody has instructions to our house. So I called the Downers Grove Police. And I tell the woman, we had all this activity last night and, you know, my daughter's going to get home. And she's like, hang on. Yeah, you know what?

There's no activity at your house last night. What? What? Trust me. There was. And she's like, no, there was no, no, no, no. There was activity in your area. I said, oh, no, no, no, no. There was activity in front of my house. There were four to six squad cars. The police were in my house. Like, I didn't get their name. It was all pretty crazy. You talked to 911. There's got to be a record of that. She put me on hold. Pretty soon a man came on. He was like, yeah, I was at your house last night. It's fine. What is going on? It's not, I don't know who we gave instructions to. We got him. We got her.

We got him. We intercepted him before he got there. It's fine. So I don't know who he was. My daughter, one of her good friends, the dad was either like a captain or a sergeant in the Daughters Grove police department. So as my daughter told her friend, her friend was like, what the F? She's like, I'm calling my dad.

So she calls, she's like, dad. What the hell's going on? What happened? And he said, yeah, I can't talk about it. So that was 18 years ago. She still has my beauty and the bee sweatshirt. No. And we have no idea what ever happened.

Oh, wow. This is a crazy mystery. And also, how did that police officer tell you that nothing happened that night? Maybe she just didn't know. You think is a cover up? I don't know. A hush up? I don't know.

That is wild. Lynn, you're so fun. You're a perfect mother for the scenario. God, that's crazy. It was crazy. So a few weeks later, I called my daughter out of school. I said, we're going on my vacation for a week. And they were like, yeah, that would be an unexcused.

I said, no, it would be excused. I just told you, I'm taking her. They were like, you have to talk to the dean. I said, by all means, he got on the phone. I said, look, this is what we had to deal with. We're going to Florida for a week. And he said, okay. Yeah, good.

Did you go to Daytona? We went to Fort Lauderdale. We had a hotel on the beach, walked out. It was very nice. No bloody lady. No bloody ladies. No, and we told my husband never again. Yeah.

But also, what was he supposed to do? There's a girl saying I need help. What's he going to do? Ignore it? A couple years later, because he was a commercial garbage man, and he was near Good Samaritan Hospital. And he came home from work one day. And he said, you'll be very proud of me.

He said, I was driving on a route. Passing the hospital. He said there was a woman in the driveway of the hospital in a gown, waving at him. And he said, I just kept going. You got to make your wife happy first. My son actually said, maybe she'll listen. If this ever gets aired, maybe she'll call in and say, I'm the bloody lady. Yes, you'll have to send us a photo of the sweatshirt so we can confirm.

One thing is, I have to tell you, parenthood. Probably one of my favorite shows. So I told my daughter I would have to tell you that. And can she say hello to you? Of course. We would love that. Of course. Hi, guys.

Hi. That was Lynn. Who are you? I'm Samantha. Hi, Samantha. You were sleeping on the couch? I sure was. Crazy story that we've told for many, many years.

And I'm a day one arm cherry. And I've been listening and listening. And so finally this prompt came up. And it probably could have been wildcard too. But I was like, mom, we have to submit. This was perfect. Your mom's, so fun. Oh my god. What a firecracker. She's the best. Yeah. She's a beautiful mix of a Midwesterner

and a New Yorker. There's a lot of go fuck yourself in her, you know? Love it. Absolutely love it. Great. She's going to love that. And was there any detail that she left out, you want to tell us about her or anything she got wrong? Do you remember this woman? I can't remember her face or anything. I was shaking. I was so scared. I remember they tackled her in the backyard. And they also did say that it was kind of like a drug deal hookup gone bad and that she jumped through the window at the ciboris. That's what the cuts are about. Supposedly, but we never saw any damage to the ciburis. Huh.

A lot of question marks. Yeah, it was never in the paper. Is the ciburis still in action? Sure is. There are definitely still people utilizing that ciburis. And have you yourself ever stayed at the ciburis? No, sorry. Okay.

Yeah, you're a good moment. I've been to that ciburis. Wait, Rob, you've been to the cibis? I have. To make love? Did you go there to make love? With a girlfriend. No.

Oh my God, were you guys in the hot tub and stuff? We didn't know learn anything about the bloody lady, but we're learning a lot about Rob. Rob might have been there for this. I'm glad Rob knows all about it. Yeah. This has been a delight. Yes, so nice to meet you and your mom. Could not have gotten a better mama.

Well, hug her on our behalf. Thank you for telling that story. That was incredible. Absolutely. Thank you guys. All right. Bye. I want to go to their house for dinner and then go to the Cibiris.

The Cyborus sounds like the Neptune in. What's it called in Veronica Mars where... It's worse. Why did you go there, Rob? When you're 19 and you have a girlfriend and you can't go home? You're so disgusting. I love it. It was like an anniversary or something.

Why didn't you should have just did it outside at that point. Yeah, in the park. I feel like you're too hygienic for the cyboris. I don't think I was thinking about that element at that point. That came later in love you up. Different part of your brains. There's like a waterfall pool in the... room. It sounds like it smells like chlorine in every room. It sounds disgusting.

Yeah. Public water that other people have been fucking in. What's the place in Bronica? Mars, Neptune in or something. And that's where everyone would go and it'd be skeezy and sleazy. Yeah. All right. Well, don't break in. We had one, but luckily I didn't interface with the person we discovered after the fact they had been in the house. That's preferred. That you don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Especially with my. What am I going to do? How am I going to survive this? Well, you'll lock your doors.

That was back when we were still pretending. We lived in the Midwest, but now we've learned our lessons. Should I lock my bedroom door? People say don't do that. Because of firefighters? Yeah, or like if I have a seizure and no one can get in. What's the point? Because someone wants to get through your bedroom door, they will.

No, but if I hear it, moving, I can just start screaming. I'm calling 911. I just called 911. You're in trouble. No, you got to go on your balcony and jump off. Yeah, you should have a little rope. That's more of the move. No, a rope then they can get up.

No, you keep it on your bed. It's got a grappling hook. You quickly run, throw the grappling hook around the railing, and then you go over the side. Think panic room's still the move for you? Oh, yeah. Panic bad. Panic bad.

Panic box bets. It's a tomb. Monica Padman, celebrity panic box bets. Check them out. This is a great idea. It is. It just lowers wherever you were sleeping. Just lowers and the top closes in.

They can be chic. Yeah. Like, I'll make them cute. And you might even prefer sleeping in the interior of the mattress. But if you're claustrophobic, ooh, that's not a move for you. But you probably are less claustrophobic than you are homicidophobic. I am, yeah. Yeah, I think most people, probably.

All right, well, that is all right. Love you. Do you want to sing a tune or something? We don't know a theme song. Oh. Okay, great. We don't have a song for this new show. So here I go, go, go.

We're going to ask some random questions. And with the help of our cherries, we'll get some suggestion. On the flyer rhymed dish, on the flyer rhymed dish, enjoy.