Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - ‘Barbaric’: Cops Say Woman Tortured Animals on YouTube for Extra Cash

Starting point is 00:00:00 Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. I'm going to be cooking my besties. Because it's not just one bestie, y'all. We got two besties in here. That's about all we can show you of Anagar Mansi's YouTube videos. It's not cooking animals that landed her in jail, but how she's accused of torturing them before she did it live on YouTube. I'm Antoinette Levy. It's Thursday, and this is Crime Fix.

Starting point is 00:00:32 This story is really one of those that makes my stomach literally turn and flip around. So fair warning to you. Anna Garmansi is in the Delaware County prison in Pennsylvania, facing an aggravated cruelty to animals charge. At first glance, her YouTube videos look like a cooking show. Actually, I'm really, really hungry right now. I'm like really starving. I feel like I'm starving, OK? But I'm just hungry. But if you watch longer, things get very dark and scary. We're not going to show you those parts. The arrest affidavit says Monsi can be seen in videos torturing rabbits, chickens, frogs, and pigeons by slowly disemboweling and otherwise mutilating the animals while still alive. It goes on to say Monsi is severing the struggling and screaming

Starting point is 00:01:18 animals' necks with a dull knife over the course of several minutes. Welcome back to my YouTube. A September 2023 video entitled Cooking Frogs and Foo Foo showed Monsi cutting open a frog's stomach, joking that he's dancing and singing Happy Death Day to the tune of Happy Birthday. That's a chicken feet And I have pig foot. Ooh, this shit is flipping in the air. And now I have some fish.

Starting point is 00:01:52 Who don't like some fish? I love me some fish. Mansi had 20,000 subscribers on YouTube and scores of people actually watching her torture and kill these animals. She can't really deny that she did it. She was encouraging people to like her videos, which gets YouTube to recommend them to other people. Shockingly,

Starting point is 00:02:10 Monsi's page was still up in the last 24 hours. This morning, it showed that it had been taken down. By the way, yo, I'm live on YouTube now. Dr. April Alexander is the director of the Violence Prevention Center at UNC Charlotte. Dr. Alexander, this is a creepy, creepy case. Your thoughts? Just completely horrified when I heard about the case on two parts. One, just the horrendous act of the torture of animals was disturbing in itself. And then two, the social media aspect to have over 20,000 people watching this type of content. What does that say about how we are consuming violence and thinking about even harm to animals or people?

Starting point is 00:02:54 That's that's what got me the number of people watching this and commenting on it and clicking the like button or the thumbs up on the YouTube video that gets YouTube to recommend the video. And she's feeding off that quite obviously. And she's on these videos doing this to these animals, just la-di-da, like it's no big deal. So I'm kind of creeped out that people were actually tuning in and egging this on. So they always say violence to animals is kind of like a precursor to harming humans. So what does it say about the people out there watching it, but also Anna Garmansi? Yeah. I wonder if people thought one, is this real? Um, I think we're being, uh, we're consuming violent content so much that this seems so surreal, probably during those first initial images of her toying with the animals, that maybe there was some surreal kind of nature of people consuming this content. But once you saw that it was actual violence and blood and gore to

Starting point is 00:03:57 these animals, why would we keep watching? And so I often wonder, you know, how are we getting more and more desensitized to violence? It's one thing to watch a horror movie and wonder, you know, how are we getting more and more desensitized to violence? It's one thing to watch a horror movie and have, you know, fun and that kind of aspect. But when we're talking about real lives and real bodies, that's what becomes disturbing to me. Why didn't people get on the phone and call right away after the first video when they saw this torture? And like you said, I'm really concerned because what we see in cases of intimate partner violence is there is often animal abuse as a precipitating factor for intimate partner violence, that this is one step before you would go and hit someone in some cases.

Starting point is 00:04:38 One of the things that I found so upsetting in reading through the probable cause affidavit right here is the fact that when the police went to the apartment and they say in the affidavit, yes, this was the apartment. Everything matches up. There was a young child there. OK, so there's a young child possibly present when all of this is going on and being exposed to it. And so she obviously had no issue doing this. She's on the videos with a dull knife, torturing these animals. These animals are frightened, scared to death.

Starting point is 00:05:11 And a young child may have been exposed to this. One of the things that we see with individuals who do engage in animal abuse is some of them have had abuse histories themselves, or they've been in family contexts where some of this behavior is quite normalized. So I have this fear of her passing that type of nature down to her child, her child being a witness. We still don't know what the makeup of these 20,000 people even watching was, that there could have been more children who were exposed to this virtually through watching this video. So that's even more disturbing is it's not just the immediate harm that's being caused. It's the vicarious harm that's being caused by the people who are watching either directly via her child or indirectly via the social media.

Starting point is 00:05:56 And, you know, Cooking Lucky is the video that she's charged with right now. And that one was filmed at that apartment. There was one filmed at an old apartment and they actually played the video for her. They played these videos and they said that she became visibly upset and requested that they turn off the videos. So how do you go through with this? Killing an animal, torturing it, you're being egged on. It's almost like mob mentality via social media. But then you become visibly upset while watching it. Is she visibly upset and asking to turn it off because she knows it was wrong or because she's caught or both? I think you're right on track. She knows it was wrong. So I'd be curious of where she had that

Starting point is 00:06:43 disconnect when she was actually filming the video. Is this simply for likes? And again, we need to examine how our social media culture is running through that we have not just her, but teenagers doing all these crazy stunts on social media for likes, for attention. And again, it kind of worked when we have 20,000 people watching and giving attention to videos like this. So yeah, I believe with that reaction, maybe part of her did assume that it was wrong. We'd have to ask her more about that. But that recognition that I'm getting attention for these actions and that's why there was repeated videos. There was also a moderator in this video in the chat saying, hey, y'all, if you send her some money she'll use it

Starting point is 00:07:26 to buy the animal you want and cook it in front of you so we have a moderator involved allegedly encouraging all of this and soliciting money so maybe this is a way for her to make some quick cash but but at the same time she's soliciting people to send her money and I'll go buy the animal you want and I'll do this again. Right. And we're seeing that on some social media platforms. For instance, TikTok has a whole live feature. You can watch live videos and people can send you different objects or monetary donations for those live videos. And again, it incentivizes people to make content. Now, most of it might be well-meaning in some of the videos that I've

Starting point is 00:08:11 watched before, but in cases like this, you are actually promoting the harm and promoting the violence. So this moderator is not helpful at all in kind of squashing the issue of harm to animals. What else do you think was going on with this woman? I mean, do you think that this is something she was just doing on YouTube? I mean, this doesn't seem to me to just come out of nowhere. Maybe this is something she's been doing for some time. Maybe she was doing this as a child. I have no idea.

Starting point is 00:08:41 We just don't know enough about her. But I just don't think you one day wake up at her age and then just say she's 28 and say, I'm going to start I'm going to start cutting into the necks of pigeons and chickens and rabbits. I mean, she's literally holding up a rabbit on screen. This was probably going on for some time, just not on video. Yeah, I think even though this case was horrific, we do have to come with a lens of empathy. As you said, people don't just wake up in the morning and do this. And so we have to really think about why is always my biggest question. Why would someone do something like this? Was it, again, her having a history of this being normalized and her just bringing it to a bigger platform? Is it for monetary gain? Like you just said, that if I get likes and I get promotions, this thing gets monetized and maybe I'm in a

Starting point is 00:09:36 dire financial circumstance and this is the only way I think I can get help. I see all these YouTube influencers making money on a day-to-day basis. Maybe this is my new angle. There's so many different lenses to this. And what I'm hopeful for is in a lot of different states right now, we are cracking down on animal abuse laws, that we are making sure that people who do commit these acts get help. I do believe that there is some area of redemption for her. I hope that her reaction is a symbol of she didn't want to do this and us getting a better understanding of why so we can support her. It's unethical for you to, you know, diagnose her, but, but, you know, just seeing her on the videos, reading about the behavior. I mean, I, I, I could only watch the videos. I couldn't watch the bad stuff. Um, what, what could be wrong with her? Do you think?

Starting point is 00:10:43 Yeah. And same thing. I couldn't watch the videos myself. I knew I wasn't in the space that this is something that I would even want to contribute to. But yeah, for a lot of people who we've seen commit different acts of animal abuse, it's for a number of different reasons. For some people, they might have OCD type behaviors. So we see animal hoarding as a form of abuse where they're taking in animals with the intent of protecting them, but they don't have the money and finances to actually care for the animals. And that's one form. Again, things like depression, anxiety, could it be psychosis? Not sure at this moment. But again, regardless, we know that this person does need some form of help and support to get a better understanding of why she engaged in this behavior and ensure she doesn't engage in it again, especially in front of a child.

Starting point is 00:11:32 Yeah, let's just hope that that child wasn't exposed to a lot of this and that that child is getting help. And of course, you know, we want Anna Garmoncy to get help as well. I mean, she'll she'll get out of jail eventually and be re-released into society. So hopefully this doesn't repeat. And whatever was causing her to do this is addressed. You know, the police chief there in Darby Township called this horrific or barbaric. It is. And it's really stunning.

Starting point is 00:12:04 And it's stunning that it was up on youtube until yesterday that was even more shocking since some of these videos were filmed last july um thank you so much dr april alexander thanks for coming on we hope you'll come back thanks for having me and that's it for this edition of crime fix on Thursday, January 25th, 2024. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with us. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Until then, have a great night. You can download Crime Fix on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your favorite

Starting point is 00:12:35 podcasts and new episodes post each weeknight at 6 Eastern time on Law and Crime's YouTube channel. Daniel Camacho does our video editing. Our head of social media is Bobby Zoki. Our senior director of social media is Vanessa Bynes. Savannah Williamson is one of our producers. Diane Kay and Alyssa Fisher book our guests. And Brad Mabey is our audio editor.

Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - ‘Barbaric’: Cops Say Woman Tortured Animals on YouTube for Extra Cash

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