Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings, and Mysteries - 171. Three Real Imposter Nightmares: Fake Uber Drivers, The Tourist From Hell, and more

Episode Date: April 9, 2026

Go to https://kachava.com and use code HSP for 15% off your first order. A college student gets into what she thinks is her rideshare. A speech therapist spends years pretending to be someone's mother. And a backpacker in Singapore accepts a stranger's offer to split a hotel room…then never calls home. Three stories about the people who slipped through the cracks. By the time anyone realized something was wrong, it was already too late. TW: Descriptions of Dismemberment, Mention of Self Harm Subscribe on⁠ Patreon⁠ to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society and enjoy ad-free listening, monthly bonus content, merch discounts and more. Members of our High Council on Patreon also have access to our weekly after-show, Footnotes, where I share my case file with our producer, Matt. You can also enjoy many of these same perks, including ad-free listening and bonus content when you subscribe on Apple Podcasts. Follow on⁠ Tik Tok⁠ and⁠ Instagram⁠ for a daily dose of horror.  To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Merit Beauty. You guys have heard me talk about Merit Beauty now for a few months, and I have to say they've become an essential part of my routine. And some days they're basically my entire routine, especially if I have to go super minimalist because of time, which has been happening quite a bit recently. But I know in five minutes, I can still go out looking put together and feeling ready to start my day. So I start with their great skin serum, which helps hydrate and kind of wake my skin up.

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and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. Welcome back to Heart Starts Pounding. I'm your host, Kailmore, and today we are talking about the imposter. Now, normally I consider myself a pretty good judge of character, but I think that's why

the stories that I want to share with you today scare me so much, because there are about times someone snuck into someone else's life so quickly or so subtly that by the time they were figured out, it was too late. And that usually has deadly consequences. But before we dive in, I wanted to remind everyone that if you are interested in joining our book club this time around, we are reading Slufoot, a tale of bewitchery by Brom. It's a dark fantasy novel set in colonial New England, focusing on the conflict between paganism and Puritanism through the story of a young widow, Abatha,

and an ancient forest spirit known as Slewfoot. I'm loving it so far so you can grab a copy and join us over on Patreon to participate. And even the free tier is welcome. We'll be discussing the book Mid-May. A specific date is going to be determined. So join us over there so you have all the information. All right.

Let's get into it. One of the most common themes in urban legends is the idea of the imposter, a person infiltrating your life under the guise of someone else, usually having sinister intentions. I think back to this legend that I would hear growing up. Back in the 1940s, a couple in a small town was throwing a Halloween party, the Radford's, everyone on their block showed up dressed in costume, ghosts with bed sheets over their heads, witches with hats and brooms.

Now, the married couple next door said that they were going to stop by another party first before they came over. So when the doorbell rang at 11 p.m., that's who the Radford's assumed had finally arrived. And sure enough, standing at the door were two people, a man and a woman. At least that's what it looked like. The pair was so heavily costumed that it was kind of hard to tell who they were. The woman had on a Dorothy-style dress from the Wizard of Oz, and the man was in a scarecrow outfit.

But both of their faces were obscured by these masks. Not character masks, though. These tanned, leathery masks that looked like they were pulled straight off a corpse and stretched over their faces. Now, the Radford's thought that this was just like their neighbors to do. They always were the most outlandish costumes to these parties. That night, the party raged on just as normal. When sometime around midnight, the doorbell rang again and again and again. Now, the couple wasn't really expecting any more guests,

but Mr. Radford went over and opened the door anyways, and what he saw made him stop in his tracks. Because there, on his porch, was the couple next door, dressed as Hansel and Gretel. Confused, he turned around to find the couple that he thought were his neighbors, to ask who they were, actually. But they were nowhere to be found. No one in the party had seen where they went.

And just then, he heard his wife scream. scream. She had gone upstairs to check on their two children who were sleeping, only to find two empty beds. The Radford children were never found. This is a terrifying legend. I think about it every time I go to a Halloween party and see someone wearing a mask, but that's all it's supposed to be, is a legend created to warn us to stay on our toes, to be aware of who we invite into our homes and into our lives. But there is a reason that stories like this is. exist because sometimes an imposter really does slip through the cracks. On the night of March 28th, 2019, Samantha Josephson went out with her friends in five points.

It's a bar district near the University of South Carolina. Samantha was a student there. At just 21 years old, she was weeks away from graduating with a political science degree and a full scholarship to Drexel University's law school. By all account, she had everything going for her and a lot to celebrate that night. Around 2 a.m., Samantha decided to head home from the bar she was at, called the bird dog. She said goodbye to her friends, she stepped outside, and she pulled up a ride-chair app on her phone. And then she stood on the curb, all alone, and waited for her ride to arrive.

Her friends watched as eventually, a black Chevy Impala pulled up to the curb. Samantha got inside, and then she was driven off into the night. The next morning, Samantha's roommates realized that she never came home. They called her, no answer. Her boyfriend was actually able to track her phone, and he saw that it pinged heading away from Columbia before going dark somewhere around 3 a.m. By early afternoon, Columbia Police had a missing person's case open,

and then, at around 1.30, that same afternoon, about 65 miles east of Columbia, in this wooded area outside of a small town, a group of turkey hunters were out hunting when they saw something laying there in the woods. It was the body of a young woman, stabbed approximately 120 times. It was Samantha. The medical examiner found wounds all over her body.

One wound went entirely through her hand that she had used to shield herself. Who would have done this to a college student who had everything ahead of her? Columbia PD quickly learned from her friends that the last time Samantha was seen, she was getting into a ride chair car. So they went back to five points. they pulled security footage from every bar they could. And sure enough, they saw Samantha get into the car, but it was footage from 10 minutes before that that really disturbed them.

Because what Samantha didn't know when she stepped into the vehicle, what she could not have known, was that for the last 10 minutes, that black Chevy Impala had been circling the block. Surveillance cameras and 5 points captured the entire thing. The Impala was seen driving completely erratically, making all of these U-turns. It pulled into parking lots for no reason.

Now, this wasn't just a rideshare driver looking for a client. This person looked drunk. At one point, the car even starts driving down the wrong side of a one-way street. At around 2 a.m., the car pulls into a parallel parking spot near a restaurant, and then it cuts its lights and just sits there.

For three and a half minutes, it just sits there watching people walk by in the bar district. And then the lights come back on, and it pulls back into traffic. At 208 a.m., Samantha is visible. on camera, standing near the corner of a shop, her phone and hand checking for her driver. At one point, she walks up to a silver car and tries to get in, but that's not her ride. That car is seen driving away without her, and she steps back onto the curb.

And then, at 209, the black Impala pulls into a parking spot right next to her. Samantha opens the back door, and she gets in. The car drives away, and at some point, Samantha's actual ride-share driver, cancels her ride because she failed to show up. She was never seen alive again. The surveillance footage of the Black Impala was distributed amongst officers in the area. They were told to watch for it everywhere they went.

And that very next night, less than 24 hours after the murder, a patrol officer spotted that exact car, just two blocks from five points. It was the same car in the same neighborhood, seemingly patrolling it again. So the officer immediately pulls it over, And the driver, he learns, was a 24-year-old man named Nathaniel Roland. He cooperated at first, but when the officer told him that his car matched a suspect vehicle,

he got out of the car and ran. He was luckily caught after a short foot chase, but he wouldn't even really have to answer any questions from the police because what was found in this man's car spoke volumes. Blood was everywhere. On the seats, on the ceiling, the doors, the trunk. A cell phone belonging to Samantha was also found in the car. There were bottles of liquid bleach, germicidal wipes, and window cleaner in the back seat.

He had clearly tried to clean up, but had done a horrible job. And most disturbing of all was something that was found on the rear driver's side window. It was a bare footprint pressed into the glass, and forensic analysts matched it to Samantha using friction ridge patterns on the sole of her foot. She had kicked the back window so hard she'd broken the point. platform sandals off of her feet. Nathaniel Roland was arrested right then and there, and his trial began in July of 2021. Over the course of a week, prosecutors called nearly three dozen witnesses and built the case

piece by piece, the surveillance footage, the cell phone tracking data, the DNA that was found under Roland's fingernails, the blood on a two-bladed knife that was found in the trash behind his girlfriend's home. Witnesses testified that they had seen him out there cleaning the blade. And this is also where the jury learned what had happened that night. Prosecutors told the court that Roland was driving around in his Impala, pretending to be a ride-chair driver. And once Samantha got into his car, he engaged the child safety locks.

And with these locks on, the rear doors could only be open from the outside. When Samantha got into that back seat, once the door closed behind her, she was trapped. She couldn't open the door. She couldn't roll down the window. The footprint on the glass was her trying to kick her way out. What was probably the most chilling about the entire trial was the jury learned that Roland had no connection to any ride chair company.

He wasn't a driver. He was just a man in a black car who pulled up to the curb for no one really knows why. The defense called no witnesses, Roland didn't testify. Someone suggested that the crime maybe started as a robbery and then escalated, but there was no way to know that. It seemed truly like this was a completely random act of violence. The jury deliberated for just over an hour before returning a guilty verdict on all three counts,

murder, kidnapping, and possession of a weapon during a violent crime. Judge Clifton Newman sentenced Roland to life in prison without the possibility of parole. And for how horrible this crime was, Samantha's parents wanted to find some good that could come out of it, something that they could do to maybe help some other people in the week of their daughter's death.

So they founded the What's My Name Foundation, named for the simple safety practice of asking your ride-shared driver to confirm your name before you get in. The hashtag What's My Name campaign went national, and it's a really easy thing to do, and her family could be saving countless lives by reminding people to just ask first.

South Carolina also passed the Samantha L. Josephson ride-charing safety act within weeks of her death. And in January 2023, Sammy's law was signed into effect. Federal legislation that requires ride-chair companies to create verifiable identification systems for their drivers. Now, Samantha's story is absolutely harrowing

because it proves how easy it is for an imposter to sneak into your life. And by the time you realize something's wrong, it's too late. But next, I want to share with you a story that I found about someone who realized years later that someone very close to them had been an impersonator. Someone they had trusted. This week's episode is brought to you by PURacy. As a new mom and also a dog mom, there are stains

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like baby showers. Puracy selects five winners every month. Go to purity.com or find them on Amazon to get 25% off with code heart 25 off. That's P-U-R-A-C-Y.com code heart 25 off. This episode is brought to you by Alma. A year from today, who do you want to be? More patient, maybe less reactive. I always think about these things around the new year, and I know I want to work on managing my anxiety personally. Well, you deserve to feel like the future version of yourself, and the right therapist can really help. With a network where 99% of therapists accept insurance, Alma helps connect people to in-network care that aligns with their preferences and coverage. People who use Alma to find a therapist who accepts their insurance save an average of 80% on the cost of sessions, and 99% of Alma's therapists accept insurance, making it easy to get affordable care.

I've used therapy before, and I know that when you want support, the last thing you need is to hear that someone is not in your network. Alma really helps make that part easier. The year from today isn't that far away. Get started now at helloalma.com slash heartstarts. That's helloalma.com slash H-E-A-R-T-S-T-A-R-T-S. That's H-E-L-L-O-A-L-M-A dot com slash heart starts. The story reads, This is a situation I found out about about eight months ago,

but it has stayed in my mind ever since. For context, as a child, I had a severe speech delay. I was completely mute. up until a few weeks before kindergarten. This caused me to have a speech impediment, which I technically still have to this day, but to a lesser extent. I'm lucky enough that the letters I have trouble with match up with the letters often dropped in certain accents,

so to the untrained ear, I sound British, or Australian, depending on who you ask. Because of this, I often just say I'm from a different country because it's easier to lie about being British than to explain my speech impediment thing and face any stigma that goes with it. the only people who know the truth are very close friends and family. On to the story.

When I was 18, I was dating a girl who was my age. We are no longer seeing each other, but for reasons unrelated to the story. We were at a social event when we met up with one of her friends who was a year older. I technically have known this girl since grade 9, but not very well. So we as a group get to talking and randomly, completely unrelated to the current conversation, her friend asks me how my mom is doing. I'm caught off guard because that's not usually something you throw into a conversation without knowing, said mom. So I ask back, why do you know her?

The friend goes on to explain that my mom used to be her educational assistant and helped her work out her behavioral issues all throughout elementary and middle school. Now, this is weird because although my mom did work in a school for a brief time, she was a lunchtime supervisor and only ever worked in one elementary school, an elementary school that I know this friend did not go to. So I ask this friend if she's sure that was my mom because she wasn't ever an educational assistant. And the friend confirms that my mom used to talk about me all the time. And when this friend was deciding which high school to go to, my mom recommended my high school because that was the school her daughter went to.

Now, within my high school, there were a few people with the same name as me. My name is about as basic as it comes. so I asked the friend, are you sure that it's me she was talking about and not one of the other people at the school with my name? She once again confirms that it was definitely me because my mom would tell her details about my life and told her about my time going to speech therapy.

Now, hold up. As I said earlier, I am very secretive about the fact that I have a speech impediment. This friend is clearly someone I've never told, although I guess there is a chance that the girl I was dating at the time could have told her, but I have never, and I mean, never, ever, ever told anyone about going to speech therapy. That's just never a detail that I share when I'm telling my life's story. It became clear

that someone who knows me, like family, is telling her this stuff. There's no way this friend could have accurately guessed all of these details about my life. So just to confirm that my mother doesn't have a double life, I asked this friend what my mother looks like. And she responded that she's somewhat short with curly brown hair. This is not my mother. My mother is tall and blonde. This, though, is exactly what my first speech therapist looked like. She was hired through the school district,

and I saw her for about two years before she switched to another school. She also works with a variety of special needs students, meaning it's very likely she went on to become this friend's educational assistant. But all of this to say, somewhere out there, this speech therapist, for some reason, is pretending to be my mother. and to some extent stalking me as if she would have done research to find out which high school I went to. Also, an additional tidbit that I just remembered. When I was a child, but after I had switched speech therapists,

I was in a store with my mother and there was a shiny blue guitar. Me being a child and liking shiny blue things really wanted this guitar. My mom clearly said no as it was expensive and I had shown little interest in playing the guitar besides watching my dad play his bass. I was disappointed, but I also understood. Well, out of the blue, my first speech therapist shows up and buys the guitar for me. My mom told her she didn't have to, but my speech therapist insisted. At the time, this just seemed like a nice thing that she did, albeit overly generous, but now, knowing that she's parading around pretending to be my mother,

it definitely paints the situation in a different light. I don't know how to feel about that gift now. There's not much that I can do about the situation, as I don't even remember what the speech therapist's name was. So let's just hope we don't meet again. I have so many questions about that story in general, but also why was the speech therapist at the same store that you were at with your mom? Over hearing you have that conversation about wanting the guitar.

Oh, it just makes me think that she was stalking this person to an even more intense degree than the poster is aware of. But this story is an example of how impersonators don't always have. have to be deadly to be incredibly strange and nefarious. Sometimes it just feels like it's this huge violation of trust. You let someone into your life and they weren't really who they said they were. Or they were using things that they learned about you

to fuel their fake backstory. And it actually reminds me of a time that I got catfished. I'll tell you the story at the end of the episode because it's very strange and I'm curious what you think about it. But this really makes me wonder how we can ever truly trust those around us. Who's to say that the person right beside you right this very moment is actually who they say they are? Well, for our last story today and our biggest one,

I want to talk to you about something really terrifying. And that is meeting an imposter while you travel, because sometimes the seeming kindness of a stranger can have disastrous consequences. A little before 8am on March 8, 1995, South African Airlines Flight 282 landed from Johan, at Changi International Airport in Singapore. On board was a 32-year-old engineer named Gerard Lowe. Now, Gerard had been itching to go to Singapore for a while now. He had heard that electronics were dirt cheap compared to back home.

Orchard Road Market, they said, was one of the best places in the world for techies. Gerard wanted to upgrade his home, hi-fi setup, and he also had a shopping list for his friends and family. Before he left, Gerard told his wife Vanessa that he would call her once he found a hotel. And as he was passing through the terminal, a man approached him. Like him, the other man was white, he was a tourist, he was tall with brown hair and a British accent, he introduced himself as Simon Davis, and he said he was also a tourist and he was looking for someone who wanted to split a hotel room with him so they could share the fee.

We don't know exactly how Gerard felt about being approached by a stranger. Remember, the entire point of his trip was to save money. every dollar off his hotel bill was another dollar he could spend on new tech and so he accepted this British man's offer they booked a hotel room at the Riverview Hotel just ten minutes from the market after a day spent scoping out Orchard Road the two men had dinner together and suffering intense jet lag they both went back to room 1511 the following morning at around 8 a.m Simon Davis appeared at the hotel reception desk he seemed stern and in a hurry.

He told the woman on duty that he wanted Gerard Lowe removed from his reservation, and he did not want to share a room with him again. He explained that he had actually kicked his roommate out last night after Gerard had made a pass at him. He still intended to stay a couple more days at the hotel, but he didn't want to risk this man sneaking back into his room. The woman at the front desk did exactly what he asked,

and Davis remained in room 1511. Various members of hotel staff saw him, him coming and going for the next few days, carrying bags of various sizes. He visited a bank and a Thomas Cook travel agency to withdraw cash in travelers' checks. On the evening of the 10th, he attended the Singapore Symphony Orchestra at a nearby music hall. The whole time, he was using Gerard Lowe's credit card, though. And while he was out, a chambermaid went up to the 15th floor to clean the room. Now, the room was really messy, but this was something she dealt with every day, filled trash cans, rumbled sheets. The bathroom was spotless, but she noticed that it smelled really weird.

It smelled a little bit like bad fish. She looked up and down the entire room for the source of the smell, but she never found anything. Simon Davis checked out on March 11th, and that evening he caught a flight to Bangkok. A few days later, though, a boatman named Lee was on his way back after a long night of ferrying tourists around Clifford Pier off the coast of Singapore. His boat was a motorized sandpan, which is kind of like a flat canoe common in East Asian countries. At around 10 a.m., his boat bumped into something that was bobbing around in the water. It was a black, plastic trash bag. It had started to tear, and to his horror, he could see a sawed-off human leg inside. Lee ran straight to a Coast Guard who came over and had a closer look.

The bag had been weighed down, but the gases of what was decomposing. inside had caused it to float to the surface, and inside were not one, but two human legs. Forensic analysis determined that the legs belonged to a well-built Caucasian man with a shoe size of seven and a half. They had been severed neatly at the joints. The scarring also indicated that the body had been dead at the time of the amputation. The bones were intact, meaning whoever did this knew how to dislocate a socket before cutting off a limb. Whoever did this, the forensic team assumed had the skills of a butcher. It was very possible that he had done this before. When they did a search for missing people in the area that fit that description, one name

jumped out at them. Gerard Lowe. A missing person's report was filed by his wife Vanessa when he hadn't called her the time he said he would. Back at the hotel, assistant superintendent Gerald Lim took over the case and he decided that he wanted to retrace Gerard's steps. It led him back to room 1511 and when he inspected the room again, it still had that strange smell in it. Officers entered the bathroom and when they were inspecting the tiles, they saw a couple fine red dots by the showerhead, small enough to be missed by the initial cleaners. They looked like blood. After talking with the hotel staff, they found a name for the man who shared the room with Gerard, Simon Davis. If this Davis had something to do with Gerard's death, where was he now?

And if the way he dismantled the body wasn't the work of a first timer, when was he going to strike again? This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Okay, you know that very specific late night experience where you're scrolling? You find something you absolutely need. You get all the way to checkout. And then you realize your cart is in your bag and the bag is across the room. And suddenly it's just way too far to go. That is me more often than I would ever admit, which is why I am a pretty big fan of that

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Go to Shopify.com slash HSP pod. That is Shopify.com slash HSPPOD. This episode is brought to you by Kachava. Okay, I have a problem. 3 p.m. Slump. To keep me going, I will raid whatever snacks are nearby if I don't have something that actually satisfies the craving that I get every day at 3 p.m. Which is why Kachava's new coffee flavor is genuinely exciting to me. And if you've heard me talk about Kachava before, you know that I don't say that lightly. They use premium decaffeinated Brazilian coffee

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code HSP. This episode is brought to you by Lola Blankets. I think my couch has a permanent Kalin-shaped indent in it at this point. New Mom Life means any chance I get to sit down, I'm fully horizontal onto a blanket on my couch. So when Lola Blinkets came up, I was so excited. I ordered a Lola Blanket in the caramel and cream color and I've not looked back since. And I will say I do have a lot of blankets, a lot, and this one is different. The faux fur is genuinely next level soft. It has this four-way stretch too, which doesn't sound like it would be a big deal until you actually are wrapped up in it. And once you wash it, it still looks brand new. No pilling, no shedding. Over 20,000 five-star reviews online. And honestly, you feel it and you just get it immediately.

I could stay wrapped in one of these on the couch all day. And you know who loves it the most? My baby. He loves being wrapped up in it and it is so dang cute. For a limited time, our listeners can get 40% off. Wow. Select Lola Blanket products with code HSP at checkout. Just have just head to lollablankeets.com and use code HSP to get 40% off your order. After you purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them and please support our show and let them know that we sent you. Grab yourself in luxury with Lola Blankets. On March 15th, Thai Airways Flight TG13 took off from Bangkok to Pouquet. Sheila Dumude, a 49-year-old Canadian school administrator, was on board with her 22-year-old

son, Darren, who was on spring break. They would have stood out on the crowded airplane because Darren had his leg in a cast from a recent injury. A row across from them sat a tall, slim, British man. It was Simon Davis, continuing his leisurely trip across Thailand. Now, we don't really know when Davis began talking to the demudes. A journalist covering the case of the time suggested that they started talking on the plane, but it is difficult to verify this. But it could have been the same spiel that Davis had given Gerard, that he was a friendly tourist, looking to save a bit of money on his travels. What we do know is that Davis and the two Canadian tourists wound up staying at the same hotel, Nilly's Marina Inn. The Canadians checked into room 43, and Davis

checked in right down the hall in room 48. That following morning, Sheila and Darren went down for breakfast before returning to their room, but then at 11 a.m., Davis showed up at the counter. He had an odd request for the receptionist. He wanted to switch from room 48 to room 14. He said that his new Canadian friends had left suddenly and he volunteered to pay their bill. That same day, back in Singapore at about 755 in the morning, a pair of customs officers were preparing for a shift change near Clifford Pier. As one of the officers was doing his final check, he noticed a black plastic bag bobbing in the water,

not far from where the boatman had found the severed legs two days earlier. As the officer pulled it out with a boat hook, it smelled like rotting meat. Coast Guard boats combed the area and they found two more floating trash bags. Inside, police found a pair of thighs and a full torso minus the head and the limbs. Just like the previous body parts, the cuts had been made with almost surgical precision. The body had no other wounds and all of the dismemberment had been post-mortem. Forensics could not determine the cause of death. Maybe if they found the head they would have been able to, they said. And unfortunately, heads did turn up just a few days later, but not the ones that the Singapore police were looking

for. On March 19th in Thailand, the skulls of the two Canadian tourists were found by a disused tin mine. At 8 p.m. that evening, Simon Davis reappeared in Changi International Airport in Singapore. He had returned from Thailand to complete some unfinished business. He handed over his passport to the woman at immigration, and she typed in his information, and then she froze. Because the system informed her that the man was wanted by police urgently. Within minutes, a pair of officers descended on Davis. They handcuffed him and took him into a separate room for interrogation.

The officers left him there going to fetch police inspector Lim, who was in charge of the case. and when they were gone, Davis actually broke an observation window and attempted to cut his own wrists and officers arrived just in time to stop him. When Lim arrived for interrogation, arresting officers gave him five passports that Davis had been carrying, two British, two Canadian and one South African. The passport photos of his victims had been replaced with pictures of himself. He was using their identities as he traveled around.

and most damning of all, his checked luggage was filled with potential murder weapons. In the bags, police found a hammer, four knives, a sharpening stone, handcuffs, a can of mace, and a battery-operated electrical stun device. Simon Davis refused to talk to anyone, but that was fine. Gerald Lim and his team finally had names to start checking. So Scotland Yard ran the British passports, and they came back with surprising news. Simon Davis, according to British criminal records, was already in prison. The man they were holding in suspicion of murder was actually a man named John Martin.

John Martin had been his legal name since 1986. Before then, he had been known as John Martin Scripps. Born in 1959 in England, Scripps had developed a love of travel as a child, taking many trips abroad with his father. After his father died, he really struggled in school. ultimately dropping out when he was 15 years old. He made a living on the streets doing odd jobs. Whatever money he earned he used to travel more,

trying to recapture the freedom that he felt in his youth. But after every taste of freedom, he would come crashing back down to earth. He went to juvenile court several times as a teenager for burglary, leading up to a six-year prison sentence in his early 20s. And after his release, he changed his name to John Martin and he started drug running. In 1987, he stashed $1 million worth of heroin in a safety deposit box abroad.

Not long after, he was detained at Heathrow Airport for possession of cocaine, and police found that safety deposit box key on him. Martin got a sentence of seven years, which was later extended to 13, and he went quiet for a while. But that wasn't because he was through with this life of crime he had started. Behind bars at Her Majesty's Prison Albany, he was employed at the prison kitchen learning how to butcher animals. In October of 1994, he sold all of his remaining prison belongings.

He bought a passport from another prisoner, Simon James Davis, and he disappeared during his home leave. He fled for Mexico, where he spent the winter of 1994. And not long after that, he began his career as a serial killer. Sometime around January 12th, Martin took a solo trip to. Belize. At around the same time, a British management consultant disappeared while he was holidaying there. And later, $30,000 moved from that man's bank account to one of John Martin's bank accounts, and the body was never found. After he returned to Mexico, it seemed like his wanderlust really returned. He flew to San Francisco, and from there he flew to Singapore. And while he was in Singapore,

he waited at the airport, pretending to be a tourist, until someone fell into his trap. On March 24th, the same day that Singapore authorities formally charged Martin with murder, hikers in Thailand discovered more of the missing Canadian's body parts, a human torso, mostly skeletal at that point, matching limbs which had been separated at the joints. The torso and the limbs belonged just to Darren, though. His mother's body would never be found.

By the time Martin went to court, Inspector Lim had gathered witness statements from 77 people, piecing together a timeline for his travels in March of 1995. What did Martin say in his own defense, though? He knew that they could place him with Gerard Lowe on the night of March 8th, and they knew he flew to Phuket using a fake passport. So instead of denying any of those things, he told a completely different version of events. He claimed that he spent the night with Gerard Lowe in a hotel room, but he woke up to Lowe standing over him just in his underwear, touching his butt.

Martin, quote, freaked out and kicked Lowe away, and during the struggle, Martin said he struck him in the head with his hammer. When he had time to finally calm down, he dragged the body into the bathroom and went to meet another British friend at another hotel. This man, who he knew from prison, volunteered to help him dispose of the body. He took Martin's room key and went back to the Riverview to dispose of the body, and Martin had nothing to do with it, he said. Everything Martin did in the aftermath of Gerard's death,

including withdrawing money from his bank accounts, he claimed to have done at the direction of this mysterious British prisoner friend. He said that he never even met the Canadians. Their passports were just given to him by this British friend. When asked to identify this friend, Martin refused, saying that he would put himself in danger by giving this man's name to the courts. He said he was called bad John in prison.

He couldn't really give any other details beyond that. I mean, Martin clearly intended to pin this crime on another man so that he could get away with a more minor charge for forgery and accidental killing using the gay panic defense. There was no evidence that this bad John guy existed at all, and the claim definitely did not hold up under questioning. The motive for the murders, the prosecutor said, was obviously financial.

Martin had stolen thousands in travelers' checks and cash from his victims. Money was the reason he came back to Thailand and got caught ultimately. This wasn't a criminal mastermind. This was a tourist who left a trail of dismembered corpses in his wake. On November 10th, after three days of trial, the judge gave his decision. John Martin was guilty of murder and he was sentenced to death. Four days before his scheduled execution in April of 1996, he met with a journalist for a final interview.

Before the reporter left, he offered some parting words. They won't hang me, I'm British. Famous last words. After granting him a final meal of pizza and hot chocolate, they did just that. John Martin's Scripps was dead at 36 years old and never traveled again. The story of John Martin is a scary reminder

that sometimes the kind stranger offering to help you during your travels is not exactly who they say they are. And oftentimes we think we're too smart to allow someone like this into our lives. But it happens so fast. I mean, I told you I would tell you my catfishing story. But when I was 16, I was catfished online by a friend who was pretending to be a boy on AIM. My username back then was Soft Ball Star 457, but I removed all the vowels. So it kind of just looked like soft blister, 457.

Anyways, my friend told me that she met a boy at a Hannah Montana concert. I know. And gave him my screen name. And for the next year, I talked to this kid. It wasn't until years later, once I even learned what the term catfishing meant, that I realized this was just her doing it for some unknown reason. I still to this day don't know why she did that. And that kind of makes it even scarier. Sometimes there is no motive.

It's just someone messing with you because they want to. So now I turn it to you guys. Have you ever met an imposter? Has anyone else ever been catfished online? Please tell me I'm not the only. Also, tell me what your embarrassing aim usernames used to be so that I feel better about soft blister. But that is all that I have for you today.

Be sure to join me here next week. We're doing another spooky deep dive into a location. And this time, we're heading down to Florida. Florida to figure out what the heck is happening in the Everglades and why you should maybe never go there. And until then, stay curious. Ooh. Hearts Outts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kaila Moore.

Heart's heart pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Our associate producer is Juno Hobbs. Sound design a mix by Red Rum Creative. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grace and Jernigan, and the team at WME. Have a heart pounding story or a case request. Check out heartsartspounding.com.