Doomed to Fail - Ep 15: Charming vs Non-Charming Southerns - Hatfield & McCoys and Tiffany Cole

Episode Date: April 10, 2023

This week Taylor brings us to post-Civil War Appalciacia to tell the legend of the Hatfields & McCoys!! It’s a doozy - so many people die for just family pride? Don’t kill people, even if they kill your people. Stop the cycle.Farz tells us the story of one of the very few women on death row - Tiffany Cole  - Tiffany and her boyfriend, Michael Jackson were shockingly not criminal masterminds and buried an elderly couple alive after they robbed them for no reason whatsoever. You do not know criminal masterminds, there are so few of them out there! Please don’t believe anyone who wants to get you involved in a heist!Pictures viaPublic domainWikipedia1historyinphotoNancy via find a graveTiffany and Michael Jackson via OxygenSources:From NBC NewsHatfields & McCoys on NetflixThe Fued by Dean King  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

In the matter of the people of the state of California, first is Hortonthall James Simpson. Case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Okay, Taylor, what's your banter for the week? I, oh, God. No, I told you, I just woke up, but I did do all my work. I outlined yesterday because yesterday was a day off,

because the New York Stock Exchange is closed on Good Friday and it was awesome it was the best I wish I had every Friday off Are you a stockbroker now and I don't know this? I am. It's called I'm a stockbroker

No I work at a fintech company of ours I see so But we Yeah so I went to a little coffee shop in town And I wrote my outline It was the first nice day That I've seen in so freaking long So it was really nice

That's awesome That's not a fun way to do it. Yeah. And then I did a bunch of like errands, today's Miles's birthday party. So I bought some stuff for that. And then we have Easter on Sunday. So I did buy all that shit. Yeah.

Is it actually his birthday today? No, it was on Tuesday. Got it. Okay. Sweet. Yeah. My banter for the week, man, my brain's working a little bit slow today. One of those nights last night. I went to bed really early, so I don't know what my problem is.

I want to bed really late That's my problem Yeah and I was like I was like forget it I'm going to bed really early And so I just went to bed at like 930 And it was lovely That's so nice Yeah that was not the night I had

I'm probably gonna repeat it more tonight So it is what it is That's the best I got You do you You live your life Your free child free life In a big city Someone told me that it's Easter

which I totally forgot that it was and I put this on like not even knowing that and so Is it upside on cross? Yeah I was like wow how weird I won this like maybe once

That's so funny And I put it on And so he was like oh yeah It's Easter And I was like oh shit What a weird time that I picked to It's a sign from heaven I know my family

This makes my mom annoyed But we always say Can't wait to see if Jesus Seas Shadow on Sunday let's make the winter. She's not like me. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, let's go ahead and introduce the show. What's my tackling going to be? Hold on. Yeah, okay. I got it. All right. Welcome to Doom to Fail, the podcast where we keep intermittently switching off. Who's the most tired person?

And today I'm winning. I'm Farr's. I'm joined here by my co-host. Taylor, how are you doing? I am good. I'm up. I think I've been up for like a solid five. minutes so now i'm starting to feel it i can see the sun i had half a can of diet coke so yeah isn't it weird

like you know i used to do this thing where if i because it's so obvious whenever i wake up and i go straight into a zoom call yeah and there there are sometimes when those zoom calls are happening like noon so i have no justifiable reason for having just woken up and i'll just like sit in my room and just like clear my throat over and over again and shout and then whisper and try to get my voice to modulate enough so that it doesn't sound like I literally just woke up. I've been up for hours, yeah. Sound just like it, too. Um, but yeah, so we're going to be covering our red flagged relationships.

One is historical. One is true crimey. Taylor is, is you go this week. Yes. Okay. I never remember and you always keep me on the straight and arrow. So why don't you introduce your drink and then you can say, well, actually, should I do my first?

Yeah, yeah. And then I'll go. So mine's going to be, um, gutter and sewer water because the people that we're covering are just gutter trashed people that probably should have been killed with a rock as children um so yeah that's that's what i'm drinking what about you okay well that's really funny okay this week i'll switch go right to my story we're drinking apple whiskey distilled by a very dirty man in a very dirty shack in the middle of the woods.

So is apple whiskey that is flavored with apples or is that? No, I think it's just like moonshine. Like, it's like whatever booze you can get out of doing that. Got it, got it, okay. I've never heard of it called Apple Whiskey, though. I think today you could probably get Apple Whiskey.

Like, I got like a peanut butter flavored whiskey one time. Like, I think you could get that. Was that screwball? I don't know, maybe. It was, it is disgusting. So you know how much I like my, bourbon. I bought a bottle of screwball when I first moved to Austin. I had that thing for like two and a half years. I couldn't get through it. It was just so disgusting. I don't remember

what it tasted like, but I remember it existed. Yeah. The topic goes. Not a fan. Okay, so I want you to try to guess far as what we're going to talk about. And we're going to get there. I'm going to do the second and maybe last installment of my weekly, weekly segment, which is called I already have children. I will have no more. Here are some names I forgot to consider when I was having them and I give them to you, you're welcome. It's a long segment name, but this is episode two of that. So I'm going to give you some names, and then you tell me if you know who I'm talking about. Okay.

Love this. Cap. I'm just going to keep going, and then you let me know. Johnzie, Squirrel Hunt and Sam, skunk hair, cotton tap, bad Frank, and devil ants. It all sounds like Frontiersmen in Texas. this. Pretty close. We're talking Hatfields and McCoys. Oh, so good. We're on the border of Kentucky and West Virginia. So good. Okay. So super excited. I did a bunch of research. I read the book Feud. I read like half of it and then I started over because I watched the Hatfield and McCoy's

miniseries on Netflix and then it had to like go back and like reread the book because then it kind of like know who it was talking about. And I swear last week it wasn't available. But then all of a sudden it was like the miniseries is on netflix it starts kevin and coster as himself slash devilance it's kind of like just kevin costster being kevin costner and bill paxton um rip as ral mccoy so was it good yeah yeah it's a three episode series and it's very it's very fun yeah it also ties back to other my other stories in different ways so one is the book feud that I read, it opens up with the author talking about how

JFK Jr. wanted to do a big story about the Hatfields and McCoys in George magazine. Because he was really interested in doing more like American history stuff in his magazine, but he died. So he didn't get to do it. It's a shame. I know. Don't get it out of playing

with it, Kennedy. And then number two, Eleanor Roosevelt was very personally invested in this community in Appalachia in this area and she made a community called Arthurdale. which was like a place where they, like, built houses for people, gave them skills, and she was able to, like, help them kind of figure themselves out. It was pretty good.

It was, some parts of it were segregated, which is great, but it was still, like, a good effort by ER. So she spent time in there, too. Also, my algorithm is hilarious because all the articles I get and, like, my pop-up news are, like, now we know what Cleopatra smells like, and we found ambulance necklace. And I'm like, oh, my God, the algorithm is, like, out of control right now. I'm going to blow my nose. Can you hold, please? Yes.

Taylor's off camera blowing her nose. I'm never going to leave this part in or edit it out, but just not y'all should know. Okay. I feel less sniffy. Perfect. All right. So anyway, the story unfolds on the banks of the Tug River. The Tug River separates Kentucky and West Virginia.

This land is a very, very rough. It's scary, but it's not like eastern Massachusetts. It's scary. It's still just like, it's like very woodsy. There's a podcast that I really like called the Old Gods of Appalachia, and it's like about telling stories of like earthy gods and witches and things in this area so it's pretty fun if you ever want to listen to something cool have you ever been to kentucky or west virginia no i've done kentucky before and it is um it's really little willville it's true yeah that counts well i mean like

the countryside like i it is um it's incredible it's beautiful for one but then it's the juxtaposition of that is abject poverty which is is really strange to see in a place that is that rich in natural resources. Like, it's just, you would think it'd be like a tourist hot spot, but I guess it's not because it's just like, there's no like cottages to go sleep in or, you know, like, it doesn't have the ambiance of like a Vermont, let's say. That's true. But it's beautiful.

Yeah, definitely. I know there's like the Appalachian Trail. It's like really beautiful and the whole area is beautiful. Yeah. So I'll tell you a little bit more about it. I also listened to some banjo music on Spotify to get in the mood. And by the time I was writing this, someone was doing Taylor Swift's anti-hero in banjo version.

It was great. So it was fun. The Native Americans didn't really live in this area. They used it for hunting. There's a lot of like bears and deer and animals and things that live there. The Tug River itself is not like the Mississippi. It's like pretty small. It's something you could like swim across.

It's not like a huge river that divides Kentucky and West Virginia. And I'll share a map. when I'm doing the socials, but everything in the story is within like two miles of each other. Like it's all very close. Everyone lives really close to each other. But they live in different states

because they live on different sides of the tug. Right. So I looked at the demographics in the area today that you're talking about. It obviously isn't great. It's not like the worst in the country. There's a lot of people below the poverty line everywhere. It's like small town stuff.

According to ARC.gov, the high school diploma rate is approaching the national average. There are 87%. But the bachelor's degree rate still really low at 25%. So people are getting out of high school, but not really leaving and going to college. There's a Diane Sawyer's 60 Minutes that came out in 2009.

And I remember my coworker watching it, I mean, like, it was crazy. I didn't, I couldn't watch all of it, but I could find parts of it on YouTube. It's called Hidden America. And two stories that stood out, there was this poor girl and everybody, like, nobody has teeth. Like, everyone's, like, really poor. And one girl was like, we're not like other people. We can't afford food after food after food. because they, like, barely had any food.

It was pretty sad. And there was a guy who was a football player, and he had potential. And so he was going, got like a little scholarship to college, and they were focusing on him. And then, in the middle of his interview, things go crazy because they find his stepbrother sleeping with his underage step-sister. And everyone is like, yeah, it's not great because they're blood. Diane Sawyer's at your house.

You can't, like, skip this today, you know? have you have you ever seen the uh mark later project that he calls soft white underbelly on youtube it's really interesting like he interviews i mean it's basically what it sounds like the soft white underbelly it's like it's like drug addicts prostitutes you know uh people like that but there's one part of it that he turned into a series because he found the subject so fast iny and he went to west virginia and basically met this family that all lives in the this shack and apparently i i went down a rabbit hole on reddit on this apparently they're very very inbred so all the siblings were just having sex with each other but the way this the group

that was currently a live camp out was because there was two two like a male and female set of twins and they inter and they were direct first cousins and they intermarried and so it basically just double tripled everything down the next generation over but it's it's really fascinating i mean you just feel bad for them right like you look at people like that and it's they had they had no hope right like they there wasn't no you know i mean they lived in a shack and middle i think i saw that recently on the news because my new algorithm is crazy but yeah they had them like one of the men like couldn't even talk he like kind of barked like a dog just bark yeah yeah yeah i know exactly you're talking about yeah super sad like it also it's like that x files episode do you remember that one

where the mom and has all the inbred kids and the mom is like not a full body but they do all these bad things and they have to like get away and it's like a really good X-Files episode. I'm going to admit something to you that I've never told you before. I've never watched X-Files.

All right. Well, you have stuff to do today. Cool. Well, I'll give you a list of good ones. It's so good. I've watched all of it twice. Yeah, it's great. Give me like a hit list

because I'm going to be on a lot of planes for the next like two weeks. Okay. There's one that our friend Laura is in. I'll give you that one. That's a good one. Wait, Laura Harris? No way.

Okay. Yeah. She's a little. She's like a little girl, but it's cute. Yeah. Cool. I also watched, oh, a long time ago. So my friends and I had a website called Pop 10.

That was like, Top 10 lists of stuff. I don't know. It was like 12 years ago, 15 years ago. And someone sent us a DVD. They sent us things. So I got a DVD called The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia, which is about a family of last names White is produced by, Johnny Knoxville. And it talks about like a family that similarly is like opioids and drugs and

just living in that area. Yeah, it's weird. It's like it's like two different versions of sadness. One, they're not in red to the point where they can't communicate or walk or anything, but they're also like horrible drug addicts that can't tell themselves. Yeah, it's real sad. So yeah, two things to highlight before we start. The first is obviously incest. We just, we just talked about it a little bit. When I was reading this book, this was the first time I've heard the word double first cousin and i was like oh my god what does that mean but that can be not terrible if you do that the right way like if you married my sister and i married your brother and we all had kids they'd be double first cousins is not related no no the next generation is a problem so what i mentioned

earlier with the two sets of twins having sex it's not like it's bad at that level but it's doubly worse when their children have sex with each other you see what i'm saying no no but i was saying there's no nobody related is having sex right now you're just double first cousins because you have like you're you only have like one set of grandparents as cousins you know how like your cousins have other grandparents like so they you don't have those you only have like the the grandparents but you're not sleeping with your sister or anything it just happens to be that your dad is like related to your uncle you know i really love that all it took was for us to get into like redneck incest to start going down a genealogy map and actually

I know this stuff for real we'll do a thing but I also want to say that like we've definitely brushed off a lot of cousin and sibling marrying we're talking about like queens and kings and pharaohs and emperors so like because it's not as gross I don't know why I don't know but it's like

when you do it in a shack it's different than when doing it in a castle isn't it? I guess no one smells good while doing it I think that's a good thing to take through. And then also talk about guns in state for the record fuck your guns there's a lot of guns in this story it's right after the civil war we'll talk about some dates but they're like homemade guns

it's like lead bullets and gunpowder and a lot of people get shot and live like a lot of people like a lot of people just like oh he shot me like it's fine you're either going to die of infection or maybe something gets amputated it's not like uh they're not shoot each other with like machine guns there's no air 15 in this story they're like homemade bullet lead bullet guns so I also know that I promise to talk about stereotypes today. So PBS has a documentary that you cannot watch all of, no matter how hard you try. But in the intro to it, talk about industrialization, the old versus the new. So like this story of the Hatfield and McCoys in the late 1800s when it was happening, it was in the New York Times.

Like people were watching it. And like it was city folks watching this story, judging them, calling them hillbillies, which like, sure. What I just said. But it was like national news. So what it was doing was inadvertently making the Hatfield and McCoys the stereotypes of the American Hillbilly, whether or not like there's other stories, other people, because it was so popular. And so the question that the PBS documentary that I'm unable to finish poses is did industrialization and post-Civil War reconstruction push rural people into this other and we've been separated since then, especially. now so like how much did you know the like eyes on the story from the city and even like from big cities in kentucky they would look down at these folks and listen to this story so

it's weird like i kind of look at it as like a badass like it's so old american frontiers living it's just like because i i don't know enough about it to like say anything pithy but i would say that like they really did fuck each other up like they shot each other they like killed their relatives and it's just like i don't know there's something weirdly charming about like they're like their own military like their own army their own nation states yeah and then also yeah because i'm going to talk about violence there's a lot of violence these are like very fiercely loyal and stubborn people there's a theory that the mccoy's had a disease called von hippo lindow disease and it's not a theory because descendants have it so like people on mccoy family do have it

and it can make you really short-tempered. So that could have escalated it on the McCoy side, at least, that they had like a disease that made them more short-tempered, but they're exceptionally short-tempered. Like, crazy things happened. Okay. So for years, the Hatfields and McCoys lived on the Tug River Valley. They sort of lived together, like just like neighbors.

They did intermarry a little bit, like not incest, intermarry, but like family intermarry. So people could be both in McCoy and the Hatfield. and they lived in the same community. It's like a small mountain community. It escalates with our two main patriarchs. So William Anderson Hatfield was born in 1842. That's Devil Ance.

Devil Ance is the nickname he got by his mom. There's a story that when he was a little kid, like 10, he tracked a bear through the woods. And the time he got to it, he had dropped his bullets and he couldn't kill it. So he was so mad, he kicked it. And the bear went running up into a tree. And he sat at the bottom of the tree. tree for like two days until the family found him because he didn't want to leave because he was very

stubborn wow so devlance is also kevin costner if you want to picture that okay he married a woman named leviisi chaffin in 1861 and they would go on to have 13 children so there's a lot of kids in this story as well and then randolph randall mccoy is a little bit older he was born in 1825 he did marry his first cousin sarah sally mccoy and they would have 17 children What is it about being poor and having a lot of children? I don't get how the two are correlated. Well, it's a couple things. It's like one, you don't have access to birth control,

so you don't have a way to not have a baby if you want to not have one. And then also, like the kids, especially in this time and in the past, I mean, more so than now, like a lot of kids died when they were little. You know, so that was like a part of life. Like a lot of kids died in infancy. A lot of kids died when they were toddlers. There was, like, disease. They would get lost, you know.

And you just needed the kids to work on the farm. So you were just having more kids. Do you remember how they would do abortions back in the day from the Dommer Party episode? Just, no. Being on a horse. No, because during the Donner Party fiasco, a lot of women would just, like, get pregnant on the trail. And, like, that was the worst possible time to get pregnant because you're on a trail. And there's no medical anything.

around and so what they would do is they just find the biggest strongest guy and put the lady on his lap and he just have to shake his legs like really really hard and that would apparently induce your portion so it wasn't really scientific but it apparently worked yeah and i do remember from that they were like they were like they wanted to do that because they were like i can't have another baby like i can't have a baby on this thing and like no way yeah and then it was later yeah oh god terrible so there's tons of kids in the story in the in the miniseries they are they are they're there are kids around but there aren't like tons of kids but like in real life like it's like grandkids are the same age as the kids like it's just tons of people constantly having babies so it's april 1861 and the civil war begins so thank you fact check so you you would think it was like a hundred percent confederate there it's not a hundred percent there's a little bit of like a little bit of tension a little bit of back and forth but devalance and randall both joined the confederate army Sorry, your point was that you would think that West Virginia and Kentucky are full of Confederate?

Okay. I mean, I would stereotyping them. You are stereotyping there a little bit. Yeah. So Devillance actually deserts and goes back to his family. That's not part of why there is a feud, but it is interesting that Devalance desserts. And he is going to be one of the, the Hatfields are a lot more, they have a lot more money than the McCoys. They have like a timber business.

They do bootlegging. The hat fills are more well off than the McCoy's are. And there's a few instances that could have started the feud. So the feud starts officially after the Civil War. Randall's brother Harmon McCoy was a union soldier. So he did fight for the North. He was injured in the war a bunch and was sent home in December 1864. So Harmon gets sent home back to this area and everyone's pissed because he was a union soldier, essentially.

and the Hatfields are like, we're going to kill him. He was a union soldier. So he goes home and his family's like, oh, my God, we missed you. We're so happy you're here. You're injured. What can we do? And within a week, he has to go hide because the Hatfields are going after him. And he goes and hides in the woods.

They end up finding him because of footprints in the snow because it's like January in the mountains. And Crazy Uncle Jim, who is Devalan's uncle, he kills him. So he kills Randall's brother Harmon in 1865. leaving his wife widowed and she has a bunch of kids that we're going to talk about later so that's an instigating thing for sure that was the start the start was the union confederate divide basically yeah yeah well yes and then just like this one guy happened to be a mccoy and they killed him Carmen so 13 years later in 1878 there's an issue with hogs so razorback hogs are just a big part of life out there they're like what you get your food from all that you would

generally let them wander around and then pick them up when it was time to like slaughter them because like they were just going to the woods and eat and kind of take care of themselves and you would mark your hogs by cutting their ears so it'd be like oh the pinero cut is like two cuts in the ear of this hog that's how you know it's mine but that got confusing because there's only so many ways to do that and like people would get them confused all the time and randall's hogs go missing and he goes looking for them and devilance's cousin floyd says they are his so now there's two people fighting over these hogs that were just kind of wandering in the woods and it ends up going to court and a lot of stuff goes to court in this story also so they do try

to like be litigious and solve things that way but the problem is like the justice of the peace is a Hatfields like this is all the people that live here you know and so like literally the jury is half Hatfield half McCoys there's so many relatives because there's so many of them Yeah. And then there's a split because one of the McCoys works for Devil Lance at his like timber place. And a man named Bill Stanton who works for Devil Lance as well testifies that the hogs do belong to Floyd Hatfield. So Floyd wins. And Randall McCoy has to pay all the legal fees. So he's pissed. Bill Stanton, who is the one who kind of swayed the jury to the Hatfield side, isn't long for this world. Randall's sons, Sam and Parr. kill him in 1880 and they claim self-defense and they get off but it was because of the hogs just do whatever you want yeah they choose him into the woods and shoot him yeah so there are some people that i haven't mentioned that i won't really mentioned in this story but one of them is the mccoy's do have a lawyer in their family his last name is klein he's in a lot of these stories kind of like as

the person who's a little more educated so he helps the mccoy's get legal justice he also happened to have inherited some land from his father and ended up having to give it to devil lance because of like threats and like other things so he also has like a personal of undead against the hatfields makes so they have this like lawyer on their side so now everyone's like really mad because like the hog thing harmon's dead tensions are up and then a third thing happens johnsy hatfield whose devilance his oldest son is a bit of a philanderer he it's actually like not the end of the world to have sex before marriage there's like saloons with sex workers everyone knows it's not puritanical you know it's just like kind of wild and they go to a party they go to all these like

community events together and at this party john z sees randall mccoy's daughter rosanna like potentially for the first time but that can't be true because there's like everyone lives so close each other i'm sure he knew she existed but he like sees her and he like likes her for the first time she's a little bit older she's very pretty and they hook up and they want to get married randall mccoy is like absolutely no and he disowns her and he never talks to her again what's her name again rosanna rosanna mccoy she's very pretty you can see this is a picture of her did you find her yeah i mean look uh beauty standards change over time i would assume she she kind of looks like john way gasey she does not for her fuck sake far she's very she's very pretty i'll put the

picture on the internet but yes yeah i mean look the people that played her Or exceptionally pretty, like, I don't know who this is. Hadfield & McCoy's, this is a 2012 movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lindsay Pulsifer something place. I mean, she's very pretty. I mean, I don't think this woman is. Anyways, whatever.

Different standards. Fine. I think she's pretty. It doesn't matter. I'm a better thing. No. But, and then, so anyway, this is the red flag. They literally say in a feud.

This is a red flag of the, of the whole feud is because Randall is so willing to never talk to her again he's like you're my daughter you're my favorite i loved you so much i will never talk to you again in the show bill paxton takes her hope chest you know what a hope chest is uh no it's like if you have if you have a daughter in like the in the past i don't know people do it now but literally it's like a wooden chest and you put things in it for her for when she's married like you make as she's growing up you make like embroidered napkins for her and you find like special dishes and special things and you put it in there that she can take with her to start her married life that's really cool but we should do that like that should be a continuation i have a

i have a plastic container filled with stuff from when obama was running for president for the kids yeah that's stuff like that that's really cool new york times and all that yeah so anyway in the show bill pexton takes her hope chest and destroys it in the rain and it's very dramatic he's like very dramatic in this movie so i don't know if he really did that but anyway he said no rosanna like you are out of my life. So Devilance lets Rosanna stay with them on the West Virginia side of the tug. While they aren't married yet, Rosanna does get pregnant. And Jonzi is a bootlegger of moonshine. So it's not illegal to have alcohol now. It's not like prohibition, but it's illegal to make it and sell it without telling the IRS, essentially. They want it to be like a legitimate business.

So Rosanna is torn. She goes home. She's pregnant. She's upset. Her dad doesn't want to talk to her. She's trying to figure out what to do. And John Zee comes to get her, because he does love, they do love each other. John Zee comes to get her, and her brothers try to arrest him because they have a bootlegging warrant against him in West Virginia. So they try to arrest him and they take him to a place like they're going to arrest him, put him into jail. And Rosanna, despite being very pregnant, she steals a horse from a neighbor and rides to the Hatfields to tell them that John Zee's being taken away and they go and save him. So this is even more betrayal to her family because she left her house and told them that. but she moved in with her aunt

instead of moving back in with her family or with Johnsy she has the baby her name is Sarah Elizabeth she dies before her first birthday so unfortunately the baby dies Johnsy does love her and tries to go back to her but she feels like she's broken then there's a terrible story because Johnsey's like still kind of a flanderer and he's been spending time with a sex worker to kind of like heal his broken heart and his family's super pissed

and they find I mean this isn't even this isn't in the movie but they find this sex worker hanging in the woods they hung they hanged her naked with a dress over her face and she was hanging for two days before someone found her so someone got rid of her so that johnsy was stopping so much time with her which is horrifying so rosanna's heartbroken johnsy actually ends up marrying her cousin nancy so another mccoy so johnsy marries nancy mccoy and even in the book feud they say that he loved her less like he just didn't love her which is he loved Rosanna. Yeah, there's Nancy in this picture.

Nancy is the daughter of Harmon, the union soldier who was killed in the beginning. Right. So it's like, Nancy, what are you doing? And the movie she's portrayed as being kind of awful, but you're like, you're not only betraying your family by marrying a Hatfield, but you're also marrying the person that you know your cousin loves.

So Nancy has a whole thing. So Rosanna eventually just dies of being sad. She dies. A couple of women in the story just die of being sad. So here's where things are getting a little bit crazy and we get into the real escalation of the feud. So there are states issues because they're in different states. So we're like, who's jurisdiction is this?

I can see across the tug, but it's a different state. But generally the Hatfields and McCoys have the same political views. So when there is a big election, like in the area, they're usually on the same side of the election. The voting in this time is very public. It's obviously just men, but you go to an all-day-long event and they say, like, everyone who wants, this person to win stand over here raise your hand this person stand over here raise your hand like it's not

private you're like raising your hand to say that and so it's kind of a fun a fun day like everyone comes you bring your family there's food there's music and there's a lot of whiskey so a lot of this like moonshine whiskey it involves like I said apples you like ferment them in the woods and you like heat it up and boil it and like let it sit for a while and so now it's 1882 and there's an election so one of these big election parties it's in kentucky and everyone's there All of our main characters are there. Someone brings even more whiskey than usual, and they bring corn whiskey. And, like, the, you know, the thing is, if you mix corn and apple whiskey, like, you're fucked.

It's, like, much worse for you to, like, drink both of them. Well, you get just drunk faster? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So, Devilance has a brother, Ellison, who had a baby with their cousin. I don't know anything about her, but, like, he has his baby. She's not in the picture.

He has the baby. Or not the baby is, like, a young man. their son cotton top is important later in this story cotton top was slow and possibly albino but either way he was very blonde and that's where they call him cotton top because he's like way here so at election day ellison gets in a fight with some of the mccoy's and is stabbed over 20 times and then shot so by they just got him this like drunken brawl over whatever

and the three mccoy boys tollbert farmer so the p h and bud they are taken away by the law. The Hatfields are the cops in this area in Kentucky. So they take the boys to Pikeville. And they say boys, but they're not boys. Tobert already has kids. They're just like young men. And they take him to Pikeville in Kentucky. Ellison isn't dead yet. He's been shot. He's been shot once and stabbed 20 times, but he's not dead. And on the way over to put them in jail in Kentucky, devilance and a posse stop them. And they're like, give them to, us like screw all the paperwork we're going to take him to west virginia and tie them up and if ellison dies then they die like we're going to do this vigilante justice if he dies then all three of these boys are going to die they kind of like even though they're like kind of the hat feels on

the law on the kentucky side he's like we're taking them over to west virginia i kind of love this it's it's like a lot so he takes the boy they take the boys they tie him up in an abandoned schoolhouse and they're waiting to see if ellison dies so they're like if he dies you die, FYI, but they're just waiting for the news. And he's like

definitely going to die because he stabbed so many times in the job. Yeah, they're probably hoping that like they're able to

kill this guy. So the boys are tied up in this abandoned schoolhouse. For Sarah, their mom and Mary,

who's Tolbert's wife, they come to the schoolhouse and they cry and they pray and they beg for the freedom

and the Hatfields are like, no. If Ellison dies, they die. Ellison dies, spoiler alert

from all the stuff and all three McCoys are walked like a mile into the woods tied to trees and shot so the shooters are basically every single Hatfield johnsy's there devilance is there cotton top cal a guy named skunk hair because he had a big shock of white hair they're all there and they all just like shoot at the same time poor mary who's toldbert's wife just dies of being sad so now i mean can you imagine three of her sons Sarah's sons were just like killed in this like vigilante things. It's just that has the 17 children, three of them are dead from this. Everyone's like super, you know, upset and obviously. But now the McCoys want revenge for this revenge killing. And there's a man that comes to town for, who's a bounty hunter. And his name is

Bad Frank Phillips. So Bad Frank. Yeah. The governor of Kentucky, Simon Buckner, Bucker appoints him a special sheriff. And Bad Frank comes to town to help the McCoys get the Hatfields for this, for this vigilante murder. Who care? Like, all, they're just, there's just two groups of serial killers. Like, who's keeping count at this point? Just assume that all your family members are going to die and then you're going to kill theirs. Like, well, everyone, I mean, like the, but it basically the governor, his stance is like, you're giving us a bad name.

Like your people are, some people would you get caught in the crosshairs? He's like, you guys have to cut it out. You can't just have like a violent area where you kill each other. it's probably not good for tourism yeah you just can't so bad frank the first the first McCoy he kills the skunk hair or the first Hatfield he kills the skunk hair because he's the guy who has like that like shock of white hair is why he's called that and he scalps him and brings his scalp to prove that he's dead which is gross and also makes sense because he has that special hair so now other things are happening

johnzie and nancy are married nancy's brother jackson gets into a drunken fight with a mailman and kills him just no one knows why i got in a fight so now there's a bounty on jackson mccoy's head and he goes and lives with nancy and johnsey's like doesn't love this he's the one outlaw mccoy at his house and he tells his brothers that jackson is there and they come and get him they chase him across the tug and they shoot him so now nancy's mad because her husband told his family where the where her brother was but like what did you think was going to happen nancy you're married to a hatfield in the middle of this and so she starts telling bad frank things and they end up hooking up she has a couple kids Nancy has a couple of kids with bad Frank while he's married to someone else and while

she's married to Johnsey but eventually they do get married and I just wrote Nancy for fuck's sake like Beijing girl so now the Hatfields are being hunted by the McCoys and bad Frank for the murder of the three McCoy boys and they're pissed so the Hatfields do another horrible thing. On January 1st, 1888, they ambush the McCoy house while everybody is sleeping. This is called the New Year's Night Massacre. Randall McCoy runs. His wife Sarah is like, run. They're after you. They want to kill you because you're the, you know, you're the man. You just run and go. So Randall McCoy runs out of the back and no one sees him leave. There's a couple other people in the house. There's a lot of kids in the house. There's Alifair as the oldest daughter.

she's 27 but she's there to like help take care of all the kids Tolbert's son is there so one of the men who died his son's there lots of other kids crazy uncle Jim Hatfield who killed Harmon throws Molotov cocktails into the house and now the house is on fire and it's full of women and children one of the Hatfield's cap I've said his name a couple times but he's essentially the meanest Hatfield and he injured his eye in like a gun thing when he was a kid so he has like one milky eye and when he died in 1930 they found a bullet next to his brain which they think maybe made him like super super aggressive but cap is there all the hat

fields are there they're shooting at the house the house is now on fire the women have buttermilk and a little bit of water they can't put the fire out um this is the 1870s isn't it it's 1888 okay okay okay okay that makes sense that he died in 1930 okay yeah yeah the women are trying to put the fire out they can't do it cal mccoy he goes to the attic and tries to shoot from there they'd actually cut like holes in the attic wall to shoot out of like a fortress, like a medieval fortress, even though it's a one-room cabin, if something like this happened. So he's shooting out there. The house is filled with smoke. And Alifair, the oldest daughter, takes the children and runs from the house. They run up the back. Cap and Cotton Top see them. And Cap yells the

cotton top to shoot her. And Cotton Top shoots her and kills her. So Alifair dies. And the girls run run in the woods. They hide for the whole night. They're going to end up with like frostbite injuries, but they get out. In the book, it says that Alifair lives long enough to say it was Cap and no one else who shot her when asked. I don't know if that's true,

but if it is true, it sounds like she said it to be very nice because Cotton Top did shoot her, but Cap told him to, and Cotton Top was like, not all there. Right, right. So that's super unfair. Hell, the McCoy boy leaves the house.

He's also killed. This is like, Sarah has had so many bad days in this. So Sarah McCoy, the mom is freaking out. She leaves the house. She knows Alifair is dead. She knows Cal is dead. She knows it's all because her three boys are dead. And Uncle Crazy Uncle Jim hits her with his rifle and she passes out. She survives, but she's like laying in the snow all night because they have like a tactic number down their house. That's horrifying. And now they have to

get the Hatfields for doing this to the McCoy. So it's just like back and forth, back and fourth. Between 1880 and 1891, like the height of the feud, you know, over a dozen people died of the two families. So it's like a lot of people are dying because of this. There's a little battle called the Battle of Great Pine Creek to get the Hatfields arrested for the murder, and that involves more like actual law enforcement because the governor is really pissed. He's like, stop doing this. So they do go to trial, and August 24th, 1888, eight of the Hatfields and some of their co-conspirators are indicted for murder. It includes cats, Jonsie, Robert and Elliot Hatfield, Ellison Mounce, French Ellis, Charles Guseppe, and Thomas Chambers.

Most of them get life in prison, which doesn't mean life because they get out in a couple of years. Johnsey gets married four more times after the story ends. So a lot of them get to go out and live their lives. But Cotton Top gets sentenced to die because he's the one that killed Alifair. So this is a big deal. This is the thing that's in the paper. People come from all over. there's like thousands of people that come to watch this this poor boy get hung get hanged for he's the one who's not all there yes and it's a big deal like people get get hanged all the time in this area but nobody had officially been hanged by the government in 40 years and it would never happen again after this because it was just so awful so poor cotton top is taken to the gallows on a wagon sitting on top of his own coffin they take him from the jail yeah from the jail

to the gallows they there's a picture there's like one photograph of it they um string him up his last words are the hatfields made me do it and he is a hatfields that's the last thing he yells because he knows that like cap told him to do it and he didn't really know what was going on and he killed alifair so he's he's hanged it's in the paper all these things and this is like sort of the end because it was so awful about it was it like was it did his neck not break no no not not not not like the hanging itself, but like the fact that after this murder of like women and children and they like attacked and burned down the McCoy house that like after that the justice was like hanging a person who was not all there, it just like got gross, you know? People were just like upset. And it's sort of the spot in the in the miniseries as well where they're like it kind of gets boring after this because they kind of are like, whoa, we really have done a lot. We should calm down. Like people are like need to recover. Like the McCoys needs to rebuild their house. Like, the Hatfields are all in jail. They need to, like, recover.

Everyone is tired. Most of the aggressors are in prison or dead. And so that's how it kind of, like, peters out. So really the highlights were those, like, the McCoy's being, boys being killed in the woods. And then the McCoy house being burnt down. And the two men live for a long time. Devil Ants doesn't die until 1921. He dies at the age of 81 of pneumonia.

Randall dies at 88 after getting burned from a cooking fire. So he doesn't even die of old age. He dies of burns. In the miniseries, there's like this scene that's incredible where Bill Paxton now has a white beard and white hair. And he's burning, he's like in his PJs and he's burning a bunch of like new sippers and pictures of his family and drinking whiskey and it gets out of control. And that's how his house burns down. But everything else is it's a cooking fire. he dies for a fire and today there's still Hatfields and McCoys living in the same place

like there's still people there there have been a few public truces most recently in 2003 in the wake of 9-11 Rio Hatfield is one of the Hatfields there and some McCoys sign a truce along with 60 members of both families and this is the quote they say when they are signing the truce they say we ask by God's grace and love that we forever be remembered as those that bound together the hearts of two families to form a family of freedom in America.

We're not saying that you don't have to fight because sometimes you do have to fight but you don't have to fight forever. That's nice. Yeah. That's it. I'm sorry. So 9-11 is what brought this to a conclusion. Yeah, because they were like,

we can't be fighting inside America. We have enemies. And I guess, I mean, it could have any of the World Wars. whatever they did it yeah there's been a lot of other situations where america's been attacked pearl harbor is a big one i know i don't know that's what they did that's what they did most recently hey so where where do i find the miniseries what is that on it's on netflix okay perfect yeah it's called hatfields and mccoy's three episodes it's fun a lot of shooting a lot of great accents i love that stuff so much i think the longer i've been in texas moving back the more

to what I've gotten. It's just it's old-timey every like I was even like when you were talking. I was like they should create a new category of serial killers, which is like families. Like it's not like one person necessarily killing people in succession. It's like this one family just had this like blood, but these two families had this bloodlust and they really executed on it. Yeah. So many people died. So many people were like permanently injured, you know. And it's like a time when you know it's in during a civil war you know if they shot in the leg they cut off your leg and you probably died from blood loss you know it's not like the height of of medicine either so a lot of people yeah just getting hurt and hurting each other because their feelings are hurt

because you know they think they were betrayed in some way it's like when you tell someone to like calm down because they're like that guy said something to me and they won't calm down and you're like who cares but like escalated times a bajillion but how did you come up with how filled McCoy's like what was the impetus for that I think I I don't remember I was thinking about I don't even know what did I do last week I think I was just I don't know I don't know I don't know where they came from I have like a list of ideas and I kind of go through it sometimes and then I'll be like oh what about this and then I just whatever so I started this two weeks ago because I had to read I had to read a book and watch a miniseries so what's the red flag well I think they in the book they specifically say

the red flag is when when Randall McCoy disowned his daughter for being with johnsy like that was like a no turning back point and it's like the red flag is like these injustices these perceived injustices some of them obviously are real because people died like to escalate to just madness so you just like get so angry that you can't do anything but do but like avenge it and that's like also like if you're in mccoy don't marry half fields yeah just don't i was going to say like that's probably the biggest takeaway for me is like if your families in a feud and they yeah you know that they kill each other regularly yeah why pour gas on that like oh my god like Romeo and Juliet exactly you're both going to die you idiots

don't do that there's tons of other people wild wild stuff wow well I'm gonna go ahead and transition us over to the true crime part of our day right I'll get some gutter water to drink you'll understand I don't have gutters I will tell you the names of these people and I want you to Google them because you look at their pictures and you're just like fucking dirt animals. Like they're just garbage trash humans that like obviously are Florida based or not Florida based actually, but like the crimes were in Florida. It's like whatever. They just fit a certain I'm actually like the red flag here is specifically about this relationship where it's like if you know if a person you're dating is sewage water personified like just don't. And then he's

like I have a plan to get us rich. Just don't listen. Maybe it's just fun. Maybe just a fun dude that you hang out with. Maybe you ride the back of his motorcycle. Like, fine, do that. But like, if there ever comes to this time where you're scheming or drafting plans, that's when you cut bait and run. That's definitely fair. Don't, don't scheme. Yes, yes. So, well, I was going to, I'm segueing too far into it. I'm going to start with the outline and then we'll talk away through this. So I will say this past week has been rather interesting so it's been conference season in the political tech land and so last week i attended one that was in austin and i have another one in denver and then the following one in palm springs where i

hopefully get to see you and i kind of feel terrible saying in this but a fun thing also happened last week in the middle of all these conferences which was this renewed interest in an austin serial killer well like let's not say renewed so like more so initially there was initial suspicions that Austin had a serial killer and now more more people are getting mom saying yes there is like like right now right now like we're living in this moment right now which is like I shouldn't be so excited about it I know it's exciting had families and God love them but it is kind of awesome to be in the middle of it unless I'm a victim but apparently so between 2008 and now about 30 men in their 20s to 40s have been pulled from what is now

called ladybird lake it used to be called town lake basically it's that iconic lake in the middle of central austin that people paddleboard on uh-huh the police aren't really saying much which is they're just basically saying these are drunk accidental drownings yeah no but this face just yeah with this facebook group that popped up like all these people are like they know these people and like no i was with him that night he wasn't drinking or somebody's in there is like my son doesn't swim he can't swim he's terrified of water he would never willingly go into water never yeah So this this Facebook group just like exploded in popularity, which is I'll invite you to it.

I feel like you'd really get a kick out of it or Blair. I mean, Blair's probably already in it because it is the biggest thing in Austin right now. Whoa. They just cost a serial killer in New York who was drugging men at gay bars and stealing from them. And they would, a lot of them would die. So apparently there's a whole theory around this. So yeah, at first I was going to discuss the, serial killings and all these deaths that are going around it i ended up going down this rabbit

hole of what's called the smiley face murder theory have you heard of this for yeah so i'll give the brief summary which is this theory that was put forth by several law enforcement professionals and professors involved in criminal justice where they've documented all these deaths deaths of seemingly able-bodied men in their 20s to 40s, found dead in bodies of water. And they theorized that there's approximately 45 deaths across 11 states that fall into the category of Smiley-Face murderers. Yeah. Which is like such an awesome concept.

The term smiley face comes from graffiti smiley faces that are found near some of the bodies, and they think that that's basically the killer trying to troll law enforcement. and they did find in these killings yellow graffiti sorry we don't know what they are we're calling the maximal drownings near where some of these bodies were recovered the police did find yellow graffiti smiley faces on the pavement but it could have been someone trolling right it could have been

it might not even be the killer it could be just it also could have been i definitely looked up i feel like i read something about it where it's like it could also be just like a coincidence yeah you could also be you know but like also like I don't know how many coincidences you need for it to like be a thing but they're like you know there's if you if you're looking for smiley face graffiti you're going to see it that's fair you know but also like it could be more than one person there's so many fun things that could be fun as in like you know what I mean that's why the smiley face murder theory is like really interesting because it would either denote one really really clever serial killer or like a tag team network of serial killers, which is like, that should be a movie. That should definitely be a movie. So I was going to cover all this. That's what I was going to do for this week's episode, but the problem is all these victims show up as accidental drownings. We know some details about their death or like theories around them because again, people hung out with the,

they're all in this group. They're all like talking about. They're like friends. But again, like the police aren't saying anything of this moment. They're basically like, no, accidental deaths, but like they're doing it delivery, right? Like they're trying to not release information to the public so when they do catch someone it's like this was not public how did you know this you know yeah exactly one of those things so because all these deaths are right now only officially considered accidental there's really no red flaggy part of this i would really just only be doing it out of curiosity of a true prime phenomenon that's going on right now so i guess like the only red flag here is like just don't go near bodies of water when you've been roofied or

if you're wasted. So I went a different direction. I went with another curiosity of true crime that is exceptionally rare women on death row. So as of right now, there are 2,364 men on death row. Taylor, guess that was my dog shaking. I did not fart. Just everybody knows. I feel I have to call this out now. Taylor, I heard the dog. Thank you. Taylor, guess how, many women are on death row i just gave you the number of men it's 2300 20 50 50 oh wait what's that percentage come out to what does the percentage of women hold on 2% so 2% of all people on death row or women so it's exceptionally rare to land on death row and be a woman so when women do get the death sentence their crimes are particularly

fucked up. It's interesting because the correlation between who gets the death penalty and who doesn't does have to do with race, but not in the way you might think it does. It actually boils down of the victim rather than the race of the perpetrator. So it doesn't matter if it's a white guy killing a white guy or a black guy killing a white guy. It matters that it's like a white victim that usually results in enforcement of a death penalty. So the other victim-related factor has do with how they were killed and where they were in society and whether they were part of a protective class in society. So think kids, the elderly, the mentally or physically infirm, like those all kind of factor into things. I'm going to get a lot more into what's called

aggravating factors here in a moment, but that's something key to know. The person I'm covering today, her name is Tiffany Cole, Taylor. Can I look at up? Yeah, go ahead. She might look for to you. C-O-L-E? Yeah. I don't know if she looks familiar. Okay. Maybe if I start telling the story, it'll start ringing a bell because her, what she did was, again, particularly fucked up. All right. Yeah, so Tiffany kind of checked all the boxes of who you shouldn't kill if you're trying not to get the needle.

In 2005, Tiffany would have been 24 years old. we don't know a ton about her childhood except that she was acquainted with her victims by way of her father and they grew up in South Carolina Tiffany and her father were neighbors of the victims that we're going to be discussing here in a moment

their names are Carol and Reggie Sumner so the Summers had planned because at this time they're living in South Carolina the Summers had planned to move to Jacksonville Florida and sell their house and in the middle of selling stuff away they actually sold their old car to Tiffany before they moved

they apparently had a really really good relationship because they also let it be known that if tiffany was ever in jacksonville to look them up they basically treated her like their granddaughter in many ways and just so you know the summers were in their 60s and not doing great health-wise they look very sweet she carol sumner looked at the smile on her face is so infectious yeah they really look like just like your typical old couple white couple yeah they seem happy they look very lovely yeah yeah yeah in april 2005 tiffany got involved with a guy whose name is kind of unfortunate it's michael jackson his name of the guy and yeah why would you do that you already knew like if there's a favorite with michael jackson it's over for everybody else yeah yeah yeah which which like for SEO purposes also just a terrible name that just didn't foresee how big SEO is going to be but heather locklear in high school poor thing really yeah oh my god feel so bad for her that's tough it sucked yeah but they were parents deliberately neighbor

heather right i know that's what i'm saying yeah yeah like this michael jackson parents didn't had not not heard of michael jackson yeah if i ever come if i mean when this podcast makes us famous you know there's so many farmers so consanganges around the world so many farmer so can sanders it'll be the hot the hot name on the list i know one baby boy list and a Erica's farmer, silkenstange, the whole thing, not just your first name. Yeah, I know. Your segment's going to have to expand into a lot more names that you should be using. So, yeah, this is April of 2005. Tiffany's now dating this guy, Michael, who's just fucking garbage. Like, I don't mean to be so elitist about this, but look at this guy. Look up Tiffany Cole and Michael Jackson,

because that's the only way you're ever going to find this guy because you're never going to find a Googling Michael Jackson. That's really funny. Wait, I'm going to do it with you, so I'm going to see what the first results are. because i'm still looking at nancy mccoy yeah i see i mean i see it he has a lot of us he keeps his sunglasses on his forehead oh god he just my number one note he just looks like he's so fucking he got garbage whatever doesn't matter again ride the motorcycle with this guy don't yeah yeah don't take investment advice from this guy right like he he is a type yes garbage, um, is the type. So in June of 2005, so two months after Tiffany and Michael got involved

with each other, Michael wanted to go down to visit his friend in Jacksonville, this guy named Wade, okay? So Tiffany takes the Summers up on their offer. If you're ever in Jacksonville, give us a shout. So she calls them, letting them know that they're going to be in town. The Summers let them stay at their home for a night. And I mean, they were just that couple, right? Like, you know what? When you get older and blue up, hey. Yeah, like you get older, people don't pay enough as much attention to you as they used to. And when somebody says they're going to come busy, you get all excited. And yay, it lets me your fucking chin strap bearded fucking Michael Jackson.

It's just, just to be, I mean, anyone, to be nice, I'd be like, sure. I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're nicer than I am, I think. But that was my chair. I think I had to call this out every single time I move now. So the Summers let them stay at their house and they made them breakfast. And during breakfast, they let them know for no reason in particular that they profited $99,000 on the steel of their home in South Carolina. That came out somehow organic or not.

So Michael and Tiffany move on with their Jacksonville trip and hang out with Wade. But it was after this experience that Michael concluded that they need to rob the Summers for the $99,000. Wow. Again, this, I'm just going to flag that this is like, I didn't know that this is elitism, but who in their right mind thinks that somebody has $99,000 of cash on them? Right. That's true. Wait, totally true. It's not like they, it's not like they sold their house and like, great, give it to me in one. I'm going to bring it home in a suitcase. Yes. But I mean, look at the guy's picture and then assume, that this guy is any better plan than there's fucking $9,000 under their mattress like book he that's the plan he

whatever I'm not oh my god no that's I I feel like I didn't get it that that's what I thought until you said that and I'm like oh he literally thinks that that money is there because I understand telling somebody that in that conversation you know this is like and this is like pre zillow but now that we have zillow you could figure that out you know like it tells you how much money people make so I know how much money you made from the sale of your house but yeah I don't assume that you have that cash in your car like I assume that that money is in a bank. Yeah, I was, um, this goes back to the elitism thing. I was like, are bank accounts a rich person only commodity?

They, there are definitely a lot of people, especially in like, probably in like more poor areas and big cities who are unbanked, which means they don't have a bank. And they don't, because they don't, they just like never had one. They don't have an available, available one or they do everything in cash or whatever, but there are there are a fair amount of unbanked people or how many this is the sound portion of our approximately 5.9 million people are unbanked so that's 4.5% of us households don't have banked at all yeah i would assume that that has something to do with like what's that term redlining where like you weren't allowed to like certain cities were set up in a way that they were like

yeah deliberately forced minorities into definitely and they wouldn't they wouldn't they they also don't have post offices, they don't have grocery stores, they don't have banks, right? But this guy's white, like, I don't, like, I mean, you see his picture, like, I don't know. I mean, he should, I mean, he just doesn't seem very smart. Yeah, and also the other thing I wrote here, like, again, like the elitism part of it is like, Michael came up, so later, we'll explain this later on, so Wade, the friend that they were visiting in Jacksonville, and then Wade's friend Nixon, we're also in on this plan to rob this elderly couple. they kind of put all this together on their own I I wrote here I was like I don't I don't like my friends are like you Taylor like I don't right if I was like hey let's go fucking knock over a feeble elderly couple like who do I ask that of like I have no yeah to do that with

this guy just tripping over them the first guy he sees after devised this plan fucking Wade and then Wade like hey not only am I down my buddy Nixon is also like super chill with this idea. Again, I don't have these thoughts in my mind, but it's just interesting that this guy just trips over three willing participants. Yeah. A minute after comes of this plan.

It's definitely a different circle than your circle. Did you ever watch The Good Place? Yeah. Remember how the one guy from Jacksonville, he died because he was trying to rob a store and they put him inside a safe to put in the store, but he brought a snorkel so he could breathe, but they didn't have anywhere to put the snorkel out so he suffocated.

I don't remember that. And that's how he died because him and his friends are trying to rob something and they were trying to sneak him in. That is a Jacksonville death. I will say that. Yeah. It just reminded me. So, yeah, I guess I need to. I mean, I feel like there's a portion of like how do you, he obviously like there, it's a, I don't think that Michael Jackson came from a place where he like had a lot of like access to education.

It sounds like, you know, and that can be like part of the tragedy too if you're like, pump with these ideas like aren't very good. literally no way in hell i can look at these pictures and look at that disgusting chin strap fucking ginger beard and oh so also 2005 stop trying to make excuses for this guy i'm making excuses well i know i'm just okay be fine what listen to what they did to this couple no i they're terrible people i'm not i'm not making excuses for all the terribleness okay so this stage so we got our four participants in this we have tiffany Michael, Wade, and Nixon. So this is when the planning gets involved with this party of four.

So part of the planning here will basically give away the end results, but I'll try to maintain some suspense here. Okay. Nixon was 18 of this time. Actually, Wade was also 18 of this time. Tiffany and Michael were the same age. They were both like 23, 24. So Nixon's job was to steal four shovels, not buy steel.

Tiffany was responsible for renting a car, which I don't even get, like, how would renting a car under your own name in driver's license obfuscate anything? I don't, I didn't see with the logic of it. It was just as good to drive her car that the summer sold her than to rent one. Right. Then the four of them went to find a remote location in Georgia right across the Florida border and dig a giant hole, basically. This part of a, uh, the country is terrifying. It is so hot. It's so humid. It's so full of mosquitoes and animals that you hear in the distance that you don't want to come across. It is terrifying. Oh my god, like alligators and snakes. Yeah, like in a moonless night like there's nothing like you see nothing. It is

just swamp. So anyways, they go to this location. They start digging the hole. The hole itself is four feet deep and six feet along all four sides of it. Okay. So that's the dimensions that we're talking about here, which like couldn't have been easy, right? Like that's a pretty damn big hole. I've been planting flowers and doing like a little. Well, I have, I'm also on like pure sand, but it's hard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's part of it where I was like, this had to take so long and you're like thinking to yourself like what's coming next like it's already been devised and there's no i don't know michael must have been just a complete charmer just convince these folks to do this so we're a month from when tiffany and michael first visited the summers so we're in

july now i'm going to get into the crime now and i want to replace that or preface that by asking you to oh you already did no mind this is a part of the podcast we're going to ask you to look up the summers just telling what you think but you did and yeah yeah so that and i think that that's also like why why wouldn't you talk is like let your neighbor kids sit at your house i would totally do that like if any of the kids i know in town right now in 10 years were like oh i'm back in town i'd be like oh my god stay here like i would never i just wouldn't think you know yeah i mean that was that's the part of the predation that Tiffany brings this equation that makes it particularly awful what ends up happening to them because she didn't know Michael or Wade or the Summers didn't know Michael

Wade or any of these guys like it was Tiffany who knew them and like brought this gaggle of morons into their lives man so on July 8th of 2005 the foursome drove to the Sumner's house and Tiffany and Michael parked outside while Nixon and Wade went up to that house they knocked on the door and asked they could use her phone Carol let her in despite being strangers she just saw two lost 18 year olds and wanted to help because that's the kind of person she was you just don't think that is this bad yeah uh once inside wade toward the phone cord from the wall and nixon held carol and reggie at gunpoint put him in the bathroom and then ducted them so that they were bound wade used a walkie-talkie to tell michael that

they were tied up and he made his way to the house while this was going on apparently tiffany drove the rental car around so it wasn't weird to just have someone sitting outside in the rental car The three guys ransacked the house looking for money, valuables, anything. $90,000 in cash. Carol and Reggie were then taken to their garage and put into the trunk of the Lincoln town car they owned. They're bound up still. Wade and Nixon drove the town car while Michael and Tiffany got in the rented car and started driving out to the place in Georgia where they dug the hole. Why?

That's the thing. Don't kill people. Like that's, not kill people. That makes no sense. Like, they could have just like left. Okay. Because, you know what it is, Taylor? It's because all these people think that they're not going to get caught.

But it's like, you're going to get caught. Cell phones. We have towers. We have cameras. We have people who care about people who, like, will call and look into things. And, like, anyways. So they then took Carol and Reggie from the, Lincoln Town Car and put them in

the Holy Doug alive and sort of shoveling dirt on top of them. What? Yeah. Okay. I just, when I was, you know, like, the joke is, like, when you were little, you thought that, like, quicksand and the Bermuda Triangle were going to be big problems and, like, they're not big problems. But I remember just being so fucking scared of being buried alive.

And there was, like, some, like, made for TV movie, maybe, that, like, happened when I was a kid. Like, they buried a girl alive. And, like, whatever. I was just, like, it was just, like, it's like my biggest fear so awful yeah i would i mean rightfully so i think yeah yeah this would remind me of that um do you remember the scene in casino where they beat joe pesci and her his brother with baseball bat in the cornfield then throw them alive into the hole it was basically that like except they didn't beat them they literally they were able they were well they were old and feeble so they couldn't really protect themselves but

they were just sitting in that this hole. They were duct tapes. They were duct tape. Fuck. So, spoiler alert, when the bodies were eventually found, they, and when they were found, it was discovered that there was dirt clogging their airways. Right. They drowned in dirt.

They literally died of being buried alive. I'm like, this is awful. I can't imagine how scary and awful because like yeah you see your wife is next to you I know it's like oh god so bad so sad yeah apparently Michael had originally devised a scheme where he was going to inject them with medication to kill them first well what was Michael he has doing to do that where was he going to inject first off does he know how to like where does you know what blood vessels are he doesn't know a bank account or does he even know where to find a blood vessel what do you know what to point to like like this is not the guy watched a bunch of movies and

then like oh just like induct them with something you don't know what that is like what could that even possibly be yeah but i mean look they had shovels like hit them in the head like anything anything is better than consciously being grown into a whole bound that you can't escape you're gonna kill them anyway like you have a little bit of like have a little bit of humanity while you're murdering this couple you assholes yeah because i also keep picturing it like actually like close my eyes and picture it and look at it from their perspective like not the summers perspective from yeah killer's perspective where it's like you're 18 and you have this couple in this hole and you're just like shoveling in this like moonless night like it's just

crazy like anyways that's terrible so fast-porting a couple of days after this event um the summer's daughter reported her parents missing to the police and only four days after the home invasion and murder police started noticing that some sums of money were being withdrawn from the Summers account. So I guess they finally did realize that money wasn't kept, you know, in the house. And apparently, like, they went and found, like, I don't know, bank information. So kudos them for that. To evade capture and any suspicion that something was going on, Michael called the police as Reggie.

He said, like, oh, we're fine. Like, we're just out of town for a little bit. Like, it's like, he didn't call the daughter because he didn't have the daughter's info. He called the police. And she would know, you know, I would know if, like, it was out of town for a little bit. wasn't my dad it was an 18 year old being like i'm fine like i don't know what the fuck did he too can you imagine what this guy's voice sounds like guy wanted him so bad he's like this specific type of douchebag that i particularly have disdain for again look at this guy's pictures anyways

uh apparently then they said they want to talk to carroll and so michael handed the phone to tiffany and tiffany pretended to be carroll so that was their that was their game plan that's awful the police were obviously suspiciously this does not sound like a 60-something year old couple like this is obviously kids so they use a cell tower thing the peeing concept to triangulate where this call was being originated from uh they also bounced the number that was called in from off rental car companies and discovered that tiffany had rented a car for like during this time period so the police assess that okay it's gonna be from like this region of the city because cell tower data isn't precise right they just gives you a rough approximation so please drive around they know what the

car is that she rented and then they look for that in in this area and they find find them so they were all hold up in a hotel while michael michael wade and um tiffany were hold up in a hotel and there they found all the summers info like the shit that they sold from their house basically so obviously they had enough at this point to arrest them nixon was the only one with the decency to plead guilty he was only 18 and really like the least involved in any of this way just sort of dragged him into it michael and wade were found guilty of second two counts of first remurder and given two death penalty death sentences each tiffany was convicted of four counts of first remoder two counts of kidnapping and two counts of robbery and she also got two death sentences but they tacked on stuff to you right

it's like 15 years for the kidnapping it was like who cares you got the death sentence like it doesn't matter right I went down a bit of a legal procedural rabbit hole here because the death penalty in general just fascinates me and the cases are really, really interesting. So in death penalty cases, there are mitigating and aggravating circumstances when deciding on the appropriate punishment. For example, a mitigating circumstance could be, hey, here's history of emotional and sexual abuse. This person was on the tail end of growing up, maybe factor that in when you decide how bad of a person he turned out to be. Or an aggravating circumstance can be things like the manner of death or your previous

charges or like other elements that are like, oh, this makes it so much worse. Well, you counter these two. Right. Mitigating versus aggravating decide whether or not a death sense makes sense. And I remember this from living in Florida at the time when this case was going on. To Florida is one of the few states where you did not need a unanimous vote for death. you need a majority vote for death. Yeah.

So very unique. On the aggravating circumstance when it comes to a manner of death that they look at, there's a concept called hack, H-A-C, which stands for heinous, atrocious, or cruel factors. So, again, because it's the law, all these things get further defined. So heinous literally means, within the legal framework, means extremely wicked or shockingly evil. atrocious means outrageously wicked and vile and cruel means

pitiless designed to inflict a high degree of pain or utter indifference to or the enjoyment of the suffering of others so because of the manner of death that happened to the Summers Tiffany Case obviously qualified for hack aggravators because it was just an insanely cruel way

to kill somebody basically yeah Tiffany on appeal said that the hack aggravators were incorrectly applied to her case because she didn't have actual knowledge of how the team, the three other guys, were going to kill the Summers. She didn't, she was like, yeah, I brought, I made all this happen because I brought them to the Summers, but I didn't know this is what they're going to do. The Appellate Court agree with Tiffany's argument because nobody could prove she designed or had any hand in how the summoners were killed. But the court also concluded that if the hack aggravators were struck,

it wouldn't change any, it wouldn't make a difference. She'd still, like, it wouldn't, like, because apparently she, I went, when read her, um, the, uh, appeals motion followed by her lawyers, and Tiffany had seven aggravators, hack was only one of them. So the other aggravators that she had were having previously convicted, being convicted of another capital felony because legally, like, one, one die, they didn't die at the same time because, like, you can't prove any of that. So, like, because one was after the other, it's sequential order, she was already convicted of a capital felony, even though it was the same murder, right?

Oh, my God. The murders were committed in the course of a kidnapping, which she did get 15 years for, so though she was convicted of that. The capital felonies were committed in a cold, calculated, and premeditated manner. definitely that they were committed for financial gain definitely that they were committed to avoid or prevent a lawful arrest because they the assumption was we'll kill them and then nobody will know we did this right right and the one I mentioned to you before the very top of this was the victims were particularly vulnerable vulnerable due to advanced age or disability so that's a big

aggravator right there it's like you took advantage of the weakest of society like you deserve the worst of society what are um what are these pictures of them like in a limo drinking champagne was that after they yeah that was after this yeah yeah yeah such garbage humans like he believes very two people alive and you're like oh here i'm i'm in a limo drinking champagne like being part of myself fuck you oh my god they're like holding cash in this limo yeah she has she she's holding cash in her teeth and michael's flashing a champagne it's like what you did to people's just fucking yeah reprehensible wow you're so proud of yourself i know look how proud of themselves they are yikes yikes god anyways just looking at this guy's picture makes

so fucking angry this is a terrible story this is terrible there's a part of me that like maybe i'm so prejudiced towards a guy and i hate him so much that it's clouding my judgment i mean would any girl get fooled by this guy that like he's going to come up with a plan like that like it's the it's like i feel like the whatever like he's just like a certain type of guy in 2005 like that's not that's not it i think the the plan thing is like yeah nobody you know is a mastermind criminal yeah you know what i mean especially not this guy and you're not going to just stumble on them like you're going to recruit a team like oceans 11 right like you have to go find these people in Paris and Italy. They've done it before and they've never been caught before. You're not going to

stumble on, you know, this peer group in Jacksonville. Anyways. So long story short, so the the fact that the appellate court reason that look, we'll strike the hack, but you already, you have six other aggravators that on their own would never made a difference to your case. Like we would have, you still would be here. So we strike one of your aggravators. So legally, she won that argument but they reaffirmed the sentence and the conviction so she's still on death row wow yeah yeah all three of them nixon's the only one who kind of got out of it because he keep was just a stupid kid and didn't just listen to like he was already the momentum was already in motion with or without him so that's why they kind of um yeah i'm still looking these pictures of a couple they're so sweet

looking poor things they just were like normal people who trusted their neighbor because why wouldn't you and then this yeah that picture of her in that great jumpsuit with the with the um cornrose it like yeah she looks like weirdly sinister in that one yeah that one's a lot anyways that's my storyteller it sucks it's awful but yeah they only killed how so when how do they find them like like obviously like it was really easy but what was it like yeah they yeah they went to the hotel because they try and live because they knew when they called the police least to say, y'all are looking for us, we're fine. But it's like this guy calling you. Like he doesn't sound, yeah, he doesn't sound like a 65 year old man who's probably chain spoke his

entire life. Like, and then Carol is just Tiffany on the phone. Like, of course it just, they're probably giggling to each other while they're doing this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, totally. They totally are. They're so proud of themselves. Like, oh my God, we're so smart. I can't believe we're going to get away with us all this money that we stole. They've tried to do limo. It's so dumb. oh my god i just realized that michael has a neck tattoo oh man and he's wearing a he's wearing a ruby in gold pinky ring why would you look that is really funny dating advice by far is literally just look at this guy and if the guy you're with gives you any of the same same vibes like get away from them that's fair that's fair and you're

not dating a criminal mastermind they're so hard to find They're so hard to find. They're incredibly hard to find. Because of criminal masterminds. Yeah. They don't need your help. It's like when, what you tell children about strangers, as you say, like, a grown-up will never need a child's help. So if a grown-up comes to you and says, like, how do I get here?

Like, be weary because grown-ups don't need help from children. Like, that's how people kidnap children. It's the same thing. Criminal mastermind doesn't need your help. Yeah. You know, like, they have their own network. It's not you. they're not going to call you it would ask you for things i feel like this was like totally

unrelated but like there's this story of like this guy in ireland who had convinced all these people that he was like a big like spy at all these things and he did all these weird things for him because he just like believed him but you're like he wouldn't be there he wouldn't be in your small town it's not where criminal masterminds are yeah you know a part of me thinks that like if this didn't happen if michael and tiffany hadn't met Tiffany probably wouldn't have gone this route. But I think that Michael would have. I think Michael was just like such a piece of garbage that like he he'd be in jail right now anyways. Like you don't matter of that self confidence. Yeah. Yes. When your confidence doesn't match your wit and intelligence, you are

fucked. Yeah. That's just always how it's going to go. And Michael, I don't know. I mean, it also describes like Elon Musk. Elon Musk is a billionaire a hundred times over... But he has a lot of self-confidence and makes a lot of weird decisions. How are you classifying this guy and Elon Musk in the same breath? I don't know. What would Elon Musk be like if he had to poor? Maybe this guy. No, Elon Musk is a genius.

This guy probably doesn't even know how to tie his shoes. What would this guy be like if he was rich? He couldn't get rich because he's too stupid-looking. No, Elon Musk isn't rich because he was rich because he was rich. from the beginning. That wasn't. He started the PayPal Mafia with Peter Thiel and all those guys. No, he was the CEO.

He's the heir of an emerald mine in Africa. That's not how he got rich. He got rich because he invented him and Peter Thiel invented PayPal. But he started off a lot higher than this guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then most knew what a bank account was. He probably knew what a bank account was. He probably knew that you shouldn't eat roadkill unlike this guy.

So that's true. Yeah, you got me there. It's a little bit of a different level. Yeah. Yikes. Yeah, no, this guy sucks. I know I didn't kill anybody else. I wonder what he's, I'm going to, I'm going to look up with this guy's been up to. He's so hard to find.

It's like impossible to find. That is a pretty great. That part's pretty great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, parents who named me Michael Jackson for fuck sake. Yeah, oh, fuck this kid. We don't want them anyways.

Like you didn't know by SEO when he was born, but still. Yeah, he's going to grow up to have a chin strap, a neck tattoo, and a row. ruby gold oh god pinky rings so also imagine what your life is like every time you go somewhere and they say what's your name

and you have to say Michael Jackson I don't know man my name was Farmar Soken Sanger he had it easier than me no uh uh having a name Michael Jackson I think it's harder than Farmer Socan Sange you think

which is the number one baby name in America I just looked it up Farmer Soken Sangeros Number one baby name coming to Oh my God she's wearing a shirt That says diva in the back of this limousine

that's also for 2005 I'm a little bit of a 2005 apologist because it wasn't great for everyone looked great you were going out of your way to find reasons to defend these monsters I'm just trying to counteract

your stereotyping I'm saying everyone dressed terrible in 2005 so my stereotyping is a problem here is what you're saying yes I'm trying to be a little more PC on our podcast okay

it's like we've been frowning so much the past hour I feel like would you look so eyes on my face to get my face to look normal again

so I've just been so mad and sad I hope I don't have nightmares not being buried alive tonight it is the ultimate nightmare there's like literally nothing worse I can't think of anything you could do someone worse and binding them

and throwing them alive into a pit on the Georgia Florida border. That sounds exactly where people are buried alive. Like it is so bad.

Okay, that stereotype I laugh at because yes. Oh, that's awful. I'm so sad. God, I hate this guy. I got something in this picture. I'm gonna hear you. Okay.

Taylor, that's my story for the week. And that's why, like I mentioned, our drink of the day was drinking fucking raw sewage water because that's what these humans were. So. Oh, I have champagne glasses in a limo that you rented.

I just saw your text from last night about starting later, but I was already asleep. Oh, it's fine. It's fun. I thought I was going to take a lot more for me to wake up this morning than I really did. I've been up since like 7 a.m. my time. Oh, good for you. Good for you. Cool. Well, thank you, Fars. Thank you everyone who's listening. Find us on social at Doom to Fail Pod. We're on YouTube. For reviewing on Apple Podcasts, you have to download the podcast app on like your iPhone or your Mac. and then you can find us there and then there's like a star rating and a place to leave a review. Should we shout out Juan? Oh, his app?

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's nice of you. My husband, Juan, just made an app for mental models. He's super into like thinking about better ways to think and ways to, he's been having a newsletter that goes out weekly that has mental models in it to help become a better thinker. And now he has an app. It's called mental models. It has like thousands of mental models in it.

You can search around and see like what will help me with my? like psychology will help me with decision making you can save your favorites it has dark mode it's super cool he made it himself he also has yep it's called mental models by one carlos pinero no because he had another name on there and i was like where did this where do this like fourth name come from anniversary that scoriasa it's a it's a thing in in puerto rico that you can take your mom's last name so escoriasas his mom's last name so his mom's last name is won carlos pinero a Scoriasa, just like my kids could choose to be, like, Pinero Sterec later. Got it.

Got it. Okay. Yeah. So look it up. It's a great app. I downloaded it. And if you're even remotely interested in how to think more effectively and efficiently and you have like a particular drive towards that, then this is, I mean, I've learned

so much just like going through it. Oh, that's awesome. 10. 10 recommend. So. Awesome. Yeah. Cool.

Thanks, Jerry. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you, Taylor. Have a great rest of your Saturday. And thanks everyone for us.