Doomed to Fail - Ep 3: Blame it on Disney - The Todt Family & Pocahontas

Episode Date: January 17, 2023

 In Episode 3 Taylor tells the story of Pocahontas, may we all wonder collectively, was she happy? Farz takes us to the creepiest town in Florida (and that says a lot!) to tell us about Anthony Todt and the awful things he did near the happiest place on earth.Follow us on Instagram and Facebook @doomedtofailpodFollow us on Instagram & Facebook!  @doomedtofailpodhttps://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpodMore on PocahontasPocahontas: Her Life and LegendThe True Story of PocahontasPocahontasShort history of PocahontasImages of Pocahontas in the Public Domain, Anthony Todt via NBC News.  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 Doom to Fail, the podcast where we have to come up with signature drinks to temper down. how sad we are about the stories that we're about to tell you. I'm Fars, joined here by Taylor, and every week will be bringing you two tales, one historic and one true crime related to relationships that were doomed to fail. What's our signature drink this week, Taylor? So thank you Fars. So today we are, our alcoholic drink is a Mai Tai. What is in a Mai Tai forest? It's like, it sounds tropical. It is tropical. So Mai Tai typically contains age, agricultural,

whatever that is cool rum real shroom lime yeah you know I'm reading off of a very very old and outdated my type recipe so I'm thinking rum I feel like a pinia clotta

ish kind of thing a happy drink it's a happy drink for a very unhappy story okay okay and then for our non-alcoholic drink we'll be drinking just the colors of the wind so just stand outside and let the wind hit you that is our

And I'll help drink. Fars, do you want to tell us who you're talking about and then I'll go into mine? I am going to be discussing the Anthony Tote family murders. Very excited. I'm drinking my white cloth. I'm very excited because I don't know what that is. I haven't heard that before. Before we get there, I'm going to talk about the tragic story of Pocahontas and her husband, John Rolf, which is a relationship that ultimately led to her death at a very, very young. young age. Taylor, you don't know this yet, but our stories have a very unusual overlap. Oh, my God. I'm so excited.

Which I'll disclose to you after I get to my story. But yes, very interesting that you picked Popahontas. Cool. Okay. That's awesome. I'm happy to hear that. Because, I don't know, that's cool. It's like we planned it.

So I got some of those information from the internet, nps.gov, of Smithsonian Magazine, History Channel, and listen to the podcast, the short history of Pocahontas as well. So I also listened to our first episode, and I want to try to say, um, less. So I'm going to work on that. That's my growth edge in this episode. I wanted to do far as something Texan, because we're in Texas together. And usually I'm in California and you're in Texas, but we're in the same house, even though we're in different rooms. And I'm super excited that we're together. So last minute, I decided to look up Stephen F. Austin and see if he had any, like, relationship stuff, but he was just a piece of shit who wasn't married. And I just, someday maybe I'll talk about the history of Texas, but

the history of Texas is a history of white people who wanted to leave America so they could have slaves. And Mexico being like, absolutely not. You cannot have slaves here and white people fighting to have slaves. So every town named after a white man in Texas is named after a piece of shit. Lovely. Yeah. The things that Stephen F. Austin said about slaves and slavery and enslaved people are disgusting. He was a bad guy and he died young without any love. So at least. And that was and that was our two-minute Texas history lesson as we discussed Pocahontas today. So then I was thinking about colonizers. So I want to talk about the

most famous woman, indigenous to North America, and that's Pocahontas. I'll talk about her and her second husband, John Rolf, who was totally complicit in her death because he took a person to Europe who had never been there. And so we know that that's obviously going to kill someone of some disease. So for Pocahontas, this is a banana's time to be alive. She's born into a world that's dramatically different from the one that she dies in. And far as, I want to you to stop being to stop at points to think about, what was she thinking? Like, was she happy, like as things are changing and things are going crazy in her world. You know, what was she excited?

What would it have been like for, you know, a person sort of watching like this alien civilization come in and try to take over? So this is like a time, this time and every time before, like now, you didn't know about what was going on in the rest of the world. So people, a people you've never seen before could walk into your neighborhood and be like, hello, we're here to like, where are the Mongols?

we're here to colonize you we're the romans we're the blah blah blah and you've never seen them before and you don't have any idea how big the world is so i think that's crazy i think the expectation when if you were alive at that point is that you could you and anybody you know can die at any point in time by anybody and you have no idea like to your point how big the world is and who could show up at your doorstep and say now we own you Terrifying. Terrifying. Just absolutely crazy. So just imagine if like aliens came down today and they started to try to learn her language and that was all happening. That's pretty much the same thing that was happening to Pocahontas. So she was born around 1596 and her name, a couple different names that she may have had. And oh my God, I apologize to the indigenous people of the United States of America and everywhere in the world for the way I'm going to pronounce some of these things in this episode. But she was born Meotoka or Amonute. So those, maybe those names,

so Pocahontas is sort of her nickname. And it means like playful little fun thing. So that's her cute nickname she got when she was a kid. Her dad was chief Powhatan of the Powhatan nation, which is part of the Algonquin Nation and all over like they were in Virginia and that part of America. And she was born to one of his. many wives. So he had several wives and there's not really a lot of information about her mother.

So she may have died in childbirth, but she was like one of 26 siblings to her dad chief power time. So 26 siblings. Yeah, but it's different ladies. So hopefully we didn't nobody had like 20 of them or something. But it's a rough. There's a lot of them. But it's kind of like a communal living kind of thing. So she just kind of goes back to the village where her mom was, her mom lived. And then the dad goes around to other villages and has his other families there. So, like, good for him. He gets to move around. And the legend is that she was her father's favorite, but, like, I feel like we made

that up because of how we want to put her into our history. But they said that she was her dad's favorite. And it was nice. It was kind of a war-torn place. Like, they were always trying to conquer other villages and, like, expand their areas. But it was fine. And everyone worked all the time, but there was a lot of music. and the women learned how to build houses and do the gathering.

So women actually had a really like not a terrible place in the society. They had jobs and they were able to choose who they married and they could get divorced. So divorce was like very popular, not popular, but like common because they would wouldn't want like no one wants that couple who's fighting all the time living in town. You know, it was just like I feel like that was a point to dig at me. It was not. I'm just saying that like if you're not having good time, get divorced, it's fine. So don't kill your spouse. This is a big rule that we're, you know, a big thing that will come back to you over and over again.

But so that's all, that's all, you know, it's a pretty, you know, it's a decent life. You know, people didn't really wear a lot of clothes. It was still pretty like primitive, but they were expanding and all of that. So all of a sudden, these ships start coming in to do reconnaissance. So this is the like, imagine the ship coming down from space moment. And people come out and kind of look around and then go back. So they know that there's something else. out there and there's something else coming but they don't know much about them yet and this is

happening when she's a little girl so all of a sudden a ship comes and they stay and the one that stays creates a colony and it's jamestown so what do you far as as a person who grew up in america know about james town on the spot i i yeah so i'm trying to go back that's the town that lucy's character and i love lucy is from he's from james town in the show i'm Is it really? Oh my gosh. Yeah, it really is. She was Lucy McGillicuddy then. But I also vaguely remember that that was one of the first colonies that was settled in the U.S.

It's not Roanoke. It's not the one. It was not the crazy one where people just disappeared overnight. But it was like it was, I feel like it's the same timeline. Yeah, exactly. That's mostly what I know about it. Perfect. Yes.

So yeah, Roanoke was the one where they like disappeared, but probably just went out to get food and became part of the vibes. But yeah, James Town is the same time, the same type of people. They came from England. They came in 1607. So remember, Pocahontas was born in 1596, so she's like almost 10 or and or 10. And they found this land in this area and they were like, oh, it's a peninsula. It can be protected. This is a great place to like build a fort and put up walls and do all these things. And the reason that the Powhatans didn't live there is because it was a bad place to live. it could be defended but the land was terrible there were tons of bugs you couldn't drink the water and it was just a terrible place to to build a town um and

can interrupt you real quick of course are you saying how do you spell poweton oh great question because i had to look up how to pronounce it i'm saying p-o-w-h-a-t-n and the way i wrote it after looking it up is pow-a-ton. Do you know what that word means in the native language? No, do you? No. I'm derailing for no reason. The reason I...

No, I'm super... There's a tribe in Brazil that's called Powhatan. Oh. That is a... It's like, it's a warrior tribe, basically. And I've recently learned about this, and that's why I brought it up, because I was like, is their potential? Like, maybe, like, some people left the American.

and went down south or I don't know. I just thought maybe they're tangentially related, but probably not. No, they totally could be because it was so the power town is a part of the Virginia Algonquin. Now I went to Wikipedia and look at this. But they also, there was also like the name of Pocahontas's dad and the name of the language. So it's like a word that's used for a lot of different things. So I think it's possible.

Some survivors relocated elsewhere, I think it's mostly North America. I'll stop derailing. Okay. I mean, we could look it up later. And then all this goes away and nobody knows that we had this conversation. I love that. No, this is perfect. Keep it in.

So I lost where I was. Okay. So the colonizers are in Jamestown and it sucks. There's no way to get food. There's no way to get water. People are dying. There's like the rumor is obviously that they resorted to eating each other because they were starving. Like two thirds of them died before they got any help.

So it's a terrible time to be a colonizer. They're only on this little peninsula and things are really bad. So they thought that they would be able to offer goods to the Powhatan for food. So it would be like, oh, I have this jacket or whatever and like try to trade it for food. But there actually isn't any extra food because it was a bad time for them also. So it was just like a shitty crop year or whatever. And they didn't really have extra food. So they weren't like full on like hunter gatherers.

They did do some growing crops and that sort of thing, but they rotated their crops, which is something that like I like to yell about in other places as well because a lot of white people came to America and they were like, looked at the indigenous people and they were like, you guys are so dumb. You could be growing so much more if you just planted all the land, ignoring the fact that for thousands of years, these people have been rotating their crops to make sure. where the land is good. So of course, that leads to things like the dust bowl and things in like America that would, that all the land that goes to shit because white people weren't paying attention to the way people have been doing it for thousands of years. So crop rotations essentially let the land rest, let half the land rest, you know, plant in the other half. And then when that's done, let that rest and tend the other half. Exactly. Exactly. And so like in Oklahoma, when the

Dust Bowl happened. What happened when it happened was all of the native grasses that would grow on the land during the rotation time stopped growing. And that held the land together. And then it was just like dust and zant. So they just, that's why like it was uninhabitable after a couple of years. Taylor, again, sidetracking here at my old house in L.A. You know how we had that backyard and there was just like grass. It was just overrun in the backyard and it slowed all the way down. I hired someone to mow that grass and I was out of town and my ex sent me a picture of what they had done when you saw it hours later they'd ripped out all the grass like there was nothing there but just dirt and I immediately thought of the dust full and was like holy shit the entire side of this hill is going

to go crashing down luckily I did it but that was my first inclination when I saw that no totally time will tell of the next earthquake how that house how that house goes yeah exactly you can't rip everything out by the roots and expect it to be the same stable place. Totally. So anyway, so there's not enough food for them, so they're not sharing it with the people in Jamestown. And also, the people in Jamestown owe money back to England because they like borrowed money to come to, to come out to the new world. So they're supposed to be bringing things back to England and they're not because they don't have anything. So they're stuck in their wrote, I wrote, now they're stuck in their fork because they're assholes and they keep leaving

and trying to steal things because they can't get anything by trade or by like normal means. And so they're trying to make a pact and they can't figure it out and things are super tense. Because obviously, like even though the colonizers have less people and they're all super sick, they also have like guns. And so a little bit more intense military power than the Powhatans have. So that's that balance is still not like fair. So one thing they did that I think was actually really cool is they sent. kids to each other's, like villages to learn the language, which totally makes sense.

Because like, if you sent me to a Powhatan village, I'd be like, I don't know what to do. But if you said like a three-year-old who's already learning language to that place, they'd be able to learn it a lot easier, right? Makes sense. Yeah. So the English sent a boy, one of the boys, his name was Thomas Savage, and he moved in and learned the language. And they said, and one thing I read, it said that Pocahontas was sent to Jamestown to learn English, but in every other thing else, they all have sent boys. I don't know if they really

would have sent her, but whatever. Either way, she learned how to speak English. So it starts with the kids, the kids learn her to speak English. Just like now, if someone moves to America, usually the kids learn how to speak English, like, before the parents do. So who is the person that you would think that Pocahontas was married to? The blonde, long-haired dude in that movie. Yes. Do you remember his name? It had to be John Smith, right? It's John Smith, yes. Yeah.

So John Smith is one of the number of colonizers. And he goes out to, in this little group to find supplies, like they said, he literally drew the short straw and goes out there. And everyone in his group gets kills. And then they're like about to kill him. And Pocahontas, like jumps in front of him and says, no, don't kill him. Let's be peaceful and nice. Which is probably not true.

And she was 10. And when this happened. and John Smith then later writes a book and says she jumped in front of them and she wouldn't let them kill me and then we totally fell in love and you're like you know she's 10 and then later he's like oh no no she was 13 which is still gross and not that much better no but neither of those things happened like they did not fall in love at any point and like who knows if she actually really saved him but he does survive and now like he's like talked about her and he romanticizes his relationship with her his whole life

not like sexually romanticizes them the whole time but it's very much like this is like showing people that like the savages are have humanity and blah blah blah he like talks about her a lot really exploits their relationship to what to what benefit to like say to like sell books honestly

for him to go back and like sell books about his time in in the colonies okay yeah common thread between our stories number two I'll point that out to you later oh my god I'll excited it. So none of that's true, but whatever, she did meet John Smith. And then she starts to, you know, she actually is growing up. She does become like a teenager. And in this time, you can actually picture her a lot like the movie, like the clothes that a young woman would wear, like, I mean, like the cartoon, the young woman would wear is like that one shoulder dress. I don't know if you remember. And she started to get tattoos and like that kind of thing. She's starting to kind of grow up. And then for a couple years, she's kind of off the map. But I feel like, did you watch the cartoon?

I feel like I should have prepped you and had you watch this cartoon before we started. I haven't seen it in so many years that I might as well have not seen it by this point. Okay. So there's a whole part of her song in the cartoon where she's talking about her dad wants her to marry this guy and she doesn't know if she wants to marry him, blah, blah, blah. And his name is Cocoaum. And I think this is the biggest shocker to me. in this whole freaking story is that she really was married to Kokoam, which is it like, I don't even have words because I wrote down is like that pot point in the movie is very,

very stressful. And it was for me, I'm imagining for like 70 to 80 percent of kids who watch the movie, because Kokoam is like in the Kukhanas cartoon, he is the first person that I ever saw with chest tattoos. And I was like, yes, you should marry him. What are you talking about? out. You know, he was like, like, imagine, like, if they did a live version of, um, this movie, Kokoam would be Jason Mamoa and there would be a global emergency because everyone who watched

the movie would get pregnant. It would start watching the movie. That is sawdcasting. That would be really solid casting. I like that. So that's, that's who Kokoam is, I think, in the zeitgeist of, like, young people who watched Pocahontas of a certain age. But she did marry him and all evidence is that they were in love like they she was loved she was who she got to marry he was like in he was like in the the military but not necessarily like the um like a you know the best warrior or anything it just seems that she likes him um and they get married they may have had a daughter um but we don't really know and then he kind of disappears out of her story so they could have gotten divorced which is totally fine or he may have died either way they don't get they're not married forever

but they are married when she's like a young woman and he's like a young man So we just have a first marriage. The way you describe him, he does seem like a risk taker. Like he would have a Harley and also not wear a helmet, you know? Yeah. It was probably a boar. I don't know why. I just think he like got gored by a wild boar.

That feels plausible for that time. No, I definitely think that may be true. Like you died in like a big hunting trip or doing something like super hot and heroic. Yeah. How we're going to lose Jason Mamoa and how we lost cook one. Exactly. exactly um so she's you know kind of living her life she's married she's hanging out there's still kind of this tense thing that obviously the jameson people are still there um and they really really want

to make uh make more trade and you know kind of do more stuff with the powhatans so um one of her jerk friends says oh there's a new boat at the shore we have to go see it and she's like i don't want to go and they're like you have to come with us and they go and then like her friend is like oh i really want to go on board come with me me and so she goes and they eat like like dinner and then Pocahanna says like something's weird and of course something's weird if her friend sold her out and she gets kidnapped so she's kidnapped onto this boat they lock her in a room and are trying to like get ransom from her dad and she's out there for a full year she's kidnapped by the by the white people and she's in jamestown and like a town next to it and now there's like

a full-on war her dad kind of concedes but like not really so there's like a whole bunch of stuff going on it's not great. So this is like worst case for Jamestown because they're not getting help from the natives. They're not getting any resources. And they're trying to like, they're really instigating things by having Pocaquinas. So she's there for a year. And guess what they try to do to her while she's there? I mean, I can imagine. It's not like a physical thing, a mental thing. They make her a goddess. No, they convert her to Christianity. Of course. I was so stupid. I mean, come on, obviously. Of course, that's the first thing you do. Of course. So, like, of course what they want to do is save the heathens and they want to

fucking save Pocahontas from, you know, her beautiful life. And they convert her to Christianity and guess, and they, not guess what they name her. You're never going to guess. But they name her Rebecca. I know. And I know Rebecca, who I like a lot. I know there are Rebecca's. It's a beautiful name, but like, come on, her name's Bocahontas. She's like this, like, amazing, like, trailblazing woman and you named her Rebecca and meet her and baptized her. It's basic. Basic shit. So basic. So now her name's Rebecca. And this is where she meets her second husband, John Rolf. And this is where there are red flags that I will point out for you for this marriage. So she's 17, which is like old had by now, because she's already, like, had a baby and been married, probably had a baby.

He's 27. I feel like that's maybe okay in this time. He was not okay. She had to convert first to Christianity. And then he, like, wrote, like, a letter to the governor of the area that was like, I need permission to marry this heathen. I'm so torn because she's, like, super hot, but also she's a heathen, essentially. You're like, fuck you, dude.

I mean, yeah, I like to think of things within the time frame in which they happen. And maybe that was like, you had to do that. Yeah, that's fair. Fine. If you didn't have a choice, I mean, I'd probably not call my wife a heath, although maybe he didn't have had a different connotation back than it does now. It doesn't. Okay.

Then that's a bad thing to call your wife. But so he's like, it's a second marriage as well. He's a widower. And he's a tobacco farmer. He has a plantation. He may have stolen tobacco seeds from the Spanish and brought them to Virginia. So to get like the good tobacco in America, which obviously like starts a whole, a whole thing. And they're married on April 5th, 1614.

And they have a son in January the next year. And then did you see this thing on the news this week about how Edward Norton is a direct descendant of hers? Wait, I thought it was something out. Oh, yeah, you're right. You have to write a descendant of her. That's crazy. Yeah, and that's from this son that she had.

So his name is Thomas Rolf. And so from Thomas, we get Edward Norton, which is fun. And so now, now, Bougainas is living on a goddamn Tibetan. Echo Plantation with other indigenous people essentially like working the land for them. But by all accounts, she's happy. She's just like, this Christian woman on this plantation, like living in a house named Rebecca. And this is, this time is called the Peace of Pocahontas. It's nine years apiece between the white people and the indigenous people.

So this is a part where I'm like, I don't know, is she happy? Like, could she be happy? Is she like? I don't know. What is Pocahontas? What does her status have to do with there being? this piece because she's like the favorite daughter of the chief and she's been someone who's called like back and forth and like met a lot of the people on the like in like in james town she can

communicate really well and i think also that she was converted to christianity is a big part of it too because then she's like you know showing that they can be saved and all these things and then they're like we don't want to ruffle any feathers whether that was i didn't mean that that was not a pun but they didn't want to like um you know do anything weird where she would get like kill So it was just like a tense piece, but a piece. And then at the end of this time, the king of England wants to see her and wants to meet her and asks her and John to come to England. So they go, they take their son and they go to England, to London, they go to parties and balls and the concerts and they meet the king and all this stuff. And so she's really just like there.

This is where we get like the one engraving of her and it's engraving. and I'll put it on our socials, but she, you know, is wearing like colonial garb, like the whole thing and, you know, you know, looks like a colonial person. It's wild. And the other crazy thing that happens while she's there is she meets John Smith again. And she thought he was dead. Just like assumed he was dead because it had been like, I don't know, 10 or 10 years since she'd met him. And he's there. And there's a whole bunch of different accounts on what happens. But fucking John Smith, he writes that. she was yelling at him as like a spurned lover would yell at someone, you know, like, blah, blah, blah. Other people are like, she was yelling at him because he's a piece of shit. And she was saying, you Englishmen lie to him, like over and over again when she was yelling at him. But he's like, oh, yeah, she's just like jealous. She still loves me, blah, blah, blah, because he's a jerk. And another thing that people say is that she also may have tried to call him father because he had that, like, she saw him as like an older person. And he was upset about that because he told everybody that they were dating i'm kind of with john on this one that she couldn't have called him father no that she probably was still into him because like she was never into him because why would you care so much like if i went into someone that i dated like five years ago i'm not going to be i don't care what you do or why would i why would i have emotional attachment to that person unless i actually was still into them no they did not date she was 10 when they met he was a grown man they did not date he did not

date. He told everybody that they did. She could have been 13. Fine. He told everybody that they dated and they did not. And then he was using that to like excuse that she was yelling at him. But I feel like she was, if anything, I would hope that she was yelling at him and being like, look what you did, you little jerk. You know, like to my people. But who knows? We have no firsthand accounts from her and what her life was like. But her life was so short. So, you know, she moved to a suburb of London. And it's gross. London is gross. Like London is like a, there's no, again, sticky, no running water. Like there's no air. Like there's one account where she's like in a carriage and she's like holding a handkerchief over her face because she can like barely breathe because she's used to being in these beautiful forests with fresh air and fresh water and all these things. And now she's in freaking London where it's disgusting. And so she's just like not having a good time. and she finally gets to go home and they get on a boat she's 21 years old and they don't even

leave like the area she dies before they even get to leave she dies of the disease on the boat could be anything like you know smallpox any like diphtheria any of those terrible diseases that you get when you're a person who hasn't been exposed to them so she got a disease or anyone really because they're like everywhere she got a disease they take her body back to england and then she's buried in England. They said her last words were almost die, but tis enough that my child liveth. So her son Thomas stayed in England, came back to America in 1635, tried to find his Powhatan family, and he was like a little bit successful possibly, but then he, you know, he moved back and John Rolf got married again and had another, another, you know, chapter of

his own life with his, like, third wife and all of that. But Pocahontas, she, at 10 years old, she, you know, allegedly saves John Smith's life and 11 years later, she's dead on a boat in England, being like converted and having all this crazy stuff happened to her. I'm a bit conflicted. Is this a sad life or not? I don't know. And that's like the question that I want to talk about. Like, I am sad about it because I feel like that is that she was like taking advantage of because she was like kidnapped, you know and like had to marry this guy john because he like said he loved her and like who knows if they really loved each other because i don't know what she was thinking and i have no evidence of what she was thinking so maybe i'm an asshole and she was super excited and was like this is exciting i'm an explorer like i'm out here like doing these things that like only chiefs do because i'm talking with translating and talking to governors and doing all these things and i'm learning and i get to go across the ocean to these lands that we didn't even know existed so like in one case maybe she's excited you know but in another case Maybe she's just like really taken advantage of and exploited as being the like an example of a person that they were able to convert to, you know, their ways and this like romanticized figure obviously because we talk about her all the time as like someone who, you know, bridge that gap between the two vastly different cultures. But I don't know. Did she want to? How did she feel? I have no idea. I wish she would have lived longer to tell us. You know, I think that's the real tragedy for me is that we don't have anything from her. We just have like the, what.

people say about her and they needed to have this like beautiful story to have it make sense. I get a little bit of Patty Hearst vibes. No, that totally makes sense. Like some Stockholm syndrome like oh yeah, I'm like now I'm on these on this guy's side and all of that because she had to like live with them and you know convert to to all the things that they were doing. And so she probably was like, yeah, no, I totally. I don't know. Maybe this is maybe this is maybe thinks this is better. This is better for the world that you're here in doing this. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, because the parallel universe, parallel timeline is she's not kidnapped for nine years and she is allowed to. What a seminal moment, though, that her friend asked her to go

check out this ship. That's crazy. That's what it all happened. That is such a great example of a fork in a road that can actually derail your path. Right. And for all by all counts, she didn't want to go. She was like, ugh, I don't want to go when her friend was like, please come with me.

Like I need you to translate. I really am excited. And her friend sold her out. And got her kidnapped to, you know, and that started a lot of things. So yeah, I know she definitely didn't want to do that.

Like that's documented. So maybe she didn't want to do any of it, you know? Maybe she would still want to marry to Cocoaum, maybe they got divorced, but maybe they got divorced and they're still friends. And they can just hang out.

I mean, they could have remarried. They could be married. Maybe she's someone who gets married four times, but three times of them is to Cocoaum. A lot of multiple marriages on our stories. We know very little about him, but I'm definitely pro-Cocoam. Yeah. No, totally.

Okay. And now I see why the non-alcoholic drink is just standing outside and having the wind hit you. Yeah, it's color of the wind. When I picture Pocahontas, I rightly or wrongly, picture the Disney cartoon of her just standing on a rock with, wind blowing her hair back leaves or like around her head yes that's what that's what we're thinking when we're outside just kind of breathing in the world and the last time that the world felt maybe safe for a 13 10 year old possibly girl yeah well awesome very cool storyteller thank you for sharing that was um i'm laughing because i'm like one thing i was like we need more banter and also

I'm like, that was not very funny. I feel like I need to be anything in it. It's just a tragic story, but it's just interesting. And, yeah, it's crazy. It's fine. I mean, they're not always going to be the same. Yeah. So I'm still digesting your story a little bit, but I'll go ahead and dive in.

So like I mentioned, I am discussing the tote family. name. Tote is spelled T-O-D-T, just in case you ever want to look it up yourself. Do you know what that means in German? No. Dead. Are you serious? Mm-hmm. Tote.

Why do you know that? Because I took like eight years of German. It was funny. I took Russian and I don't know any of it now. I'm pretty far in dual lingo, but I also took it in college and so, you know. Yeah, I took it in college too. And I was like, I'm in Texas. I probably should learn Spanish. but I know I learned Russian. So let's get into the Toad family.

So obviously, Taylor, you know, I love true crime. I like to think that I'm aware of the more sensational stories that are out there. This one wasn't even on my radar. Yeah, I've never heard it, and I'm really surprised because I feel like I've heard everything. So that's cool. So I'm going to plug a few other shows here. I stumbled on this story, mostly because YouTube's algorithm just totally has me dialed in. and they recommended a channel for me called the Behavior Panel.

This is a channel that is comprised of four body language experts who review police interviews or testimony on the witness stand. They'll pause these conversations, they'll pause these videos, and they'll assess what they're reading into that person's body language. Okay, that's the entire premise of this YouTube channel. YouTube recommended a episode of this to me called History. worst liar question mark anthony tote with a picture of tony i'm going to call him tony from here right now that's how people refer to him so we're going to call him tony um and it was a picture of

tony and he just looked like a haunted dufus like he just looked like such an idiot on on this screenshot that i was like uh this could be interesting he's so hapless looking let's see what this guy's all about i went down a rabbit hole i actually think i probably scared people how deep into this, I went. I would tell everyone I met about this case for a period of maybe two months. I am positive there are women in Austin that I went on dates with. Add me on their list of worst dates ever. They're probably telling their current boyfriends of this date where I'm talking about this horrible, haunted crime that is just like in my brain forever now. I can't wait. I will look around on the internet to see if there's anyone who's like,

watch out for the guy who talks about this scary thing. Yeah. Sorry to, sorry to you all, if you all are listening. Go back to this. So this story is so macabre and sinister. The one thing I would tell people listening is don't try to go inside this guy's head. You know, so much of what I love about true crime is trying to figure out like, how could someone be this way, how could they do this, how could, you know, like, what are the

thought patterns that would lead someone to the outcomes that we see in true prime? Don't do it with this guy. It'll take you places that you don't want to go. Just trust me. Like, I went really deep with this. I just don't want to do it again. But yeah, if you really want to go in the weeds on this, there is a 14-part series called Looking for the Tote family.

It's produced by this publication called The Day. I highly recommend it. It was incredible. I actually listened to it twice back back. I actually didn't go back and listen to it when we started researching this

because it was already ingrained in my brain like I said before. But... Farras, are you... Are you okay? Yeah. Yeah, no, I'm totally fine.

Again, like, in this, when I started researching this again, I didn't go as deep as I did before because I didn't want to. But I highly recommend the day, it's publication. They actually interviewed this guy. They interview his sister.

They did an incredible job of a completely comprehensive take on what happened here. Okay. So let's get into the subjects of this topic. So there's Tony Toe, he's 47. He's a patriarch of the family. He is married to Megan, who's 42, was 42. They had three children, Alec, who's 13, Tyler, who's 11, Zoe, who's four. And they also had a dog named Breezy.

I'm using past tense for a reason. I heard that. Tell me what year we're in. Everything transpires in 2019 and 2020. Oh, Jesus. Okay. Yeah, fairly recent. It's like yesterday. Yeah, exactly.

There isn't a ton of detail out there about Megan and Tony's past. All we know is there were high school sweethearts. They grew up together. By all accounts, it was kind of an idyllic marriage. It looked like a successful happy marriage from the outside in. And that's, unfortunately, where the extent of our knowledge of their background is. There is a detail about Tony's background that I'm going to go into a little bit later. I just don't actually know where to couch that in this outline, so we're going to discuss it later on.

One thing to note is Megan had Lyme disease. I don't know much about Lyme disease, other than from the stories I've heard, it can be an incredibly debilitating disease. Do you know anything about this? it comes from ticks right yes you typically get it from a tick yeah and i feel like i um well i remember do you remember the real world seattle and definitely not okay that is not some that's going on the hard drive forever there's a real old seattle oh my gosh it was so dramatic it was like 1993 maybe and um but i remember one of the women had lime disease and it was really debilitating for her and i know people who like i think i know people who have it and it's definitely

something that is really difficult to recover from. Yeah, yeah. Don't go in the woods and get eaten by a tick. Well, I don't know if it has psychological impacts, but I put it in this because there's a part of this story that comes up a little bit later that might make it relevant that she had a live disease. We'll get to that.

For Tony's part, Tony was a physical therapist in Colchester, Connecticut. it. He was apparently pretty successful and good at it. Enough to at least to start his own clinic that was called family physical therapy. From what I read of his patients, they were incredibly pleased with him. And again, if you listen to the day podcast, there's so many glowing interviews of his patients that are in that. It's fantastic. Like after, after? Yeah, yeah. Maybe I don't even know what happens, but I'm saying like after. They're like, they went back and interviewed some of the patients. They're like, this guy, like one lady was like crying, saying that her kid was in constant pain, and Tony's therapy, like, just saved them. Both. Yeah, like,

he was apparently really good at this. Um, but we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna have appetizers, okay? An appetizer of a crime. So we're gonna start with a starter crime just to get the ball rolling here. Okay. I immediately said that I said, mm, mozzarella sticks in my head, so. I thought I'll jalapeno poppers. Nice. Oh, we should get one of those things that has a little bit of everything. I think, I know we're doing that for this um so as a starter crime to kind of wet our appetite tony was apparently engaged in um medicaid fraud from about 2015 to 2019 so tony this is going to be a theme here to me tony tony would over and send himself constantly um and he did it with his clinic as well

he had the best of the best equipment in one instance he ended up billing a patient's insurance company and medicaid for 172 sessions that he didn't perform so that's basically like that's how this fraud works is you say I did a service you've issued an invoice you get paid for it you didn't actually do anything so um in addition to that he had multiple commercial loans that he had taken out it kind of sounds like he was running a Ponzi scheme on himself where he'd take a loan out to pay expenses in other loans then take another loan to pay that loan he's basically he's just Bernie Madoffing himself at this point like you made no sense like I don't even understand how desperate one could be where you don't see the writing on the wall if you continue doing this. But he

did it. I feel like this is a theme that we see a lot is like not knowing what to do with all your debt. Like the turpins had all that credit card debt. And even like the people of Jamestown had so much debt back to the back to England. They had to start doing kind of like weird shit to figure out how to get something they needed. We don't know how much that Lucy was in. So we can't substantiate that. Lucy McGillicuddy. Yes, of course. So it's worth noting that Megan was not involved in operations of the business at all. She sometimes worked as a physical therapist. For the most part, she was just homeschooling the kids.

It's fair to assume she had no idea what was going on financially. And as far as she was concerned, she was with this great provider and Tony who was basically taking care of everything. And again, as far as we can tell, everybody liked and respected him. So why would she dive into it? But I actually flag this is red flag number one for me, which is be okay with inquiring into your spouse about what's going on with them professionally. I feel like maybe like this family was incredibly, incredibly traditional where the wife stays at home with the kids and homeschools and the husband goes out and earns the bread

and does all that, which is fine. But you should also have the kind of relationship where it's okay to bring the negative and the stressors of your professional life into your personal life. And so I don't, it doesn't sound like that was the case here. It sounds like there was a clear silo between Tony's professional life and his personal life, which I can't imagine how much tension that puts on a person. I mean, we'll see how it turns out. But yeah.

So keep in mind that as we're going to go through and talk about all this, that he'd already been found out by the authorities that he'd been committing this fraud. So the news is starting a time. So Tony's the only person who knows what's going on. here. Nobody else knows what's going on. His employees don't know what's going on. The patients don't know. Megan obviously doesn't know what's going on either. Okay. I'm going to go into a bit of a rant, Taylor. Okay. So in the interest of overextending, the family also rented a house in Celebration, Florida. So they had a house in Colchester. They also got a house to celebration. Taylor, your reaction, I wrote this about it. I was like, what does Taylor know about

this city? And you just reacted in the exact way that I was hoping you would react. So tell you what you know about the city. I've been there. Holy shit. Okay, so I am of the opinion that like, and I hate to yuck people's yums. And I know I did that in the last episode with the sex party at the Turpin's house. But also I stand by if you're at a sex party and children are being abused, you should call the police. Also, like people like different sex parties, that's fine.

So I apologize for yucking that yumb. But I do feel like it's really hard for me to not yuck the yum of Disney adults because you're a freaking adult. Like, I know adults that go Disney World by themselves. You know, I'm like, what is wrong with you? So, I mean, I know people love it, but like, I just don't understand. Like, I don't even want to go with my kids. But celebration is the city in Orlando that's like a Disney town where, like, they made everything look perfect. You know, like I went there because my in laws just live in Orlando.

And we went there on Christmas to a restaurant and walked outside and it was like fake snowing. So it's like building this idea that you live in this like idyllic perfect. to Disney town with a bunch of other fucking psychopaths because everybody wants to live in a Disney town and it's weird a shit. Taylor, guess what the average age of a person living in celebration is? 45. 37. Oh.

How fucking stunted. Sorry, I'm not talking shit. If you're in celebration, God love you. But how fucking stunted are you if that is the epitome of a life to you at 37 years old? It's so weird. I mean, I don't know. I mean, obviously, I just talked about a Disney movie and how, like, Coquolum was a big deal for a lot of people.

So, like, sure, but it's just like, it's too much for buying a house and celebration. That was the overlap, by the way. That was it? Yeah, the Pocahontas movie, the Disney movie, and then the celebration, that's the overlap here. There's another one, too. But I just wanted to say that Jason Mamoa would not live there.

Nobody you would want to socialize what would live there. again if you live there god bless you um but yeah overall one of the grossest concepts i've ever come across um it is i wrote down that it is the ben shapiro of cities just it's a case study in consumerism yes visualization of life the sterilization of the human condition it's all disgusting like take character and just remove it and that's what you get with Celebration. Oh my God. I'm like so many people are going to stop being my friend because they thought I was like super nice and then they're going to listen to this and be like Taylor's not very nice. Well, Taylor's honest in this situation. So yeah, to your point. So Celebration, like you said, like you said by the Walt Disney Corporation. And like we're kind of talking about here. Like I like you said with you like I fucking hate Walt. Like I hate Disneyland and Disney. The movies are great. The movies are fantastic. I like I'm into the movies. but there's something about this town and about like the Disney culture it just it just like it reminds me like an Irish Catholic family where like the dad's a constant drunk and the kids gay and the mom cries all the time but they all pretend like everything's fine and normal and nobody talks for other issues of all like that's what Disney sounds like to me I mean I guarantee you there are no therapists in celebration yeah yeah yeah yeah

you got to figure out your mental health some other way there unfortunately but um one thing i wrote here which like is incredible i i dug this out did you know this taylor they put speakers in the trees to make bird sounds celebration yeah can you believe that shit i've guessed like 15 times but i feel like it's like what i said what what are you what are you like are you like ah not like put a fucking bird feeder outside and get some birds peanut butter on a pine cone like you do when you're a kid you know like perfect enough you need to have the exact right pitch you have the exact right cadence i'm like so i know i told you when i was there there was fake snow after when i went out of the restaurant that was delicious i had paella it was really good but

i feel like i'm surprised it's not in a dome yeah yeah i'm surprised it's not like a biosphere where it's like it's sunny all the time and like blah blah blah it's 10 square miles you believe Oh, my God. It's crazy. So anyways, yeah, like, there's a part of the story, which is obviously going to get an incredibly dark and terrible, but it's also kind of hilarious because I just want to imagine the typical resident of celebration and then pretending they're living in this Disney universe, and then Tony comes along and does what he does there, and it just completely just, like, I don't know, it's not funny, but it's also like, this is the real world.

Like, I know you want to live in a Disneyland, but there is also a real world here. I'm so sorry, I can ask you one more question? Yes. So we are together in your new house in Austin, and I told you as soon as I got here that I already zillowed it because I always was a little at a house if you give me your address. And then I sent your address to my sister, so I could tell her where I was, and she also zillied it immediately because that's what you do. You zillot.

And did you zillow their house in celebration? How much did it cost? Do you know? I so this is when I went on in that deep dive a few months ago um because the house came up for sale uh I think maybe six months ago give or take and it didn't sell obviously being the reason it the reason it came up for me because I'm on every social media group that has to with like serial killers and it popped up somebody saying does anybody know whose house this is and I looked it up and it was listed somewhere in the four to 500 range whereas every other

house in that areas in the 800, 900 range. It's a large house. It's a little, a little, maybe a murder house. The, um, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the worst parts about this is that the poor woman who owned the house, at least this house, the Toad family, she lives there now, full time, because she can't get rid of it. Oh, she, they, oh, no. Yeah.

They didn't, they leased it from her. They leased it. Um, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So long story short, so the family is living in celebration starting in May of 2019. That's when they signed their lease. So May of 2019, they moved a family down to Florida. Tony stays in Colchester, Connecticut, to see his patience and the work. Then he goes back and forth on the weekends. I'm going to start throwing out some dates here. But like I said, just know that everything we are talking about is between November 2019 and January 2020. It is that tight of a time frame. Okay. So on November 21st, agents raid Tony's office. They take all his files, computers, all that other stuff that further bolstered

a case against him for insurance and Medicaid fraud. This blows my mind. This investigation was apparently super chill because he was kind of just like going about living his life and doing whatever he wanted. He still go back and forth to Florida and Connecticut. The agents would ask when he could meet. He'd let them know.

They didn't seem to have an especially adversarial relationship at this point. To that end, he told investigators to be back in Connecticut on December 4th to meet with his attorney and then continue with this investigation. It was almost like they were putting things on hold to work around his schedule, which is incredible. So invests here is saying, okay, cool, we got a few weeks to chill. Then obviously this upstanding man's going to come meet with us. And, you know, like, I hate going super into like the privilege thing. But this one just smacked me so hard of privilege.

The fact that this guy built the government out of tens or potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars. The government is like, well, have a great holiday. We'll see you, you know, whatever it's good for you. When are you free, sir? Yeah. So weird. So the next day is the last day anybody sees Tony. That's number 22nd. So that's Thanksgiving and he is with his sister. No clue if the rest of the family is there if they're still in Florida. All we know is that Tony was for sure there. The sister hears from the family periodically. And it was like it was normal interactions with them until around December 23rd, 24th. That's when the all communication stopped in a way that for her

sounded unusual to the kind of relationship she had with them. On the 29th, she gets vibes. She calls the cops to do a welfare check. The family also owned another condo about an hour away from this rental house in celebration. Again, super over-extended. She asked the police to go check there and to check the house of celebration for the welfare check.

Tony and one of his earlier communications to her had told her that the entire family was super sick that's why nobody was talking to her basically so police went to check and again they're super chill they knocked them the door they didn't see anything suspect they're like nah it's all good we can't really do anything else for you here that was the way they ended

on the 29th of December that's like a week after Thanksgiving she's like we're not I haven't heard from him no she stopped hearing from him December 23rd 24th it was a month after Thanksgiving Oh, December. Okay. Yeah, yeah. So on January 6th, people started hearing from them again. Tony made some vague claim to a family member that his phone had been stolen or lost at a Starbucks and then he'd just been returned.

A neighbor to the, a condo neighbor of theirs texted Megan, letting her know that an eviction notice had been put on the condo. Megan replied, okay, thanks. By this point, there was eviction notice on everything. The Celebration House had an eviction notice and the condo an hour away from the house. house had an eviction notice on it. Given what was going on, obviously Tony just didn't. He was in a different mental state. He was not paying bills at this point. On January 9th, the FBI is starting to get frantic by their investigation. This is the point in which they're like, this guy's not talking to anyone.

He's not coming back. We should probably start doing something. They call the police, the local police in Florida. In the same day, Chrissy also calls the local police. And this is what Chrissy says. this is a quote my sister-in-law had made a comment that basically quote the world is ending on December 28th and nobody has talked to them nobody has physically talked to my sister-in-law since the 26th of December and my brother stopped texting us as of Monday January 6th she's making

this call on January 9th so I'll tell you this statement really threw a monkey wrench for me in this situation because I don't tell my family anything. I keep all the inner workings of my mind a complete secret because I just don't welcome any questions about my life. So for me to say the world is ending on whatever date seems really fucking bizarre, you know, like maybe you have a different relationship, maybe you're more vocal about the things that you would express to your family. What do you think of that?

Well, okay, I am definitely more vocal and express my feelings to my family, but it's a weird ass thing to say. Who says that? It's so weird. it's so weird i wouldn't say that to anyone like what what are you supposed to do with that as a receiver of that information be like cool i'm going to spend all my money now or i don't know or like great have you talked to jesus like what does that even mean i don't know what that means so we know you know we know that megans said this to chrissy to tony's sister because it was on

a phone call it wasn't a text it was a phone call and so very peculiar very, very odd situation. And again, I'm not sure what to make of it, but it does set up some plausible deniability for Tony later on. So that's a good thing for him, I guess. A day later, this is January 10th. The police go to both the condo and the house. They find nothing. On the 11th, they go back and again, find nothing. And then on the 12th, the poor owner of this house they're leasing calls it also asked for a welfare check. This woman sounds like a sweet landlord actually like it here's here's what she said this is a direct quote i own a property that i rent out and i have concerns for the family on social media i've just sort of seen that

people have not seen or heard from this family in a long long time and i'm trying to sort notice to evict them because they've not been paying rent i'm concerned for the family and i'm concerned for my property i just thought it was me they weren't communicating with because they owed me money but in general they've not been in contact with anybody so she's freaking out like what's going to happen to this like amazing house she has and shitty shit fuck celebration florida you know like it's gonna are they destroying it or what that's good some good soothing of her yeah yeah um at this point federal agents are basically like fuck this guy we got to go get him they call the local police for backup and by this point they had seen tony entering the

rental house and not leave so on the 13th they go to the house this time the door is unlocked and they just let themselves in. This is all for Medicaid fraud. Right. Not even like the fact that his family is missing. No. None of them. This is just like money.

Yeah. And that's thing. Like I don't know how the FBI works, obviously. But I imagine you don't put the financial crime people on murder investigations. Yeah. Look at my mind, I'm picturing like these guys going in with calculators and pocket protectors to put this guy for like an incredibly white collar crime, which like just frame that in your mind as well of like who the personality types are that are walking into this

house. And it's also that they're like they didn't have like a tremendous sense of urgency, you know, that they were like, okay, we'll give you the holidays. And now they're like, all right, it's super annoying. You haven't called us. But they're not like, this is a life or death situation. There's like, we need to finally do our job. So come to. Yeah. Their investigation in the fraud is less than two months old. I mean, these things drag on for years. Like it's not like a crazy urgent situation. Yeah. But here, Taylor, this is where the nightmare fuel really begins.

Okay? Do me a favor. Google Tony Toad, again, it's T-O-D-T, and do arrest after it. So I want you to see the most recent picture of him upon his arrest. Don't say anything. Yeah. Okay. You saw it?

did. So apparently, pretty shortly before the events of what's going to happen, Tony was in decent shape. So if you're listening and you're not looking at this picture, I'm going to go ahead and describe him. Then Taylor, you can describe him as well. The day he's arrested, he basically looks like Danny DeVito's penguin from Batman Returns. Like he is a, again, not fat shaming anyone. He does not look normal fat. He looks like a blob of a human being, is how I describe it, and it becomes relevant

that he looks like a blob of a human being shortly when I get into the murders. So, Taylor, what do you think of his appearance? He definitely doesn't look good. I mean, not even like his weight, but he just looks like he looks like a broken, sad human.

Like, he definitely looks like he's given up. I feel like that's what I get from like his face, like his face is like it's expressionless you know you know and i mean it's like doing you many favors he's wearing it's like white jumpsuit but like he just he looks like well he looks real fucking guilty that's what he looks like he looks real fucking bad he looks like somebody who has probably like been resuscitated after 17 heart attacks like he is not in a good way no and he's not in a good way the day the police get there. Apparently, I'll get into what he took, but

police open the door to this house. The FBI and the police open the door to this house. They go inside and Tony comes hobbling down the stairs. Again, he's not in a good way. Like, he's not like just bouncing down the stairs. Like, what's going on, guys? No, like, he's just like half aware of what's going on. You know, I just keep picturing all the lights off in his house for some reason and then this guy coming down the stairs just looking out of sorts with the body type that he had it had to be surreal they already knew something was up because they later stated that the second they opened the door the smell of decomposition hit them and it only got it only got worse the deeper they went into the house so they knew there was something going on here

this part again don't go into this guy's head is fucking terrifying he told the police that his kids were probably at a friend's house for a sleepover and that his wife was upstairs sleeping Taylor he yelled up to his wife no like police are here come on down again just it gets worse it gets so much worse so I feel like yeah I feel like he's when you say the lights were off I feel like the lights were like always off yeah I feel like he hasn't like he looks like someone who hasn't been in the light artificial or not in a very long time Yeah, yeah. Whenever, whenever, I didn't put this in this outline, but when I originally was looking up this case, apparently what he was doing when the police had showed up was that he had been sitting on the front patio of the celebration house, just like blankly staring into the distance. And then they say that when he got up to go in the house, his body movements were abnormal. Like he was not moving his body in a way that made sense to probably just to stand up and walk inside the house. So like, again, there's a lot going on in this guy's head. in his body.

He kind of looks like Vincent Dinoffrio when he's full of aliens in blue black. Yes, that's what he looks like. That's so good. Yeah, you know that. Yeah, that's why I think he's too. And I can also picture his fucking neighbor across the street mowing his lawn and being like,

do-to-do, I live in celebration. What a weird fit community meeting that must have been after this happened. Right, and way went up, yeah. So police go upstairs, and they find what you would expect, given the nature of stories that I tell, they find incredibly badly decomposed bodies.

Ew. Except Zoe, the four-year-old little girl. They can't find her at first. Megan was in bed with the covers pulled over her. This is so bad. They eventually, after some investigation, realized that the puddle that was at Megan's feet was Zoe.

No. For whatever reason, she decomposed the quickest or whatever. They say that this girl was there. Like, it was just like an amorphous blob at the foot of her mom's bed. No. How old is she? Four. Oh, my God.

That's like big. It's not like a tiny baby. Yeah. What, um, how long were they dead? Oh, we're going to get to that. Yeah, we're going to get to that. Going back to how Tony looks now and, like, his abnormal fat distribution and weight, what he did to Zoe is so fucking haunting to me.

Like, again, this is the stuff that, like, you just don't want to go super deep into it. He killed her by laying on her. No. Can you fucking believe that? no oh my god you can give your kids away i just want to say that again you can just leave him at like the store

yeah take him to the fire station please um so oh my god poor baby so as far as the rest of the family he at the very least

stabbed the two boys and megan but an autopsy also revealed a toxic level of Benadry in their system. No. Which, like, I didn't, I'd actually know you could OD on Benadryl, but I guess you can OD on anything. Of course you can.

Yeah, totally. Well, there you go. Well, hopefully there was asleep. Oh, that's terrible. Except for, at the very least stuff for Zoe. And no, we know that that wasn't the case because one of the boys, Tony later stated that he was really, really nervous about because when he started stabbing him, he was like, that's the older boy.

He might actually be able to overpower me and run out of the house or escape or something. he actually like so they were conscious enough to where he thought that was a legitimate risk yeah we know all this because he actually confessed the police three times three separate instances he confessed the police ultimately they deemed this inadmissible but whatever we're not a legal procedure show so he confessed to laying on his little girl until she stopped breathing that's what happened as far as i'm concerned he also killed the dog breezy not sure why that was necessary but i guess you know he was on a roll um police think the murders happen around christmas taylor do you remember when i said they were found

january something january 13th so think about that picture this guy basically the penguin rambling around the house for three weeks oh my god with four corpses plus his dead dog eating popeye's chicken and just sitting there like and people are like knocking on the door right yeah people are asking where they've done like at this point three or four welfare checks on them as well oh my god this is another another point from our last episode i feel like you should look in your neighbor's windows guys please don't do that i'm just going to say like maybe you need to sometimes like just like take a peek and if things look like weird then call the police like i don't A little curious.

Yeah, be like a smidge curious. Like if things seem weird, just like, I don't know, pop in. Maybe, like, bring some cookies. So you can later be like, oh, I was bringing your cookies, you know, but like, not make it weird. But like, I feel like we should, you should look in your neighbor's windows. Taylor, like, this is the part of this story that I think I, like, dwell on the most, was you're in this house with your dead family rotting above you for weeks. No.

it's so crazy to me to the point where one of the kids is a puddle of a puddle of sine you like it's absolutely unbelievable oh my god it's awful um so tony's side of the story uh changes after he confessed um it seemed at first you know he did the confessing then later on he said that his wife did it then later said that it was some part of some plan he and his wife had to stave off the apocalypse it's worth noting that nothing i read mentioned religion or spirituality at all with these folks all we have is to what Tony says now. And what Megan told Chrissy about the world ending on December 28th.

Which is interesting, given when investigators think they died. Wait, did he kill them on December 28th? They don't know because the bodies were so decomposed. They just assume it was in this window of time around Christmas time. Oh, my God. Yeah. So according to Tony, Megan had baked a pie that had a shitload of Benadryl in it and apparently fed it to the kids.

Then they took a bunch of Benadryl. then she took a bunch of Benadryl herself and then also, he says she stabbed herself in the abdomen, given her previous statement, yeah, I thought that too, but given the previous statement about how the world is going to end, there's part of this story that I'm like,

could this have been a thing? It's, there's more evidence around Tony having done all of this than there is about Megan. All we have about Megan is that she was in constant pain because of Lyme disease, and she did make this statement that is verified that the,

world is going to end the 28th. That's all we really know. So like, I don't know, this reminds me of like, it would be a lot if he was like secretly convincing her that the world's going to end and she did to kill her children. I feel like other people would know that she was having that experience. And nobody said anything. Nobody, they were like Megan's normal. Like, to the point where the, the red flag of all this to Chrissy, Tony's sister was, I talk to these people all the time. like we have a great relationship and now I just don't hear from them at all so I don't know I I'm leaving it's not enough for me to say Megan did this but it's just another weird component of this yeah no I don't make sure I don't think he didn't it yeah you when you think about like the axe dropping of the fraud investigation with the evictions it also the fact that at this point it goes probably without saying but he'd actually exhausted every financial reason worse he had at that time you had nothing left like there was nothing left like it was over like it was all done um and then yeah ultimately what ended up happening was his trial lasted for

only six days he was hit with four life sentences plus one year for killing the dog greasy he obviously appealed and obviously that's not going anywhere um there is a there's a random fact here that i didn't actually put into the storyline because i don't know where to place it. So in the 1980s, Tony's parents were married. They lived together, like they wanted a divorce couple or anything. The dad's name is Robert. And apparently Robert hired what kind of sounds like probably like a slightly mentally disabled person paid him $800 to kill his wife. Oh no. Tony's mom. Did he do? Yeah. So the guy shot her in the face in the kitchen of their home directly in front of a four-year-old Tony.

Well, I don't think that's random. I think of that fucks me up for life. But like, oh, by the way, she lived. I don't know how she lived. And apparently, apparently she, like, really loved Robert because she was, like, on his side for the trial, which is incredible.

He ended up ultimately going to jail for five years. And Tony and him essentially had no relationship after that. until now, until this happened with Tony and now him and Robert are now back pen-palling each other and having the conversations. Because they're wife killers. Son, you fell so close to the tree. I'm just so jealous that you succeeded in killing your wife.

I don't... It's not irrelevant. Like, I think that's really a big fucking deal. But is it relevant in the sense that now like there's a common stripe running through this family? that is absolutely unbelievable fucking trauma for a child like can you you

that ruins your life clearly I think we can direct thread that what happened and they get red yarn and direct thread that to him killing his family because if you see that I mean Tony Tony

um draw that comparison himself as well of this did something to me I don't know what but it's it's just like I have such a hard time excusing like finding reasons to excuse behavior like this like it's no I mean don't kill your family that's number one that's not an excuse but I feel like it definitely contributed and like I also feel like he never went to a therapist yeah yeah and he never talked about his problems he never told his wife what he was I'm totally editorializing this and and

making an assumption, I would assume that if he didn't think that he was in a position where he had to commit all this fraud to the same lifestyle that he and the kids that Megan had become accustomed to, he probably wouldn't have done this. I think that this was a man at the incomplete end of his rope. He given up on life. I mean, that's the part of it. Again, the picture that you see of him, that is a man who gave up on all of life, all of it. Well, I mean, this is exactly what a feeling annihilator does. When you see filmy annihilator, I think John list and it's exactly what he did is he was like there's too much debt i don't know what to do i have to kill my family i'm in too deep you know like i can't take this family out of this nice

house i have to kill them yeah yeah it feels like that is a common thread that runs through all this but um yeah that is uh so the reason the reason i picked my tie is because if you don't know this you can only drink in one place in Disneyland and it's Club 33 and Club 33 has this like old timey vibe to it and you have to be like invited or something to go there again this is so fucking stupid like it's like another reason not to go I'm just going to add that to my unbelievable you have to be sober while all these kids are screaming and running around it sounds like in lines, just in lines, and it's and you've also paid

thousands of dollars to do this. I feel like we did this last week, although I have the turpins going there, but also it's been really rainy in California, and I saw pictures of people going to get to Disneyland in the rain. Oh. Taylor,

Taylor, if we ever are able to get like advertisers and Disney or Disney Cruise line decides to advertise on us, we're going to take this episode down. Yeah, no, I'm 100. going if they're paying for it. I did go one time because I had a friends who worked there and they paid for it. Like it was free. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's worth that. And only that. But, but this Club 33, all they have are old-timey drinks. They don't do anything modern. And so it's

like Saziracs and Mai Tai and stuff like that. I love it there. Yeah, the vibe inside is very, yeah, it's very you, Taylor. It's very like, I love a speakeasy. Clapper, retro. Yeah, like, I want to open a closet door and be in a bar. Yes, 100%. Yes. But if I had a bookcase, oh, my God, I would die. That's so fun. Oh, yeah. So that's why we're doing my ties today. But that's my story.

It is really troubling. It's so sad. It's so sad that people, like, it's, I mean, I feel terrible for the kids and for the wife. And I think all of that, like, her doing it stuff is bullshit. I think he just wants to, like, you know, maybe get one less life sentence or whatever. but like that's absolute bullshit there's no way that she did that i mean i feel like he was maybe i'm sure as she was saying shit hit the fan that things were not great in their relationship you know yeah she's like oh hey hon the fbi is at the door for you that's beginning of something

bad i don't even think she it didn't even go that far i think that was like the barrier that he created with them living in celebration while he's doing all this in connecticut oh right oh yeah Maybe that's why they moved to celebrate. Maybe that's why they even moved to Florida was because he was like, I have to create a physical barrier between, God, what a cluster. Well, that's terrible. Thanks for sharing.

Next week, I will be sharing an incredibly happy story. Will you really? No. Oh, because. It's like, really? Of course not. Because next week, mine is a love story. And I'm just so sorry that it's not going to be funny,

but I just can. I have already cried about it. So I love story that didn't work out. So I just can't even talk about it. But also don't stop recording because I feel like we don't have any banter at the end of our show. We need to add banter in. I will keep recording. We need like a sign-off and something funny to say when we leave.

So I feel like, I don't know, like look in your neighbor's windows and. Do you want to do it? No, I need, we need maybe to think about it more, but I just don't want to like abruptly end it. I don't want to sit here in silence, but we're going to work on an ending. This is episode three, but we're not just going to cut it off anymore. We're going to add more banter. We're going to be funnier. These are my promises to the, to the worlds.

I feel like my stories aren't funny, though. Well, you don't want to pick comedy as like our number one thing. I feel like I should adjust that. that's a good point but yeah no i'm looking forward to next week to learn more about this love story and i'm going to bring you another horrible horrible story that will hopefully curl your toes and make you envision horrible things happening to people that probably don't deserve it great yeah yeah more red flags more red flags more relationships that we're doomed to fail it's all coming up oh wait wait i have one more thing to say while we're still recording

So, Farrs, one of my best friends, Nicole, she was like, she texted me and she was like, I have to tell you something. And I was like, okay, she was like, so when I looked at your stuff for doomed to fail and I saw a DTF, I thought about something else. I didn't think doomed to fail when I saw that acronym. And I was like, I know Nicole, that's the joke. She was like, okay, good, just making sure. That was intentional. It was intentional. I was like, thanks for my back.

And she was like, of course. That was absolutely intentional. I will also say that Taylor is the one who asked for the DTF. logo. Yeah. So it was all you're doing. Well, we'll go ahead and sign off. Thanks everyone for listening and we'll be back next week. See you next week. Thanks, Price. Bye.