Last Podcast On The Left - Relaxed Fit: The Ayahuasca Murders

Episode Date: March 6, 2021

On this week's relaxed fit, we delve into the true, complicated story of The Ayahuasca Murders — a saga in which a would-be shaman named Sebastan Woodroffe got wrapped up in the world of the powerful psychedelic, only for his long strange trip to end in tragedy.Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

Honestly, most of the people I know who did ayahuasca live in Prospect Park. Yeah, they seem to be fine. Yeah, it's very strange. I used to have to go all the way down down to the southern hemisphere in order to get the ayahuasca. Uh-huh. But now all you have to do is go to like fucking South Street, Seaport. Yeah, go to Fort Greene in Brooklyn, they got a bunch of ayahuasca.

It's covered in it. Really strangely, there must be a link between all of the usage of ayahuasca in Prospect Park and all of the crimes inside of the private schools. Yeah, there could be. There could be. Hey, what's up, everyone? Welcome to the last podcast on the left. I am Ben, hanging out with Henry, and of course, Marcus Pugs.

Hi. And we are talking ayahuasca today because who better to talk ayahuasca than three people who have never tried it? I think that's great. I want to try ayahuasca, but all of the experience is I don't want to do the first 15 minutes where you vomit and throw up all over yourself, and then maybe you defecate yourself, and then you have a great time. I don't know if I can do it.

I've heard stories where it's both very cleansing, obviously. This is not a pro or anti-ayahuasca podcast. No, we're not changing that way. We got to be afraid of the inherent changes that can happen because I know people that have used ayahuasca, and it's changed their whole life for the better. And in some people, it turns you into the Joker. It could. Anywho, today we are...

This is just going to be a fun story. It's a relaxed fit. Oh, dear, dear. We haven't talked peer-mirder in quite a while, and thanks, everyone, for their great compliments towards our latest Crowley series, but this is going to be a bit of a palate cleanser, perhaps. Sure. Is that safe to say, Marcus?

Yeah, I'm only going to mention True Will once, this entire episode. Oh, thank God, we did it. All right, folks, let's listen to the ayahuasca murders. Yeah, ideals. Our relaxed fit episode this week comes to us by way of our friend Ragnar out in Iceland, who sent me a fascinating piece of journalism by Matthew Brimner called Blurred Vision, the true complicated story of the ayahuasca murders. Also big ups to Iceland right now, which is about to explode, but apparently Ragnar is

not that worried about it. He said it will just give him minor lung problems. That's really all they're worried about. They're just saying it's going to be some minor lung problems because of all the gas and the ash and whatnot. What's going on in Iceland? These are your volcano about to pop, and I said this to Marcus, I thought now we can fix volcanoes.

No, we can't fix, no, we have no power whatsoever against volcanoes. Not anymore than we can fix earthquakes or tornadoes. Volcanoes are just zits on the earth, so we need to get some kind of pop. You got to pop the volcanoes. That's what I thought, that you could pop the top. It's kind of like when you want to have sex, but you know for a fact that you're going to come too fast because it's been too long, so you shoot one out earlier in the day so that you can build up the stamina for the evening.

This isn't fucking Minecraft, they're not just going to go to the volcano with a bucket and put the lava somewhere else. No, two big thumbs. You can pop it. See a little less than three years ago, a Canadian by the name of Sebastian Woodruff became involved in the world of ayahuasca, except Woodruff chose to explore the benefits and profits of this psychedelic therapeutic drug in Peru, it's native land. As a direct result of Woodruff's actions, two people were dead, including Woodruff himself,

and while the entire saga was not a direct result of an ayahuasca trip per se, the drug and the shamanistic practices surrounding it played a central part in the tale. Technically it was the lack of ayahuasca that made him come in the morse. Absolutely, and I just want to clarify, this murder does not take place at Burning Man. No, no, no, no, no, no, it does not, so Burning Man, too much innocent and to my knowledge, not one murder has ever taken place there. Oh my God, I can feel the letters. I don't feel anything else come in.

Oh, inbox is full. But before we get into Sebastian Woodruff's story, it might be helpful to talk a little bit about what ayahuasca is, what cultural role it plays in Peru, and how the western world came to worm its way into what was once, and still is, a sacred spiritual experience. Ayahuasca is a traditional spiritual medicine which has been used by the indigenous people of the Amazon Basin for at least a thousand years. One thousand years! Damn, that's a long party.

Remember that guy that we worked for for a hot second that wanted us to write conspiracy theory sketches? What was his name? Alex Jones? Not him. No, he said no. He said no to the packet. There was an author we worked at who talked about this thing called the Cosmic Serpent.

So he said one thing that happened is that indigenous people would use the local psychotropic, and then what happened is that the galactic knowledge that these mushrooms accrued over the years of their existence, because they can think, go into our systems and then they could see the DNA strands inside of the plants to see which ones were good, which ones were bad, and which one would make you trip balls. Are you talking about ride the snake? Sort of, I think so. All right, I like it.

That's a Jim Carrey sketch. No, that's the doors. Oh wow. Well, I always prefer to the windows. All right. I hate you. I just prefer to the bucket. Yeah, I will.

These people with the aid of a shaman use the concoction to induce psychedelic experiences that are both healing and spiritual. With some people claiming it treated their severe depression when nothing else would help, while others claim that it revealed to them the true nature of the universe. I know people who have done ayahuasca and it's changed their lives, and they swear by it, but they did it very properly because you can see that it's not a thing to be trifled with like recreationally. No.

Not a thing you fuck around with. Okay. Usually, yeah, you're not supposed to like take ayahuasca and have a fun day in Prospect Park. So you don't micro dose ayahuasca? Not anymore. Not anymore. Okay.

Usually, the trip starts about 30 minutes in with violent vomiting, sometimes paired with diarrhea. That's what I'm here for. This is called the purga or the purge, but after that, a fantastically strong trip takes hold for the next six hours, peaking about a third of the way in. Because an ayahuasca trip is so intense, the people of Peru use a shaman to guide them through, making sure that the tripper doesn't fall off the deep end because the psychoactive ingredient in ayahuasca is pretty much the same as DMT.

I just have to say this, man. January 6th this year really hurt the shaman. Yeah. The idea of the shaman. I see as that dumbass with the fur, but I understand when we say shaman, it's a real person. It's a human. They actually have a position within a society.

A shaman's an earned role. Not just the stupid fucking hat you buy off of Amazon. You literally have to walk the walk. It's very difficult to become a shaman. Okay. And if you meet someone who's a shaman whose name is like, Greg, you need to look at it. I need some proof. I'm more of a PCP shaman, so if you take PCP, I will glide you on that ride.

From what I can ascertain, the ayahuasca ceremony can be a beautiful experience that can give a person insights into who they are and what their place in the universe is, which sounds sort of like a shortcut to discovering that whole true will thing we just spent seven fucking hours talking about. Seven whole hours. That's your only time you can say it. But since ayahuasca obviously has benefits, people have found ways to exploit it. Ayahuasca tourists have been going to Peru for ayahuasca vacations since the 60s.

And over the last decade, hundreds of ayahuasca retreats have opened for business, mostly under the ownership of North American and European expats. I need to see the pre-flight photo and post-flight photo. It reminds me of when we were traveling to Colorado on 420, there's all the weed tourism. I just want to see everybody all buttoned up on their way to Peru and on the way back, it just looks like they were all silently molested by fun. Is that person wearing a bronzer? Yeah, what has happened to him?

The retreat that makes the most money, located in Equitos, Peru's largest jungle city, rakes in almost $6 million a year annually. And for top-tier service, they charge $2,700 for a week of ayahuasca trips guided by local shamans who know what the fuck they're doing. I don't think that there is any problem with them profiting off of ayahuasca and trying to bring this out to the world. That's part of why I was kind of my vaguely pro-AC stance, right, is the idea that sometimes I think it is good for society for people to see some of these secret traditions that

have helped other people gain personal understanding over the years. But the problem is that I think it's good when the shamans are doing it and making money and they know what they're doing. But it's hard when it's just some like, when Trippy Steve's doing it, it's really, you know, I think it hurts the culture. Yeah, well, but then again, money can corrupt and do these shamans have the best in mind for the people that are in their little classes there. They should.

Yeah, the perspective of a lot of people that actually take this seriously and take it seriously is like a spiritual experience. They say that the way a lot of people are approaching ayahuasca is the exact same way that like the lumber industry approaches the Amazon rainforest, is that it's just another resource to be exploited at the expense of the larger cultural heritage of the country, of the people who have been living there for thousands of years. But Marcus, every time we kill the rainforest, every foot of the rainforest we destroy, we destroy more frogs.

So that must make you happy. But no, I like frogs. You don't want to kill frogs. It's toads. I like the little Amazon frogs. I like those. It's toads that I hate. Well, there's some toads in there, too.

There's one. Did we saw the stream? Of course, our stream is available to all of our Patreon subscribers. Thank you. Good plug. Now, that place that I talked about, you know, that rakes in six million a year, that's one of the nice places, which I'm sure they help out a lot of people in a lot of different ways there.

There is, however, a dark side to the ayahuasca tourism industry, and that's largely where we'll be spending our time today. In some towns in the jungles of Peru, people sell ayahuasca in Coke bottles at the markets. They advertise places that sell it on posters like it's fucking Amsterdam, or they openly sell it in rickshaws as a way to just kind of add a bit of a kick to the night. It's just like the opposite of what I want to do. I just don't need, like, if I'm going out to a bar, I just want something to make me feel less anxious.

Something that allows me to maybe enjoy music a little bit more. I like going out, you know, it's fun and give you a little bit of energy, with the idea of just, like, doing lapurga, and then all of a sudden being like, oh, man, I gotta stop thinking about fucking money all the time, man, I can't do this on a Thursday, man, Thursday's a new Friday. I think, but the rickshaw idea does sound fun, to be on a rickshaw. I've always wanted to be on one, I don't know if I can fit. Dude, you've never been on a petty bike?

No, oh my god, no, I would never do that to someone. Buddy, me and Casper Kelly, my fucking, my boss from your pretty face is going to hell. Back in the day, it was the first season, we got into a petty cat for adult swim, not say anything about Casper or myself, but I was also at my largest, and he was also at, we were both about the same size, both of us got into a petty cat, and the look on the man's face when we, like, stepped into his, we were both like, sorry, buddy, and he's just like, hey, man, don't worry, leg day for me, and then he's just like, but he, you know, he just shifts it into another gear, and then he's like, so his legs were going

real fast, but the thing was just kind of, it was a nice relaxing ride. Too fat American princess, just in the back of a petty cab. Now the shamans that work at the nice retreats and the shamans who are actually a part of their community, they both know what they're doing when it comes to guiding a tripper through their experience, and they know how to put the experience in context afterwards, which is actually very important. Very, very important, because what I have heard from people have told me that they've done ayahuasca trips, a lot of times you can go and be like, I'm looking to get this out

of my trip, and then what they do is they coordinate the dose to the amount that you're looking for, and then they add kind of like a guided meditation, essentially, they talk you through it, and then when you're done at the end of it, they talk about what the symbolism of what you saw meant, and it gives it a whole experience, and you can come out of it. It's a trip, it's an actual trip. Well that's why you usually leave the trip station, you leave it, and you say, I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me, and then your friends all say, you just watched SNL, you took ayahuasca and watched Saturday Night Live from 1992,

and that's Stuart Smalley. Oh wow, I thought that that was the god of all the inner light. Nope, that's Stuart Smalley. But since there are a fair amount of tourists who see ayahuasca as nothing more than a part of their vacation to Peru, a lark at best, they're unfortunately a fair amount of sham shamans ready to take their money. Hey you man, you know Sham Shamans, my name Rick, my name Rick and the Sham Shamans, come on kids, we're going.

Come on, we're going to the McDonald's in Peru, they say they have a different type of burger than they do here in Oklahoma. No, I don't tell you anything new, I'm your Sham Shamans, I'm your Sam Shamans, you can't come to ayahuasca now, I'm your Sham Shamans, you kids eat nothing, throw up enough this morning. No, well I would like to throw up a little bit. These fake shamans, who sometimes rob or molest their customers during the quote unquote ceremonies, they often mix ayahuasca with other local plants to create what one shaman

called a more explosive trip, and these guys have no idea how to guide it, nor do they really care. No man, they're just like these fucking stupid Americans, all right, let's get the elevator ready and just grab a random bullshit. It doesn't seem safe, it doesn't seem safe. Well they know exactly what to grab, like they have very specific plants to make the trip more explosive, to make it longer, to really give people a trip to the fucking moon, but it is also very dangerous.

Over the last decade, 11 tourists have been killed in incidents with less than credible shamans, including an American who was secretly buried by a shaman after he died during an ayahuasca ceremony. Honestly thank god he was dead. If you guys seriously, such a nightmare. Trips over now, the trip's over. Because you know that feeling after you've been tripping balls like all night, that beautiful sort of like melancholy mixed with like sometimes exhaustion, sometimes you've been crying or

something you had a wonderful night like kind of like one of those trip mornings, and can you imagine just like you have one of those ayahuasca and you're with, you've been with your sham shaman all night and he's been like hey you want some tater tots, you want some tater tots. I do want tater tots. But then all of a sudden like it's like you're all coming to awake in the morning and you look and you see your sham shaman just fucking burying a guy in a shallow grave and just been like he's real asleep see, he's real asleep and he's just a bed on the ground

and see, so I mean you guys get out of here see. Well this is a horrible way to end my marriage. That was my wife, he was buried. Well a couple of years after that blooper, a man was violently murdered during an ayahuasca ceremony at a quote alternative health center in Peru called Phoenix, ayahuasca that was run by two Australians. There a British man named Uneas Gomez had a bad trip during a ceremony and went to the health center's kitchen where he grabbed a knife and threatened to use it.

I will make a sandwich, whoa not an ayahuasca. In response a Canadian man also tripping, wrestled the knife away and stabbed the British guy in the chest and stomach multiple times killing him in the middle of the trip. You that's gotta be pretty fucking heavy. That's horrible cause then you're still tripping for four hours, oh that's gotta be bad news. What I will say though is that in the video that showed the Canadian being arrested with blood all over his shirt, he managed to look both very worried and oddly calm all at the same time.

It was more just like oh man I really got myself into a pickle here, well I don't really love the control there I wish somebody had put me in a bit of a calm down spot or something you know like got me some gum. Absolutely. I tell you something about the power of ayahuasca, he seemed to have accepted his role in this murder. Well it all made sense in the end, in the end it all made sense and he's just like I guess I was supposed to always be arrested.

Maybe that was the purpose of his life, I don't know, the ayahuasca caused it though. He wasn't going to murder someone without the ayahuasca, so I say we have to be a little bit, we can't throw the book at this guy I don't think. I don't know if anybody, it's a very dangerous drug. If you don't have someone guiding you there, it is a highly dangerous drug. Also why did they take ayahuasca around a bunch of knives? They had a kitchen and a lot of times they do have a kitchen. I actually wonder, I will push back a little bit, I don't know if I've ever been tripping

balls to such an extent and I wasn't on PCP or on a mixture of a bunch of different things where I would lose total control over what I do. You've only ever done mushrooms and acid though. You've never done the more insane, like the more disassociative types of, like Angel Trumpets. You remember the most people you used to talk about Angel Trumpets? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, this can be like a full disassociative episode, so it is very dangerous.

But the guy we're going to talk about today didn't become involved in a murder during a trip. Instead, his path to murder came as a result of him trying to get involved in the ayahuasca tourism business. I do feel like there is way more murders inside of the tourist business than, like, then just the drug business. I feel like tourists, like moving tourists or, because sometimes these guys get lost. Of course.

Somebody falls off the truck. You don't know, they're obviously in the middle of the fucking Amazon. You're going back and getting this guy? No. Well, Sebastian Woodruff was born in Ontario, Canada in 1976, and by most accounts was an affable and popular guy. But Sebastian also sounds like the male version of the manic pixie dream girl. He's the type of guy, he's always trying to get you to do amazing things like climbing

a mountain barefoot or getting lost in the woods on purpose. How about we watch a movie, Sebastian? This guy is like this. Every single thing has to be this fucking intense, like, experience, he didn't believe in shoes, you know, like, and he was wearing shoes, you know, he wore those fucking God-awful toe shoes. Oh my, I hate those. Unpredictably, Woodruff never really had a direction in life, and he drifted between

jobs and construction, tree planting, and sea urchin diving. Yeah. That's kind of cool. Yes, tree planting is good, sea urchin diving is fun. Absolutely, but if you live your whole life as if you're Captain Ron without the boat, like, it's a hard life because he had kids, you know, that's the thing. Yeah, he had a kid, he had a kid around 30, but he's like, but I'm not like a normal father, you know, like, I don't really subscribe to the whole family structure thing, you know.

All right. That's cool, you're just barely there as a man. Yeah, but he takes it, he took his kid out into the woods every once in a while. For him, life was more about experiencing things and being one with nature, which is a perfectly fine way to live. Absolutely only through a shade because nature makes me itchy. Okay. And I love nature, I totally get live and life like this.

But Woodroff had a darker side, one person who spoke on condition of anonymity said that while Sebastian was essentially a good person, he also had a temper and could be both volatile and obsessive, specifically the thing that Woodroff became obsessed with was cultures that were more spiritual, specifically indigenous cultures. And before he knew it, he was tethering himself to a pole with a big hook ripping through his chest while participating in a Native American Sundance ceremony. Man, they were just fucking laughing at him when he showed up, just been like, let's tell him we do this thing where we fucking put a hook in his chest meat.

I mean, like, that's hilarious. This guy loves it. Meanwhile, he's just doing the fucking wiggle dance, they're hanging out, they're all like, does he know that we have genes now? And he was constantly showing his scars to everybody like, I got this at a Native American Sundance ceremony. That's how fucking cool I am. All right.

Well, I'm sure many people at many bars were entertained when they ran into him and he was part of the tapestry. Oh, of course. I'm sure he made some people happy where if I was hammered, I'd be like, that is a big scar. You know, he really was. He was a character in his neighborhood. People liked him.

He had a lot of friends. He was kind of larger than life kind of guy and he would always do things to for the story. It seems like Vancouver is fucking full of guys like this. There are some. I remember one morning we went there last time, me and Carolina went out to fucking have breakfast one day and the waiter was overly friendly. One of these types of nature guys, like he tried getting us to go with him to a nude beach.

Oh yeah. Immediately. That's just called, he's just trying to over breakfast. Like, I'm not even, he's just trying to have sex with you and Carolina. There's something about him. It's very obvious. That's what he was trying to do. You attract.

This is why your yoga instructor talked about your butthole. You attract certain energies where people just want to be with you and you need to let them in. Yeah. You need to have sex with these strangers. You need to have sex with that waiter. You need to go back and have sex with that waiter tonight. It is sexual harassment on every level.

It is unwanted sexual attention. Lean in buddy. I don't want to lean in. Give the net and have the net drop it off and drop them off at that waiter's house. Don't want to have sex with these men. All right. Fine. I have a wife.

You don't have to have sex with the men. He doesn't have to. It would have helped. It would help. But he doesn't have to. That's fine. Yeah. I don't have to have sex with a fucking waiter in Vancouver.

Marcus, who are you trying to convince? Yeah, Marcus. It sounds like you've been fucking fighting to have sex with this waiter all day. Strange. Well, in 2013, Sebastian Woodruff found his purpose. His family had staged an intervention with an alcoholic relative, and Woodruff began pontificating about the nature of addiction on his video blog. The problem's the video blog.

Yeah. Sebastian began to think that drinking problems and drug addictions did not come from the substance themselves, but from unresolved issues and familial trauma. So Woodruff became an addiction counselor coming from this perspective. However, Woodruff also believed that Western ways of treating addiction were useless. And I can kind of see where he's coming from, because hell, I've been microdosing psilocybin for about nine months to positive results for the depressive side of my bipolar disorder. But I'll also say that I've never stopped taking the mood stabilizer I've been taking

for 15 years. I've never stopped going to therapy, and I've never stopped seeing my psychiatrist. Because for those of us with these disorders, mental health is a complicated and fragile thing that takes a lot of fucking work if you want to keep your shit together. And there are no easy fixes like Sebastian Woodruff thought there were. I don't know. Have you ever eaten a lot of empanadas? Because they think there's a lot of cultural ways to fix your problems, Marcus.

I agree with the empanada stance, to be honest. That's non-Western medicine. That is non-Western, no. See, Sebastian Woodruff's biggest problem was that he wasn't a doctor. Or did he have any sort of degree in the fields of medicine, or addiction, or anything even common close to mental health treatment? He just decided that he had all the answers. I tell you what, man.

I don't need shit. I got a bachelor's in being a bachelor. I know what you need, dude. You know what you need to do, bro? What's that, man? I'm really drinking too much. It's really not going well for me. I'm waking up late to work.

I'm going to lose my job. Dude, hey. Kids, hey, me. Listen, I'll tell you what you got to do, buddy. What's that? Jumping jacks. Jumping jacks. Okay.

Well, thank you so much. Tie yourself up. See how you frown? You're still a place like this. Upside down. Make it a C. It totally worked. Furthermore, it seems as if Sebastian Woodruff himself suffered from mental illness.

At the time of his death in Peru, investigators found sleeping pills, clonopin, and a prescription for anti-psychotics in his hotel room. Sure. After doing ayahuasca once with his brother-in-law at a ceremony in Whistler, BC, Woodruff decided that ayahuasca was the key to treating addiction, severe depression, and a whole host of other mental illnesses. They actually do now use it. Oftentimes people use ayahuasca to get sober.

There is an inkling. Totally. There's like a seed of it in this story where you're like, okay, you can be used to help. You have to use it properly. I think the difference is like, oh, I need to fuel up my car, and the difference is like spraying gasoline all over your car, or putting gasoline right there in the hole, because you want it in the hole because you spray it everywhere. It's not going to do anything.

It just makes it wet. Yeah. It's just going to make it very flammable too. So in 2013, Sebastian launched a crowdfunding campaign to kickstart a career as an addiction counselor focused on plant-based medicine. And he was actually able to raise a little over $2,000 Canadian. Oh, God. Dang, not bad.

I am actually in a time warp right now. I feel like this was really common seven, eight years ago. The ayahuasca thing, like the video blog, when CORE was coming up, and I forget the name of, there was a bunch of different startups that were all health related. I remember that. I don't know what happened to any of them. The next year, Woodroff made his way down to the Peruvian jungle city of Equitos, a known center of ayahuasca culture.

And he began studying under an ayahuasca shaman named Guillermo Aravallo. Woodroff then spent the next three years taking trips down to Peru while also performing ayahuasca ceremonies and doing ayahuasca himself back in Vancouver. This however, only seemed to exacerbate whatever mental problems Woodroff already had. This shit's not for everyone. Yeah. By 2016, he was making Facebook posts about how lonely and low he was feeling, and friends described him as increasingly more distant and erratic, with some feeling that he was

struggling with his fantasy of becoming a spiritual healer versus the relentless grind of modern western society. And that's a real struggle. Yeah. That is a real struggle. If you do want to be a shaman in Los Angeles, you better have a tight butthole because you're going to need to show it on the internet in order to make money to get through the training for being a shaman.

Or you're going to have because now there's no, you can't even be a waiter right now. Only sham holes. Only sham holes. There it is. I love it. Get rid of your only fans. I want someone's holes, but I want it to be attached to someone who's going to be a shaman.

It's sham holes. That's right. That's right. Call me Ricky the Shame Shaman. What I got to do here? Come here. Only fans here. There's only fans here.

Show me your hole. Okay. I can show you the hole. This is the hole right here where they actually took out the rest of my throat. I'm actually only speaking through, I'm speaking through my nose and through the top of my mouth. That is lung cancer caused by years of smoking, sir. By 2017, Woodruff had been going back and forth to Peru for four years.

Because you know, this guy, he is determined to become a healer and he's determined to heal himself in the process. But that year, Woodruff went deeper into Peru to a smaller city named Pulcapa. This one was located on the very edge of the Amazonian jungle. From there, Woodruff traveled down unpaved roads to a village called Victoria Gracia, which was populated by the indigenous Shepibo Conebo people who took both ayahuasca and the shamans who performed the ceremonies very seriously. This is, if there's something, there's a superpower that white people have where we want to go

to the center of where we don't belong. I don't know why, I don't know why it is, but we just want to go. You don't belong, not welcome. They don't want you there. It's not even that they don't want you there, it's just that you are, you're harsh in the vibe, dude. It's dead. It's a turd and a punch ball.

Yeah, you're showing up and you just want straight into the secret ceremonial secrets of the shaman and they're just like, can you, why don't you buy a bottle of water? Honestly, can you help me here? Will you come to our bowling alley or like do something besides just try to steal our centuries old secrets? So you think there's tribe in the middle of the Amazon and a bowling alley? Got you, how else do they get to occupy themselves? Did King Ralph go there at some point in the 80s and set up all of what he thought was

the most wondrous things? This is why I'm not going there. King Sebastian had been sent to Victoria Gracia by his former shaman, Guillermo Arevalo, who had told Woodruff to find one of his relatives. And it doesn't say, the article didn't say it specifically that Guillermo Arevalo sent him there to kind of brush him off and to get him out of his hair, but that's kind of what it seems like. Yeah, he sent him to like, basically it's just straight up, it's like meeting somebody,

a tourist that you don't like in New York and just like just sending them to the most remote place in the face of the planet, being like, you're actually going to want to go to Jamaica for this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. You're going to go see train is where you need to be right now, sir. You know where the best pizza in New York is? Sheepshead Bay. You got to get down there.

Wow. Yeah. Well, the relative that Sebastian had been sent down to sea was an 81 year old shaman grandmother and beloved spiritual matriarch to the Shepibo Canebo tribe named Olivia Arevalo. Now, to be clear, this wasn't a deep Amazonian village. While these people were certainly plugged into the old ways, they still wore Western clothes. They still all spoke Spanish as their first language and they all own cell phones.

Okay. And to a point they were also very patient with Sebastian Woodruff. It kind of speaks to how beautiful these people are that he came and they try their best to treat this man with the toe shoes nicely, you know, like he showed up and they were like, okay, I mean, I feel like it's a general feeling of like, this guy's going to destroy everything. But maybe if we just like, if we give him the right amount of corn, like maybe he'll leave.

That could work. Also, if you're wearing toe shoes right now, I know you're cozy and comfortable and that's why we're jealous. We're jealous. Now, according to Olivia Aravallo's granddaughter, Woodruff showed up at Olivia's house frantic, telling her that he was sick, he was crazy, and he needed help. He wanted Olivia to use her magic to reach all the way to Vancouver because he believed that she could heal his family from afar.

And she unfortunately told him that she was capable of doing it. Uh-oh. I don't know if it's going to work, no, it might not. It might not. Yeah, the insane part about all this is that Woodruff, despite spending four years going back and forth to Peru and obsessing over Peruvian culture, he still didn't speak Spanish at all. So all of this had to be translated by a local taxi driver named Herbert.

If I was a local taxi driver, I would always insinuate myself between the new American and the shamans and just be like, yes, yes, yes, I'm honestly, the translation fee is $150, like each time, just kind of, you just get it, you get your money. It's a great deleted scene from the movie, Stuber, when Stuber brings Dave Bautista to do a bunch of ayahuasca and has to take care of a mile of that. The whole country remembers Stuber. Over the next month, Woodruff went back and forth between Polkapa and Victoria Garcia at all hours of the day and night, but he was still quite erratic and many times arrived

intoxicated and occasionally he would arrive brandishing a big club and threatening the villagers. Yeah, dude. Yeah. He started going buck wild. And the thing about ayahuasca is to me, in my mind, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't know, but it doesn't feel like an emergency drug. And so when he shows up screaming like, I fucking need it, I need it, like all of these people

are just trying to live their lives. And then this man has just shown up just screaming how he needs the powers of the shaman to fix his Vancouver family. And it's like, man, I don't know if this is going to work. I think you need, you know, you need, do you remember when Hulk Hogan played that nanny? Oh, of course. Yeah, I forget the name of it, Suburban Commando. No, that's not, that's the one where he's the space alien.

Same action, though, space alien and the nanny film, both wild Hulk Hogan films, the wild Hulk Hogan comes in, fixes the family just by being so big. So maybe Hulk Hogan had arrived to fix his family, like he could have been better off, because Hulk Hogan, you could get for like 20K. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't remember the name of that. Mr. Mom was with Michael Keaton, but I think it was nanny man. It could be nanny man. It might be big nanny.

The steel nanny. Daddy nanny, I'm looking it up now. I'm gonna install this whole fucking show. Daddy nanny might be the name of the porno that he was in. Hulk Hogan nanny movie. I feel like a big fucking pig. Look at that big fucking pig. It is Mr. Nanny.

It is Mr. Nanny. Okay, good call, Henry. Good work, buddy. Thank you. Hey, I'm glad I derailed the whole show. Yeah. Well, things got so bad in Victoria Garcia with Sebastian Woodruff that the locals started calling him Pishtaco, which means boogie man, or even creepier, they'd call him Pelicara,

which means face peeler. I just am so scared of this guy. Face peeler is really scary. What did he do to deserve that name? It takes a lot. I don't know. It takes a fucking lot to go from being. The face peeler has come in.

Think about this. You used to be the new guy in town. You were just the new guy. All of a sudden, you're the boogie man? I mean, boogie man seems nicer than face peeler. Yeah, face peeler scares me. Geez. Now, they kept telling him, go away.

Never come back. After a while. So you want me to stay and always come back, is that right? Go away. Never come back. Always stay and always be here. I need you. I need you.

And here's, you have to give it to me. And he would say, OK, fine, yeah, I'll go, I'll go. And then a few days later, he's right there again, and he's drunk most of the time when he shows up. Now, we don't know if Woodruff was taking ayahuasca during this period, or if he was just having some sort of mental break. But everyone that journalist Matthew Bremner spoke to said that Woodruff's visits were connected to one man, Julian Aravallo.

Julian Aravallo was Olivia Aravallo's son, and it's now believed that Julian and Sebastian Woodruff had entered into a business relationship to start their own ayahuasca retreat. But the deal eventually went south, as these things often do. If you don't speak the language. Yeah, that's a bit of a barrier. Well, he's tried, because I think it would be much more appropriate if you travel to a place constantly to try to figure out the language. Try.

You know? Yeah. Now, Woodruff returned to Canada in January of 2018, but he was back in Peru by March, writing on his Facebook page that he was going to the jungle to do some soul searching, and that he'd return once he was healed. Because were his wacky Facebook posts monetized? How did he have the money to constantly be going to Peru? I don't know how he did this, but I'll tell you what.

This has got to be a rich kid. I'm just going to speculate this man has, does he have money in the fam? I don't know about that. It sounds like he just put money together, and this is the only thing he spent money on. Okay. And so he was very invested in going back and forth in Peru. But I'll tell you what, if you ever see me do any side of post, if you ever see me

do any kind of post that says, going to the jungle to do some soul searching, it means I'm going to a rehab in Tulum. But really, what it sounds like is that Sebastian Woodruff had been fucked out of a lot of money by Julian Arvalo, and he was going back down to Peru with murderous intent to do something about it. Oh yeah. So it was more like, I'm going to the jungle to do some fucking soul searching. I think if you could read it, that's what he meant.

Or it could have just been a misunderstanding. It could have been that, you know, Julian Arvalo took the $4,000 and there was some sort of misunderstanding because, again, Sebastian Woodruff didn't fucking speak Spanish. So who knows? I actually know, I think I understand Damae De Nero. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like there is a, that is an international language of where is my money. Now according to a British expat named Simon Donald, who runs an ayahuasca center near

the city of Polkapa, Woodruff showed up at his center looking for Julian. But the shamans turned him away. Simon, however, took pity and met Woodruff for coffee. Simon simply told Woodruff that he didn't know where Julian was, and in fact said that Woodruff seemed like a nice enough guy. And Woodruff is like, okay, you don't know where Julian is, thank you for your help. And then he left. Yeah, it's not like I just came all the way here from Vancouver and I, I'll just leave.

Okay. That's really nice. Seems like a nice enough guy. When Woodruff popped up again three days later, though, his attitude had changed. He showed up at a police station near the center of Polkapa and straight up asked a cop if he could buy his gun. Sure. Well, you never, you never know.

You never know. You know, I tell you what, you miss all the pitches, you don't take a swing at. Yeah. Using Google Translate, Woodruff told an officer that he was going into the jungle and needed protection from animals. That's great. Do you have an AK-47 or something? You guys, like in America, everybody's got AK-47s.

You got one of those. You guys got a tank? I love it. It's like he read Ted DiBiossi's Travel Abroad book. Everyone has a price. Chapter one. Chapter two. He wasn't that wrong.

No, he wasn't. The cop said no at first, but when Woodruff said that he was willing to pay $900 for the cop sidearm, he couldn't fucking resist. It's 900 bucks. He's like, it's just, it's so much money. He just- Cultural differences. Go to Penn Station and ask one of the air quotes officers, peace officers, how much

for the gun? And see what happens because you might get some bullets for free, which would be nice. And so, Sebastian Woodruff walked out of the police station with a nine millimeter hand gun. Fuck, they did the opposite of keeping the people safe. Holy shit, dude. I mean, it's just people, man. He just went in and ordered a gun to a la carte from the police station.

What's truly baffling about this is that after an investigation, the acting magistrate said that the transaction between the cop and Sebastian Woodruff was abnormal, but not illegal. Wow. 900 bucks, man. Yeah, they're all just been like, wow, that's a lot of money for a gun. I would have given you the gun for 50. Yeah. And the cop faced no action for his part in what was about to happen.

Sure. But before Sebastian actually used that gun, he tried one last somewhat pathetic attempt to recover his money. The day before everything kicked off, Woodruff, unarmed, showed up in the village of Victoria Gracia holding a sign written in Spanish that said that Julian R. Arvalo owed him $4,000. Has anyone tried to do that for the COVID stimulus yet? No, they haven't done that. Someone should just sit outside of the White House with them.

I'll take it now. Where's my money, please? Where's my money now? Go to sign, please. It turns out they don't care. When that got no response from anyone, Woodruff returned to his hotel room and ruminated on what to do next. What do I do?

Just relax in Peru. No, no. I'm too busy in Peru. Have fun. I'm too busy. I'm all charged up. Do I start a smoothie stand? No, that's not tripping balls.

Do I fucking start selling toe shoes to random other white people? No, I kid, this is my look. This is my shit. Yeah, you don't want to do it. God, I guess I got to kill. Oh, no. After seemingly deciding that there was no other recourse, Sebastian grabbed his gun, borrowed a motorbike from his neighbor, and sped through the rainforest to Julian's home

in Victoria, Gracia, where Julian lived with his mother, Olivia, who, remember, was the real shaman in the family. I mean, I just, of course, with the gun on the motorbike, his hair flowing with the big basket in front of it as he's, like, swerving through the village. Just full of white man rage, which is very difficult to describe because of its power and very scary, strange nature. Sebastian Woodruff arrived at Julian's house at noon and climbed off the bike, yelling the name Julian over and over again.

And when Julian stuck his head out the window, Woodruff fired a single shot. You really got it. If you hear someone outside of your house going, Markas. Don't peek your head out the window. Markas. Like, no, you stay inside. Yeah, you stay inside. Text me.

Yeah, you don't peek your head out. You don't look out the window. Unless, of course, it's that yoga instructor over here who hasn't forgotten about your wrestle yet hasn't been able to think about anything else and maybe he needs to be with you, Markas. Well, he does work around the fucking corner, but I don't think they're doing it anymore. Yeah. Good.

Yeah, that's a good COVID destruction. Hell yeah, fuck that place. But when Sebastian took the shot, he missed. And Julian quickly escaped, but his 81-year-old mother, Olivia, walked out the back door of her home to investigate the sound. Now, the villagers, they immediately knew that the gringo had flipped out, so they ran towards him. Like, this was the last straw for them, but he's firing a fucking gun.

They ran towards him, shouting, what the fuck are you doing? The boogie man is here on a child's bike with a cop's gun. It has reached peak white man panic in the village. So at the sight of the encroaching mob, Sebastian turned and tried running away, but found that his path was blocked by Olivia Aravallo, who was just confused about what was happening. And that's when Sebastian Woodruff panicked. He fired the gun twice into the ayahuasca shaman's chest, and Olivia Aravallo fell to the ground, dying.

Once he saw what he'd done, Woodruff got on his bike and tried starting the engine, as the villagers quickly surrounding him just processed what the fuck just happened. This woman was a beloved member of the community, but the bike was old and didn't start easily. Oh god, so scary. And just before the villagers were about to grab him, Sebastian kick-started it to life and sped away as fast as he could. The road, however, wasn't paved, and Woodruff hit a rut. He lost control of the bike and wiped out, and the villagers quickly caught up to the

bloody Canadians sprawled out in a puddle in the middle of the road. While some wanted to take him to the police, others in the crowd opted for a different kind of justice for the woman who had been a spiritual center for the village. I would have to say that I would be the latter, too. They'd be like, bring him to the police and be like, we can take care of him here. Because I would be mad, too. Oh, yeah, I'd be very mad. As about 25 villagers shouted and surrounded Sebastian, one man took it upon himself to

play executioner then and there. He took a loose seatbelt from a car and wrapped it around Woodruff's neck. Now, Woodruff was able to throw it off once, but when the executioner tried it again, Woodruff was unsuccessful. Once the belt was suitably converted into a noose, it was wrapped tightly around Sebastian's neck and someone in the crowd started shouting, pull, pull, pull, over and over again. They were also beating him. They were all, it was a full on, like, what happened with Gaddafi, like, a full on the

whole town was killing him in one move. Indeed. So the executioner and an accomplice started dragging Woodruff by the makeshift noose wrapped around his neck until finally he stopped struggling. He did lift his head one more time, but the executioner pulled the noose tight again and again and again until finally Sebastian Woodruff, the would-be shaman, died a horrible death directly after murdering the exact type of person he was aspiring to be. Wow.

A death soap here, even Ralph Nader would love it. You think about the power of a seatbelt, think about the power of a seatbelt. Ralph Nader gave us a seatbelt, so he forced him to be in Congress. There is a video of this. Of the hanging? Yes. It was, they shot it on cell phones. Yeah.

It was a chunk of it, it's not like the funnest way to spend your time. You wouldn't say it was the most fun? No. No, it's not a good video. It's a fucking awful. It's a terrifying, terrifying video, but as you watch it you can really, you really do feel the pain of the village. I feel like that's what it is because they were all, everyone was like wailing.

It was this kind of group snap where everybody just went nuts because in the end he did become the boogeyman to these people. He ruined their lives for no reason. He just was kind of, I made the joke at the top, but the joker, but he kind of showed up and decided to just cause chaos, which is not what Ashamman is supposed to do. Ashamman's supposed to be a guide through the chaos. I don't think he tried, he didn't try causing chaos. I think he showed up with the, he only wanted his money.

He wanted his money from Julian, and then when shit got out, when he caused chaos, he panicked and killed a beloved member of the community who was just sort of wondering what was going on. After she had told him that she would help him, after she promised him that she would help him and tried helping him. Sometimes you go to a slot machine at one of these wonderful money-making casinos and you pull it and you don't make the money, but you don't have to say, good on you. But that's what it kind of seems like to me because it seems like he's spending a lot

of money to go to Peru, to live in Peru, to try to get the four grand. If he just didn't try to get it back, he probably would have recouped the four grand already and everything would have been fine. Yes. Sunk cost. Yeah. Sunk cost. Yeah.

Well, after killing him, Woodroff's body was wrapped in a blue sheet and quickly buried in a two-foot grave, 700 yards from the village center. The four men responsible for the lynching soon disappeared into the jungle and are likely to never be found. Oh, they're still on the loose. Oh, yes. As far as ayahuasca tourism in Peru goes, the murder of both Olivia Orovalo and Sebastian Woodroff didn't make a single dent, although I hope that maybe it might convince people

that ayahuasca is something best left to the professionals. Let the shamans do it. Absolutely. Let them do it. We all don't need to get into the shaman business. We all are not capable of being shamans. Unfortunately, what I'd say to you, and this is actually bad advice, but if you thought about being a shaman, you should just start a podcast.

Maybe. Maybe. Do something else. We use that energy and harness it. So no one was held accountable for the murder of the dude, but I mean, you know. They tried. They tried. Because it did come out that the reason why they found out about the murder was because

of the cell phone video. Someone uploaded a cell phone video to social media. It caught attention. They did do an investigation and they said, okay, yes, we know for, we can tell that Sebastian Woodruff definitely killed Olivia Arvalo and they had. They could see. They identified. They identified all the guys in the video, but they just all disappeared into the jungle

and like you're never, we're never coming back or they just, all they have to do really is like leave for what, two years and then, you know, until the heat dies down because I don't think this is, I don't think this is really going to be one of those things that they're going to really pursue that hard because they have the bullets. They have the evidence. They had everything to basically say, he definitely murdered this woman and they had all of these witnesses. So.

Yeah. You go when you kill an 81 year old shaman, the leader of a small village, the village is going to kill you. I don't know. I don't know why. I'm not like, well, they didn't let them stand trial. I don't know. They saw him kill like a perfect older woman.

She was just the center of the emotional center of their town. She was the, to the people in the town, she was the connection to the old ways. She was the one that, you know, she, it was like, it was like he showed up and killed culture. You know, he showed up and he killed like the living embodiment of these, of the culture of these people. It'd be like coming to America and shooting weird owl in the head. Oh my God.

Don't even say that into a microphone or not into a microphone. Don't even think that weird owl. He already lost his parents to carbon monoxide, the, the silent killer, hopefully he doesn't go the same way. He will not go. Don't even ever do weird owl. You know what I think about weird owl? He is the Willie Nelson of comedy.

We all love him. We all love him. He's the best. That's what I'm saying. How I'd feel. You shoot my shaman. Yeah. I would feel the same way.

I think it's apt, an apt description. Thank you. All right. Apped pupil. Well, be extremely careful when you're taking your ayahuasca. Have a good trip. Be safe. I don't know if I ever will do it.

Maybe at some point, if the situation is absolutely perfect, but I have a guy here. You know what? I said, absolutely perfect. And then you said, oh, I have a guy here and I'm like, you're Polish. So I'm not Polish. I don't know if I want the Polish bridge to ayahuasca. It takes a lot of preparation. Like you're supposed to not eat sugar or red meat or salt or anything like that for

a week before you, like there's this whole process that you have to go through. And there's a, it's a big, big deal. It's a beautiful ritual, but you do have to stick to it because you're trying to get a, you're trying to get a result from it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just like any other medication that sounds like you got to take it when prescribed. Otherwise it's not going to work.

It's not the same. Well, yeah. So this is a bit of a shorter episode, but hey, man, what are you going to do? It's a bit of a high water gene episode. But guess what? We're right back into the fucking bullshit next week. Don't you fucking worry about it? We're going to show.

We're going to slop some blood all over your fucking legs next week. Oh yeah. It's going to be an episode that has quite a bit to do with a location that was spoken of in a recent Netflix documentary series. Ooh, Sioux Falls. Sioux Falls? No. No, it won't be the action, it won't be the murder or not murder, it won't be the death

that they cover in the documentary series, but it will definitely involve the location. The location. All right. We have a lot coming up. We do have a new Alien episode coming up after that. We have a lot of shit coming up in the pipe. And we have already scheduled our summer shows, not the live shows yet, but what we're going to do, and guess what?

Your guys are fucking coming with Marcus and I down a fucking tunnel. You kissle. You're right there at the front of the fucking line, buddy. Yeah, I'm going to shove everyone else down that tunnel. It'll be scary. Yeah, they're going to be shoved down a fucking tunnel. Shoved them down a goddamn tunnel. Also speaking of aliens, and of course they do the sports show kind of fun, but Baker

Mayfield, the quarterback for the Browns, he saw a UFO. And Marcus, he's on Twitter and other people said, oh, we saw the UFO too. So now we have a quarterback who has a laser eye. Field general. Field general. Seeing a UFO, is this the biggest sighting ever? We've had pilots and astronauts see them, but have you had in a quarterback? I just feel like they're, I mean, we've had people that watch these guys professionally

who've seen them. The Navy's seen them. There's a lot of people, the professional observers who've seen them. You want to hear something interesting? Do you know who, where Baker Mayfield went to college? Texas A&M. Texas Tech University. Wow, where you went.

Temporarily. Temporarily, at least, until he transferred out because we sucked. Oh, that's great. You guys had Padma Homes and Baker, damn. Yeah, and didn't do jack shit with either one of them. Texas Tech basketball, men's college basketball, doing relatively well, though. I've seen a few other games. They're doing okay.

Yeah, we usually do pretty good in basketball. Get your guns up. Yeah. Okay, we'll put your. Florida State University drama department is still doing very well. Really powerful. Can't wait. I can't wait to see what they do this year.

It's though they're doing the man who came to dinner. Oh my God, the man who came on dinner. That is disgusting. Isn't that crazy what one word changes? The man who came to dinner or the man who came on dinner because one, one you want and the other one you want to leave. All right. A couple of announcements.

We are going to be, it looks like we're trying to add another date to our Tennessee Cavern show because it's sold out so fast, which was, thank fucking god damn, we can't wait. We can't wait to come out there, but we looks like we're going to be adding the show and we will let you know exact, those exact details when those come out. Is that official? That is official. We were, I was told today to do, to do that, to, to plug it.

And then March 8th, we have some place underneath our new show about Missy Women hosted by Natalie Jean and Amber Nelson. March 15th, we've got Dunecast with Holden McNeely and I. It's ruining my life. Oh, and people are getting ready for it. Sure. Sure. The six IIU vlogs in space is coming back with season one point five. Yup.

One point credit. Yup. Season one one point five, you know, we're getting there but that's coming back on March 25th. We're hard at work on it right now. We'll be sick. People are going to love it. They will be covering the sexual exploits of the Beejis.

You can only. Alright everyone, well thanks so much for supporting all the shows here on L. P. N. We also got some weed coming really soon. And of course, check out our Twitch. the last podcast network on Twitch. We have a lot of fun on there. And anyway, all right, everyone. Thanks so much for listening.

Inhale yourselves. Hail Satan. Oh, again. Magustalations, everybody. Help me. Help me. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Help me. That sounds funny. 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 lastpodcastnetwork.com. And don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe.