Doomed to Fail - Ep 23: Fictitious and Real Monsters: Mary Shelley & The Cheshire Murders

Episode Date: June 5, 2023

This week Taylor goes back to the Gothic tale of Mary and Percy Shelley. There’s a lot of poetry, free love, and that odd ‘poor but rich-poor’ way of traveling around Europe. There’s also so much sadness, many babies that never got to grow up, dreams that never came true, and a string of broken hearts. But also Frankenstein! It’s a story about a man who gave humanity science that quite possibly humanity doesn’t deserve. (We’ve been through this with the Curies!) Farz delves into the randomness of life to tell the story of the murders of the Petit Family in Connecticut - The Cheshire home invasion murders. When two criminals see the Petit family at a store they follow them home and commit the most atrocious crime. It’s ‘In Cold Blood’ all over again - but this time, the police had a chance to save the family, and 110% failed.  We’re doomed.https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpodYoutube - https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpodSo my main source was the book Mary Shelley by Miranda SeymourShelley’s in the public domain Petit family from Today, OprahLinda Hayes - from The New Haven Register Joshua Komisarjevsky - from the AP  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 a matter of the people of the state of California, first is Hortonthal 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. Welcome to due to fail. We discussed two doomed to fail red flaggy relationships, one historical, one true crime. I'm Farr's joined here by Taylor. Hi, Taylor.

Hello. Taylor's had a really, really busy morning, and she has a really busy. After this, there was the kids baseball game or softball game that she... T-ball, yep, the last T-ball game of the season. And then she has a piano recital to get to. And then a lot of wine to hopefully drink later tonight when the kids are asleep. A hundred percent. Yeah, that's a lot.

It's also my birthday weekend. Do you know my birthday's on Monday? No, Facebook didn't tell me. I'll tell you, I'll tell you, like, on the day. Okay, that's not helpful. I know. What do you have planned besides all this stuff that you're doing with the kids? I know, exactly. I was going to ask if I could take a nap tomorrow like most of the day. Solid present. It's all of a gift that you're giving yourself.

I was trying to game plan out our Halloween activities because we got a sort of thing about this like now. And I was going to message you and Jay and ask if there's any interest in going to Halloween Hornanites in Orlando this year. I just made a Florida face. I know, but the one in the one in Orlando is so much better than the one in L.A. I know. I'll think about it. Yeah. I'll message about it too.

It sounds fun. It sounds fun, but it's like, part of me is like, they got a wedding like the next month, like, where they really going to want to, like, travel, you know, on like one weekend that they don't have to. So, TPD. But yeah, we can go ahead and kick things off. And Taylor, you know, I had a night last night. I don't remember who goes first with the, I think I do. You go first?

Okay. Yeah. So I need to tell you a drink, and I don't have a drink. So we're going to have to brainstorm this together in real time together. What did you drink last night? I had bourbon, but I only have like one glass of bourbon, and then I drank red wine. What would happen if you mix red wine with bourbon? Would that be good?

I have had cocktails that have like a splash of wine in them, but there's not like a mixing them together. I feel like someone would have done that if it was good. I did I was thinking about yesterday because of I don't know why as a sushi restaurant someone was doing sake bombs and that reminded me of you I don't know we've never done a socky bomb but I was like I don't know I just was thinking maybe because of the the um that one thing with the Guinness and the Sambuca on top that is a weird synchronicity because I was looking at a place called Texas Saki bar to go to this weekend because it looks kind of fun and kind of cool nice fine do Saki I'll do Saki yeah. Great. Yeah, that's my drink. I have sake in the fridge. Perfect. Wow, you're really prepared.

Yeah, well, at the restaurant we have, like, your second bottle, like, little bottles of sake is half off, and then I just like take it home. Okay, yeah, that's fun. That's fun. So, yeah, I'll do sake for my drink, which has nothing to do with location or the events I'm going to be discussing, but that'll be my drink. Cool. Love it. So for my drink, we're drinking absent. And have you ever had absinth? Oh, yeah. I don't know why. I bothered that. not because it was a drink that was drunk during this time because my story is in the late 1700s and absinth actually came to France around 1840 so they didn't drink absinth in the story but we're drinking it because it's green have you had absinth yes okay it's fun it's like a ritual it's like a fun thing to make like yeah yeah I like licoricey things too so yeah so but actually I think it tastes terrible but I think it's fun that have because you like have the cube the sugar cube right you put it over it and like yeah it's just it's just fun it's like a fun little ritual yeah i've been drinking moscow which is like tastes terrible but also i like it's weird yeah i just had a mescal margargarita i was like mescal is fine on you don't you don't need to read mescal it makes it worse yeah

totally um anyway we're drinking green absinth because we're talking about the mother of the monster and her free loving poet of a husband mary and percy shelley yes nice yeah So I, my main source was a book, the book Mary Shelley by Miranda Seymour. It took me like a month to listen to it, but I listened to the whole thing. And it was very good. And then, you know, Wikipedia and chat GPT and all of that. But I want to lay out our red flags. I don't think you're going to miss them.

But here's what they are. They eloped when she was 16, but he was already married and his wife was pregnant. And he also wanted her to sleep with all of his friends. And he wanted to sleep with her friends. and he definitely slept with her sister. So. Wow. That's an accomplished man.

Yeah. Yeah. No. Not great. So yeah. So those are the red flags. We'll get into them as we go. So so much of this story is taken from Mary's letters and journals and Percy's

letters and Claire, her sister's letters. So you have to kind of take their writing and know that it's edited. So you could like literally burn things and no one would ever see it again. You know, it's like a real disposable time. So it's really like what they wanted us to know. And also, I think I've said this before, but like, imagine if someone wrote your life story off of your journals and emails, you could isolate times in your life and make a great fucking story. So I want to, so I was thinking like, for example, my senior year of high school was wild. I had a punk rock boyfriend who was a drummer.

Then I had some like friends that like, you're like potentially like hooked up. It was weird. Then I went on a date with a dude in a boy band and we didn't hit it off. so introduced me to another boy band member, and we dated for a while. Then I went to Germany and met a guitar player who was, who I very recently found a picture of him and looked up up on Instagram, and within five minutes sending him a message, he sent me back a picture of us from then, which was super cute. And then also B, I wrote A, B in Germany, I was camping with my friends in the woods.

And like, this dude was just like in the woods. And he was Dennis. And he was like, I have the same dreams as you. And it was like, I don't know, I was an idiot. But it was like, but we were like super excited and I was like, this is crazy. And then I went home. and my boy band boyfriend was still there and then also then I went to college I'm just like Jesus Christ you can make any of that in two an hour and a half long movie and I think it'd be really good yeah you accomplished a lot of boy band people huh yeah pleasure thing I mean when is it not anyone's thing yeah I did buy guitar at one point and I learned how to play Oasis underwall for like three minutes and and I was like this is the way you get girls and it didn't work.

I've already warned Florence, I'm like, Florence, the first boy that picks up a guitar and sings brown-eyed girl to you. You're in trouble. Yeah, there you go. Yeah. So anyway, there's fun. So this is just like experts from her life, but I feel like it tells the whole story, but also just like, you could tell a full story out of like any time in your life. You can read a full story about our time at Nation Builder, you know, and like end it. It ends in a death, you know, like that's been cool.

You could have made that a good story. So I also Oh recently threw away all my journals from high school Because they were like just really stupid But also like could they have been a gothic romance? And then I wrote they weren't because it was the 90s So it was not got a romance So anyway

Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley Was born on August 30th 1797 in London Her mother Mary Wollstonecraft died 11 days after she was born And you know how she died? This is so gross She didn't dive Sepsis. I mean, I don't know exactly what Seppis says, but she died on an infection that she got because the doctor's hands were dirty. So gross.

So gross. It's so horrifying and gross and awful. So Mary never met her mother. Her mother was actually a famous writer on her own. So her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, was considered one of the founding voices of modern feminism. She wrote about women's education, marriage, and status. she wanted more of like a free love situation so do whatever you want which was a lot for the 1700s she also was you know she had a baby out of out of wedlock she's kind of like you know just doing

whatever she wanted to do and also just to put in like time frames this is the late 1700s so we're in like capham the great time mutiny in the bounty time oscar wild kind of ends up in the story much later he's the neighbor of mary's and percy's son so cool it's like where we are in history Okay. So some of the notable works of Mary's mother, Mary, she was a vindication of the rights of women, which said that women should have the same rights as men, which were still fighting that fight, and that was in 1792. Taylor, is your version of feminism considered not okay anymore? What's my version of feminism? You know when you told me how, like, you like to wear makeup and pretty dresses and these other women were like, you're not a good feminist because you should like shave your head and wear flannel or something? I forgot what it was, but it was like, I like it.

They're being real bitchy. My version of feminism is do whatever the fuck you want and be able to have the opportunity. But is that considered okay still? I don't know. Okay, it's so hard to keep up with what it's okay now. I know. I have no idea.

Sorry to do you go. Yeah. No, good question. I'm not sure. But Mary Wilsoncraft continue to influence future generations of feminists. And this is what Mary Shelley was kind of like living up to. So you don't know your mother. but you have these books that she wrote that were published you have her journals you have her letters so like who do you think your mother was and how do you live up to that so that's a big part of Mary Shelley's story um her father was William Godwin he was a little bit of a bumble butt so he was a philosopher a novelist political theorist he wrote books about political justice he owned a bookstore in London and he was literally always in debt like he never made enough money to keep his family secure he was always like

chasing the next pound or whatever, like he just was never, never secured. He was an eccentric who, like, really was, like, into these, like, kind of, like, liberal political ideas. Aaron Burr, do you know what Aaron Burr is? Yeah, yeah, he shot, um, Hamilton? Yeah, Hamilton. So after all that happened, he kind of, like, escaped to Europe, and he stayed with, with them for a while. So, yeah, which is weird. So he, like, there's, like, some famous people that kind of come in and out of her life in a weird way. I didn't write this down, but later, like, much later, like, one of her girlfriends, like, hooks up with Lafayette when he's old. So, like, we've talked about him before. So, like, that, you know, that happens.

So William Godwin, her, Mary Shelley's father, married a woman named Mary Jane Claremont later after his wife died. So the household was William and Mary Jane, the parents. Fanny Imlay was Mary Wilsoncraft's illegitimate daughter with an American businessman that she met before Godwin. So Mary had his older half-sister who her father was out in the picture and her mom was dead. So Fannie, but they adopted Fannie into the family. And there's Mary. And then Mary Jane brought in two children from her first marriage, Claire and Charles, and then they had baby William. So it's kind of like the Brady Bunch. Right.

Mary and Claire are very, very close in age, and they have a really insane relationship that we'll get to. So that's her step-sister. So now for Percy, Percy Bish Shelley, was born on August 4th, 1792, which makes him five years older than Mary. His father, Sir Timothy Shelley, was a member of Gentry, and he was a squire. had some Shelley family estates, so they were like pretty well off the Shelley's. He was known for his conservative and traditional

values, and so I wrote AKA he was unamused by his son's shenanigans. So Yeah, what is conservative back then? God, must be like insane. Yeah. So Bridget. Yeah. So

Percy's mother, Elizabeth Helfode Shelley was also very fancy. So Percy's like a bit of a dandy. They're lifestyle is like kind of confusing and like kind of bizarre so they're in a constant state like Percy and Mary and Mary's family are in a constant state of we're poor like we don't have any money but they're moving from like furnished house to furnished house you know they're like living in like these like big houses in Italy and in Florence and in Paris and in London so

they keep like moving around but they're never like homeless and they also always have servants So, like, she never cooked or cleaned. So it's like, we're super poor, but could you imagine not having servants? You know, like, okay. I mean, kind of reminded when I was in Ireland and you have all these castles that are still owned by the same families that were like bequeathed them from like generations ago. But like, yeah, you have a castle, but you can't afford it. So you have to open it up to the public and have them pay an admission fee to like be able to leave the lights on and turn the heat on. So like, maybe it was one of those like house poor things.

Yeah, totally. so well they didn't like own houses like rented houses around anyway percy is even he comes into the story because he wants to be a writer and so he goes to william godwin's bookstore and says i will be your benefactor if you teach me like some of your skills i will give you money and spoiler alert he never fucking does so like for the rest of his life and the rest of william godwin's life he's like give me money especially after you stole my children and percy he's like no he never does percy is married to a woman named harriet westbrook they got married in 1811 they eloped when harriet was only 16 years old pattern and they had two children together she was pregnant with a second children child when he left her from mary so he's always like never percy's never been like a faithful dude his Wikipedia says he was in an intense platonic relationship with someone else which is hilarious and you know so he's like but he's like he thinks of himself was like a romantic guy, you know?

Like, he's super into, like, he's into Mary Wilson Craft's, like, free love stuff. He's like, you know, let's all just, like, be happy and whatever. So another question I have for you is, are you, are you a poetry person? I'm laughing. I wrote, I feel like no, but like, I don't know,

maybe you have a secret, like, for poetry. It's almost like we've never met. I know. Well, I thought I would just see, make sure. Okay, I'm going to read you a little bit of Percy's poems. So you can get an idea of what this Jude is like. This is an excerpt from Ode to the West Wind. O wild West Wind, thou breath of autumn's being, thou from whose unseen presence the leaves dead,

are driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, yellow and black and pale and hectic red, pestilence stricken multitudes, oh thou who chariotest to the dark, dark wintry bed, the winged seeds where they lie cold and low, each like a corpse within its grave, until thine as your sister of spring shall blow that's so you know it's flowery yeah i guess i would describe it that way how else would you describe how it just it's like it sounds luxurious like somebody who has never had to like worry very much about anything in life exactly right that's exactly right yeah like the internet was like you know emotional attention intensity vivid imagery blah blah whatever it's not the coal miner's daughter you know like it is it hits a

note but not like one that I love yes so Mary so now it's like 1810 1812ish percy is in the godwin's shop they met in 1814 when he came over there so she probably didn't know they had a pregnant wife but even if she did know from this from the poem and from this I know exactly what kind of guy Percy was. I'm sure he was like, oh, my wife is the worst and you're so pretty and blah, blah, blah, writing her poems, blah. So in 1814, they run away to France. They take Claire with them, which will always be a problem. Claire is the worst. I'm team Mary 100%. So Claire's her step-sister. So they're doing like weird, rich, poor. I read a while ago, I write a book where like there was, in this time, you would like bring a letter of introduction to a place. So I bring a letter that

be like, oh, well, not me because I'm a woman. I couldn't get a lot of credit. But a man would like bring a letter and be, you know, Fars is, you know, vouches for me. Here's a letter from Fars. And then someone would like credit me money when I went to a different place. So you have to like, kind of like. Yeah, but like very manual. So that's what they're doing. They go to France. Mary's already pregnant. So she's 16. She's already pregnant. Percy's still married to Harriet. Who's also pregnant. Just to say this now, Mary gets pregnant five times. and four of the babies die young, which is awful. They have one son lived to be about four or five, but then he died.

And their fifth child, a son is the only one who lived to adulthood. So they only had one child survive all the way, which is terrible. She doesn't sound like a great mom if all your kids are dying and there's no congenital defect. That's not her fault. All her kids are dying. It's the 1700s. Her mom died because the dirty doctor hands. Yeah, I guess that's true.

75% is like a lot it's a lot of kids to die yes it's awful it's it's higher than than average if 75% of the dogs I owned died like with like in three years like you gotta stop giving me dogs well yes that's that's definitely fair but it's also just like it's I think it's of the time I think it's high but she was like I don't know it's just there's a lot of disease I don't know you're defending it's fine it's not her fault she didn't kill her Babies. Yeah, it's a terrible thing to happen. I'm not telling her too much.

She didn't kill her babies. It's terrible. So Percy wants to have a commune, literally, and, like, he has her flirt with one of his friends, and he's like, you should talk up with that guy. You know, he wants to have, like, a lot of lovers and, like, all live together. They live in Italy for a while. They climb up Vesuvius, which is hilarious because I've also climbed Mount Vesuvius, and it's stupid. It's just, like, a trail around, and there's, like, nothing, and it's boring. The son William, like, he speaks Italian before anything else.

Already Percy and Claire are 100% sleeping with each other. But, like, maybe already doing it. But as soon as, you know, Mary starts, like, getting pregnant and he's, she's definitely sleeping with Claire, too. And Mary does not like, Claire. She hates her. She does not want her around. She's like, how can we get rid of her?

I'm just tired of her for following us. And Percy's always like, oh, no, let her stay. Of course. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, she's just like, is a hangar on her. It's crazy. So in 1816, they travel to Geneva to meet with Lord Byron, who's another poet.

Have you watched the show Ghosts? No. but Lord Barton is a pretty big name. Yeah, no, absolutely. Absolutely. So in the show, it goes, there's a British version and an American version, but I've watched the British one, but there's like a poet, and he's always like, oh, Byron, but he's like, he's exactly this kind of guy.

The ghost is like exactly this kind of poet, you know. But let me read to you a little bit of a Lord Byron poem. Okay. This one's called She Walks in Beauty. She walks in Beauty like the Night of Cloudless Climes and Starry Skies, and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes, thus mellowed to that tender light which heaven to Goddy day denies. One shade the more, one ray the less, had half impaired the nameless grace,

which waves in every raven tress or softly lightens over her face, where thoughts serenely sweet express, how pure, how dear their dwelling place. God, they're so infatuated with women, but like, man, they really don't want them to have rights. Like, it's weird. they don't they just want to like have women around but they don't like why would you bother yeah no you're right that was very pretty but yeah it's very pretty so it's much longer that was that was an excerpt of an excerpt but very pretty very romantic so this is the big trip this is the life-changing trip with a go to geneva one thing that happens is that Claire and Lord

Byron hook up and she gets pregnant so now Claire is pregnant from from Lord Byron I imagine it was a ploy by Percy to get them all to live together because he wanted to live with Lord Byron too. Like, sure, like, that's super romantic. They just, like, kind of like live in Geneva and could hang out, but they don't. They ended up, like, they never really together. Lord Byron just got her pregnant. Their daughter, Allegra, was eventually taken by Byron. And he ended up putting the Allegra in foster care, even though Claire wanted her back.

And Claire was really poor as she was a nanny around Europe, and Allegra died when she was four of malaria. And that was like, Lord Byron could have just given her to her mom into him. taking care of her so that sucks but so the other thing that happens on this trip to geneva is that mary starts writing a story which is a super popular story so it's a historical fact that it was a gloomy ass summer like there was no sun it was like rainy and everybody you know they're all writers here including clary was like not very great but frankenstein didn't come out of nowhere so there are many many versions of it she didn't just like write it in one day she like came up with the story on this trip but then she then she you know worked on it for a long time so it's called officially

frankenstein or the modern prometheus and you know how that joke is like frankenstein is like the monster or whatever i got wrong but you know what i mean frankestine no frankestine is the doctor yes so frankestine is the doctor so so the title is frankenstein the modern prometheus so So Frankenstein, the doctor, is the modern Prometheus in which he's giving society a technology that society does not know how to handle. And that's like what we saw with the curies too, because Prometheus, he stole fire from the gods and brought it to humans because being like, this could help you, but didn't see the unintended consequences of doing it. So giving humans fire gave them a choice to use it for good or evil. So that's what she had in her mind, like Dr. Frankenstein giving the world this ability to, like, reanimate and do you use it for good or to use it for evil. Is that the actual title?

Yes. Wow, that's weird. I never knew that. I know. Cool. I know. So it's a wild time to be alive, like I've said. So there's a couple of things happening also in the world.

Like, there's a thing called galvanism, which is using electricity to stimulate muscle contractions. People were, like, electrocuting dead frogs and, like, showing them jump. That had to be fun. That really had to be fun. Yeah. So that was like a thing in the world. There's also a lot of like, just like things happening in science and philosophy that are new. There's also the beginning of the industrial revolution.

So this is where we like, you know, really seeing like machines like becoming. So she knows that's happening. And also it's a really sad story. So there's also some like experiences of loss and grief and in Frankenstein as well. So Frankicine is published anonymously in 1818. She's only 20 years old when she when she published. That's crazy. yeah so 200 year spoiler alert let me tell you what friccine's about because it's not like the movies

and also incidentally she never got any money from any of the plays or acting out of that people did from the book which is lame well yeah because patent laws don't protect content but that's all that's that old no no even in her time there wasn't it wasn't a thing so it starts of a story of a man writing letters from the Arctic. So he's a like a man is in the Arctic and he is writing letters to his wife. He's on an expedition and he sees in the distance a sled with someone

like a huge person on it like going really fast. And then he sees another sled or whatever coming after it with an old man who is Dr. Frankenstein, who's Victor Frankenstein. And he's like I'm trying to find this creation and chase after this monster that I made. So he tells

the story to the man on the boat. So when we go back and he's telling his story, Victor Frankenstein is in college. He starts to think about bringing something back to life. And he does. He just like right away. So he finds like the dead body, brings it back to life and he's horrified by it because it's like big and ugly and

not what he expected. And he didn't find the dead body, right? He found bodies and he piece Frankenstein together. I think so. I'm not 100% sure. Okay. But, but it does get, but it gets alive really fast. Then it escapes.

Then it kills Victor Frankenstein. his little brother. And then the monster, like, spent some time outside of, like, a family home. He, like, listens to the family talking. He's, like, outside their windows. And he's, like, I think I could be a part of his family. Like, he's really, really lonely. And then when he meets them in, like, he, like, says hello to them. They're super scared. They're, like, scream and run away. And he burns their house down because he's like, no one will ever love me. I'm so ugly. And then he asks, he goes back to Dr. Ferguson and says, I need a, I need a partner. I need someone who's just like me, I can get my life with because I'm lonely. And he says, Dr. Franklin

and says, okay, I will make you like a girlfriend, essentially. But he doesn't. Instead, he destroys all of his, all of his papers. And the monster sees him doing that and goes back and murders Victor's wife on their wedding night. And then he escapes. So that's where he's going out into the Arctic just to like be alone. Victor's running after him. Eventually, Victor dies on the boat and the monster comes back and takes his body and mourns over him. So he didn't kill that little girl. like all that all the movie stuff of like he finds a little girl and he like the front monster finds a little girl and kills her by

hugging her too much or whatever like wanting her to be with him like none of that that happened no none of the it's alive I don't even is there is there an Igor in it I don't know yeah there is yeah his help or the hunchback no no I'm saying in the book there's so many versions of the story is what I'm saying

like she wrote several versions of it and then like the world took it because it's a great fucking story and wrote a million versions of it. I just watched Young Frankenstein again with my sister. It's so good. So good. I mean, Robert De Niro played Frankenstein's monster at one point. Like, it's been done to death at this point. Exactly. Exactly. So, but the point is, once you invent something, you can't go back. So that's, that, that's like the, the lesson of the, of the story. Now, there's a little bit more money around. They're trying to find patrons. They're writing poetry. There's some babies around. Lord Byron left. He never intended to stay. Mary

dad still wants money from Shelley. He's never going to give it to him. And then after a couple like random weird things happen, like after one of her babies dies, Percy tries to get another baby in Italy for them, which like isn't weird. During this time, like there were just like tons of Italian orphans you could like buy. It was like a totally normal thing there. That's cool. But they think that it was actually Percy's kid from like an affair. Yes. And so, but they ended up not keeping that baby. And then also some other tragedies happen. Mary's older. Wait, what do you mean they ended up not? They just gave it back? Yeah, they just gave it to like the baby box. I don't know. It's like a very free baby time. Oh, it's so easy going. Yeah. And then some other tragic

things happen. Mary's older sister, Fannie, dies by suicide. Their, their mother, Mary Wilsoncraft, definitely had like severe depression and both girls have it. So Mary's super depressed and so was her sister. Her sister's a little bit like, I'm out of this loop. I'm not really a part this family. I don't really have anyone. So she goes and she dies by suicide and they can't get her body back because suicide is a crime. So if they like say that they know her, they'll have to like pay a fine. So they have to leave her body where she was found. Which is terrible. It doesn't make any sense. And then Percy's wife Harriet also dies by suicide, which is terrible because she, Percy tried to like frame her as like a terrible wife and all these things. But like

she was just fine and he just didn't want to be married you know so she does my suicide too which is awful so now they're trying to they're going around europe mary's still trying to get rid of claire eventually she gets her a nanny job and gets rid of her claire's trying to get her daughter back but she doesn't get it back so in this time you know rich poor i can't imagine shelly being like we don't have any money i have to write poems you know just like being the worst you know seeing him him like that on july 1st 1822 a few weeks after mary had another miscarriage so i think that they have their son Percy and then she has like her final miscarriage and Percy got in a boat that was his boat and he meant to meet with Lord Byron and some other people to talk about a new publication

called The Liberal. So they were going to make like a pamphlet or whatever. And on the way back, the boat was over masked and that means it had like the wrong, what is it called? Sales. Sales. The wrong sales. And the crew was inexperienced and everyone drowned. So Percy died when he was 29 so he uh him and mary were only together for like eight years there was a delay in knowing if they were dead because of like the time period they were like well did he get to his destination and like no one knew and they had to like find someone like travel around and finally figured out that they hadn't made it 10 days later their bodies washed up on shore and he was cremated on the beach mary and another like a person who was like a friend of theirs took percy

shelley's heart out of his body and put it in a jar with like like a her to keep it and then Mary eventually got it and like burned it so she had the ashes of his heart and she kept in with her until her death she always had his heart with her that's kind of romantic but mostly grotesque mostly gross mostly gross so now mary is a widow and she's still doing the same thing she's traveling around but she's a great friend there's a ton of stories of her like giving people money and like supporting young artists and all of these other things that she doesn't you know she she never accumulates her own wealth because she's always like kind of giving it away she's writing up more books she writes poetry she writes some biographies of like

different people just to sell those one thing that she does that i think is fun is she's friends with a trans man who known who was named isabel robinson and the story goes she had a friend who was like, I have to leave England because I am pregnant out of wedlock. How do I get out of here? And how do I, like, keep my, like, reputation? And then she had another friend who's like, I want to, I am a man. I want to dress like a man. Like, I want to be a man.

So Mary got them fake papers and had them get married so that they were able to escape. And they lived together as man and wife for, like, a very long time. She's pretty cool. Isn't that cool? And Mary was like super supportive of that. She was like, whatever, that's fine. I think, unfortunately, the trans man friend ended up dying in a poor house. and like bad things happen later but so it's a cool story yeah so so she's doing that she's

writing some books she wrote more books that i've never read and i really would like to she wrote a novel called velperga one called the last man her last one was called faulk faulkner she also spent a lot of time editing percy's papers and trying to figure out who's going to write a biography about him so she was it was a kind of a perpetual fight between like his family and her family like who was going to actually be the one to like kind of capitalize off of his life and his poems she did she published like an edited version of his poems people hated it like they just like it's which is weird because like how do you edit poems differently whatever so she was doing a little bit of that his dad so percy shelley's dad he gave her an allowance but he never met her he was like giving her money to as his son's widow but they never met and when he finally died he left her and her son a house but the house was like in shamble they took all the furniture and there were like people living on the land who had to pay a rent but like the um crops were bad it was just like not a good situation like it sounded like good and cool but it was not cool and yeah and then she is also editing a lot of his stuff to be a little bit

less truthful because england is getting more Victorian during this time like more conservative more like what we know is like classic Victorian so she's not so she says like we were married when we ran away like they definitely weren't you know and she like leaves out the stuff that he wanted her to sleep with all his friends so she kind of edited it's a little bit depending on the time so their son percy is kind of a dud unfortunately he she tries to get him to like run for office but no one like votes for him he like fiddles around school he's like not that smart eventually he does get married to a woman named jane and jane and mary become really good friends so jane her daughter-in-law is one of the people who you know really helps mary organize her papers and like start to put stuff

together for her own story and later jane is like one of the people who's in charge of her of her biography and she definitely like idolizes mary and talks about her in like a really like romantic way like she's the best and eventually uh percy and jane they run like a playhouse they write plays percy like does like the costume design and paints the backdrops and writes the plays and people like it's like very amusing so he does fine they live a couple they built a house and they called their house like shelly house house of Shelley and then Oscar Wilde named his house house of something else to make fun of them like down the street so that's okay that comes back Mary's father passes away in 1844 so she's like feeling super lonely and awful she's really sad she kind of reconciled with her dad and she's super sad

when he's gone then she starts to have in her 40s so they're like she was 40 and like still walking around you're like oh my gosh she was 40 she's not like 100 but you know whatever of the time she started to get these weird headaches you just started to kind of get like not feel good. She had to rest a lot. She spent some time traveling to get in the sea air and do things like that. And it ended up that she died in 1851 at the age of 53. And when they did her autopsy, she definitely had brain cancer. So she had like a large tumor in her brain that she had been living with for like a really long time. And that was the thing that ended up, ended up killing her. And then after that, you know, it's a kind of a mess of people trying to capitalize off of them, trying to sell their stories. It's kind of Frankenstein having really a life of its own, you know, becoming like one of the most famous stories ever. But, you know, really she was a very so smart, so talented and so lonely woman who was really kind of like abandoned by her mom, abandoned by her husband, trying to just like live her creative life.

And that's it. Can you imagine being 20 and running the most influential thing in the history of the world? No. I'm like 38 and I barely influence like a single person, much less the rest of the world. I know. I know. It's a lot. It's a lot to live up to. They kind of sound like a fun group, though. They sound like a San Francisco, like, tech bro community of like they just rewheeling, doing whatever they want.

I mean, I love the idea of like, oh, let's move into this like potentially really dusty, like really big house in Europe together and then like take all of the sheets off all the furniture and you just like rape homes there for a couple months and then you move somewhere else, you know and like you're like oh we're so poor also servant make me dinner i love it i feel like that would that's good for you but not so good for me if someone's like far as you have to sit in a room and write poetry i'd be like fucking tell me i'm not doing that i'm not going to write poetry but i would like to sit in a room and read for like a month you know you remember when you told me that like your biggest hope for flow is that she doesn't become like a poet yes oh yeah no it would be

terrible to have a child. There was a poet because you'd have to listen to all of their bad poems and their good ones. So we're on the same page. Yeah, no, that'd be terrible. Like, imagine oh my god, like, if like Miles was like, hold on, if I did like, hey mom, and on that cheek and over that brow, so soft, so calm, yet eloquent, the smile that win, the tints that glow, but tell of days and goodness spent, a mind at peace all below, a heart whose love is innocent. I'd be like, good job. That rhymes. go do something different like this is not worth your time here learn how to learn how to code JavaScript yeah I mean really yeah so that's it it's he I think

personally really just like have these women following him around you know and yeah it's not hard when you like are a poet when you walk up to every woman you're like I need to paint you in words like it's just like you know what I mean like how easy is that like So easy. So easy. 100%. Even if it sounds like shit, I can do it. Yeah, 100%.

No one would ever tell you that your poems were bad. They would just be like, Why is write a poem about me? He's so mysterious. He's like this dark, mysterious guy. Like, it must be a cultural thing. It's like, no. He just like knows how to manipulate you.

That's exactly right. It's very, very, very manipulative. Okay, wait, hold on. Write a poem, a short poem about a mysterious man named Farras. oh my god ooh okay ready yes

this is way too long okay this is way too long this is way too long chat chp t okay i'm gonna read a little bit of it in shadow deep where secrets lie there walks of man far as by and by mysterious he with eyes so keen

a veil of enigma his silent scene in moonlight nights he treads the streets his presence felt where darkness meets whispers follow his elusive trace a figure cloaked and mystic grace with every step he stirs intrigue his words like riddles make minds fatigue and cryptic language his tales unfolds a tapestry woven of stories untold who is far as is anagnetic soul a wanderer a sage beyond control his wisdom deep has passed unknown a man of secrets yet to be known he dances with shadows through twilight's haze a master of secrets of mysterious ways with every glance a glimpse of his heart a puzzle unsolved a puzzle to start and whispered rumors his legend grows and enigma wrapped in mysteries throws far as the man of the veiled unknown intrigue follows wherever he's thrown so So let us wonder, let us stream.

In far as his world where mysteries gleam, for in his presence we find delight in the riddles he weaves in the depths of night. Dude, that is awesome. Hey, do you slag me that. I'm going to put part of that on my dating profile. Your resume. That was real good. That was awesome. And it totally encapsulates me as a person.

I am mysterious. And my riddles, I do produce riddles of the mind. Oh, my gosh. So funny. Well, now it's easy to write poetry. I know. I don't do right now. It's something to really clear. Moving on to the true prime side of the equation, I got a bad one for us today. Oh, a bad one? Well, a bad story. Yeah. Okay. So, Taylor, we are a little bit desensitized, me and you, and a lot of the listeners who actually listen to True Prime, because we know what Ted Bundy did. We know what Jeffrey Dahmer did. We know what Onricha Cotillo did.

And you look at that stuff, you know, like, can anything possibly surprise you about what humans are capable of doing to each other? And usually the answer is no, but I can actually think of two crimes that came to mind for me whenever I think of like, man. So we can level up beyond that. One of them, I've already covered. One of them was actually Lawrence Bidicker and Roy Norris and what they did to that poor girl in that van. yeah yeah yeah the toolbox yeah yes uh no toolbox toy box is the different guy both are awful both they're awful but like this story that i'm going to describe has a lot in common with that first off it involved it's not a romantic relationship that got two people together it was like a

criminal relationship that got these two people together and put each other in each other's and the other one is that it kind of stuck out in my mind about how cruel it is i'm going to say this back as I was researching this and it was like, why did this stick in my mind as being so bad? Because now in hindsight, I've definitely covered worse crimes. I think the part of it that makes it so bad is that the things that happen to these people, in and of themselves are awful. Like I won't mention that they're awful. But they're not like crazy, crazy. I definitely heard of worse things that happen. I think what it is is the randomness of it. And the type of victims that they were.

So the type of victims they were were like very upper class income, successful, white people. They were the perfect little nuclear family. And the randomness of what happened to them is just like how on earth, it's scary because it feels like, oh, this can literally just happen to anyone at any time. Like, I was actually doing the math on this. It was like, we're probably going to get into an argument over this because I can understand, a story like this why people are so gun happy in this country because it's like yeah wait somebody and come into your house and do that to you and yes the outcome is that like also people can go into schools and shoot kid like i get the juxtaposition there but almost like

if this ever was a thing that i thought was possible in my life i would definitely go get like a gun and want to kill somebody that came in my house and did this so anyways that's the framing yeah you know i'm thinking my thinking what you're going to say and it's awful and also Yeah, you're afraid of the randomness. Yeah, the randomness of it is like, what is so freaky? Like, I mean, that's the part of it that I think just, because again, like, what ended up happening to them, like, wasn't like the most violent thing I ever read. It's more like, just like, damn, like, that's just like that could be your life. It might be, it's basically like the, the strangers, right?

It's like, it's a randomness of like the strangers. Like, that's the story. But so we're going to get into our two main antagonists first. First off, we have a guy named Joshua Andrew Kamoserjewski. Kmer-Serjewski. Okay. I was just writing this. I was like, man, I should have had Taylor do this because she is so much better pronouncing these crazy names than I am.

Josh. Farmer are so concerned. But this has so many more syllables on my name. Like, my name looks hard because people are lazy, but if you actually look at it, it's not that hard. This has, call me Sarjevsky, whatever. I'm going to call him Josh going for him. So Josh was actually, he was born to a 16-year-old mother and some mechanic that was barely old enough to, like, get someone pregnant, basically. And he was immediately sent off for adoption.

Normally, I would say that this guy was dealt like a pretty bad hand, given that he was born into these circumstances. But he was, like, adopted at two weeks old by what I'm going to describe as mostly normal people. They were religious lunatics, who basically would put him in Bible camps. And as far as I can tell, I would classify them as, like, evangelical. The one thing that did happen that was obviously horrific was being molested by an uncle. And the way the family dealt with that was, you need more religion. So that wasn't great. Like, his mental health was not super well taken care of.

And the uncle didn't, like, go to jail or anything, huh? No, of course not. And, I mean, yeah, yeah, you'll see this play itself out later on. like that molestation piece of it will manifest itself later on it's interesting because he um his family the family that adopted him came from like these like crazy like this crazy background like his grandfather was apparently one of the most influential theatrical directors ever and his grandma was a lithuanian princess yeah it has no bearing on any of this but like these people were very, very waspy. You know, I saw a documentary about this, this prime that we're going to discuss,

and they interviewed, like, his uncle and aunt, and did their house look like one of the coolest houses you'll ever see? It was like a glass house. It was like, these people were like very, very waspy. Yeah, yeah. This all happens in Connecticut, the home of the wasps. So just were clear. That is true. We know that. So around the time Josh was 12 or 14, this one, the molestation piece kind of manifests itself. He also had a sister who was also adopted by this family and that sister accused him of molesting her which is like the cycle you see right like if somebody gets molested they just keep kind of perpetuating that cycle so and around this time josh was also doing some other petty crimes such as breaking into homes and burlarsing them

which is like an insane thing to do when you're like 12 to 16 years old but he did it a lot my my libertarian cousin who was like it was like what did he say He says, oh, the one who said that, like, America is the least racist country now on Facebook, and I was like, oh, my God, it was like super embarrassing. But I wanted to say to him to say, oh, yeah, because do you remember when you got arrested for breaking into houses when you were 15 years old, did you, were you afraid the cops were going to shoot you? No, because you're white, you're white. But I left that out because I'm pretty sure it's a felony, but he definitely did that. So I was literally talking to someone about this. After having gone to Europe, I can attest that a man.

America has a much better perspective on racism, at least as it relates to me, than English people do. Like, English people still do think that if you're not, like, as white as a dickens. People have a problem with brown people, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was, that was a unique experience. It was like, it was like living in America in the 1990s is me. Like, I was like, wow, this is crazy. But, yeah, good point. So Josh ends up getting, so Josh had actually committed about 18, burglaries at this point. By the time he was accused and convicted of sexually molesting the sister, he'd committed about 18 burglaries. Like, this is this thing. You just like go out. Yeah. But it was also like, my take on it was like, okay, this kid like literally has nothing but

like religious indoctrination. Like, yeah, it's got to be fun to go break into people's houses. So he gets nine years in prison. It was interesting because he, this is like when he started like showing some sociopathic tendencies. He told his lawyer that he would like to go into the bedrooms of the people whose house he broke into and just go from bedroom to bedroom and just listen to them breathing. Not doing anything.

Oh, they were home? They'd be home. Oh, my God. Yeah, and it was something around how he like wanted, he just liked knowing that he had this like power of them, that he was breaking into their intimate space, that he's disturbing

that privacy and all that stuff. Jesus. So, and that kind of leads them like, this is like when he kind of starts showing that he's kind of fucked up one thing that's interesting was that he was apparently like super super smart too so he had like a photographic memory so apparently when he was like coming clean about these burglaries he could remember every detail he would tell you how much money he took from which house what denominations that money was where he found the money if he found them in pants he would tell you where the pants were what color they were

what kind of pants they were and he was a crazy good artist like his oh like i saw a picture of his art and i was like dude this kid was like super talented and he didn't utilize it the way he should his poetry was going back to poetry his poetry was really really um uh dark but like like i wouldn't classify it as like something i want living in my head but like it's good to read it's not a bad read but so so anyways he had a lot of stuff going on there so five years after the conviction for the sexual assault and this burglary. He is paroled and he sent to a halfway house. This is around 12-7. Yep, there you go. Perfect time. You're right? And this is when he would meet the other antagonist

of our story, a guy named Stephen Joseph Hayes, who very recently, as of like two, three years ago, came out as transgender and changed gender orientation. So from here on now, I'll just refer to Stephen by his current name, which is Linda Hayes. Thank you. Okay. And I'll be referring to her as her. going forward. So Linda was quite a bit older than Josh. And I think it amounts to some around 17 years older than Josh is. The events we're discussing here, again, they happened in mid-2007. So Josh would have been 27 and Linda would have been around 44 years old. That being said, usually the dynamic that we talk about is how the older one manipulates the younger one. That's really not the case here.

linda seemed like a total fucking burnout nothing loser like like she spent most of her life in jail for like stupid petty crimes like racing the window to a car to steal like a computer like stuff like this like linda had been arrested about 30 times by this point like it was just petty stupid shit it wasn't like creepy i'm gonna stand at the foot of your bed while you're breathing crimes like it feels like josh was the one that was the most influential over the two of over the their dynamically with each other. Linda would apparently try to OD and kill herself many times while she was younger. I actually watched this documentary. It's on HBO if you want to watch it. It's called the Cheshire murders because it happened in Cheshire, Connecticut. I watched the documentary and they

interviewed Linda's brother, who I don't totally want to talk shit about because he seems like he has some kind of a degenerative disease, the way he moves to mouth and talks. He has like MS or Lou Gehrie's. I can't really tell what. But after the crimes took place, he like, Linda's on trial and the brother writes the judge and the prosecutor about how like they should put the brother or Linda to death because he was such a terrible brother growing up and talks about how when the brother was five Linda put his hand on a hot plate and was like you should kill this kid like I mean there's a lot of like ludicrous assumptions being made there but the long story short was that Linda's entire family kind of hated her so that's kind of

where that sort of ended up it is interesting because linda does have a kid that was interviewed on the um on the HBO special on the documentary and that kid had just gone back from police academy when all these crimes happens like the kid went a totally different direction on linda did it which is kind of interesting wow could you imagine like how different yeah you're like i mean that i need the old too you know like being old and having your parents can be like a criminal yeah yeah it's got be a little wild yeah so let's we're going to turn our attention to the victims this case So we have the nuclear family, right? We have 48-year-old Jennifer Hawk Petit, who was a nurse and the director of a private boarding school and also the mother of this family.

Her dad was a pastor in town. And, again, they just seemed like this like overall waspy, happy-go-lucky family. We have her daughter, 17-year-old Haley Petit, who was about to graduate high school and attend Dartmouth College. She was an overachiever. She was an honor roll. She wrote varsity for crew. she had started actually a non-profit at our school to fundraise for MS research because Jennifer the mom had MS herself.

Yeah, sweet kid apparently had a lot going off for. And then we have the younger sister. She's 11 years old. Her name is Michaela Pettit. Lastly, we have the father, William Pettip, who was a doctor and endocrinologist in town and, you know, the patriarch here. July 22nd of 2007 is when all this kind of goes down. So on that day, which was a Sunday, Jennifer and Michaela went grocery shopping to get some,

apparently McKill made dinner with the family a lot. It was really sweet. They went grocery shopping and Josh saw them and started kind of following them and observing their routine. Josh and Linda had become friends at this point. And this is where it's a little bit of a conflict. I don't totally know the truth. They either became friends at the halfway house or they became friends by attending A meetings together. There's conflicting reports on that.

Long story short is that they started texting and the text was something along lines of, hey, I saw this family. I think we can break into their house because that's what I do. I'm Josh. We're going to bring into their house and we can go ahead and steal a bunch of stuff and it'll be great. Nobody's going to get hurt. That's what we're going to do. One thing to mention here is that in the documentary that I watched,

they interviewed Josh's girlfriend at the time and they also interviewed the girlfriend's dad. And there was some insinuation that Josh, had pedophilic tendencies. He obviously had some enough to sexually molest the daughter or the sister, but the intuition, what's being intuitive here is that he told Linda we're going to rob this house, but it's believed he actually was trying to get to Michaela. And that was kind of the, you know, the main idea here. How old was she? 11. Oh, gross. Linda doesn't know any of this. Linda's assessment is like, we're just going to go rob this place. because Lund is a burnt-out loser.

Like, you're going to follow a 27-year-old when you're 44. Who does that? So the two arrived in the early hours of July 23rd. So they saw the mother and daughter on Sunday, July 22nd. They put this play in action. Day alive in early morning hours. Josh enters the house through the unlocked door in the basement. William, the dad.

He's asleep in the sunroom. So away from the rest of the family, he's downstairs in the sunroom. Josh had found a bat in the basement. and bludgeon the shit out of William, knock him unconscious. They would then zip tie Williams' arms and legs, and then they would make their way up to the family's rooms where they would just grab them, put their hands over their face, and say, don't scream.

They'll zip tie that all the other individual people upstairs and put pillowcases on their head. Again, the plan is, we're robbing this house. So they ransack the house looking for things to steal, and they find some cash and realize that there's got to be more money somewhere. So Linda starts freaking out at this point because, again, like, this is going, this has gone too far for Linda already. She's there to rob a house. We don't know for sure, but it was assumed that Josh told Linda to go to the gas station and fill up some gas canisters.

So we see him doing this. He takes a family car. He goes to the gas station and fills up some gas canisters. It's during this time, Josh stays at the house, and he uses this as his opportunity to basically rape Michaela. And then it's all documented. It's like he took pictures of this on his cell phone. Apparently after trial, the state ended up offering free counseling of the jurors for having to look at these pictures. Like it was one of those things.

This is one where I'm really glad that we're not a video medium yet because my face is like just a gross horror this whole time. Yeah. And this is also like just in cold blood that we talked about. Yeah. So you read it. somebody that what when I was listening to the documentary somebody said this is the most gruesome thing that's happened since cold in cold blood yeah it was actually referred in the in the documentary it's like such a similar fucking story oh yeah yeah

this is where things get a little bit dicey and gets a little a little bit more true primy so Josh takes Jennifer in the morning to the bank and tells her to withdraw much cash he does not go in the bank with her he stays in the car fucking stupid idea crazy okay go ahead continue it's crazy because what ends up happening it's just like it's like why didn't she say anything is it will they kill your family what happened yeah so she did she tell there's video of this like there's from the bank of america and she looks she looks like a haunted woman when she's in front of this tell her and she's telling the tell her hey we're being held hostage do something about this she writes this down in a note she gives her the bank manager

the bank manager immediately calls the police you can hear the audio recording of all this if you listen to the documentary the police show up at the bank and then basically just don't reveal themselves jennifer apparently told the bank tell her that hey these guys are not aggressive she hadn't seen that they bashed they bludgeon she didn't know she didn't know because they dragged him into the basement so to her she's like look they're just trying to ransack the house and still money like they're not trying to hurt us so like you know they're not aggressive they're just after money josh josh takes her back to the house and at this point Police had basically just shown up at the bank. And that's the story that they were at the bank kind of surveilling things.

You don't follow her home? This is, okay, so this is where it gets weird. This is where, like, it's not totally clear. So there was a FOIA request for the transcripts of what the police were doing by the media. And it's all kind of like blacked out. Nobody knows for sure. And the police aren't saying for sure if they were at the house or not during this time. It's assumed that somebody, some police were like at the house sort of, but we don't.

don't know that for sure. What they definitely said was that they showed up at the house when these two were getting away because they rammed into a deputy's patrol car and that's when they were arrested. But there's this window of time from when they got back from the bank to when they escaped the house when all the horror took place. Right. And people generally think like this could have been prevented because a hundred percent like that. Yeah, like there's no weapons involved, right? There was no guns. There was no knives, nothing. All they did was they found this bat and the police could have done something, but they seem to nothing. They should have gone there. They should just been there. Yeah, yeah. So I was listening to

a presser where the mayor, mayor's like talking about what heroes the police were and how proud of them they were. And it's like one of those things where your job's like, you're talking about. They were late. They were late. Yeah, exactly. It reminded me of the shooter in Vegas. Remember that? When the cops were in the hallway and they wouldn't go in the room and they could have like apparently saved a bunch of lives they actually busted in the door. Oh yeah, like it's faulty as well when the cops didn't do shit. Which like look, look, I don't blame them, but like I wouldn't go in that room either, but I didn't sign up to your cop, like. Exactly. Exactly. It's not your job. That's so stupid.

Yeah. So they get back to the house and Linda ends up raping Jennifer in the living room. And then he strangles Linda or she she strangles Linda. to death, right? Linda strangles Jennifer to death. Yes. And apparently during this time, again, Williams in the basement, he can hear what's going on above him and his wife screams and he's shouting at them telling him to stop. And Linda shouts back that it's going to stop soon enough. Like he was trying to be funny and like, I'm going to kill her kind of the way.

That's how this is going to stop. Why isn't he out of the basement? He's been zip tied. He's had his head back. He's tied to a pole. But he was, it's so sad too because we look at pictures of this guy after the, this all happened because so many people were like you could have saved your family you should have saved your family you should have done whatever you'd look at his you'd look at his head

dude they cracked his head wide open like he was not in like a good position like help anyone but i can imagine as a man and that's your family like the events afterwards had to be like nightmarish for you but man every basement has that like terrifying pole yeah right that you like run into on roller skates and or get zip tied too when someone's dropping you yeah yeah remind me of the the, uh, uh, uh, BTS or G, uh, what is it? BTC murders too, because that's what he did. He zip tied them to the pipe in the basement. Yeah, that's what happened.

They're breaking bad number. Like, yeah, yeah. So William saw how manages to free himself enough to escape out of the basement door that they, Josh and Linda actually let themselves in from and started making it out to a neighbor. This is the time when he said he could, he swore he saw men like in the backyard, like, like, like cops. Yeah. Like the assumption was that there were police there and nobody came out to help him. But again, part of me is like he also, his head was wide open. Like he'd been bleeding out for this whole thing took seven hours. He'd been bleeding in the basement for seven hours of this like massive head wounds. So like could he have seen nothing? I don't know. Right. He's definitely like confused. Oh my God. Okay. So around this time, Josh starts dowsing Jennifer's body and the two girls who were still alive and zip tight in their rooms in gasoline. Not no. Not good. They. sparked the house and they tried to make an escape in the family vehicle and are immediately stopped by police. They ran into the police patrol car and the police hop out. And again,

this is where, like, where there's this difference between, like, the police say we showed up when they were leaving. It was a coincidence that all this happened at the time that it happened. But the FOIA request showed that police actually did say that they saw fire consuming the house. So, like, somebody was there. We don't know for how long or whatever. So... Oh, my God. The girls ended up dying due to smoke inhalation

before the rescuers could get to them. And their bodies were pretty burnt up, and nobody noticed that was pre-reported post-mortem that they got burnt, which is awful. That's the worst fucking weight in your fucking bedroom as a teenager. Yeah, as an 11-year-old, one of them. So Josh and Linda get set for trial, and they ended up having separate trials.

Linda was the first one to go. And apparently Linda and Josh both were like, we'll do a plea deal. We'll do a plea deal. We'll do life in jail. And the prosecution's like, no, no, we're taking our chances and we're going for death. Like we're, this is not one of those times when you get a plea deal. The Linda's lawyers would argue that Josh was up brains of the operation. That didn't convince anybody.

They did five hours of liberation. They found him guilty and they also sent him to death, obviously. like this was like it was horrible i mean i've really still always like uh these talk shows were like y'all should have literally just put two in the back of their head like immediately like these people did not even deserve a trial i don't know how i feel about this so in august of 2015 before linda could be executed or josh the matter the state of connecticut abolished the death penalty so linda's now in jail forever without the possibility of parole i don't really know how i feel about it like you know the death penalty like it's not really that big of a deterrent and it does

cost a lot more than keeping someone in jail for life. Maybe being in jail for life is worse than the death penalty, but there's a part of me that's like, man, the dad should decide what happens to them. Like, I know. My friend Agnes from Illinois said, uh, slacked me and said, it sounds like Faris is pretty pro-death penalty. You know what's funny is I did death penalty defense work in when I was in law school. Did you really? Yeah, like I was trying to get people off death road in Florida but I don't know that was a long time ago and like part of me like I don't know how I feel about it it's interesting because in this case what ended up happening was this spark Connecticut's entire obsession with the death penalty because if you were pro death penalty

this is the case you point to and say obviously we should kill these people yeah and what ended up happening was the state legislators passed a bill to abolish the death penalty it went up to the governor and the governor's like, no, I'm not going to sign this specifically because these two have to die. It was just because of these two. And so it went back to the legislator, the state legislators, and the state legislation passed another bill saying, fine, going forward, anybody convicted of the death penalty, or going forward, nobody can be convicted of the death penalty. Previously, anybody on death row can be killed by death penalty. And it was just these two. So they passed this bill just to ensure these two get killed.

The governor signed that into law. Obviously, one of the Supreme Court of Connecticut, and the Connecticut Supreme Court was like, no, you can't have. If you apply it now, it has to apply retro as well. And they found unconstitutional and struck it down and said, fine, we won't have a death penalty at all. As a result of that, that ended up, these two ended up on life without parole. So, I mean, yeah, that's, I don't, have they ever done that?

Because I know that, like, all the Manson family, like, they should have been absolutely death penaltyed, but they weren't because of the law change. So is it always, like, retroactive? Yeah, so I remember this in law school. There was something about how if it's a criminal case, you can't, if you change the law, that law has to retroactively apply to people that are being punished by that law. It mostly came up in the cases of, like, drug offenses when California made drugs legal, or marijuana legal. but it also happened with the Manson murders, right? Like, they were all on death row, and they were like, nope, nope, we're just going to abolish it altogether.

That's a piece of the shit. And then, but then it came back. When it came back, they can't also then retroactively increase your punishment after the fact, right? So California then passed laws saying that death penalty is okay. Scott Peterson's on death row, but they couldn't put the people who were previously off death row back on death row. Oh, my God.

What a roller coaster. I know, I know. So this, it's interesting because this thing had so many policy applications. The dad, William, would move on with his life. He'd get married. He'd have another kid later on in life. He actually became, he was tapped to run for the U.S. House or the Senate. I can't remember which by the RNC because he obviously, Keanu was like, as a talking, that was a dog.

As a talking point, he's like a really good candidate on the Republican side, right? because he's 100% pro death penalty. He's a 100% pro second amendment. So it's like, it's a really good, he'd be a good candidate. He turned that down. He ended up running for a state Senate, which he won. And his term is up actually this year. And who knows what's going to happen after that.

But it's a horrible, horrible case. And I can't imagine being that guy and how you live with yourself. He looks, he has a wife and a baby. But I don't know how you, like, move on from that. What, like, how would a gun have helped? He got ahead and had when he was sleeping. no it's not that it would have helped it's that like it gives you this sense of like how can i stop the how can i is there anything that can limit my ability to be victimized in this random situation

and it's like i don't know like no a gun would not have helped you was sleeping but like i don't know you're right it wouldn't have helped damn that my argument completely fall apart i mean like i imagine like i don't know one of the girls could have on the gun but like also you shouldn't have a gun around your kids like i don't know it's terrible it's awful the randomness of it is so scary the people being your house the fucking failure of the police to help her like dude it's crazy it was crazy bank like you can see her and she looks like just like a ghost woman and it's like just follow her home and then just tackle one of like i don't her parents were so sad like the parents were the pastor they're like these sweet sweet old people and they were like you could have they could have called their house phone and asked to talk to them you know like they were really trying to throw out suggestions anyway it was yeah it was bad but um

a million things yeah yeah that's part of it like it's the randomization of it it's a fact that they were just such a normal family piece of it that plays into it it's just like you don't expect stuff like that to happen to people like that I guess and and also there's part of it's like it's like it reminds you of straw dogs or nocturnal animals have you ever seen either of those movies it's largely around like being victimized and not being able to do anything to stop it and natural animals is like really bad so straw dog actually they're both really really bad but they're yeah they're i mean they're scary but like i don't know it's not scary in a fun way it's not like the conjuring scary it's in like you know sexual assault scary so yeah yeah i hate

that. But yeah, that's my story today. Oh, that's terrible. I thought you could talk about a different one, because there's another one, another family that looks something similar happened to. Who? And it was in the one in D.C. in 2015, the Sevopolis family, S-A-V-O-P-O-U-L-O-S. And they had two daughters who were out of town, and one of them is on Instagram, and she's like, talks about her life and being like, what do you do, you know? I mean, what happened? Somebody broke into their house? Yeah, and killed the mom and the dad and the housekeeper and the little boy.

Why? Random? She's still money. He was like, I think he was someone, I'm bringing Wikipedia really fast. He like knew them in some way, but it came back to, he was someone that they had fired, I guess. Okay, so it's not like entirely randomized. No, but it's still like in your house, kind of killing. We're going to help that.

I'm going to lock on my doors. I don't know if a gun would have helped them God, I'm so glad I have Luna That's true I feel so safe when she's here Yeah, I feel she should be pro big dog We're pro big dog We're pro big dog podcast

Yeah All right, well that is our story Taylor I know you have to rush your recital What do you have 30 minutes to get there? Yeah, it's in an hour So I have to dress up and get the boy to dress up And then we're going to go And watch some kids play some instruments

That sounds fun. It's Florence playing? No, she, well, excuse me, Miles has piano and Florence is Girl Scouts, but I heard a rumor that she would start playing the violin, so. You heard rumors? I don't know.

It's a word on the street? Yeah, I was telling my sister, like, when I have to help Miles with his piano, I'm like, I literally don't know anything. I know nothing. So it's like asking me to help Miles conjugate verbs in Chinese. I'm like, I don't know. He's like, what do here?

I'm like, I literally don't know. I don't know what the notes mean. I don't know what they're supposed to sound like. like. I don't know what the keys are. Like, I don't know anything. I cannot help you. I can sit here. I make sure you sit here, but there's literally nothing I can do. You know more than me. Yeah, you got to stop paying your piano teacher because that's when they're coming to you for guidance. That's not a good thing. No, no, I'm saying me. I cannot help him. Right. He's doing great. Good. I did piano for a long time when I was a kid too. Yeah. Can you still play?

No. I can still do deck the halls because that's the first song you learn. And that's it. So I can do deck the halls on piano. I can do one. I can do. Wonderwall on guitar, and that is little yet. You are a catch. Which like, you don't need to know more than that. No. Oh, wait. Oh, wait.

Sorry. Thank you to everyone for listening. I'm sorry. I'm just like falling asleep as we're ending this. I don't know what's going on. Also, nobody who doesn't know us listens to this because I got zero emails for people who don't know us. That can't be true.

If you don't know us, please email me. Tell me that you don't know me. Just say, hey, I don't know you. to your podcast what's the email you got to tell them what the email is it's doomed to fill pod at gmail.com doomed to fill pot at gmail.com yeah there's no way like we have enough downloads to where like I don't think these are our like all over I mean maybe like 10 of them are our friends or family email me tell me about your life no taylor okay cool I'll go ahead and cut us on the things thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you all bye

Thank you.