Every Town - Mysterious Illness Causing Body Malfunctions In Teens In Upstate NY

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

Today we’re checking out a very creepy case that grew out of a perfect storm of circumstances. Were the townsfolk justified in their panic when their children fell ill, or was this a case of Mass hysteria in the modern era? 👀 Watch This Episode On Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/scarymysteries 🎧 Our Other Podcast Scary Mysteries: https://open.spotify.com/show/3ZooEZMoZ421WdsOVJhVkT 💀 Exclusive Videos, Podcasts & Perks: https://www.patreon.com/scarymysteries  👁 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrew.fitzg 👁 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewfitzgerald 👁 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scarymysteriesofficial 🗣 Business Inquiries, questions and comments hit us up at [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Everytown has a dark side. Over 300 years ago, in the English colony of Salem, now Massachusetts, the entire community was gripped with terror and uncertainty when two girls, ages 9 and 11, daughters of the local minister, began acting strangely. What started as a peculiar illness characterized by convulsions, fevers, and hallucinations affecting only the two girls, quickly escalated into a mailstorm of terror and paranoia that gripped the entire town, it remains difficult to explain to this very day.

The Salem Witch trials were one of the darkest episodes in American history. Events that in one way, shape, or form were caused by what we now know is mass hysteria. Events that because of the human psyche are doomed to repeat themselves over and over again. In a small town in upstate New York in late 2011, they did. It happened when a teenager woke up from a nap, suffering from terrifying sales. symptoms, and soon she wasn't the only one, sending the entire town of Leroy into complete chaos. Hey guys, it's Andrew, and thanks for tuning in to another episode of Everytown, but today we're checking out a very creepy case that grew out of a perfect storm of circumstances.

Were the townsfolk justified in their panic when their children fell ill? Or was this a case of mass hysteria in the modern era? Let's find out together and dig into all the strange events happening in Leroy, New York. In mid-2011, the small town of Leroy in upstate New York appeared to be just another normal, safe, and peaceful place, with really nothing all that spectacular to set it apart from any other town in the U.S. The population of just 7,500 was a typical rural community that prided itself on doing things right, as their slogan says. a place where people could raise their children away from the stressful pace of city life. It was also a town with a bit of an interesting history.

And for a long time, companies like Jello employed thousands of people here, roughly from 1897 up to the 1960s when they moved their factories. This left Leroy as a relatively stable manufacturing community after that, although its heyday was certainly behind it because Jello is tough to top. So by 2011, really, its main attraction was its excellent schools, which drew people from the nearby city of Rochester. But then all the strangeness began. And this all can be traced back to Katie Crosworth, cheerleader at Leroy High School, who awoke

from a nap one day, to find that she had transformed into a different person. That's really the best way to describe what happened. And Katie was an athletic and poised young woman, as evident by her prominent position. on the school's cheerleading squad, discipline that, as you know, requires coordination, good reflexes and agility. However, as soon as she woke up on this day, and Katie knew something was terribly wrong.

Her chin was swinging back and forth uncontrollably, and her face started to contort into violent and involuntary spasms. And Katie was at her boyfriend's house when these symptoms began, and so they drove down to the emergency room thinking it might be some sort of stroke, but luckily the doctor suggested that it was probably an anxiety attack. Nothing too serious to be concerned about, they thought. And Katie herself figured that made sense, and she admitted that from time to time,

and she did get anxious about her schoolwork and the general pressures of teenage life. And they sent her home with some mild medications, assuring her that things would get better. When her mom brought her back to the doctor just days later with no relief in sight, concerns began to grow. At first, Katie's case seemed like an isolated incident. A random illness that despite having no proven explanation beyond the stress of being a teenager

didn't worry anyone too much as it didn't appear life-threatening. After a few weeks, however, things began to escalate in the town of Leroy. While Katie was still dealing with her own issues, her best friend, Vera Sanchez, who was the captain of the school's cheerleading squad, woke up from a nap one day with similar symptoms as Katie. At first she began to stutter, and then she started to shake uncontrollably, flailing her arms and shaking her head side to side in an unnatural manner.

When doctors told Ther was mother Melissa that her daughter's tics were the result of stress, but she was skeptical since she knew what Katie was dealing with. At the same time, what else could they do? Again, there was no apparent immediate danger with her health, and so they hope that it all just subsided within a few days, and time would tell. Then two weeks later, the next case came in. Lydia Parker, a senior who also experienced ticks, arms flailing, and mumbling. More or less, the same thing happened to Chelsea Dumars,

another cheerleader who had recently moved to town and who, it was rumored, had begun making the same strange noises and suffering the same ticks, spasms, and motor problems as the previous young women. So what exactly was going on here? The townsfolk were demanding answers. I mean, how many more would it take? The situation then began to spiral out of control as the number of students experiencing the same weird symptoms grew.

Another few days, and the number was up to six. Then 12 teenagers were affected by the strange affliction. It ballooned up to 15, and then 18, in a school of just 600 students. But it didn't stop there. The strange illness, which at first seemed to have preference, only affecting those who you might call popular kids in school, then began to spread, affecting girls who weren't cheerleaders at all, been a boy, and even a 36-year-old woman. Long before, the number of people affected by this mysterious illness reached its peak, while parents in Leroy, who were worried about the health and well-being of their children were only left to speculate. Was there something in the water at school?

Lead pipes, maybe. Was it a chemical and the fertilizer laid out on the playgrounds and fields of the school? Maybe it was mold or a new street drug that someone was manufacturing in some bathtub in town that none of the kids wanted to talk about out of fear of getting in trouble. By mid-January, with about a dozen known cases at that point, the anxious parents of Leroy awaited the preliminary results at the New York State Department of Health investigation of the area. But at the community meeting where the results were to be announced, Officials claim they could not reveal the diagnosis out of respect for patient privacy.

And nevertheless, they tried to reassure the crowd that the school environment was safe. Statements that not surprisingly left many parents unsatisfied and even pissed off, including Beth Miller, the mother of Katie, first victim, and her husband and Katie's stepfather, Don Miller. As media caught wind of the strange illness in Leroy, soon young Katie and Thera accompanied by their mothers, appeared on the nationally televised Today Show. And during the segment, Katie's tick seemed under control for the most part, but Theros were extreme. She would shake her head to one side and flail her arms all across her body

and sometimes stutter a word before letting out a guttural scream. She stated, I was always very active, and everyone loved being around me, but I no longer feel like myself. The girl's media appearance set off a fierce chain of reactions, The numerous local and national news outlets, Facebook profiles, autism blogs, and websites dedicated to mental health and environmental issues picking up on the strange situation unfolding in upstate New York. Shortly thereafter, in fact, just the day after the girls' media

appearance on the Today Show, a Buffalo neurologist whose practice had seen several of the affected young women at this point was given the go-ahead to discuss the diagnosis in order to try and quiet the panic. And it was a bittersweet diagnosis for parents and patients alike. This wasn't any mold or drugs or chemicals. It was, in fact, what the doctors had initially been saying all along, with a little bit more attached, though. It was conversion disorder, which is described as a physical response to overwhelming stress or emotional distress, and is more common in people going through difficult emotional situations and in those who suffer from anxiety or depression.

It is also three times more common in women than in men, although it affects people of all ages, it's more common between the ages of 20 and 50. But because the symptoms had appeared in multiple teenagers so fast, in addition to conversion disorder, the neurologist added another item to his diagnosis, mass psychogenic outbreak. which would more commonly be known as an instance of mass hysteria.

In an unbiased analysis, the diagnosis wasn't too far-fetched, as this condition is much more common than one might think. But it still wasn't enough for the teenagers' representatives. One of the girls' guardians said, It's very hard to swallow this pill. Are we living in the 16th century? Meanwhile, James DuPont, the father of one of the affected girls, told CNN, a lot of these kids were just living happy, normal lives.

Don Miller, the father of the first patient, also joined the ranks of those unhappy with the diagnosis, telling the media, "'My daughter didn't suffer any trauma. It was just happy and living her life. She was as happy as she could be.'" In cases like this one are interesting, and really they highlight the urgent human need

to have someone or something tangible to blame when things happen that we simply, can't understand. In other words, the parents weren't happy because how does mass hysteria even happen in the first place? It just seems like a lame excuse. But it's most certainly a real thing, and it's happened time and time again all throughout history. Going back to where we started in 1692 and the then-English colony of Massachusetts, that similar story unfolded when young Betty Paris, who was nine and her cousin Abigail, who was 11. Both residents, of the rural town of Salem began to exhibit similar symptoms.

And the girls, the daughter and niece of Samuel Parris, the community's new minister, began to suffer from high fevers, convulsions, and severe spasms. It was even rumor that they were running around the house on all fours, barking and growling like dogs. And the situation alarmed the community, of course, which could find no logical or medical explanation for the girl's suffering. To make matters worse, the symptoms that began to start,

spread, affecting more and more women in the town, turning confusion into paranoia and that into fear. Unable to find a logical and rational explanation for what was happening, the townspeople came to the conclusion through rumor after rumor that it could only be the work of Satan himself, and they needed to protect themselves. The Paris girls had already said they suspected that they had been bewitched by mysterious women whose shadows they had seen lurking around the house. The Locals then believed they had finally found the answer in a book called Memorable Providence. This book, written by the Puritan, Reverend Cotton Mather, covered many cases of possessions, and it also mentioned an alleged case of witchcraft in Boston, where an Irish woman suffered

from the same symptoms as the girls in their town. The entire city came to the same conclusion, there must be witches among them, hiding, looking to wreak havoc and unleash pain. and the collective madness that gripped Salem was so great that in less than three months some 14 women, five men and even two dogs were executed for being alleged servants of the devil. Of course, that was the start of what would become the Salem witch trials,

and it is perhaps the most well-known example of mass hysteria. But there's been hundreds of examples of this same sort of thing occurring in little pockets of the world forever. The Halifax Slasher in England, back in 19, 1938 is a good example, where in the span of two weeks, more than 10 people came forward with claims that a mysterious attacker was coming from the shadows and slashing them at random. The victims were interestingly, mostly women. The town went into a frenzy, but as it turns out, well, none of the attacks ever happened.

The June bug incident in 1962 happened at a dressmaking textile factory, when the women there started to suffer from numbness, nausea, dizziness, and vomiting. The word got around that a bug was in the building, biting them. And in the end, 62 employees developed symptoms with some even being hospitalized. But experts in the U.S. Public Health Service looked into it, and there were no bugs, no bite marks on the people. And it was concluded that anxiety was the cause, and it just caught on with everyone who worked there. And back in Leroy, well, it was the same sort of situation. The mind is a powerful thing, more powerful the most realized.

You ever been in a situation where you faked you were sick, only to actually start feeling ill? That's the mind-body connection working. So when these cheerleaders saw that their friends were sick, well, they thought they were too. And soon the dominoes fell. While the parents in this case didn't blame the devil or a slasher or a bug, they did find someone to point the finger at. In the not so distant past, Leroy had been a major industrial center, filled with factories of all kinds, so there were many neighbors who were in the midst of typical dinner conversation speculated about what kind of waste might have been left behind by Leroy's long-closed industrial plants. The older resident said that in the past, you could always tell what flavor was being produced in the jello factories,

just by the color of the water in the nearby river. So, little by little, the seeds of this paranoid idea took root in the town's mind. Seeds that germinated when the first of the girls began to suffer from those inexplicable ailments. And Beth Miller began to dig deeper, and in fact, she and several of her neighbors had suffered from tumors in the past, and she had heard of cancer cases on the street where she and her family had previously lived. So the idea that her daughter's symptoms were related to some pollutant in the environment never left her. Beth followed these leads until one day someone left a series of documents under her dormant about a nearby railroad accident in Leroy. The disaster had occurred more than 40 years earlier in 1970.

The papers stated that the accident had spilled thousands of gallons of highly toxic chemicals. And the papers stated that the accident had spilled thousands of gallons of highly toxic chemicals, including a solvent linked to nervous system damage after high exposure. So three months after her daughter Katie fell ill, Beth contacted none other than Erin Brokovich, the famous environmental activist and paralegal played by Julia Roberts in the movie the same name. Brokovich, perhaps more interested in the big story at hand than anything else, sent a team to Leroy to analyze the school grounds and determined if the school might have been built on soil, transported from the contaminated site.

Brokovich's team, accompanied by CNN crew and other journalists, arrived in town on Saturday, January 28th, only to find local police waiting to prevent them from accessing the facilities. This situation caused a bit of tension, as you can imagine, plunging the town further into a climate of anger and rationality that even the newcomers could taste. Bob Bocock, one of the analysis on Brokovich's team, claimed that the presence of the police, rather than serving as mere peacemakers to prevent disorder and irrationality, indicated that there was something to hide. A woman named Robbie Horn, mother of four, echoed the same sentiment, stating, I'm very angry.

I mean, what are they trying to hide? Were they not allowed to take the little soil sample? In a local newspaper poll found that 67% of the 1600 respondents did not trust the Leroy schools to look out for the best interest of the students. By this point, it had been five months since the first teenager had fallen ill. The quiet town of Leroy, the place people lived to get away from all the hustle-bustle, had become a complete circus. What had started as a strange case of a group of teens suffering from unexplained ailments

now escalated into a potential environmental crisis. And Kim Cox, the school's principal, offered the best assurances to the angry and irrational parents that proper analysis have been done and that no expert had found any evidence of anything that could cause the girl's distress. But his words fell on deaf ears. By this time, Brokovich was making regular media appearances. She continued to speak out about her suspicions

that there was some chemical component in the area and highlighted the low level of trust the townspeople had in the authorities. Unsubstantiated rumors of natural gas wells on school property, and toxic waste dumps a few miles outside of town, and an orange sticky substance oozing from playgrounds spread around. And so it's no surprise that just as the patient seemed to begin to recover, their symptoms once again flared up.

Laslo Meckler, one of the many neurologists in Buffalo who had treated some of the girls, said they were returned to the office, completely terrified, sobbing, and saying things like, These chemicals are in my head, and I'm going to be damaged for life. When neurologists continued claiming that the ticks, spasms, and seizures, the girls were experiencing, were due to a conversion disorder. Most parents raised their fists in protest. The idea that their daughter's illnesses had a psychological cause didn't sit well with anyone, either parents nor, of course, the girls.

It's likely that the parents found it confusing to hear about deep stress when their daughters had been as normal. as ever in the days before. By the time the New York Times interviewed them, both Katie and Thera were convinced that the epidemic of ticks and seizures sweeping the city couldn't be due to hysteria, with Katie stating in reference to the start of the sickness, Theran and I have definitely had moments of stress,

but this was not one of those times. A quick investigation, however, would suggest otherwise. The second time Katie and her best friend were taken to the hospital, but they were not accompanied by either of their parents. Instead, they were accompanied by the mother of Katie's boyfriend. The reason? At the time, Katie's mother was recovering from a recent brain surgery. In addition to the brain tumor, Beth also suffered from trigomenial neurologia,

a nerve condition that causes severe facial pain. In the weeks leading up to her surgery, while she had been so ill that she could barely get out of bed, Just a week before Katie's ticks, she had undergone surgery, not for the second, third, or fourth time, but for the 13th. In reference to this, Katie said without a trace of emotion on her face that she was quite used to it, and that it had been a walk in the park. Never hadn't had it much easier. A few years ago, her family had suffered a loss that could only describe as traumatic. Although the family asked that the details be kept private,

the situation had severely damaged the girl's relationship with her biological father. She had not in contact with him since she was young. It recently felt so bad that she was having trouble sleeping after some harsh words they had exchanged. She even admitted that both she and her mother were very upset because her father was unwilling to travel from South Carolina to Leroy to visit her after her seizures began. She said,

I used to be sissy to him, a nickname he called her. and now I'm just Thera. And he used to be dad and now he's just Frank. What was also interesting was that the ticks began to spread in an almost rigid way, as if following the strange social classes of high school. And they started with the much more popular girls like Katie and Thera, and affected young people of much lower status, if you will, after that.

There were even cases of teenagers pretending to have the same symptoms to get on the news, situation, by the way, that is quite common when such cases occur because a lot of people tend to fall the herd and don't want to be left out. Thus, using almost the same means as three centuries ago, hysteria spread throughout a small town, affecting directly or indirectly, depending on the case, hundreds of people. Not because of the malevolent actions of the devil, or even a minor or major environmental crisis, but because of something much closer and more invisible, but just as powerful, the influence of our own minds.

So that's it for this week's episode of Everytown. Hope you guys enjoyed it. If you want more exclusive content, check out our Scary Mysteries Patreon page, where for just $3 per month, you get four new podcast episodes from us, plus access to our entire library that's filled with all sorts of strange and creepy topics.

I'm about to play, of the episodes from our exclusive library now, so if you like it, definitely go check us out and support us. Stay safe out there. I'll see you guys the next one. Oklahoma is an interesting state because for some reason there's a lot of weird and brutal true crime stories happening there. Going way back, you have the Osage Indian murders, the Oklahoma City bombings and the Girl Scout murders. Today, we're looking at five other crazy ones you probably have never heard about, but need to know.

Hey guys, it's Andrew. Thanks for tuning in to this Patreon-only Patrons episode, but today we have a solid one for you. Here are five murder mysteries that shocked Oklahoma. Number five, the twist and turns of Kevin Sweat. Ashley Taylor was a caring daughter and a devoted friend. Known for her kind-hearted spirit, who was deeply committed to her family,

particularly her younger siblings who had special needs. In high school, in Welita, Oklahoma, she was a bit of a corky outcast, so when she found her sweetheart, Kevin's sweat, the two became inseparable. He parted ways for a bit after graduation, but not long after that, in 2007, tragedy struck when Kevin's older brother passed away suddenly. In a hotel room, he had died of a drug overdose. At least, that was the official ruling. But Kevin always suspected foul play. was involved. He took it hard, and after that fell into a dark place, but Ashley was by his side and, in a way, it brought them back together and bonded them even closer.

They eventually got a place together on their own. At first it was good, but soon friends and family noticed a growing tension between Ashley and Kevin. It was like he had never recovered from his brother's passing, and it changed who he was. My arguments became more frequent. Ashley started to withdraw from her social circle as he began to become controlling. In 2010, with plans to get married, the couple headed down to Louisiana for a little prenuptial vacation. But the problems in this case all started here because Ashley never made it back to Oklahoma.

Her family couldn't get in touch with her, and Kevin was hard to reach too. Ashley's mother found out that he hadn't missed any days of work recently unless she realized that they had never gone to Louisville. Louisiana at all. With the police getting involved, Kevin explained that he hadn't talked to his fiance in weeks because while they were in the car headed out for their trip, they got in a fight. Ashley demanded he'd drop her off on the side of the road and actually never wanted to see him again. A lead investigator, Officer Lyndon Spears, thought the story sounded strange, given their long history. On top of that, while he was interviewing Kevin, he said the following, I've dealt with multiple homicides, drug dealers, gang members, things of that nature.

But Kevin is the only person I was ever in a room with that there was just something unnerving about him, about his aura. Sure enough, Lyndon's nose was correct. As the investigation deepened, they discovered that a couple years back, what Kevin had been visited by the Oklahoma State Bureau, looking for a gun that he had purchased a year prior. Why were they looking for that gun? Because the bullets were the same kind used to murder two young girls, Taylor Pachel Placker and Skyler Whitaker. And they had just been shot and left on the side of the road just like that.

Kevin said he sold the gun and so they never got their hands on it. After obtaining a search warrant detectives, then found Ashley's wallet inside Kevin's truck. His search history on the internet showed a morbid fascination with guns and violence. The police then discovered that Kevin had long suspected Taylor Pachel Placker's older brother of being the individual who had killed his brother, and so a motive was found and that the killing of the sister was an act of revenge. In face with these allegations, Kevin began to falter. He changed his story a few times with what had happened to Ashley, ultimately landing

on a scenario where the day she went missing, she had pulled out a knife and slid her. She had pulled out a knife and slid her own throat, after which he picked up the knife and finished her off. Sweat was arrested and charged with the murders of both Ashley Taylor and the two young girls. He pled guilty to all charges in order to avoid the death penalty. The discovery of Ashley's burnt-out remains on his father's property provided the final heartbreaking piece of the puzzle. Before being sentenced, Kevin attempted to slash his lawyer's throat with a razor blade he had snuck into court. court. He nicked the guy but didn't get the job done. So now Kevin will spend the rest of his life behind bars without the possibility of parole, which is where he belongs. Number four,

surloin stockade murders. The surloin stockade murders stand is one of the most horrific crimes in all of Oklahoma's history. Six people were brutally killed inside the restaurant and four of them still just teenagers. But this story doesn't actually start right there. It goes back a few weeks prior to the incident to June 22nd in 1978. On that day, a man named Melvin Lorenz, his wife Linda, and their 12-year-old son Richard, were making their way to North Dakota for a funeral, and they stopped to assist a woman on the side of the road. This was near Purcell, Oklahoma, and she flagged him down because it looked like she was having car trouble. But no good deed goes unpunished, and unbeknownst to the family,

this woman, Verna Stafford, was just acting as a decoy for her husband Roger Dale Stafford and his brother Harold. When the Lorenz family pulled over, they were subsequently robbed and murdered in cold blood right then and there. The police were unable to solve that one at the time, but less than a month later, on July 6th, The horror escalated. It was closing time at Sirloin Stockade Restaurant in Oklahoma City, around 10.45 p.m.

And cleaning up were 17-year-old David Lindsay, 16-year-old David Salzman, 17-year-old Anthony 2, 15-year-old Terry Horst, 43-year-old Louise Sicarius, and 56-year-old Isaac Freeman. The front door swung open, and that's when the trio of Cycle. burst in waving guns in the air. The perpetrators didn't hesitate or play any games, and they just forced them all into the walk-in freezer and opened fire. They then made off with around $1,500, and so each life was worth about $2.50. The police would arrive on the scene early the next morning

after the loved ones of the victims began calling. And five of them were dead while one was hanging on, though. They would go on to die at the hospital soon after. And so it was chaos in the streets as nobody felt safe. Massive manhunt was launched to apprehend the killers. And it would take more than eight months, but finally the truth would come out, though it wasn't because of stellar police work. It happened because Roger himself called the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigations when he was drunk,

saying that his brother Harold and wife were the ones responsible. I guess it was an attempt to try and save himself, but it backfired and pretty big time. Harold had actually died in a motorcycle accident just a week after the restaurant murders. Police tracked down, Werner and Roger and arrested them. And for her part in the crimes,

Werner received multiple life sentences, in part because she gave up all the details of what they had done. Roger will go on to receive a death sentence through lethal injection in 1995 when he was 43 years old. Number three. The mysterious death of Karen Silkwood.

The night of November 13, 1974, is when a seemingly ordinary drive on Oklahoma State Highway 74 turned into a nightmare. A young woman, Karen Silkwood, would never make it to her destination. But this wasn't just an ordinary accident. Her death would spark one of the most controversial and chilling investigations of the 20th century, one that involves corrupt corporations, nuclear secrets, and, of course, life cut tragically short. The mystery, what caused the track?

And Karen was no ordinary nine to fiver. At the age of 28, she was a technician at the Kerr-Meggie Plotonium Plan in Crescent, Oklahoma. Beneath her unassuming exterior, Karen was a woman with a mission, the one that would place her directly in the crosshairs of the powers to be. After joining the oil, chemical, and atomic workers' union,

and she had become increasingly concerned about safety violations at the plant she worked at. And she ultimately discovered dangerous levels of contamination, like 400 times the legal limit of plutonium amounts. She also found faulty equipment, even evidence of falsified records, and she wasn't going to stay quiet about it, which was a problem for her employers. Her investigation would lead her down a darker path than she had ever imagined, one filled with paranoia, fear, and ultimately a faithful decision to blow the whistle on Kerr McGee. She had contacted the New York Times, and soon she'd be interviewed by a journalist there for an expose.

On the evening of November 13th, Karen had set out for a union meeting in Oklahoma City, in her possession where the document she believed would expose the truth, but Karen never made it to her destination. and the official cause of death was listed as a single car accident. Her Honda Civic had seemingly veered off the road and crashed into a culvert. After police found weed, some quailude tablets on her seat, and 100 milliliters of met the colon and her bloodstream, which is twice the amount needed to induce drowsiness,

but was determined that she had fallen asleep behind the wheel. One thing the police didn't find in the car, though, were all those damning documents against her employer. As news of Karen's death spread, well, so did speculation. Friends, family, and fellow union members were convinced that Karen's death was no accident at all, and they thought she had been deliberately targeted, her car forced off the road by someone who wanted to ensure her silence.

Investigators did note damage on the back of her car consistent with that of a rear-end collision, and Karen had never mentioned an accident prior, and there were no claims, so were these brand new. In the aftermath of her death, her story became a rallying cry for activists and a case study in corporate corruption. Congressional hearings were held, lawsuits filed, and Kerr McGee found itself at the center of immediate firestorm. Still, despite the scrutiny, the company denied any wrongdoing. and many believe that a cover-up was orchestrated at the highest levels and evidence was allegedly destroyed and witnesses intimidated and key players silenced

the truth about what happened to Karen's Silkwood is buried beneath layers of corporate and government secrecy and though her life was tragically cut short Karen's legacy endures and she's become a symbol of courage a woman who dared to speak out against powerful corruption and for that she paid the ultimate price. Number two, the unsolved murder of Tracy Nilsson. It was the start of the new year, January 5th, 1981,

when the world was turning over a new leaf filled with hope and resolutions. But for the small town of Moore, Oklahoma, this day would forever be one of their darkest, one they'd never forget. The 21-year-old Tracy Nilsson was newly married to the love of her life, Jeff. The two were just getting their lives started. And at the time Tracy was a college student, she had planned to spend her birthday that very day with her husband. However, when Jeff arrived home from work, ready to celebrate with a card and perfume in hand, he instead found a horrific scene.

And Tracy was lying on her bed, brutally murdered, and a victim of multiple stab wounds. It didn't appear she had been sexually assaulted. And Tracy's friends and family were questioned, and the small town was in shock. How could something so horrific happen in a place like Moore? And this wasn't a big city with faceless strangers. It was a close-knit community where everyone knew everyone. There were no signs of forced entry, suggesting that Tracy either knew her killer or that the door had been left unlocked. The nature of the attack, brutal and personal, led authorities to believe that this wasn't a random act of violence, but a targeted killing.

Though the investigation seemed to hit one dead end after another. The community, once united by grief, now became divided by fear and suspicion. The whispers filled the air. Everyone was a suspect. No one was above scrutiny. But in the end, none of it really mattered. The case eventually went cold and things went back to normal. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation hosted a press conference, though,

in 2015, but they released some information about a cable ticket book, something repairman carried around with them at the time. The last ticket in the book showed an appointment at Trace's apartment at Trace's apartment at 1151 a.m. on the day she died, and this would be a great piece of evidence, however, in the corner of the book where the employee's name would be, well, there were only three letters. Investigators have never been able to connect those letters to any worker. One of the best pieces of evidence in the case is a latent fingerprint that was left to the scene. Unfortunately, in the 1980s, matching prints to a suspect was time-consuming and difficult,

especially if there was no known suspect for comparison. And so to this day, there's never been a match there. As the 43rd anniversary of Tracy's death approaches, we are left with one chilling truth, while her killer would still be out there. Maybe they've moved on, living a new life under a new name, or maybe they're still in more, walking among the very people that once terrorized. Number one, the Beaver Family Massacre. On the surface, the Beaver family was a picture of normalcy. David and April were raising their seven children in Amata's two-story home in Broken Arrow,

Oklahoma. The Beverer children were homeschooled and, well, they weren't well-known in the neighborhood. and they were seen as a typical quiet family. Robert, the eldest son, was 18 years old, and, well, he should have been dreaming about college and co-eds. Instead, he was nurturing a different kind of dream. That was actually more of a nightmare. I don't know. I just came up with that.

As younger brother, 16-year-old Michael, shared this dark fascination. Together, they became obsessed with mass murder, studying the lives of infamous serial killers and mass murderers, craving the notoriety that came with such heinous acts. These weren't just idle fantasies, and the brothers meticulously planned what they would later describe as the biggest killing spree in American history. For months, they discussed how they would carry out their plan,

whom they would target, and how they would avoid capture. As night fell on July 22nd at 2015, they put that plan into motion, and their target, their own family. After everyone retreated to their rooms, they waited for them to fall asleep, and at around 11.30 p.m., the massacre began. Armed with knives and hatchets, they had been secretly collecting.

Robert and Michael first went for their parents. The brothers showed no mercy as they stabbed their mother and father repeatedly. Dad got 28 stab wounds all over his body, and mom died from blunt force trauma to the head, as well as 48 stab wounds. Next, the brothers turn their attention to their siblings. 12-year-old Daniel, 10-year-old Chris, 5-year-old Victoria, and 13-year-old Crystal. One by one, the beaver children were attacked.

Hearing the commotion, Daniel managed to lock himself in a bathroom and dial 911, but his desperate plea for help was cut short as Robert broke down the door and stabbed him 21 times. The other has received similar fates, but if there's any upside to this, it's that the youngest Beaver child, 2-year-old Autumn, and 13-year-old Crystal, managed to survive. And Crystal was gravely injured, and they slitter throat but didn't go deep enough. In Autumn, too young to understand the horror that had unfolded, was left physically unharmed.

The boys showed a little mercy, I guess, on that front. When police arrived and they were greeted, by blood stains and chaos everywhere. Robert and Michael, their clothes soaked in blood, fled into the nearby woods but were quickly apprehended by the authorities. Their capture marked the end of a horrific night, but the question still remained. Why? During their interrogation, the brothers showed no remorse.

They coldly recounted their plans to kill their family, and then follow that up with a cross-country killing spree. As the details of their lives and mental states emerged, it became clear that the two brothers were deeply troubled individuals. Isolated, socially awkward, and obsessed with violence, and they had fed each other's dark desires spiraling further into a shared delusion that mass murder would bring them the recognition they craved. In the aftermath of the massacre, the surviving Beaver children faced a long and painful

road to recovery. And Crystal, despite her injuries, testified against her brothers, ensuring that justice would be served for the family she had lost. In the end, Robert and Michael got what they wanted, attention. But instead of the twisted glory they sought, their names are now synonymous of one of the most senseless and tragic acts of violence and recent history. So there were five murder mysteries that shocked Oklahoma. That's going to do it for today's bonus episode. Hope you guys liked it. And as always, I want to say thanks for the continued support.

You guys are awesome. I hope you have a great weekend out there. I'll see you over in the next one.