Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 356: Joseph Kallinger Part I - The Shoemaker

Episode Date: March 16, 2019

On today's episode we cover the saga of wildly schizophrenic serial killer Joseph Kallinger, aka The Shoemaker. Join us as we explore how Joseph Kallinger's delusions about God instructing him to save mankind through orthopedics eventually led to three murders. 

There's no place to escape to. This is the last time on the left That's when the cannibalism started I'm ready to go as well. We're all ready to go ready to go new show in the new studio new studio do it just three buddies Starting from nothing. Oh now we got a storefront in where? Brooklyn, New York This is what my father always dreamed what would happen. All right, it's being out here being a small-time business man That's the bro. That is the the New York dream. Yeah, and we were covering a man today He was living that dream he had it all in front of him

He had a whole empire of shoes in front of him. What did he choose to do now? What did he choose to do snippety-snip cut the penis off a bunch of little boys and ruin all of it How disappointed would your father be Marcus if he found out he did it you did that instead of throwing away a good business? Extremely, yeah, I think so. All right, everyone. This is the last podcast on the left I am Ben Kissel with Marcus Parks Henry Zabrowski He traveled all the way from Los Angeles to christen in our new studio. Oh, here we go. Look at me. Oh, you see what I'm doing Rub in my fucking asshole Are these chairs from a sponsor? Yeah, what's your which spot I can't remember? Oh

I'm getting a tingle rubbing my beehull against it Speaking of rubbing beehulls This story is going to be I'm gonna call it a bit of a a whopper Yes, we are here in the new studio in Brooklyn, so if it sounds a little bit different, perhaps that's the reason We always do this. We always do it. It's always like a new sound a new vibe It's like each studio is our new like, you know, Willie Nelson has trigger. Mm-hmm. It's like this is our Like old instrument. Does that make sense? Oh, I see that's his dog He's got his dog at his lap

Come on you give it treats everyone knows that yeah, I did but no this is this is it's nice But this story is something special this story is something it's it's a bit Disgusting a lot of folks have been wanting us to cover him for a long time the fellow We're gonna talk about his name is Joseph Callinger actually this is This is an underground topic Kessel literally nobody knows what this is. No, that's not true. What are you talking about? I've heard you guys talking about this for years. Yeah, yeah, me and Henry have talked about it But yeah, no nobody knows about this guy. Oh my god

So you're telling me that you guys have perverted my brain to the point that I think everyone knows about this guy Yes, really? Yeah, it's called being indoctrinated. You've been groomed to be a true crime nerd I didn't even know I thought I swear to God if you'd asked me that Joseph Callinger I thought everyone was telling us to do this story. Nope. Well, you guys have ruined me You ruined my entire mind. Well, Joseph Callinger aka the shoemaker was a wildly Schizophrenic serial killer from Philadelphia who along with his 12-year-old son murdered three people and kidnapped nearly a dozen others Back in the mid 70s. Um, nothing makes me more relieved that I am not Impenetrably insane than a story like this. I know I'm insane. Well, sure you don't need to tell me how sane I am

I don't need your compliments. Well, I am happy that you immediately clarified that you're that with yourself. Yes Because yeah, you are you are mentally insane. Yeah, but yes What a relief to not be in the throes of very deep schizophrenia, right now We're obviously not saying that schizophrenia leads to murder nor are we saying schizophrenics or people with mental illness or dangerous because they and we are Not we are not dangerous. I am not a dangerous person. You know the more you scream that though The more dangerous you sound mentally. Oh, yes dangerous. Absolutely not definitely not No, I feel completely safe with Marcus Park surrounded by knives now. We don't allow guns around But knives, I think that's fine. No ranged weapons. No ranged weapons whatsoever

But Joseph Callinger was dangerous Now it's hard to say whether or not he would have been a serial killer without having the delusions there to drive him But the delusions definitely had an influence on the severity of his crimes Certainly didn't help Then you've got your delusions literally being as Mickey right from Rocky. I'm going like get in there If you have hallucinations that are doing that but about murder, that's not the coach that you need That's not now oftentimes with schizophrenia people will have delusions of grandeur though, right? Think of themselves as the second coming of Jesus Christ possibly didn't it was wasn't that something with you Marcus or another one of

Believe it or not in the stand-up comedy world We know a few people that might have so so-called mental illness Definitely one that thought he was Jesus for a while Yes, he did he went off the rails and I actually went and I listened to some like kind of it was like what there's one YouTube pronoun personality that does a lot of being like trying to transcribe the true symptoms of being locked into hallucination hallucinations both visual and audio and man it sounds fucking Harrowing it sounds rough a lot of that shit is that you see photorealistic shit right in front of you telling you to do stuff Like set fire to your house, which we're going to go through in this episode and you're and you kind of like yeah like in a way

It's almost like oh, yeah, it's real. Yeah, okay. Yeah, or a fine Well calendar was given plenty of chances to get treatment before and after his crimes began But time and again calendar was labeled as just fine and got dumped right back out into the streets Because Joseph Kalinger was a proud small business owner and I really do believe you think so as a part of it is that he didn't let Anybody know what was going on inside his head and every single time anybody asked him about how you doing Joe How's it going on? I know you've been accused of a lot of weird shit But why it seems to be used you seem to be constantly innocent and I that why is that Joe and he's just like they just want to shut down My business they are saying that I'm trying to pull myself up on my bull strips

Because if you look at also if you look at Joe Kalinger, he looks like Alan Ginsberg of Alan Ginsberg were played for the 49ers Yeah, he's in a much better shape I mean really not that unattractive of a character not by the 70s But all of his shit was on the inside. Well, that's not necessarily true because you know the thing is about it is that his alias The shoemaker actually had very little to do with his crimes He was called the shoemaker because Kalinger was an honest to God cobbler one of the best in all of Philadelphia And the thing is he had a nickname in shoemaking circles. His nickname crazy Joe I love it when you're crazy by shoemaker standards

You got to be a bit out there, but this is what happened before Automation how many people would he have killed if a robot took his job? The fact that he was busy working in nine to five for the majority of days of his life Probably saved hundreds of lives, but on the other hand the immense amounts of Chemicals that he inhaled while working on those shoes may have led to the bigger delusions So he could literally be a schizophrenic on the stand screaming the shoes made me do it and the judge would have to be like Technically they did The judge was getting his shoes fixed by him

We were literally happened in the episode the judge was like well He's really good at making shoes like that call me crazy Joe because I won't stop at anything to make the perfect shoe But also at the same time. Oh my penis will not grow Oh my goodness just make the shoes Joe just make the shoes But that talent in shoemaking came with a price Joseph was an Uncommonly good cobbler because he was raised for the sole purpose of shoemaking sole purpose sole purpose and as we know It's a shoe pun Marcus do you see what you did? Holy shit. I didn't wow

Honestly, that's the sign of a true genius Just accidentally being able to make puns Stephen Wright is a multi-millionaire for doing things like that on purpose Well, as we know from a certain documentary that was just released raising a child for a specific Profession while giving them only abuse is a pretty good way to fuck up a kid And that of course was the recent documentary about Doug Flutey You add that single-minded childhood abuse to schizophrenia and you got something Extremely dangerous like the album

It's really all coming together so many synchronicities But before we get to the story let's acknowledge our source today our book for this series is the shoemaker by Flora Shriver written with the full and complete cooperation of Joseph Callinger. It's a co-production It's me a floor, but I tell you what floor wouldn't exist if I wasn't for show me small-time business owner I'm the best maker shoes. I'm also at the best at killing the entire world I guess so The book is now out of print due to a lawsuit brought by the family of one of Callinger's victims because Callinger got a 12.5% cut of the royalties

But it is still well worth picking up one of the old used copies now I would like to see Callinger on Shark Tank trying to make a deal with mr. Wonderful talking about how he's got a look at your bald head. I got a full head of raven hair. It's absolutely impressive It's absolutely wonderful. Let me talk to you delicately if I get the angle perfectly quickly. You'll be the king in the universe And if not, I gotta fucking cut your penis off. I'm sorry 12.5% royalty deal walking out of the Shark Tank with a deal now as far as serial killer origin stories go Joseph Callinger's ranks among the worst Just like it seemed as if Richard Ramirez's cousin Miguel was training Ramirez to be a serial killer

It seems as if the Callingers were trying to create an evil presence in this world Hmm, but the Callingers were not Joseph's birth parents The sources are conflicting on who exactly his birth parents are but Shriver claims that Joseph was the love child of Judith Renner Scurdy and a man named Tony Patale. Hey, they call me Tony squirts cuz all I do is the fun part of making a kid Oh, oh my goodness a little Andrew Dice Clay for a dad It's not I mean Andrew Dice Clay is a person as much different than his character. Absolutely not. I'm exactly the same Oh, my family is afraid of me. Oh, yeah. Oh the dice man. I saw him outside of a Dunkin Donuts once Nice guy. No matter what the story is though Callinger was given up for adoption soon after his birth in 1936 and

Spent the first two years of his life at St. Vincent's in Philadelphia Now eventually Joe was chosen for adoption by two hard-bitten Austro-Hungarian immigrants named Steven and Anna Callinger The two of them had immigrated to America separately, but found each other in Philadelphia And were married for 12 years before they decided to adopt a child just after they both turned 40 years old See that shows you that life is not over at 40. You can have your kids. You can still you can adopt a kid You can have your shoe making business still going. I mean what a wonderful incredible hopeful story This is and of course they met on the really exciting dating app just for Austrians. Oh strudel date. Yes strudel date

I think it was it was also cold beef That you could go to and that's where they found each other. Well little Joseph Callinger was not adopted out of any altruistic urge Oh, nor was he taken out of any desire on the calendar's part to form a loving family unit. Oh Oh for the Callinger's adoption was a practical decision a necessary evil because Steven was as sterile as a mule And that's just how I like it. Honestly, there's somewhere a mule is like I'm actually Should be a corpse Wow, see Steven Callinger had already been running a fairly successful shoe making business in the Kensington section of Philadelphia But without a child he had no air

No, or did he have the free labor that is having a child provides? Yeah, yeah now This is I guess this is what's called old-country thinking Then I'm not particularly, but I feel like I even on some levels like yes children were essentially Sharded out into this world in order to help the farm or the borscht factory or the rock I don't think a borscht factory. I don't know what this is the old country now. They have borscht Like easy pass. I don't know what that is. Well, yes, but this really isn't that uncommon children work back in the day Yeah, this was a little bit uncommon because you'd like to think they pepper in a little bit like I'll give you like a I love you or give you like a little hug or do anything

They legitimately viewed this kid as workforce and that is it. Yeah from the moment Joseph was brought home He began a lonely solitary existence He was never allowed to play with other children and the only physical contact He received was from the back of his adopted parents hands and the calendars were upfront with Joseph from the moment He was able to understand why he was there You're here to make shoes. That is what you're Yeah, this really is a horror movie beginning here In fact when a neighbor asked Anna why Joseph was never allowed to play with the other kids

She said quote. He is not here to play. He is here to work We gave him a home and he must pay us back I mean honestly that must really suck to have a negative relationship when you see shoes Because you see every person has to but you know how many people do you see a day? But you and I have discovered when you're oddly shaped shoes is how we can be fashionable We can go get sneakers and that's fun and I have a nice like a normal shoe size Yeah, I mean so I can get many different varieties of sneakers and I take a lot of joy from shoes

Yeah, sure. It's kind of a subtle dig there on my not so normal shoe size. We all have different bodies, you know The internet provides And anytime calendar disappointed his adopted parents in any way They had a stock threat to hurl right back if you don't behave We'll send you back to the orphanage from which we rescue now. I have a question though Can you really just do that? No, you can't just Is the orphanage like it's a 30 day return policy you can leave a kid anywhere? I mean honestly, I know you're not yes, you're returning. You're not really returning into the orphanage

But you could definitely leave a kid outside of the orphanage and then eventually someone will come scoop him up Or it'll get hit by a truck or we'll get put in a garbage can't I don't know what happens to orphans You don't know. I know that it's all bad. No, of course Joseph got into trouble as all kids do and the things he got in trouble for were all normal parts of childhood innocent stuff But three incidents in particular led to another incident that fucked up joseph for life for fucking life forever I don't like it Now it probably doesn't come as a surprise that the calendars were staunch Puritans in addition to being tyrannical monsters

So when joseph at five years old came home one day asking what the word fuck meant because he was in philadelphia He's gonna hear the word fuck. Well, I don't know if you're born raised on the playground It's where he spent most of his days. So he's out there seeing hearing what these kids are saying Of course, and he didn't even say the word. He just asked. What does the word mean? What does this mean? Mighty mommy. What does fuck mean? And they they Beat him within an inch of his life. And you know what they beat him with which is the thing I got thwacked with a couple times On a calendar had a big old wooden spoon from the old country, right?

She's a fucking beat him with this shit And this is back when spoons were also used to fend off invaders from your home Well, they did have a double purpose. It literally had like carrots so deeply just kind of like burnt into the back of it That they were like a gauntlet just fucking smashing you in face with it But that's what that is what he got beat with quite a bit and a leather strap, right? And they beat him for being a dirty little boy because he said a dirty little word and guess what that does That plants a fun little seed in there doesn't it saying you're a doddy You're a fucking dirty naughty little boy

So i'm gonna beat you with this spoon and that's a way and then you and you're in your ooh, we're gonna punish your penis Well with any luck you just become a chef But no and this was back when spoons were remember when people used to buy things for life This is what i'm saying. This is our spoon. This is a family spoon. Don't even look at another spoon when we go shopping We have our spoons. If our spoon knows that you looked at another spoon, that spoon is going to attack and kill us It's a big gross grimy spoon. It's got a new American spoon I love it. Well a couple of months after the fuck incident Joseph got into trouble for pulling a little girl's pants down. I mean it's a curious natural thing kids do it

I never did it, but I never did it either, but some kids do it I guess it's good, sure. I was told that some kids do it Pantson and then everyone laughs. Yeah, but again He was labeled as a filthy dirty little boy and again He was beaten the third incident however was not joseph's fault at all But it had the most dire consequences When joe was five years old He got the shit beat out of him by a local bully a girl and while joe was being treated for his injuries

It was discovered that he was suffering from a congenital hernia and the calendars had assumed that joe had been beat up by the girl Because he was once more being a filthy little boy So while joe was admitted to the hospital to fix the hernia the calendars came up with a plan Oh, no As soon as they got little joseph through the door from the hospital They sat him down and had a talk about his little bird Uh-oh, if you tell me that they put a face on the spoon and they had the spoon and they were just like This is this is sarah the spoon. She wants to know about your little bird. Yeah, dude

It's close. It's disgusting. See in the calendar household Bird was their euphemism for penis. Oh Really? Really? So they told joseph that the doctor had not only fixed his hernia, but it also fixed his little bird They went joseph asked what had been wrong with his little bird in the first place They told him that a little demon had been living inside. They're not wrong. I don't know. They're not wrong. They are wrong I mean, I don't know what to do as a kid, but now I I'm intimately know the little demon inside my bird But we're friends. This is like but he already

Obviously schizophrenia. He was probably born with it. Yeah, well, we're gonna this is all planting This is not how to do it. No, it is not and they further extrapolated by saying that the demon makes your bird kit Hard and when it does that the bird makes you do bad things Which will eventually cause the devil to drag you down into hell So they told this five-year-old boy that dr. Dali who'd done his hernia operation Fixed it where his bird will never get hard. Yes When joseph asked exactly what the doctor did to his bird his mother said by joseph's recollection quote It is a secret

But you won't have no demons in your board because your bird will always be small small small small small small Well, very theatrical for an austrian mom So they really they're messing with this kid in every possible way But this thing because really was it's not even purposeful to him It's trying to make him this obedient robot that had they viewed him as something that would never grow almost being like You are our property. You will take over the business when your father dies and that's how this is going to go You're going to be good at this. We don't even really care if you get married

We don't care whatever happens to you outside of this home because as far as we're concerned you won't leave And this little bird being small the little emphasis on the little is what's going to drive Joe Callinger for the rest of his life. Yeah, maybe you put a maybe you'll put some spaghetti strands on the spoon Marry the spoon. Yeah, I mean it was the Callinger's opinion that their adopted son was going to grow up to be a sexual deviant And if he was a sexual deviant, there's no way he's going to be able to run the store properly. That's the biggest problem That's the biggest problem. I see they don't understand sexual deviance run the most major businesses in the entire world So they seriously thought that if they fucked him up in just the right way when he was young They could put a stop to all

But just as it was with edgine and his mother augusta all they did was make it a thousand times worse See right after the conversation about the bird immediately after is when joseph remembered having his first vision Think about how scary this is You just had this weird ass conversation with your parents where they're like Vihan to pay a special doctor to do a special operation on your little bird So that it could never be grown up ever again And you're sitting there being like give us a little boy. You understand the importance of your penis You've been feeling it. It's going like hey, buddy. Hey, let's get going. Come on. Let's grow up, right? Let's grow up

But then all of a sudden you look in the mirror That's how my relationship is with my penis. Is it like chucky? Yeah, we go out there and make some money and we really go out there and give it to him. Give him all you got Um, but I you look in the vision you look in the mirror and all of a sudden your first photo realistic hallucination Just projects itself in front of you Mm-hmm after the talk joseph walked upstairs and looked into the mirror there He saw his father's curved lip shoe knife Floating behind him. Hmm slowly the knife floated in front of joseph's crotch

and vanished Whoa Now as far as punishment went the calendars didn't stop with the symbolic castration Steven had a homemade cat anine tails that he fashioned out of leather and rawhide shoe laces That he used on his son on a regular basis. It was made out of shoe parts. Yeah, isn't that interesting? Is that your own punishment? You're literally working on shoes all day and then you get beat with shoe material every single time you say anything online Yeah, and anna got in on it too once in the presence of a customer and friend who later told this story to flora schreiber

Anna hit joseph in the head with the hammer four times for asking if he could go to the zoo on a school trip Yeah, because she was like what are you doing going to your pleasure monkey games in the middle of your birthday? You should be writing and scribbling as you shouldn't be seeing the bats You shouldn't be seeing the turtles and then she starts beating him with a fucking hammer And then puts and then locks him in his room and another time both anna and steven together held joseph's hands over a stove after he stole a roll of quarters So he could pay other kids to go to the movies with him because he was just that lonely He was a fucking ghost kid. Yeah, and if you see pictures of him at that time too

big Wet eyes with dark circles around them like dark dark hair stooped He was tall for his age. Look at kiss. Look what it did to his personality. It turns you into this. I don't even know I can't make a shoe At least they gave him a skill I can I can make I can do you remember that I remember crusties. No crusties. I have no idea what you're talking about. That's a hell of a pizza It's a it's a pizza. It actually comes in like it's um, what do you call it?

You would literally systematically a mill eliminated of this turn into a dictatorship You would be one of those would be like oh, he's chaff It's a we can get rid of him. It's a powder and then you'd get a wet And then an evaporated milk you talk about dough crusties dough. You're just talking about the concept of dough We're just saying I can make that Well, it wasn't just inside the house that joseph was abused when he was eight years old Three older boys orally raped him at knife point in an empty metal tank that joseph had been using for personal sanctuary Well, because he that's that this is a common now thread is that he likes hiding in holes

And this was the place he used to go for sanctuary and then now it's been turned for him by all these fucked up little boys So predictably when joseph began to develop sexually at the age of 12 he did so violently when he began to feel sexual urges he found he couldn't help pair those urges With fantasies of cutting open a woman's stomach or cutting off her breasts And when those started making him hard, right a part of it that he realized Oh, this is because the doctor said always you'll never get hard. That's what the surgery was supposed to do So this thing was helping him defy the orders of his parents. Yeah, I don't yeah I don't think the doctor knew what his parents were telling. No, no, no not at all

But he also but it also added like an extra layer because they told him a demon lived in your bird We got an operation to get the demon out And so when he started getting hard when he said it's turned like 12 or so. He's like, oh That's the demon. They didn't get the demon out So he had this implanted in his head that a demon was living in his penis And then The schizophrenia kicked in Yeah

And all this was also tied to the fact that joseph was never That joseph never felt as powerful as he did when he was holding a knife Even when joe discovered pornography, he found he couldn't orgasm unless he had first stabbed the picture It's a bit of a I would say red flag. Yeah He also cut a hole in his wall using the same knife Which you can only hold in his left hand because I was his power hand And he's he cut a hole in the wall because that's where he would sort of place his penis inside of To in order to kind of

Demonstrate the action of of having sex and then his father would discover it and come and fucking Plastered over it and beat him with the fucking cat and night sales Yeah, and then he'd cut the hole out again And then the father would come and plaster it up and he cut the hole out It was this weird like back and forth thing Interesting. They did a similar thing in the movie porkies Yeah, my father's favorite film Yeah, I know and then they were also um, they were beaten but by the by the female gym coach

Mm-hmm. Yeah and calendar couldn't reach orgasm unless he was holding a knife and specifically his left hand And soon joseph was bringing those violent sexual tendencies out into the world when he was 12 He sexually assaulted a boy in pretty much the same way. He himself had been raped when he was eight years old Concerning this development joseph said that when normal things should have taken place this quote-unquote other thing developed And that other thing would only be exacerbated by joseph's burgeoning mental illness He said that the demon that had supposedly been removed from his bird when he was five began speaking directly to him Audio he had audio hallucinations first and they were frightening and he's also too young

To not understand that this shit's not real. Yeah, so all of a sudden he is just he's just like lost in this world of like He knows nothing but pain and now and he is obsessed with tiny penises Right. Well, and his only friend is his tiny bird, I guess. Yeah, dude And that's I mean honestly, that's all boys have when they start and then you learn to apply those friendships to humans No, usually you do have friends Well, yeah, but your first love is your penis as a little boy. No, I think that's you. No, that's just you. No I did not fall in love with my penis My friend's name was jason my penis was like my kramer

Joe had continued to assault boys in his neighborhood and during one assault He actually bit his victims penis after the quote-unquote demon And instructed him to chew it off. I know but he then this is a build-up He had been doing this and then also kind of daring himself to go into the same We're seeing this very very early. Yeah, but during that time joseph discovered something that actually seemed to make all those bad feelings go away When joseph was 13 years old. He discovered the joy of acting Thea just saves another boy. Theater can save lives. Absolutely. There's another well, you know actors are just so stable and reliable Right, right. Well, I mean this could be a dangerous comp. Uh, this could be a dangerous

Combo here. He's you know with all the shoemaking and then the acting the shoemaking and the acting that's fucking daniel day Lewis, baby He went he quit acting in order to go to shoemaking think about that. I wish Joe calinger had heard that story Yeah, it could have helped could have helped. So joseph tried out for a part in a ymca production of a christmas carol on a lark And was surprised when he was cast in the part of ebony's or scrambles And he was even more surprised when he found he was damn good at acting as well Now surprisingly his parents allowed him to participate and on the night of the performance joseph brought down the house. He fucking was really good

So after the play joseph no longer wanted to be a shoemaker. He wanted to be an actor I got the chops. I got the look. I got the move. I got my little penis is telling me all sorts of fun things about how to memorize lines I got this. Yeah, you never know But when he told his parents about his revelation the next day because they sure as hell didn't go see him that night Oh, they should have gone. They did not know all they did was mock him They demanded that he act for them right then and there in the kitchen So joseph tried out a soliloquy from hamlet to me

Oh Not to be mommy and daddy. Can you see can you see me perform? I got tights on pretty good pretty good And as he attempted it his adopted parents sat there and heckled him Fucking water at his face the entire time Fun star fun star honestly, that is how you train a kid to get ready for the life of being an actor Which is almost more difficult than acting The life is the hard part with all the egglers in the crowd and in life in general and when joseph, of course didn't do very well They forbade him from ever acting again because he had been adopted for one purpose

Shoot shoot. Oh, it's still shoes shoes batch. That always brings me back to that old youtube. Yes But since joseph hadn't been socialized in any way whatsoever. He pretty much resigned himself to a solitary life at like 15 yeah, he's like this is it. This is what I do. Yeah, he's like this is what I do This is my life. I get to go to the movies on saturday morning and that's it That was all he had they let him go to the movies on saturday morning So he just became a grizzled a grizzled grizzled shoemaker at the age of 15 bending over covered in dirt all day They were hoping he was but guess what man Huh, the heart wants what the heart wants. Yep, and one of those saturday mornings when joseph was at the movies

He met a girl named hilda bishop in a romance somehow blossomed. Well, she was also really fucking weird Yeah, when they met each other. He was uh, he was essentially it's the love story from adam's family values Oh, yeah, that really was nice. So that was nice. He is the what's his name's character The crumb holds character who is just this like my pants don't really look beyond and I can't do it all very much when I was back time And hilda was like, yeah, my my mom calls me a whore You know like they were and she was this weird lanky Chick with like brown teeth and but they you know, hey two steps or two steps back We come together because what opposites attract although you did say that both of them were the exact same

Oh, yes, that's right. To be fair. Yes. Oh at first it seemed like live was going to turn around for joseph He'd come into his own at the shoe store and he'd got a work permit which forced his parents to pay him Hey, all right, of course now they charge them room rent for you know room and board But still small victories small victory and you know if everything else wasn't so unbelievably messed up in this boy's life That teaches some responsibility Plus things were going pretty damn good with hilda But around this time joseph's mind began to deteriorate Uh-oh out of nowhere joseph's body would begin twisting and turning like a snake

completely out of his control Then came the laugh completely unprovoked joseph would begin giggling without joy Without joy without joy. Yeah, schreiber described it as a gothic belly So yeah, but what was the point of it? What was why did he do there was none? He just came out of his mouth It was a tick. Yeah, it was like a tick like he said it came from a completely different place and came without warning He tried stopping he'd put his hand over his mouth, but it wouldn't end Huh, okay, so yeah, but it was not him laughing because he thought it was funny

He literally would come in these weird episodes But you know those but you know those people that just say force yourself to laugh and then you're going to end up Actually laugh that's scary. That's what people recommend. Who says this? I swear to god People say if you just force yourself to smile force yourself to laugh You will feel better because it releases certain chemicals in your brain. That sounds like bf skinner shit. I don't know I've seen it on some blogs Now anna and steven had definitely noticed that they're adopted son

It started writhing like a snake and laughing uncontrollably in the halls of their home They didn't notice yeah, you know, but instead of getting the kids some help. They just put a padlock on their bedroom door And started sleeping with a baseball bat. Okay. Yeah, you know what not unreasonable because at the time they viewed him as Almost he immediately became an enemy when they saw that he was having real trouble The way they talked about him was being like he's evil. He doesn't know what he's doing Yes, no control over his body. He's evil and he is bad and so they could not Not contemplate that he actually uh, he might need like a reach out like he might need some help Well, yeah, I mean

Getting help that would require joseph to leave the store Yep, and even though the boy was slowly losing his mind demonstrably losing his mind Still one hell of a shoemaker cut the touch. Yeah, all right So the calendars just let it go He's like well as long as he can show up to the shoe store every day and do his work Who gives a shit? No, this is called what they do with johnny dep He's like well, he's still got it and they just do it, but even though he's propped up by two different like Whatever those like a beams are like see clamps holding up his pants and shit

So soon after the writhing began joseph had his first full-blown schizophrenic delusion One day as he was working in the shoe shop a bright light appeared before him And in the center was a figure that joseph believed to be god. Oh my god So you're telling me at this age. He is a shoemaker and he saw the nike symbol In that bright light. That's incredible. What that's the god of shoes That's for us some people like a fee a lot of some people like no, no We like nike. I like your balance. Look at him. That's just You don't like new balance mark is you have to wear new balance because you have frogs feet

He does have flat He could technically go to a real shoemaker that doesn't do all the horrible things that this shoemaker will Yes, I know he will get you a little like insert you could put into a shoe if you want it But just how wide all he had to do all I'm saying is all he could do is put a little swoosh Take some take some makeup make a little swoosh and now he's a multibillionaire Well, this is what joseph later said the vision told him joseph callager You are a special person and you must undertake a special mission Already through your orthopedic work. You are easing pain in the feet the feet are also the key to the brain

Your mission is to control the brain through the feet. This is what I got of the universe Command you to do you will use this method to heal yourself and heal men god You must heal and save I like that. I mean honestly dr. Scholz. I saw commercial. They said the exact same damn thing I don't even think he's a real doctor But nonetheless, I would love to see a schizophrenic version of dr. Scholz commercial where it's just like god Like in my imagination, it's the cut out from montipython Like in the fucking cloud just going like heal your feet or in the universe But really bad feet bad brain. No, you're talking like a fuck

No, joseph callager. No, you've said several things You've gone to a store lately and they have the foot map out or had if you As the palms are good for reading you can also read one's feet You got to read these books before we do the show so you can see the slippery slope you're talking about I watched a lot of youtube video. They did not mention these in the youtube videos No, no, they didn't mention that god spoke to him about his feet But you know I also but there is some you know, if you're if you got a bad toe My grand my grandmother used to this is true. My grandmother used to do used to

Monitor my sister and I and she would go and she'd poke us under the table every single time She felt we were eating too much or doing something bad But another thing she used to do is we had our feet anywhere closer. She'd grab my shoes by the toe and be like Your shoes are too big. They don't fit right That's a that's a grandmother thing to do. But that's also a really smart parent technique. Get them two sizes too large Yeah, you go into them. Yeah, we know that Well after joseph had that vision he now had a mission from god And that mission was something that he would work towards for the next 17 years

He would be the savior of the universe and the instrument of salvation would be orthopedics Honestly, man. This is just like the the hudsucker proxy. I will everything turned out. Okay. It's true technically it's could it's it might have been the way steve matten like actually started like it could But it's not salvation through shoes. No, it's not though. I know it's not but I actually think that's a it's kind of true It's a thing to think about but the problem is that does that what we just said does that sound really vague? You're correct. Yeah, because it is because it's a nonsense Mission from not god the back of your head, which is not doing well But you go back in the day you got a niche market. You're selling shoes salvation through shoes. That's a hell of a pitch

By this point joseph's parents were absolutely terrified of them So their decision just like the decision made by richard chase's parents was to let joseph Go off and move into a place on his own brilliant kind of what we've sort of discussed We've been talking about this as we were researching the show We were like, oh my god, he's richard chase if richard chase could hold on a job Yeah, richard. He's richard chase with the work ethic So do you think that his austrian parents just did not understand? whatsoever how they messed this kid up and just thought to themselves like or talked about how

They just did too good of a job of making him amazing at doing at making shoes Of creating just the the greatest shoemaker ever They were quite proud of that and they never thought that they did anything wrong. They're austrian Well, they actually they never were they were fine with Joseph's calendars work, but to them that was to be expected absolute excellence was literally just the bar They were being real tiger moms about it where they were like they did not you had to be a plus because if not Why are you our son? We'll just take you back to the fucking orphanage and they viewed him as evil

Well, this is why your father's technique of when requested to do something. He would this is henry's dad He would do it really bad. Yeah, and then you don't get asked again Which I think is a great life lesson for every father to teach his son And no way does that make him reliant on another person and then that other person becomes really sick and tired If you're not being able to do anything around the house And the next thing you know, you're alone forever No, you just have to make enough money where you could have a handy person come and fix the thing because that's what you have to do Well, 1953 pretty soon after calendar moved out. He decided it was time to get married

Now the calendars didn't approve of hilda. So they filed something called an Encourageability petition to try and stop it This is like old-timey shit where you can really like children work sort of considered your property Yeah, you can still file an incorrigibility petition, but it's just not done very often It's filed in a parent essentially loses control over their child. It is getting the law to declare your child incorrigible Okay, but since the judge couldn't see anything wrong with what joseph was doing The petition was thrown out and joe is free to start a family of his own Of course the camera pans down and the judge is wearing some of those primo shoes

The calendar had it in the bank But as you might expect joe didn't exactly have the right training to be a family man Not only had he spent most of his life in near isolation nursing violent sexual urges But he was also just 17 years old as was his new wife because remember during this whole time Every time he's been able to successfully have sex with hilda and it's because he has gripped a knife In his pocket. He had either one in his pocket He had old stuff in order to get hard. He had to literally charge himself up to even make love to this woman So that literally that old joke of like knife in your pocket. You just happen to see me and just be like it's a knife

Yeah, I it is the it is the contraption from seven interesting. Okay Now this started off as the best thing that ever happened to joseph They bought a house and joseph went to work for another shoe maker after promising to one day return to run the family business And the father was all for he's like go out get some experience just promised to never open a shoe making business in my neighborhood Okay, then in 1955 joseph and hilda had a daughter and inexplicably named her ana after joseph's horrible mother But that was when things took a downward turn joseph's household fell apart almost immediately Him and his wife started constantly fighting hilda was constantly putting down joe's penis size because it

It had turned out to be very small. It was It was very small like it was it like Medically small. It was a micro penis, but it was you know on the on the shorter side It was enough to bring it out. Yeah, you know, this is why he should have been friended like bobby dildo Who made dildos and then you couldn't exchange shoes for dildo I mean, you know, there's a lot of different ways that you can have pleasure with a partner Well, he probably did do that and that's not that's not appropriate Yeah, and they even they had another kid which they again inexplicably named steven after joseph's father

But that only made things worse. Yeah, it's just his children. Everything's a trigger every time he has to call his kids He's triggered about his past Yeah, and it's also but it's almost in a weird way of still searching for acceptance and love Even though you've been abused but entirely you're still like kind of giving this thing That you know that they'd want to try to see if maybe we can normalize this shit Yep And helda had no maternal instincts whatsoever She usually left the kids hungry stewing in their own filth

Just leaving them in dirty diapers all day long and there's no mention of it in the book the shoemaker But other sources say that joseph was physically and mentally abusive during the marriage and that's almost certainly true That he was also abusive right back to helda And that may be why hilda left joseph in 1956 for a man named hans ibbler And when he found her when they were cheating she just left they were she was so scared or unhappy to be with To be with joe calinger that she just lived in another dude's car Lived they had parked the car outside of a graveyard and she was just living in it. Yeah, I got you what I want I do what I want look at this hatchback

This is my fucking funny ass hatchback you get away from it. That's my home Well after that the two of them filed for divorce and joseph moved back in with his parents Eventually he got custody of the kids and took him by train to see their mother and haunts on the weekends But on one of those train rides joseph met the woman who would be his wife until the day he went to prison decades later Betty bomb guard She was a lonely soul. Yes meeting another lonely soul He came and he I mean, I guess he dazzled her by being saying I take a look at your feet Maybe something I can do with it off because I feel like your toes are you know, they're in line with the devil

She's like you're funny Right. Yeah. Well, he's got the kids. He's got a job. Yeah custody of the kids But no, he got which is not common for the man to be able to do that But at the time It is a massive shame for a woman what they called they're like, oh, you're gonna Are you're gonna marry this guy with some ready made family? Yeah, where they were like they said it's like a shame for a woman to marry a man with kids already Because then it's like, oh, you're not gonna make kids your own. I kind of like it better that way, you know all out of the way

Yeah, just have ready-made family. It's perfect. It's like crusties Pizza dough don't bring up crusties again. It starts with a k crusties As far as betty knew joseph was a perfectly normal guy who is just going through a hard time There were things that betty didn't know about joseph even in their most intimate moments See joseph had never gotten over the link in his brain between sex and knives So he hid a small pin knife in a bookcase built into the head of his in betty's bed And when they had sex every single time joseph would reach up into the bookcase And hold the knife in his left hand just to juice it up like it's spinach like he's papai

This is like when castanza was trying to eat a sandwich in bed I in Seinfeld trying to combine his two loves You know, I wonder if he could have just been up front with that because I mean people have weird fetishes all the time No, you're saying 2019 in 1956. They didn't know the word fetish. Yeah, it's also hard to bring in knife play Yes, I understand the beginning of a fucking relationship. I feel like you need to build. I don't know. No, I know But maybe just uh, yeah, how do you bring up knife play? I don't know why you're asking me I don't know who does knife play. I'm sure that there are couples that have that kind of Wild stuff going on. You're the kinkiest person. I know before from the back of the day true

So I wondered if you ever do but you don't stab people. No, I No, I never stabbed anyone. I'm just asking Just asking questions. Yeah, I know I know okay, so that's so this is um He just can't he can't separate these two things. He cannot know very bizarre And when joseph was 22 right after he and betty were married. He had his second major hallucinatory episode A figure with a black cloak and a witch's hat appeared to him again as he was sitting at his work bench So scary Yeah, this thing is fucking kind of unfolding itself in front of mf

You're just like a like it's like you stop and you stare It's like one of those like weird scenes from like Mandy or something when fucking sludge music comes in Yeah, the figure pointed to the space next to him and told joseph to watch carefully So as clear as a movie screen joe saw a vision of himself as a child with his two adopted parents They were raking leaves and once they were raked into a nice pile Stephen set the leaves on fire The flames grew and spread and the more joseph watched the more excited he got Then when the vision was over and done with the figure in black gave joseph a command

Go home at lunchtime and burn down your house All right, so this is the last thing he needs now is to just let's bring fire into the mix We'll already love knives It was one of his favorite memories as a boy watching the flames grow kiss. Oh, don't take this from him But the burnt smell of burning leaves is not good. It smells very bad So when noon came that day joseph followed the instruction from at home Once again the figure in black appeared and flames shot from his mouth She's so joseph went to a shed connected to the house

Let a match and threw it in a can of paint thinner And the whole time joseph was just as hard as the dick And that's the thing Is that the turkey timer goes off every single time he thinks he's making a right decision So every single time he feels like he's like, okay, I'm on the okay I'm on the right truck. This is fine because he goes And it's like as it pushes it's like his full strength meter It's like I was playing street fighter 5 with holden and you see that little bar fill up and then you can do a special like move

That was his penis. Yeah. Yes. Yes, interesting And in fact joseph was so excited by the idea of arson that when he retold the story to flor schreiber Talking about the ecstasy and the power of burning everything you own Joseph came in his pants right then and there and she put that in the book, huh? Yeah If I was the author I would have left that part out It's literally him like the flames like a big omega. Whoa the flames. Oh tickling tickling Looks like a bunch of feathers tickling the bottom of my feet. Oh And he is fucking you're in a jail cell and you literally have fucking your floor just like calmly staring making notes

While the the guards are all just trying to look forward because he's going Oh, it's gonna go Uh-oh So after the house was gutted joseph and betty moved into a house on east fletcher street in kensington And life continued along nicely with joseph joseph. He started winning awards for his shoe making skill. He's getting some medals All right Soon after that he and betty had their first of five children a little girl named mary joe But four months later joseph had an episode

He blacked out and ended up in hazelton, pennsylvania 70 miles northwest of philly without any idea how he'd gotten there Honestly, who among us has not blacked out and ended up in hazelton? That has happened to everyone in the world. I do remember when you ended up in the wrong hotel In uh, was it oklahomans? Oh, Indianapolis. Yeah, Indianapolis. Yeah, that does happen But he was a this is isn't it was it a cult associate of fugue or is that old school shit? Well, the thing is about the author florishreiber. Uh, she also was the author of civil Yeah, and a lot of the claims that she made in civil concerning multiple personality disorder Uh, we're I mean not necessarily debunked. It's just kind of been uh

Like shifted to the left a little bit like that's not like it's yeah dissociative episodes and things like that and disassociative Disorder as it is is not schizophrenic like it's not schizophrenia like multiple personality disorders not schizophrenia. They're two extremely different things I mean, I know it's complex. I know it's complex and it's just one of but but amnesia is a weird symptom, right? Can that happen amnesia can be a part of schizophrenia? Okay So joe was found and was hospitalized for nine days He was eventually released but since he got no help whatsoever from the state He figured it was up to him to quote-unquote correct himself

Through orthopedic experiments It's the hell the tiger Come on feet. We're doing this from the heels up He's really thought I'm gonna go to my thing and I'm gonna make the perfect pair of shoes And when I get these perfect pair of shoes on my feet not only is my family gonna love me my my parents are coming back I'm gonna be completely adjusted. We're gonna fucking we're hitting the top. We're gonna be the new dr. Scholes Fuck dr. Scholes. Well, I mean, I don't know it sounds like in some other world. He could have been the my pillow guy Who you know, I don't know if you know what the my pillow guy does though now. He says doctors recommend

A good night's sleep is the best thing for your health And what's the best thing for your good night's sleep my pillow? So theoretically he's trying to say that my pillow is the best thing for your health But if you do if you are sick Just my pillow is not gonna save you. Wasn't he addicted to crack cocaine? He was for a little while Well, joseph was fully and totally convinced that all of his problems and the problems of the entire world Could be corrected by placing a wedge in the heel of a shoe That would adjust the slant of his foot to harmonize with the function of the brain again

Great sales pitch. I'm walking into the store without a cool pair of shoes I'm walking into the store just half-brained and then I talked to this guy. I'm walking out full brain Because he gave me the right pair of shoes. Oh, you're my biggest customer. So I'm so happy to see how many gallons of shoes I can make to fit your huge among us all beautiful feet. Look at this now. Tell me my fellow schizophrenic company customer Uh, do you want to also wear a pot on your head or do you want to maybe Introduce me to your friend for the stand next to you or uh, I'll do the pot on my head. Okay. Let's do it. Thank you But joseph's obsessions went beyond just feet he became obsessed with bowling And installed a 12 foot long 4 foot wide bowling alley in the room where he and his wife slept

He's becoming more and more like michael jackson each movement. It's like it's like all night Him bowling in the room. They're like It really is remarkable if you tell me next that he starts a group called no, ma'am He is becoming albundi as well bowling shoes and hatred. It seems of women in general It's all coming together and he also started filling the house with junk See joe always had a thing for discarded objects So he filled his family's home with various pieces of machinery and electronics that he found in the garbage He thought he was he thought he was adding more projects

Yeah, he thought it was that he would bring like these huge gigantic like 10 foot long pieces of machinery And just plop it down in the living room and say deal with it meanwhile meanwhile betty is like be like he's he's so funny I don't know what this woman's shit is his family continued growing as well A few years after mary joe was born along came joey michael and jimmy But at the same time the hallucinations continued specifically hallucinations about fire A voice from the darkness that joseph knew was the devil kept telling him set fire to your house Set fire to your house And he did it four times

Just one time you want to hear the counterpoint Put the fire out in your house put the fire out in your house Now is it possible and this is like totally an ignorant question here But is it possible that he could receive things that were less negative every now and again? Of course he did he had that he had the mission to save the entire world through orthopedics. It's good. It's still Not good. No because you're not going to do it So what we're going to find out is that you're setting yourself up for a fall

It's not good, but it's positive. No, and it's also actually kind of real orthopedics have greatly improved society It would be really nice to hear just one being like go run a half marathon Why not? That would be a good one Now the first three fires that joe set in his home didn't do much damage But on the fourth when joseph was 30 years old he finally pulled it off and burned his own family's home to the ground Hard as the dickens. Mm-hmm. He was charged with arson, but never did any time And so with nowhere else to go joseph bit the bullet Permanently moved back into his childhood home and took over his father's shoe shop for good. Uh-oh think about this

This was your prison as a boy. Yeah, you got out and you built this whole other life, right? Now you moved your parents out. They left so it's now your house, right? But you are a deeply ill human being that is now Replacing your own parents in your mind and you were beginning this that you get this like power complex You literally defeated this one section now. You are the shoemaker. Yeah Yeah, I mean it only made the trauma worse because I mean joe was you know, let's say unstable Yeah, yeah. Oh, it sounds like it. Yeah. Well, he continued his experiments to try to help But each experimental heal that he tried needed a test walk

So joe would go on long walks in the middle of the night But joseph got lonely so he'd shake his kids awake and force them to go on walks with him to make it interesting He turned the walks into garbage hunts garbage hunts And this is where marcus has first been like actually this kind of sounds like fun Yeah, if you're walking up in the middle of the night, but I'm going back up back up. It's time to test my feet. It's time to test the feet And then they go out there back and forth walking and him going like I'm not well yet I'm not well. Yes garbage hunt. This sounds kind of like an episode of bob's burgers I could see the whole family loving to go on a garbage hunt

And whenever anything interesting was found it was brought back to the house on a little red wagon and got added to the pile Oh, and betty never went on these walks, but she had a different part to play Her job was to bring joe tea while he was working on his experiments cup after cup Sometimes as many as 30 cups a night. Whoa Pretty soon the paranoia started to take hold joseph became terrified that someone was going to get his kids Like they got him or get his wife like hawn zibbler had gotten hilda Or that someone was going to break into his house and steal his experimental ideas because he was the king of this castle

Yo, he was the king of this castle and no one was going to come in and he was going to ruin his fun Like he needed to establish dominance. I mean, you know, I uh, you ever see flubber Do you remember what they did to jerry louis this character in flubber? They stole everything from him using him on the basketball court and that was really that helped him win a championship This truly is a fucking x-rated horrible version of flubber So joseph turned his house into a fortress what he called joseph calender's castle All the cellar windows were covered in steel and every window from the first floor up was covered with hinged steel gates

Locked to the side of the house Some windows were even bolted with flat steel plates and covered in cement Now you're also you're his customer, right? Let's say you're in philadelphia Playing some b-ball on the street. You look and you see the shoemaker every day that you enjoy joe And you know, like he did a great job for your wedding shoes Yeah, I mean, yeah, I did a great job and he's up there and he is fashioning the front of his home with gigantic Fort knock style steel plates that he is soldering and cementing and just run us home He's like that's one of x-all no one steals my brain ideas and you just have to be like cool. Oh, yeah

Shoes are be ready with my friday my friday. I'm absolutely obsessed with them. I made my wife psychic and you're like, okay Cool. All right. Well, they are great great shoes. You know these companies they keep their secrets under lock and key They do and this paranoia didn't stay inside the house joe started having paranoid delusions about his neighbors He imagined that the building across the street or state representative harry cummer had his offices Was actually a secret cia outpost specifically put there to spy on joseph calinger You know, everyone might made fun of tom hanks from the burbs. He said, oh, they said you're being crazy There's no way your neighbors are murdering people putting them in their furnace and what were they doing

Murdering people and putting them in their furnace. Also, let's be honest harry cummer. Yeah, something's going on I don't think this guy is on the up and up. That's all I'm gonna say. I think his name is pronounced comers Whatever honestly You're probably right. That is probably not harry cummer. I am representative harry cummer Vote for me or you'll know you'll know why they called me that The harry comers had actually known joseph since he was a baby and when joseph had gone to trial for arson and cummer was a character witness being like having to go into court and being like joseph good guy, um

I'm not sure why he burnt down his own house because they were like there was no insurance for him to get He got insurance from another building of his that he burnt down. He burnt down his shed that he owned but they were like So there's no really any reason he's just like He's just stressed out Yeah, interesting, but nevertheless joseph started smashing comers office windows in the middle of the night with ball bearings This is what happens when you I actually like the tv version what happens when you meet a stranger in the house

And cummer was none the wiser Comer sorry. Comer. I keep saying comers house Spells c o m e r Well comer was none the wiser because joseph even helped him board up the broken windows It's like someone was trying to infiltrate a cia operative Kind of location that's happening across the street from the best shoe maker Interesting. I mean, you know, it would have been a dead giveaway if he threw shoes through the window

So I guess, you know, he knew what he was doing. Yeah, he knew to cover up his teeth and quiet. Yeah, literally He's not a mega man villain, which is right right Every time that joseph would help comer replace the glass the next night be out there with ball bearings again Breaking the next one. He did it again and again and again until finally comer replaced the glass With pretty much bulletproof shit. So if you're comer, aren't you just like my neighbor? He loves it when he has to come and help me fix my windows. Like he laughs and says this won't be the last time I just want to spend it out the room with you, you know

Just really kind of spend afternoon. I wonder where you put the microphone. So it's out of my asshole Interesting, but no, it's like what do you do with when you're comer having to constantly redo your windows and be like, huh? Well My shoes are due friday and it's feeling like if I could just get once I get these shoes out of there Then we can handle this whole thing, but I need those shoes. Those are my lucky shoes No neighbors were like, oh, yeah, we see him every night. No go out smash all your windows Well, he was doing it from the window of his house He's thrown it across the street

That is a dream come true though Just to be able to take your neighbors windows out and get away with it Well after the bulletproof glass was put up. I mean joe had no recourse Or at least he thought he had no recourse so to escape the watchful eye of the cia He covered up all the windows on his store with dark screens And his action only made joseph's problems worse because the screens cut off both light and air from the outside Meaning that this man who was already suffering from full-blown schizophrenia was now working day and night in an unventilated room Constantly inhaling glue. I don't want to be anything

I don't want to be like, oh mister get on my soapbox and start talking about how nike makes their shoes But it's still the exact same way But instead of a man, it's a bunch of children In countries that don't have a lot of economic means because they work with enthusiasm I see But can you imagine that? I mean he is already full-blown schizophrenic and then he becomes an unwitting glue-huffer That is the worst kind I think he kind of liked it. Well, I mean the smell of glue, you know, what was the uh, the rubber smet?

Oh, the kids were all as sixth grade was the year of rubber smet No, that was crazy. I had this black bag filled with the old school like poison markers like the old school I remember those just sticking your head in there and man. What a good afternoon you dad Yeah, we had no idea what we were doing. I think they took rubber spents out of school though. You just got that wow wow wow wow wow wow wow wow wow Well huff and glue may partly be the reason why joseph started the hole At the beginning of 1969 joseph bought a house on east haigert street to use as a warehouse But he also planned to turn it into both his own private retreat place to get away from the wife and kids and

As a pathway to hell. Yeah So this is no ma'am So he is albany. Well, this is where um, maybe you could say it gets dark Starts getting real dark right about now. Okay And so on the command of the devil Joseph forced his five children to rip up the floorboards of this house in the middle of february And dig a 20-foot hole straight into the ground. This is where marcus called me We were going to do a stuff and he was just like

Henry Henry That's like marcus. You're doing it's one o'clock in the morning. Why you call I use everything. Okay. Are you okay? It's caroline. Okay. It's like They had a dream childhood Joe callens used to wake his kids up in the middle of the night just to go dig strange holes Interesting and I was like, this is not a fantasy. This is not space camp. You're misrepresenting. Oh, yeah Interesting, although I could actually see that being the tail. What's your point counterpoint marcus? Oh, no, I just said like if it wasn't insane if he wasn't a crazy serial killer

Ripping up the floorboards of an old house and digging a hole straight down into the ground Your dad's helping you out and he's putting up all these supports You don't know what the hole's for all you know is you get to dig a hole your brothers and sisters Yeah, how much fun is that you know in the first hour Yeah, then the first hour this song like don't work together Yeah, come on. Come on. I could see how like the sister act tube montage is kind of happening But an hour six I'm digging the hole when the sun is coming up and you're still like deeper

They're gonna dig deeper kids gotta get in there. I gotta say china because that's what he did say He was like, I wish I got that girl hole so much that I would come out on the other side and then Oh, this whole world would slide inside of this hole But as he's doing this monologue to himself the kids are just like when can we stop? Yeah, is it over yet in reality it would be terrifying and awful and abusive but in a dream world You got a garbage digging daddy. Absolutely. It's like you get to go Yeah, that's in a dream world though. It does not exist. Can you imagine wife swap with this guy? Yeah, so then of course the earth is filled with molten lava. Yeah, so that that doesn't make it very fun

You don't come through the other side Well, when the hole was finally done joseph banished the children from the home forever He would climb a ladder down to the bottom of the hole with only a candle for light and stick the candle Into the mud walls. This is the only place he could feel any sort of peace He said by this point the the shop and the house were so filled with noise in his own head That he's like, I gotta really get home. I gotta get to the message I gotta get to the center of the message and then he would climb down this hole and be like There's this way I could actually go. Okay. Yeah, that's just nice. Well, maybe it was all the glue that was being

In the air there. It could be Once he got down the hole He would either masturbate or defecate or both And he slowly began to fill the hole with his own semen and feces as a part of a twisted Ritual that only made sense to him. Well, no, I mean how much uh How much would you have to crap to fill a 20-foot hole? That's the point That's why you got to make the hole as deep as you can So you don't have to be worried about what about the supply and demand of the shit that's needed here

Right, but he used to sit in this hole and literally be like, okay. What's the smallest messing? What's us? Ah, there's a spot I think he would just shit a turd out and he would literally believe it To give him power and every time he's shat and then he would come on the shit But his own shit and he would be like, okay It's like having a cup of coffee. Yeah, but I don't know what that solves It's like 35 minutes on the elliptical for him. Okay, interesting Then one night as he was in the hole

The voices came. Oh in the hole. That's his safe. Did the voices know that's his safe space? He heard a voice that sounded very similar to his own say and this is just a Partial reading of what joseph said quote Went on and on and on like that sounds like something ash read in the book of the dead It's crazy. Yeah, just nonsense word after nonsense word and joseph said that he had no idea Where the voice was coming from and finally he pressed his index finger to his own throat and discovered that the words Were coming from his own mouth. Think about how scary that is. All right now again step back Take a zoom out. Oh, I'm sorry. You just stepped on your human feces

That was such a fun shape it was shaped like a question mark. No, I know that's why I told you about Yeah, I know I know sorry about that, but you look at this. He is his own separate space He is dug a 20 foot hole into an actual building and it's filled with his common shit You are you are so sick That you don't understand you are actually talking. Yeah that you are hearing these voices But it's you talking to yourself and he only understood after he felt the vibrations of his of his neck, right after he felt the vibrations Yeah, now, I don't think this question matters and nor should I really be asking it But did he which we had to pee did he get out of the hole?

Oh, yeah That's my shadow my come So you put okay, so you're my favorite customer I know that's I'm a size 14. You charge me double. I know what happens. Do you want a couple coffee? I would is that Yeah, I see you pooping in the I see you pooping in the mug. You can see me do this. Yeah. Are you for the fuck? Can I my shoes please? Well on another night after that after taking a particularly large dump in the hole because he said that like the bigger the dump The better the idea

And he said he had a dump that was so big that it released him an entirely and I'm not gonna say I don't understand There are sometimes because you've ever done this and I'm gonna put you know I'm gonna say this for the casual viewer if you're not a If you're not a person who tourists are living but sometimes you got a hotel and you got fucking you're you got to get out of there You checked out. Yeah, you've been drinking a lot of beer. Yeah, maybe eight something at 12 30 at night, right? You do you're on tour tour life and you got to wake up and you know like, huh my shit's gonna come at some point And I like it from when you get down on the plane for that first time and you just unleash

A couple of dirty snakes on the plane. Oh, yeah Then those are technically good as motherfucking snakes off this motherfucking plane. I do My flesh and and it's but you do feel like oh, huh like your shoes are bigger Yeah, absolutely when you really get you feel cleansed for sure I I read a Gwyneth Paltrow. That's all that's all the goop is about god her pussy. He's got to be so strong I have no idea Well after joseph took that particularly large dump He decided that it was time to bring the punishments of his childhood to the lives of his own children

Uh-oh, see the calendar kids weren't exactly what you'd call model students. No Joseph and betty had raised a family of chain smoking teenage philadelphia street tufts I mean these were hooligans. They stole from the blind They snatched purses from old ladies and they're 10 and they're like between 10 and 14 years old They're the little rascals. They are just like the lovely violent thieves Oh my god, I know If the little rascals were real they would have knives Yes, of course they would

I mean, what can you expect? They don't get any sleep at night. Oh, they're surrounded by garbage You know hanging out with their dead digging holes all night. No, I mean, I'm not blaming the kids here They were raised in an absolutely horrific environment. They started to fend for themselves and they went feral But the only methods joseph knew as far as discipline went were physical painful and cruel So he set up the cellar of his home as a straight-up torture chamber and all this came from the time He spent alone in his literal shed hole You know, I really don't appreciate when they call it a shit. That's my this is my sanctuary

He used rope rubber hoses straight pins strips of leather and taking influence from his father a homemade cat anine tails Joseph called this stuff his quote educational materials And he took it seriously In fact, he said that he took this just as seriously as he'd taken his experiments with the hamsters With the what? With the hamsters. Yes. Okay. This takes a little bit of explaining Remember joseph had received a commandment from god when he was 15 to save mankind through the miracle of orthopedics Uh, again positive. Don't mind that one. Sure. And joseph. He'd never stop trying to crack the code

In fact, when joseph's father was in hospice in 1971 steven died With joseph vigorously rubbing his feet trying to keep the old man alive just a little longer Just don't do it though. You know, it's a calendar just to wrap it. They're like, come on, daddy Got these feet back and going on daddy I'm licking the things and then the father a little going like, please let me die. Yeah, please let me sleep boy Who doesn't love a good foot rub though, you know Well, one of joseph's favorite things to say was this quote the feet control the brain

They're god's magic gift to us I I agree with him the feet do control the brain And to really give you a peek into the mind of joseph calender We're going to read excerpts from the shoemaker in which i will play floris striber while henry will play joseph joseph talking about those experiments with the hamsters and henry is going to read this verbatim this is verbatim All right, and this is a part of people wonder where these characters come from We're going to make up all these characters. We're going to talk with these people

I was really I really wanted to showcase a little bit of what joseph calender is really like so you can see That there's very little exaggeration. Yeah, this is there's nothing added here. There are no jokes. This is verbatim What joseph calender told floris striber? Mm-hmm. Did he like the hamsters because they have four feet You're gonna find out everything he knows about the hamsters. All right, joseph In what way did you take this experiment seriously? Well, I've already done over 40 000 experiments Most of them are myself some of my wife and kids I'd even talked a mailman and to let me put wedges into his shoes

So I did a few on him, but I'd never done experiments on animals before what were you gonna do with them? I was gonna make little shoes for their feet and little wedges Deported to the shows. I figured I'd get a lot of information that way I wanted to experiment on the connection between the hamsters feet and their brains Now if they lessen them me and then what I told them that I would have known that the wedges and the little shows that I've made for them Would doing them good by giving them greater durability and intelligence. They'd be a did they'd be obedient to me? They masked them When I got them home to east legislature

I saw that there was no way I could make shoes and wedges for my hamsters Their feet were too tiny But I knew I could go on with the second part of the experiment the connection between obedience and intelligence even without the shoes To make sure I didn't get the hamsters mixed up. They all looked like you know all the same color brown same class hamsters I put a name tag on the right wheel leg of each one. I called them winkle popsicle jelly roll and Humpty Dumpty Then I put them into a large cage with a small wheel in it. I knew that the best way to touch their intelligence at their ability Was on the wheel if they had intelligence that they would listen to me if they had their ability They'd listen to survive to obey is the one test of intelligence to survive is another right right

Joseph how in the world did you expect the hamsters to listen to you when they don't speak any human language? I spoke to them in English like I'm talking to you. I pulled up a chair right next to the cage and I sat down I told the hamster everything I was going to do. It was very important to the future of mankind I said that they obey me I told them their feet were too small for me to make shoes and watches But I promised to make them little hats and suits even though I'm not a tailor if they listen to me and survived Flora, they understood every word I said. What did the hamsters answer you? Nothing. That was my second disappointment with them First I found I couldn't make wedges for defeat then I couldn't get them interested in my experiment

They didn't even perk up their ears when I told them about the hats and the suits But I knew they understood me. All right. They played foxy to throw me off my god They didn't listen. They didn't seem to want to get it while I talked. They ignored me So joseph decided that he wasn't going to be ignored anymore Oh, man, honestly these hamsters you just imagine being one of the hamsters though. Just look at him be like What the hell is going on? This guy is just screaming at her. What are we supposed to do? It's if ratatouille was in saw So joseph forced the hamsters to get on their little hamster wheel

Then he'd sit and poke them with the pencil for hours Forcing them to run until one by one. They all pissed themselves and died This is so But I mean honestly though, it's like make them the shoes if you're gonna force them to run that much I just won. Well, you you're so completely insane. But I could have made them suits Now this was of course a failure of an experiment But had joseph succeeded he was going to build a huge laboratory with wheels big enough for elephants and lions prisoners and mental patients all wearing his special wedges

This is straight up though if he was if they did stay Austrian Yeah, I guess if they did if they were around during the mengala era Yeah, she would have been the shoemaker of oschwitz. Honestly, you really would have been because these experiments are so wackadoo Well, uh later on in the in the second episode, uh, he used his techniques that he said he learned from the nazis And in this experiment as goofy and as cruel as it is Joseph had crossed a line for the first time joseph had killed another living thing And even though he didn't know it yet, this was his first step towards murder

And it began with his kids The punishments started getting even worse because joseph started taking him down to the cellar one at a time But only after midnight when a huge clock with a skull where the number 12 should be emerged from the darkness Now the clock hallucination would always be preceded by an itch in joseph's left palm When he felt this itch He knew his kids had done something wrong So he'd wait until after midnight then he'd shake him awake and take him down to the cellar where they'd get Straight pins thrown at him whip with the cat and nine tails whatever he felt like doing that night

He had this one thing that was like a box of rocks He would like collect this thing It was a little kind of like a weird little like a like one of those Cigarette boxes whatever it was this weird little palette things and he'd have a meal on it for hours Hmm and in 1972 the voices changed It was no longer the voice of the devil that was commanding joseph to do things It was the voice of dom delawis Honestly, we all just laughed at dom delawis. Well, he was dying. Yes

See joseph could resist the devil most of the time because it was the devil. It was a devil Yeah, those commands were only urges Okay, so he only followed the advice of the devil when he felt like it but god But god was the soul and the brain guy right god would god was telling him to do good thing God was his boss. Okay. All right, but on new year's day when joseph was 35 The same figure that it appeared to him when he was 15 showed back up and said quote joseph I control you now Oh, no

And joseph knew that this was the voice of god From then on joseph felt as if he had no choice but to follow the commandments of the voice he was hearing No matter how awful or violent those commandments might be The first violent episode came just a few weeks after god took over And mary joe and joey hoping to escape the abuse that they were suffering at the hands of their father ran away from home They've been gone for two days before joseph decided to go out looking for him So he put his 45 automatic pistol into his belt Hailed a taxi and directed the driver to troll the streets looking for a couple of teenagers

Am I trolling for you to murder? I don't want to be complicit in that so give destination or my destination is straight to the pits of hell Okay, okay. No, I mean taxi drivers. I think we're more pliant back in the day Well, finally joseph saw his kids coming out of a movie theater with a couple of friends So joseph jumped out of the car pointed his gun into his own children's faces and told them to get in the cab When they got home joseph told betty to take little jimmy and little michael out to get pizza And not to come home until he said so see joseph had begun to develop what you might call a crush on his own daughter

He never did anything sexual with her but prior to this incident He had begun what he himself called a courtship. He said in his own words. He's like I'm back at the notice She's uh, she's the beautiful young lady and she seems to be held in esteem by other men in the neighborhood But I won't let her have him. I wouldn't let him have him Well, thank you so much for coming on the stirring show once again. Mr. Trump really appreciate you being here Howard said he loved him Howard said he always loves the way you talk about his daughter Anyway, you know, you're gonna be president in five years. No shit. You look in right? Yeah, the two of them they hung out. They went to the movies. They went to dinner in essence

They were dating. Well, she was just hanging out with her father. Yeah, he was dating her And he'd buy her jewelry and he would do all this kind of stuff where he was like she was this pure thing to him Great. Okay. So now we're are we talking about leaving neverland again? What's going on? Okay, all right, and strangely during those few weeks Joseph said he didn't have a single hallucination Although that may have just been a way for him to justify dating his own daughter to flora schreiber Maybe maybe maybe marcus. I don't know because there are other things that he fully admitted to that are much worse than this Okay Now we have no way to know uh, if that are really any of this is true

But when mary joe left joseph had a break and now he was gonna get his revenge on behalf of the god Living inside his head who told him to do all this First he took joey to the kitchen and handcuffed him to the fridge before dropping a butcher knife on the floor Just out of reach just to scare him Then he took a spatula from the kitchen and a rope from the cellar and returned to the living room where his daughter was waiting He forced her to strip down to her underwear then he bound her wrists and ankles with rope After that joseph brought out his kerosene stove and turned it on setting the spatula on the flame After leaving it there heating for five minutes joseph picked it up and under his god's command

Burned his daughter's bear thigh and while he was burning her he was saying over and over again in a sing song voice You will never run away from me again. You'll never run away from me again little girl my little pancake You'll never run away Can you imagine that and you're just and the other your other kid is just fucking Handcuffed to refrigerator. Yeah watching you burn your daughter and a part of it It's like he said that it was so that she couldn't have sex with other boys Because there was another family that was becoming close to those kids strong family the strong family and he was watching them Yeah, like again and again literally driving past going

My kids and you know Bad daddy. Yeah, yeah crazy stuff happening Then he took the spatula back to the kitchen washed it and returned it to the drawer After that he turned his attentions back to joey He took the hammer removed the metal head and beat his son with the wooden handle Then when he was done joseph went down to the cellar and corrected himself with orthopedic experiments Yep, and you saw that he did the same thing too when he be he said to to the to son I'm I'm saving you. Yeah, because my mother hit me with the head of the hammer. Yeah

And after he was done he came back up and gave each of the kids $5 and coins for their troubles saying like i'm sorry. I had to educate you and when betty finally called joseph told her to come back home and the whole family sat down for a pizza dinner The thing was it could have been a lot worse joseph didn't follow his god's complete Instructions what the god delusion had actually told joseph to do was to shove the burning hot spatula into his own daughter's vagina to quote Sizzle out the badness so the goodness would come back And over the coming years those instructions would get more and more dangerous more and more brutal more and more insane

Until finally they resulted in three murders including the murder of one of joseph's own Children yep, and that's where we'll pick back up next week on the shoemaker part two. All right. There it is Interesting story this guy seems to have the it seems like a perfect storm at this point Well, we haven't even we haven't even gotten to the fucking murders Yeah, we're gonna show that this next episode is one of the most because I think it's very interesting Is how this happened over a very small period of time which is very similar to richard trace But you see that with other serial killers, right? Is that they develop their methods and then they kind of they hone them and they they have their rest periods

And they do all that kind of shit where the one happens they get it they get it out of their system And then the the desire builds back up where with him is that we're going to see the What's going to happen the shift in his hallucinations are going to like up the tempo of all of his activity Yeah, it's all all of his all three of his murders happen over a period of I think about six months Yes, but the and then like it's it does but the Last murder could have been 10 All right, we'll get into all that on the conclusion on the next episode. Absolutely

All right, that'll be next week The shoemaker part two I was I wonder if his shoe do does he have any shoes that he made? I wonder if there's any still out there. Oh, there must be there has to be because these were like shoes that last in a lifetime Yeah, that probably is. Yeah, probably are calendar shoes calendar shoes. All right, and I want to uh, thank uh, uk neil Out there in england who first turned us on to the shoemaker See uk neil. That's what I was talking about at the start of the show

Well, we both have one I feel like it's because we just have copies of this book somehow and you're reading and it really does page It goes by but but it's this deepening Kind of sickening feeling. Yeah, I've just been like wow like this is what happens You're almost total control of somebody who is an unbridled unbridled untreated mental illness and also is known nothing but pain Well, I wonder if they even had do they even have drugs like pharmaceutical drugs to treat something like this I mean, you know, that's not really they don't really work if you want to have the functioning lifestyle still I mean, he needed intensive therapy and hospitalization. Right. I mean considering his

Extreme childhood abuse. I mean this guy just didn't have a fucking chance. Right. Yeah. All right, but speaking of the uk Speaking of not having a chance We've got some exciting news. We're coming back to england Yeah, we're coming back to england. We're coming to australia. We are we can't we're not doing the specific dates yet But we're coming to you and we want to know It's they are booked and they're they're coming out the pipe. Yeah, they are all of the day inspirational dudes All right, all of the dates are gonna be on the website last podcast on the left.com this monday So you can see all our dates there, but yeah, we're coming to england. We're coming to ireland. We're coming to scotland

We're coming to scotland. We're coming to australia. Um, and also Do we have fans in stock home and in berlin? Do we have fans there if you if you are there and you want to see us? Let us know because we have a couple potential dates and we want to know if y'all want to see us there because we'd love to Go to berlin. We love to go to stock home. Love to go to stock home. Love to go to berlin So if you're a listener out there reach out And we'll try to make those shows happen I cannot wait to get back to the uk and cannot wait to see australia for the first time

It's gonna be great. It's our world tour two countries back You know, we're missing key portions of the world, but we are yeah for us. This is pretty big Oh, yeah, we've never been asked to go to other countries. No, no except for the last time we went to another country. It was nice Yes, but we like ask them essentially. Yeah, and we but but we've also got a ton of us dates coming out too. So we're not just going to other countries We're gonna be coming to a tonus. I think we're gonna do 10 11 cities in the united states this year We got a lot of dates coming up and all those are going to be announced very very soon Also, we want to say say thank you to your pretty face going to hell on adult swim for sponsoring the first leg of our us tour

We are going to be we're excited to see you. Did you just thank yourself? I guess so Yes, well, thank you. No, it's like I don't make these decisions. I don't make these decisions Adult swim. Yeah, they're sponsoring the first leg of the us tour. Absolutely awesome. Your pretty face is going to hell When can people watch it henry? We're coming out friday may 3rd. It is finally being released We're fucking so excited. We've we've had these in the can for a fucking while But I'm really really excited to see for you guys to see these batches episodes because I think they're really fucking good Awesome. Make sure you check those out. I want to thank everyone who came out to our show at the bell house Uh, really excited and always wonderful to see all of you. Yes. Thank you very much

Um, and can't wait to see you in beautiful nashville, Cincinnati, cleveland and pittsburgh yens Uh, we're gonna have a great time. Yeah. Um, so yes, thank you all so much for listening. We absolutely love you Keep on supporting all the shows here on the lpn network. Feel free to go to itunes rate and review all that kind of stuff It really helps us out. Um, it makes people it makes our parents think that we're really doing it Because they still don't believe that this has ever been a recorded show. Yeah, uh, it's hard to understand It's hard to have people understand what we do. No, it means a great deal. Thank you guys for your constant support Thank you for giving to the gattie and patreon for all that. Who are you? Absolutely? We have a fun interview. Henry and i do with the dude behind hell year, which is a really fun documentary

About the kentucky goblin. So check that out this week And uh, yeah top hat for everything political check out page seven if you want to hear the beautiful jack is brouski Um, just check out all the shows on the lpn network. Yeah, um anything else? You can go uh follow uh last podcast network at last pod network on instagram and twitter And we'll let you know when uh new episodes shows come out if you want to get ready for our batch tours this year Go to last podcast live.com and watch last year's live show. Yeah, it's really fun. Yeah, fuckers hail site Hail yourselves again. Hail me magustalations one and all honestly support your local businesses even if they're run by

Absolute total mania. I mean who knows the day. I don't even think there's a shoemaker around anymore Yeah, there's one around the corner, but now they're very expensive. Oh, I see This show is made possible by listeners like you Thanks to our ad sponsors You can support our shows by supporting them for more shows like the one you just listened to go to last podcast network.com