Let's Go To Court! - 268: The Disappearance of an Entire Family

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

Alice Anderson was in a state of alarm. Her fifteen year old son, Bruce Brenizer had just called with disturbing information. His father, Rick, was missing. So was his father’s girlfriend, Ruth Berentson. Ruth’s daughters, Mindy and Heidi, along with Bruce’s half-sister, Crystal, had vanished as well. Alice made several phone calls before she determined that it was time to involve the police. Someone needed to find this missing family. And now for a note about our process. For this episode, Brandi copy and pasted from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases. In this episode, Brandi pulled from: “The Brenizer/Berentson Family” episode Family Massacre “‘I Did It. I Killed Them All’: 15-Year-Old Shot And Incinerated 5 Family Members” by Joe Dziemianowicz, oxygen.com “The Brenizer Berentson Family” episode Crimelines Podcast “Rumors Fly, But Murders Still A Puzzle” by Rogers Worthington and Chicago Tribune, Chicago Tribune “Deal possible in killing of five” by The Associated Press, Wisconsin State Journal “Two years later, Brenizer relatives seek answers” by The Associated Press, Leader Telegram “Brenizer ruled insane” by The Associated Press, The Oshkosh Northwestern “Life terms for Brenizer in family slayings” by Richard Meryhew, Star Tribune “Appeals Court Says Wis. Killer Should Remain In Mental Hospital” by The Associated Press, CBS News “State v. Bruce C. Brenizer” justia.com YOU’RE STILL READING? My, my, my, you skeezy scunch! You must be hungry for more! We’d offer you some sausage brunch, but that gets messy. So how about you head over to our Patreon instead? (patreon.com/lgtcpodcast). At the $5 level, you’ll get 50+ full length bonus episodes, plus access to our 90’s style chat room!  

One semester of law school. One semester of criminal justice. Two experts. I'm Kristen Caruso. I'm Brandi Pond. Let's go to court. On this episode, I'll be talking about the disappearance of an entire family. What the fuck is wrong with you?

It's a really rough one. Well, obviously, that's terrible. Yeah. You know, there are light ones out there. Mm-hmm. Brandi. Mm-hmm. It's interesting that those ones don't really seem to draw me in when I'm looking for a case to cover.

Just right off the bat, folks, this is a tough one. I know you'd never guess it from what Brandy just said about an entire family. Children are victims in this case, yes. Great. It's rough. Great. Cool. Also, adults are victims in this case, yes. Great. It's rough. Yeah. Great. Cool. Also, adults are victims in this case.

Oh, good. Everybody. So it's something for everyone, as they say. I wouldn't describe it that way. Any dead dogs? I mean, can we just, you know, fully? No, no dead animals, to my knowledge. Well, there you go, folks.

Yeah. Hey, how's it going? I'm good, how are you? Wonderful Brandy, what you been up to? Oh my gosh, London just had to have Like her first little surgery I don't think you should have gotten plastic surgery

I didn't get plastic surgery on her She was perfect in every way No, she had to have a dental procedure done And they had to put her under anesthesia. And she did amazing, and I was also there. Brandi, you were a brave little toaster. You did great. I was the bravest little toaster.

I only cried a little tiny bit. At the end, they gave Brandi and London a lollipop. That's right. No, she did wonderful. I was just a ball of nerves about it. But, you know, poor little baby. Her enamel didn't form properly on a couple of her teeth. She had to get little baby root canals.

And I hear that's the mother's fault usually. You stop it. I am 37 and have never had a cavity. I know. You remind me of this quite frequently. I mean, so much of it is just genetics. And, like, that's the, like, I just genetically have good teeth. Yeah.

And London did not get that gene. Like, her enamel just didn't form properly. And so. So, in this case, it's the father. Yeah, David and I together, our genetics did not pass on great teeth to London. So. Well, she's got great eyes. She did not pass on great teeth to London, so. Well, she's got great eyes. Well, she does.

She has great eyes. She does. No, so it's interesting because I think her teeth look so much like mine, but they do. Well, I had. Sorry. No, I had very distinct teeth before I had all my dental work done. What do you mean? Exactly my dad's teeth. Like, we have the.

Oh, okay. Shaped exactly the same, and London's are shaped very much like mine. Mine don't look like my dad's anymore because I've had a ton of dental work done. Right. Right. Braces and veneers and crowns and the whole all of it. Oh, my. Yeah.

Well, I'm glad London made it out. OK. And that you also survived. I was there as well. You know, she's doing great now. Good for you. I got her a stuffed tooth. Okay, so my mom texted me and was like, she watched a video where this girl went to the dentist and the little girl got a stuffed animal after she went to the dentist.

Yeah, so that's now the expectation. Just a heads up, you have to get her a stuffed tooth. So I got her a stuffed tooth. And I gave it to her after her appointment, but she was still really loopy. So then later that day she was like, they gave me a stuffed tooth at the dentist. I was like, they didn't give it to you. I gave it to you. That was me.

Your mother. Where does one purchase a stuffed tooth? Amazon. Oh, okay. Stupid question. It looked terrifying when it came in the mail. Because it was like shrink packed. So it was all compressed down and it has like a smiley face on it.

Yeah. It did look smiley when it was all. Sounds wonderful. Anyway, you want to talk about our Patreon question? Oh, yes. Yes. You know, the dental bill will be coming soon for little London's teeth. And if that doesn't get paid, she's going to have to take up a job.

Well, she has to give the crowns back that they put in on her new teeth. So to prevent that tragedy, that very real tragedy from happening, you can support the show on Patreon. Patreon.com slash LGTC podcast. That's it. You lost a little steam there,

but you had it. I, yeah, lost the steam, lost the confidence, lost a lot in that moment. But you know what? You'll gain by going there. 50 bonus episodes? Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, my. That's a lot of bonus episodes. That's loads and loads of bonus episodes. Ew, don't say loads and loads like that. You're the one who made it weird. Sounds gross. It sounds too close to gobs and gobs, if you know what I'm saying. Okay, okay.

I don't know what you're saying. You do. Neither does anyone else. You are alone on an island. I will not be baited into saying disgusting things again on this podcast. I'll have you know. First of all, I did not bait you. I'll have you know I had a very awkward conversation with my parents after that episode dropped.

And they knew exactly what had been said. Of course they knew exactly what had been said. They felt like geniuses and also grossed out geniuses. Yes. And I was like, yeah. I was like, yeah, I know. Because my dad was like, everyone's going to figure it out. Yes, of course they are.

Yes, everyone will figure it out. But you know what? We just had to bleep it because Brandy is such a disgusting hoe. You know? These things happen. These things happen. I warned you how terrible it was. So I blame you.

Oh, OK. Well, anyway. You started the joke, too. So I, again, blame you. Hey, hey. I start a lot of jokes. I start a lot of jokes. I say a lot of things. I rely on the maturity of other people to sign it in.

Uh-huh. Okay. Well, I lacked that on that particular day. I was in a weird mood that day, so. How's your mood today? I'm pretty good. Yeah. Yeah.

Not nearly as freewheeling as I was last week. I'm not sure what was happening. I don't know what was happening either. My favorite thing is sometimes people assume drugs are involved. No. No. Drugs are never involved. Sometimes a fried chicken salad's involved.

Yeah. I don't know. We haven't researched the effects of that on our tangents. But anyway, at the $5 level on Patreon, you get all kinds of bonus episodes. And you can pay us even more money than that if you'd like. And you get even more stuff. Yeah. That's how it works, folks.

Check us out. For example, at the $10 level, you get to see Brandy's driver's license photo. That's not true. No. You don't. You don't. That's not true. That's not true.

That chance to see the light of day. No, never. All right. Brandy, I hear you've got a real fun story to tell us. I do. Thanks. It's bad. Yeah.

No, we know. We know what you've brought to us today. Shout out to a program that I've actually used as a source before. And at the time, I was like, nobody watch the show because I'm going to cover every one of the cases on it. And I've not covered another one since. But I remembered that show this week. And so then I picked a case from there.

It's terrible. What's the show? Family Massacre. Oh, God. Why? Yeah. I think there's some interesting aspects to this case legally, so. There better be.

Uh-huh. Yeah. Great. Okay. You ready? Oh, gee. Do you ready to hear about a whole family getting murdered? Boy, oh boy.

This is right up my alley. Yeah. Go ahead. All right. Here we go. Cushing. What? Jesus. I am so sorry. I haven't even gotten started yet. Yeah, go ahead. All right, here we go. Cushing. What?

Jesus. I haven't even gotten started yet. I didn't realize how little iced coffee I had. And it's slurpy, slurpy. I can usually tell by the weight of the can. Well, aren't you a fucking genius? You know what? Some of us glide through life on our looks, and that's me, okay? So, yeah, I'm not going to know basic math or anything about the periodic table.

Okay. All right. All right. I'm back in business. I put that old coffee away. You got a new one. A fresh one. All right.

Here we go. Here we go. Coffee away. Got my new one. A fresh one. All right. Here we go. Here we go. Cushing, Wisconsin, is a rural, unincorporated community in the northwest part of the state.

Do you mean a not particularly densely populated area? Cushing is near the Minnesota state line. And according to the Oxygen Program Family Massacre, Cushing is known for its lush pine forests and low crime rates. Although, I looked up Cushing. They always say low crime rates. Oh, it never happens here.

Were they full of shit? Wikipedia lists the population of Cushing at 724 people. Well, goddammit, better have a low crime. In the year 2000. In the year 2000. At 724 people. Well, God damn it. Better have a low crime rate. In the year 2000. Yeah, there's not enough people for there to be crime. Well, where's the lie?

There is a low crime rate. It is a low crime rate. Also, low population. I'd like to know more about the Pines. I bet you didn't do any digging on that. I didn't. I did none. That was it. Yeah.

Yeah. Typical. All right. Continue. In the spring of 1991, Cushing was also the home of the Brunizer-Berenson family. The family. Brunizer-Berenson, like. There's two.

It's a. It's a. Hyphenated name? Well, that's the way that all of the sources describe it. But it's really just two families kind of mashed together. I'll explain it to you here in just a second. If I keep my pants on? If you keep your pants on.

It would be difficult for you to get your pants off at this particular moment. Disagree. Don't, I didn't mean to test you. Stop, put it back on. Put it back on. Boom, they're up. She has an overall on today,

so I thought that I could joke, and boy, was I wrong. No. First of all, I just want to explain, because I don't want people to think that I actually disrobed. No, she just took the top of the was I wrong. No. First of all, I just want to explain because I don't want people to think that I actually disrobe. No, she just took the top of the overalls down. Yeah.

She dropped her bib, if you will. Yeah, just dropped the bib. But boy, did you hear the horror in her voice? I was nervous. My God. I didn't know when it would stop. Because sometimes you take a joke and you keep on pushing it. Me?

I think you're mistaking me for some other friend. Also, you should never be alarmed at the prospect of seeing me naked. I look great. Have you ever seen ingrown hairs? You're going to love them. Okay, so we have the Brenizer-Berenson family. The family included 35-year-old Rick Brenizer, his long-term girlfriend, 31-year-old Ruth Berenson, which some sources call his common-law wife. Sure.

And then Rick's 15-year-old son from a previous marriage, Bruce Brenizer. Bruce Brenizer. One more time. No. Didn't I say it weird the first time? Did I not? I think your confidence is shaken because my bib fell down. Oopsies.

And you didn't know what to do with yourself. Bruce was Rick's 15-year-old son from a previous marriage. Oh, I already said that. Randy, your confidence is shot. It's shot to shit. You're worried because last week we were just a tangent fest. We were. This week you're trying to get it together.

That's right. And here I am slurping on an old iced coffee and talking about my ingrown hairs. And it's really troubling you. It's rattling me. All right, I'll calm down. Okay. Then there were Ruth's two daughters from her previous relationships, 10-year-old Heidi and 7-year-old Mindy, as well as Rick and Ruth's daughter together, Crystal, who was five years old.

Okay. So we got a big family. We got four kids. We got two adults. Those last names, I know this is not the point, but they go great together. They do. They do. Brenizer Berenson goes, it...

I would hyphenate that all day long. Absolutely. Absolutely. So this large blended family lived in a trailer in a very isolated area on the outskirts of Cushing. So Cushing is already this really rural area. And then they live like on the edge of it. Very secluded. See, I'm thinking that sounds really nice if you're like surrounded by pine trees.

Yeah. But you know nothing about that because you didn't look into the pine. Okay. Well, I'm going to continue on to tell you about their living situation. You tell me if you think it sounds wonderful. Gotcha. This family definitely scraped by. Rick worked manual labor jobs.

He had a small fencing company that did well during the spring and summer, but then he'd pick up odd jobs, you know, in the winter and fall to make ends meet. He also was a regular seller at a local swap meet. Rick worked hard to support his family, but sometimes it just wasn't enough. And the family would go through periods where they had no electricity at this. They lived in a trailer on the outskirts of town. I don't know if I mentioned it was a trailer. You mentioned it. Okay. So sometimes they would go without electricity. I also came across mentions of the trailer not having running water, but it's unclear to me if that was like an, if like there

wasn't water to the property or if like sometimes it would be shut off. And I don't, I don't know the answer to that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's rough. Either way. It sounds like pretty tough living conditions for the Brenizer-Berenson family. Yeah. And is often the case when we're talking about large blended families like this. There were a lot of people in that family, a lot of personalities, and that resulted in a lot of butting heads and tensions in the home. Fifteen-year-old Bruce and his de facto stepmom Ruth did not get along very well. Bruce made it pretty clear that he'd prefer to go live with his mom.

And according to Ruth's mother, Mary, Ruth had similar feelings. In one article, she's quoted as saying that Ruth had told Rick that if she did not send Bruce to live somewhere else, that she and her girls were moving out. That if he didn't send her... If Rick didn't send Bruce to live somewhere else, that Ruth was going to take the kid, her daughters, and take them somewhere else. What's the reason? I mean, it's... Just butting heads as far as I could see.

Wow. Just, yeah, bickering, stuff like that. Okay. What's interesting is that Bruce really wanted to go live with his mom. Was his mom not able to take him in? No, she absolutely was able to take him in, but Rick wouldn't allow it. Huh. So he had full custody.

Split custody because Bruce would go spend weekends at his mom's house and stuff. She didn't live that far away. She lived in a nearby town called St. Croix Falls. I think it's like 30 miles from where they were living in Cushing. So not like super far away. Right. And yeah, he would spend a lot of time there, but he lived at his dad's house. Gotcha. But like I said, Rick was adamant that Bruce could not go live anywhere else. He was actually adamant that his entire family live under one roof together and he took this really to extremes whenever talk of anyone moving out of the home would come up so when there's talk about bruce going to live with his mom or ruth taking the kids and leaving he'd threaten to harm himself

if anyone were to leave oh boy yeah yeah this is a hellhole. Yeah, pretty tough living arrangements all around here. And then one day in April of 1991, nearly the entire family disappeared. It started with a phone call. On the morning of April 23rd, 1991, 15-year-old Bruce Brenizer called his mom, Alice Anderson, to tell her that he didn't know where his dad was. Bruce relayed to Alice that his dad, Ruth, and all three of the girls had left the previous day to go to the Menards in Fridley, Minnesota. I totally understand that. Yeah, to buy lumber. You do a lot of lumber purchasing, do you? but here's here's the thing i've got a husband who's kind of an enthusiast yeah he's a woodworking enthusiast for home projects and if i have to be

dragged along anywhere menards is your favorite one yeah better than lowe's better than home depot yeah yeah menards does have like they have stuff that the other ones don't have you're telling me sister yeah yeah yeah anyway that's our thoughts on the Mars that you were definitely curious about. So the drive to Fredley was quite a little journey. It would take about an hour and a half each way. The initial drive was through a very forested area. Lots of heavy underbrush. That's all I know, Kristen.

All right. Specifically mentioned that even in the springtime, the underbrush would be quite thick. So how's your underbrush, Kristen? Excuse me? Excuse me? I thought I was the one who took things too far. Well, you did like an eye motion. And so I thought that I'd just take it to the next level and say it out loud.

I don't know what you're talking about. Okay. All right. That's the game we're playing. say it out loud. I don't know what you're talking about. Okay. All right. That's the game we're playing here. I do have dazzling eyes. That's what you mean. I've been told I'm quite mesmerizing by myself. Uh-huh.

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay. Yeah. You're quite mesmerizing. What did you just? The joke was that. You've told yourself that you're mesmerizing.

I got it now. But we all understand that the truth is that people tell me I'm mesmerizing all the time. Constantly. Constantly. And the tough thing is that sometimes people take it too far. Okay. People who aren't very classy, they'll ask about my underbrush situation. Yeah.

Which I think is inappropriate on a family-friendly podcast like this one. This is not a family-friendly podcast. I certainly wouldn't expect it from a mother. Okay. So mom-shaming now. We are mom-shaming. This is a family-friendly mom-shaming podcast. Hey, if you're a mom out there, I just want you to know you're doing it wrong.

Oh, geez. Oh, jeez. Anyway, ma'am, thank you for that lecture. You're welcome. Yeah. It's been a joy attending your TED Talk. What if I did... TED Talk on this subject? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh-huh. About inappropriate jokes. That's what your TED Talk is about? No. No. In my fantasy, I'm giving a TED Talk about something that I have no authority on.

Oh, sure. Okay, like being a mother, for example. And I'm going real judgy with it. Yeah. Because that's kind of my favorite is like the Phyllis Schlafly of it all. Yeah. You know, saying women should stay at home all the time while she goes out of the home to tell people that. That's my fantasy for myself. Sure. That sounds wonderful. Yeah. She seems like a good role model. It's kind of like how I pretended to know anything about drugs when I was shocked by meth being made in the 70s. I told my dad that this weekend.

Yeah. And do you know what he said to me? What did he say? He said, Hitler famously gave the Nazis meth. Brandy, get a grip. Just think about Hitler for one second and you'll remember. OK. But yeah, that's way earlier than the 70s.

Your dad and my mom, my mom one time. Sorry for anyone who hates tangents. My God. It is what it is. And you know what? They're going to really blame me this week. And they're right because everyone can hear you trying to move this train along. And I'm stopping it.

So my mom, several years ago, read some book about the Nazis and their use of drugs and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. She was fascinated by it. She tried to get me to read it. I'm guessing you didn't. I didn't. And I had to, sometimes I have to go silent for a while. She tried to get me to read East of Eden for years and years and years.

And shit, she's going to listen to this. She's going to bring it up again. And she's going to harass me again. So you've never read East of Eden, Chrissy? me again. So you've never read East of Eden? Chrissy? My dad calls me Chrissy mostly. You're right. That's true.

Yeah. Get it right. Just like you need to get it right on when meth started up. That's right. Way, way earlier than I clocked it. Anyway, back to this story, okay? Bruce calls his mom.

He can't find his family. He tells his mom that they had gone on a shopping trip the day before to go to Menards. We all love Menards. Kristen doesn't buy lumber. We're back here, okay? Seems like you're struggling to get back into this story, and I don't know why.

So this was a long drive, hour and a half each way. Bruce knew his family would be gone for a significant amount of time. But he told Alice on the phone that his dad had told him to expect them home around 11 p.m. Bruce had gone to bed before then, though. And when he'd woken up in the morning, he found out that no one had come home the night before. So Alice instructed Bruce to go ahead and go to school that day as usual, but to come to her house after school got out. And she assured Bruce that she would spend the day figuring out what was going on. Yeah.

So Bruce did what he was told. He went to school and then he came home to his mom's house after he got out of school. Meanwhile, Alice spent the whole day calling the trailer repeatedly trying to reach Rick or Ruth, but she had no luck. The following day, April 24th, 1991, when she still had been unable to reach anyone, Alice Anderson called the Polk County Sheriff's Department to report Rick, Ruth, and their three daughters missing. Yeah. So they of course do all of the initial searches. They go out to the trailer. No one's there. They do a basic

search of the route they would have taken. They don't see anything. But again, forested area, heavy underbrush. If they even had just like driven off the road, stop eyeing my crotch, Kristen. You wish. I take regular care of my underbrush, I. You wish. I take regular care

of my underbrush, I'll have you know. That's disgusting. No one asked. They also did, you know, kind of some basic looking into did they ever make it to the Menards? Was there any purchases

through their bank account? Right. They even called the manager of the Menards and asked them if they could look at any surveillance footage that they might have had. But we're talking 1991. So it's just grainy as fuck. Yeah. But they do determine that no transactions have been run through the Brenizer Berenson bank account. That doesn't mean they couldn't have paid for cash or something. But then they search the footage at the store and it doesn't appear that they ever made it to the Menards. OK, so are we checking hospitals now? What's going on?

Yeah, just all of that basic stuff. But everything is turning up nothing. There was some history of Rick like getting an out of town job and taking the family with him. But is something that, like, there would have been a plan in place for it. It's not something that he would just run off and— It's not an impromptu thing. No, exactly. And then they spoke to the guy at the swap meet, and he said that Rick did have a booth rented for a day, and he missed it. And that was very much not like Bruce.

And so— Yeah. I'm not Bruce. Not like Rick. I'm so sorry. I have a really hard time with a 15-year-old not like Bruce. And so I'm not Bruce. Not like Rick. I'm so sorry. I have a really hard time with a 15-year-old being named Bruce because I just assumed every Bruce is born a 43-year-old man. Yeah, no, I think that's a very fair assumption. And you can't be blamed.

In my head in this case, I keep getting Bruce and Rick mixed up. Rick is a younger man's name. I totally agree. We all get it. My sincerest apologies. It's hard to picture a baby Bruce, don't you think? Impossible. Yes. Impossible. Impossible. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you know, you've got to come up with a nickname for a baby Bruce. I think they call him Brucie is what you typically call a baby Bruce. Yeah.

Adorable. It is. It is cute. We'll allow that. Okay. So with just like the basic searches kind of revealing nothing, investigators sit down with Bruce Brenizer for any information that he might have. He told them the same thing that he had told Alice, that the whole family had gone on this shopping trip to go to Menards to buy lumber,

that they were headed all the way almost, it's almost to the Twin Cities. Like that's how far, I mean, into Minnesota. This is, it's not really that far apart. That's only like an hour and a half. Boy, you're losing confidence, are you? Well. What?

I don't want to be inaccurate with my distances. It seems far. Yeah yeah let me tell you something that's a hell of a long way to drive to fucking menard yes i totally agree and you got three little kids in a station wagon sounds terrible yeah so bruce did tell the police that his dad had wanted him to go as well and they'd actually gotten into a bit of an argument over it i bet they did i would have fought like yeah br was like, the last thing I wanted to do was to squeeze into the station wagon with the whole family to go to fucking Menards. I don't think he said fucking Menards, but there was a vibe.

There was a vibe for sure. Finally, he'd been able to convince his dad that he needed to stay home and do homework. And so his dad was like, all right, you stay here, do homework. We'll be home by 11. But they never came home. So at this point, the police are like, okay, something definitely has happened. Five people don't just vanish without a trace. That's an actual quote from Rodney Pevito.

Pevito. Who? Pevito. Pevito. Pevito. P-E-Vvito. Pevito. Pevito. P-E-V-Y-T-O-E. I like Pevito. I like Pevito because

it sounds kind of like a perverted toe. It sounds kind of like he has a foot fetish. Yeah, Pevito. Absolutely. Oh, look out. Don't go near a Pevito in your sandals. I'm guessing that's probably not how it's pronounced, but he was interviewed on the Oxygen program. Mr. Peavy Toe.

My sincerest apologies, sir. Wait, does he have a job title? Yeah, he's a special agent with the Wisconsin Department of Justice. Great. And also, he's really in defeat. I don't make the rules. No, absolutely not okay okay big scale investigation is launched this part helicopters are brought in they're doing ground

searches but i don't know if i've mentioned this densely forested area yeah it turns out i'll see that nothing sure yeah rumors start spreading around like, about all kinds of shit. Drug deals, satanic cults. Oh, Lord, yeah. This was the time. Oh, yeah. We're 1991, so we're, like— We're in the thick of it.

Yeah. Yeah. Then on May 11th, nearly three weeks after the family disappeared, a local fisherman was, walking through a heavily wooded area off of like this logging road, an area that you could not accidentally find. Like to get there, you have to know it exists. And so he's walking through the area and he finds a burned out station wagon in the woods, like completely incinerated. But by this time, this missing family has made huge news.

And so he thinks that he has found their car immediately, like immediately he clocks what it is and he calls the police. And so police come in and police have the same thing. They're like, OK, this is for sure the family station wagon. The plates had been stripped off of it, though, and it had been heavily, heavily burned. There were. OK, I'm going to read you a quote here from the episode. We suspected that it was arson because of gas cans found near the vehicle. That's quite a leap. I don't know. I don't know if that's okay. Yeah, I would also suspect that. Yeah. Because I'm a genius.

So at the scene, they noticed a couple of things. Gas cans, arson. Also, there was some blood observed on like the bumper of the station wagon. There were some scraping marks on the interior of the back of the station wagon. What do you mean scraping? Later they determined that it likely came from a shovel. There were also shovels found in the back of the station wagon. Oh. And there were bone fragments found in the back of the station wagon.

Okay. Lots of bone fragments. But everything was so burned that it was really difficult to tell if they were human bones. Right. So they called in an anthropologist to, like, look that over. But another thing they witnessed at the scene or noticed at the scene or took note of at the scene, whichever way you want to phrase it. I like the variety you're giving us. Was a shoe print or a foot mark on the outside of the station wagon door, like the rear door. Like someone had kicked it shut.

Uh-huh. So no one could get in. However, it had been left after the fire. Oh, weird. Yes. So this meant two things to the investigators. Either someone had come across this and not reported it. Yeah.

Which seems very odd. Very weird, yeah. Or whoever the arsonist was had returned to the scene after to make sure everything had burned enough. I'm going with that one. Correct. All right. Yes. Thank you. So anthropology experts from the University of Wisconsin come in. They collect a bunch of these bone fragments and they analyze them and they are able to determine that they were, in fact, human remains and that it appeared that they came from two adults and at least two children. No remains were found in the front seat. bodies had been placed in the back of this station wagon, likely that they'd been killed somewhere else and then transported to this area to be burned.

Good God. Mm-hmm. So they've identified the fragments as human, but now they've got a bunch of little tiny bone fragments that they can identify as like human skull or this. Right. And they have a bunch of teeth fragments. So they called in a forensic dental expert to analyze those tooth fragments. Okay.

This guy's name. Let me tell you how disappointed I was when I found out I was reading his name wrong. What? I thought his name was Dr. Don Smiley. Oh, that's adorable. Yeah, it's Simley. Oh. So it's not nearly as exciting.

Don't you think, though, if you go into the field of dentistry, it's kind of on you to go by Smiley? Yeah. When you're that close? Yes. Just go ahead and take it over the edge. Just do it. Yeah.

Yeah. I would have hated to be there when you made that realization. It was really upsetting. I can only imagine. Oh, that's the best name of a dead death star I've ever seen. I just know how excited you were. I was. Yeah.

I was really excited. That's a hard fall. It really brought me down. I bet. It did. excited. That's a hard fall. Really brought me down. Uh-huh. I bet. It did. So Dr. Don Simley, as it was, as it were, is what people usually say. Yeah, but not you. Not me. You're a very special lady. That's one way to put it. Pulled nearly 100 dental fragments from the car. I think it was like 94 or 97. Yeah. And then started assembling those fragments as best as he could and like matching them up on what teeth went with each set.

Oh, I can't even imagine. No. Yeah. And first, Dr. Simley was able to positively ID some of the dental fragments as belonging to Ruth Berenson. Mm hmm. as belonging to Ruth Berenson. So positively ID that some of the teeth are Ruth's. And then next he was able to identify fragments belonging to Rick Brenizer. And then when those fragments were analyzed, they found traces of lead on some of his teeth. So there's no explanation for there being lead, like no reasonable explanation.

No lead is used in dental work anymore. So the only explanation for this was that Rick had been shot and some of the lead from the bullet that had shot him or had entered him had left traces of lead on his teeth. So at that point, they were like, OK, this is this 100 percent confirms that this is a homicide investigation now. I mean, I think we could have gotten there before then. But yeah, but this was the thing that was like, absolutely. OK, so Dr. Simley was able to identify those dental fragments from Rick and Ruth, but he was unable to determine if the rest came from the three girls. What he was able to determine was that there were three separate sets of fragments. One came from a

child in the range of five to six years. One came from a child in the range to seven to eight years. And one came from a child in the range of 10 to eight years. And one came from a child in the range of 10 to 11 years. And those are the exact age ranges for the three children that would have been there. I would not have guessed that you could tell that. I think I wouldn't either. I think it's nuts that they could identify anything. They show these fragments on this episode of this Oxygen show. And like it is this is the most nuts thing to me is that there's

like there's real science that they can identify people by this small of fragments that's incredible yes yeah and like they show the fragment and then compare it with a dental x-ray that they have and like you see you can see it all right the the the lay person can see it. At least in the demonstration that they did on the show. Maybe that's not how it's done at all. But you had on your glasses and you were like, aha. I see it. I see it. So now they've got clearly an arson, clearly a homicide on their case.

They said that this was the most horrific crime that had ever happened in Cushing. Yeah. So now investigators go back to Bruce for leads on anyone who may have wanted to harm his family. And Bruce was super cooperative. He answered all of their questions. He was willing to speak to them like they came to a school a couple of times and spoke to him like he went down to the police station and spoke to them. Very forthcoming. He told them that there had been an incident shortly before his family disappeared, and there was an incident right after they went missing. So before they disappeared, he recalled a man coming to the house, and it seemed like he was trying to claim a debt that maybe Rick owed him money or something.

He didn't know the specifics. He had just kind of been eavesdropping. And yeah. And so he thought maybe his dad owed some kind of debt and that this man, whoever he was, had come to the house and threatened him in an effort to collect. All right. So they investigate this claim, this path. It goes nowhere. Yeah. I mean, that'd be pretty ridiculous. Yeah. OK. Yeah. And they couldn't find any. I mean, the Brenizer-Berenson family, they didn't have much money. But one thing they didn't have either was debt. Like they were.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. They were debt free or had very low debt. I don't know. And so this didn't seem like a thing at all. The other incident, he said, was that it seemed to him. So after the day that

his mom told him to come to her house after he got out of school, he'd been staying at her home since then in St. Croix Falls. But he'd had to go back and like get stuff at the trailer a couple of times. And he said shortly after that first time that he went back that it seemed like someone else had been in the home, had maybe gone through some stuff. He didn't see anything specific that was missing, but it seemed to him like someone had been there and had gone through it. Wow. Yeah.

But again, that kind of proved to be a dead end. They couldn't find any leads to follow up on that. Right, because that was really more of a feeling, right? I mean, they couldn't point to anything that was missing. I think, yeah, I think some stuff had been moved. And I think after the initial missing person report was made and an investigation started, the police then kind of took custody of the trailer. Yeah.

And they left it unsecured. Oh, dear God. Yeah. Was the claim, at least, that Bruce made and that they make on this show, is that it seems that the trailer was left unsecured and people may have been coming in and out of it. Okay.

But nothing Bruce tells them is leading anywhere. And then the investigation took a really weird turn when some satanic graffiti appeared at a Masonic temple in St. Croix Falls. Yeah. So there's this temple in St. Croix Falls. All of a sudden, I mean, we're 1991. So we're satanic panic to the max right now, right?

And the graffiti read, Devil Worship, Death by Fire. And it was signed with the initials S-I-T-N. S-I-T-N? T-N, yeah. I don't know what it means. Sittin'. Sittin'. Sittin'.

Was everything else spelled correctly? Yes, as far as it was reported anyway. Interesting. Okay. When it was signed, this all comes from a Chicago Tribune article, and according to the Chicago Tribune article, it was spelled S.I.T.N. Oh. Like initials. Okay.

Gotcha. This really got the rumor mills a churning. Okay. They – oh, my gosh. Okay. They – oh, my gosh. Okay. On this Family Massacre episode on oxygen, they interview a man who was a reporter at the time. And he talks about how the media really grabbed on to this satanic theory. Sure.

And he said something to the effect of – and this is not an exaggeration. Okay. Okay. With satanic worship, you often have fires and arson. What? What, sir? What? He said this in modern day?

Yes. Yes. What an idiot. I could not. I paused it and David was watching it with me and I was like, did he fucking just say often include fire and arson and satanic rituals often include? Yeah. See, he never got out of the satanic panel. He did not.

Like legitimately. got out of the satanic panel. He did not. Like, legitimately. Well, they had to search high and low for this fella to be interviewed because everyone else has realized perhaps

it was a bit of an overreaction. Yeah. Hmm. Okay. Uh-huh. So, as I mentioned, this made the rumors just swirl.

Area residents said they heard talk about multiple people being involved in these murders, adults being involved, chainsaws were likely used, the victims were decapitated, their spinal cords were removed. I mean, there's no, none of this is based in any kind of fact. My God. Other than the fact that in satanic rituals, which happen all the time, it's often the removal of the spinal cord.

Absolutely. As we all know. Yes, with a chainsaw. Sure. One of the biggest rumors was that it was a group of satanic drug dealers from the Twin Cities. Big city drug dealers. Coming in. Worship Satan.

Smoke a little pot and then go back to the Twin Cities for a shopping spree. They quoted a kid who went to high school with Bruce Brenizer in this Chicago Tribune article

and he said, his name's James Bystrom. He was a junior at St. Croix High School at the time that he was interviewed and he said, people can't find

the real reason for this happening so they just jump to conclusions. Yeah. Yes. Exactly. From a high school. From a high school kid. Yes.

Although. We've got the fucking journalists being like, well, you know, oftentimes, you know, satanic rituals involve fire and arson. And oftentimes these big city drug dealers come out. Come in and just remove a bunch of spines. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. This is ridiculous.

Well, it's one of those crimes. It's so horrible. Yeah. But we don't need to add horror to it. It's bad enough as it is. Yeah. Okay, continue. Yeah, so Sheriff Ben Ware, who I believe was the sheriff in Cushing or around Cushing, I don't know.

He was interviewed in the Chicago Tribune article as well. And he said that they were doing their best to shut down the rumors. Okay, what were they doing? Well, he says it's a bizarre and unique case, and I wish it hadn't happened here, but we deal only in fact. All right. Yeah. Which is exactly what they want you to think. Right.

Can't you just picture the idiots being like, hmm? Anyway. Yeah. Just for the record, detectives found no credible evidence to support the theory that satanic rituals were linked to the Bernizer-Berenson murders. And yet there was a mattress firm nearby. So what do we make of that? It's weird because it's a pretty remote area for a mattress firm. And yet they're everywhere.

They'll just put those things anywhere these days. You've got to ask yourself a lot of questions. Dr. Kenneth Bennett, who was a professor. Professor. Professor. What was he a professor of? Biological anthropology at the University of Wisconsin. So he came out and made a public statement that he had examined the remains.

And he said, you can put to rest rumors that chainsaws were used or spinal cords were removed. The bones were likely fragmentized by the intense heat of the fire. So yeah, it makes a lot more sense. Yes. Yeah, no. All of these rumors are simply that, rumors. There's no truth to any of it. Okay. Can we find the killer now? Uh-huh. Oh. I sure, we'll get there. So, they've talked to Bruce several times. He's the only, you know, surviving member of his family at this point. But he's just telling the same story every time.

He's very consistent, very forthcoming. So they go and talk to some people that he knows. They talk to a girl that's a friend of his who also happens to be the girlfriend of his stepbrother. So Bruce had a stepbrother, Jesse Anderson, who was very close with. They were about the same age, went to the same high school. Jesse lived with his dad and Bruce's mom. So this is where Bruce wanted to live. Right. Jesse was like his best friend.

He got to live there. So, you know. And so they go and talk to Jesse's girlfriend, who was also Bruce's friend. And she tells the same story. All she knows is what Bruce has said. But then she does at the end of this little interview with the police, she says that she did kind of walk in on Bruce and Jesse having a conversation that made her believe that they both knew more about the deaths of Bruce's family. Oh, God. Than they had been telling. There's no way a 15-year-old did this.

Except there is, isn't there? Is there? Holy shit. So she said, if anybody knows the truth, it will be Jesse. Like, Jesse will know. And so they decide they're going to talk to Jesse. But also they talk to some other kid. And, like, I think this kid's identity has just never been released because, like, every source just says another friend.

Right. And they talk to this other friend who says that Bruce has been doing weird shit since his family went missing. Okay, define weird. So in the time between when they went missing and when the car was found burned out. So when they were just missing, he was giving away stuff from the trailer, TVs and stereos. And he used his dad's coin collection at the arcade. I don't think that's that weird.

See, I agree, actually. I think that that is a kid who's maybe, first of all, maybe dealing with something terrible. What do you mean maybe? Definitely dealing with something terrible. Absolutely, and handling it in an odd way. Okay, again, I don it in an odd way. Okay, again, I don't even know that that's necessarily odd. You've been through this tremendous trauma.

You know, it sounds like he was involved. Oh, my gosh. That's still trauma. Yeah. But also, like, it sounds like this family had no money whatsoever. So now all of a sudden the rest of the family is gone. Dad's got a coin jar. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. But it was like a coin collection, not a coin jar. That's fine. Yeah. Still. Yeah. Yeah. I just don't think it's that weird.

Yeah. What else you got? He bragged about having a car now that his family was gone because they also had two other cars that were still at the house. Just. Yeah. Yeah. Some stuff. Yeah.

So with that information and with the girlfriend's information, they bring in Jesse Anderson to talk to. So he comes in and his dad, Ron Anderson, comes with him, which is just like, thank God he did. So he comes in. They sit down with Jesse. They ask him what he knows about Bruce's family, about his dad and Ruth going missing and everything. And he repeats the same story that Bruce has told all of this time. All I know is what Bruce has told me. They went, they're supposed to go shopping and they didn't come back.

But then I believe that the police kind of pressed him a little bit and are like, well, that just sounds like exactly what Bruce is saying. And Jesse got a little bit agitated. And so Ron stopped the interview and asked if they could have a private moment. And they left the room for about 15 minutes and had a private conversation. But it's not private because they had it. It is private. Oh. They had a completely private conversation.

OK. I don't know where they went. They went into some other room. I'm sorry. I assumed that they were still. It truly was private. OK. But they come back in and Ron says that Jesse wants to cooperate with them.

He wants to tell the truth. He wants to be helpful, but that he's not going to talk anymore until he consults a lawyer. Good job, Dad. Seriously. Okay. Seriously. And so they left that day. And then a couple days later, on May 18th, they come back and meet with investigators again.

This time Jesse has his dad present and an attorney present. Yeah. And Jesse says that he wants to cooperate and that he knows a lot of stuff. And they're like, OK. And so with his lawyer present, he basically gives the police the entire case. He says that Bruce had been having a really hard time at home. He hated the living conditions, like the actual physical conditions of the trailer. He also hated his living arrangements, being there with his dad and Ruth and the little sisters. And he just wanted to live with his mom.

And he wasn't being allowed to. He said that he had gotten so upset about the living conditions because his dad was also really hard on him. He was abusive to him. Yeah. Sometimes physically, but more often verbally and emotionally. He called him fat. He said he looked like a girl because he was kind of effeminate. And he teased him all the time. Yeah.

So he was abusive. Yeah. That's awful. And so like a week before the family went missing, Bruce had told Jesse that he was considering killing his entire family. Dear God. Mm-hmm. And Jesse gave him the ammunition for his rifle to do so. He gave him the literal ammunition?

The literal ammunition to do so. He gave him the literal ammunition. The literal ammunition to do so. So on April 21st, Jesse and Bruce had a conversation. So the initial conversation happened like a week earlier than that. Then on the 21st, Bruce said, I'm going to do it. I'm done living under these conditions. And that was when Jesse gave him the ammo.

And then Jesse didn't really believe that Bruce would go through with it. But then on April 22nd, Bruce called Jesse and he said, I did it. I killed them all. Oh, my God. Jesse then gave the investigators a detailed account of what Bruce told him. So Bruce got home from school that day. And shortly after he got home, Ruth's daughters, Mindy and Heidi, got off the bus from school and came to the house. The trailer. He tied them up, initially put them in their bedroom. And then he told Jesse that he overheard them plotting an escape. And so he took them outside to the rear corner of the trailer. So on the outside, but toward the back of the trailer, and he shot and killed them with a shotgun.

Oh, my God. And then he went in the house and waited for his dad and Ruth and the littlest sister, Crystal, to come home. They were out running errandss he sat inside the trailer with his gun like propped in the window with the window open and waited for them to come home and as they when they came home his dad got out of the car and his dad according to jesse looked at bruce and said what are you doing there and bruce said hi hi, dad, before he shot and killed him. Wow. After Bruce shot Rick, Ruth ran into the house to call the police.

And Bruce caught her before she was able to call. He pulled the phone line so that the phone went dead. And then forced Ruth out of the trailer at gunpoint and then shot her as well. Crystal, the five-year-old, was the last to die, according to Jesse. Jesse said that after Bruce killed Ruth, then he saw Crystal standing at the door of the trailer looking at her two sisters' bodies. My God. And he forced her out of the house and he shot and killed her.

This is awful. It's awful. After Bruce had killed all of them, he then called Jesse and said, I did it, you know. And he asked Jesse to come help him clean up the crime scene and dispose of the bodies. And Jesse did. He came. He helped Bruce load the bodies into a wheelbarrow and then load them into the back of the station wagon. How? I don't, right? How? So Jesse said when he's telling all of this to the investigators, he said that when he got, like, he still really didn't believe that Bruce had really done this. And then he got to the house and saw the bodies.

He said he immediately threw up. Yeah. And then he was like, there. Oh, there. I assume there's an amount of fear that kicks in and you just do whatever the person who just killed five people tells you to do. I guess so. Yeah, so they loaded the bodies into the back of the station wagon. they used a shovel to go like dig up the areas where blood had pooled on the ground where the bodies had laid so that you wouldn't be able to see where those bodies had been yeah and then they drove the station wagon to the wooded area they drove down this secluded logging road until they

got to this area where they left the station wagon. I believe that Bruce drove the station wagon and Jesse followed behind in another car so that they could drive back. I was about to ask how far they were from the house. Three miles. Oh, yeah. So they didn't go far. No. Okay. Jesse told the investigators that following the fire, a couple days after, a few days after, Bruce had gone back to the station wagon to check out and see how the fire had burned. And he had noticed that there were large bone fragments in the back of the car. And there was a skull that had not burned enough. And so he loaded those larger bone fragments into a duffel bag and then buried them with Jesse's help at another location. Yeah.

So that explains that, like, that footprint mark that they found on the car after the fire. And this explains those scratching marks that they found in the back as well. Oh. So they would have used a shovel to get those bone fragments out. Yes. Yeah. I love your cases. Boy.

Yeah, this is a rough one. Oh, my God. This is terrible. Boy. Yeah, this is a rough one. Oh, my God. This is terrible. Yep. He also mentioned that they had dumped the gun in a pond and they had also buried the license plates from the car. Okay. So following Jesse's statement, a search warrant was obtained for Alice and Ron Anderson's residence in St. Croix Falls. Anderson's residence in St. Croix Falls.

So that's where Jesse lived. And then that's where Bruce's mom and where Bruce had been staying since his family disappeared. When they searched the home, they found a journal that Bruce had kept that had all of his grievances about living at the house. And then it contained a bunch of stuff about his hatred for his father and how terrible his father treated him and all of that. And Bruce was arrested, obviously, for the murder of his five family members. But then they were like, what do we do about Jesse? So at this point, Jesse has implicated himself. He has given enough information to police to be charged as an accessory before

and after. As he admits, he gave him the ammunition and he helped him cover up the crime. So they sat down with Jesse and offered him a deal. If he would lead them to the evidence, lead them to the evidence,

lead them to the bone fragments, the gun, the license plates, and if that further evidence didn't implicate him any more than he had already admitted that they would give him immunity in the case if he would testify. Wow.

And so he took the deal. I tell you what, he's fortunate his father got him an attorney right away. Yep. Absolutely. Because this would have gotten figured out. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I mean, they would. I think they would have been able to solve this without. Yeah. Jesse, we're talking about a 15 year old kid. Right. This would have come out. But obviously, it's much easier with the help of Jesse.

Of course. Yeah. So Jesse took the deal, agreed to lead them to all of the evidence and agreed to testify against Bruce. And he did. He took them to where the car license plates were buried. He took them to where the bone fragments were buried. They were able to positively ID those bone fragments. And then he took them to the pond where they had dumped the rifle that Bruce Brenizer had used. And they brought out a metal detector, and they were able to recover the rifle. Wow.

So Bruce was arrested, like, May 18th, 19th, something like that. So pretty quickly after the car was found. It was found on the 11th. So basically within a week, they get the full story. They get Bruce in custody. But this thing would drag on for the next two years because initially there was a big fight about how he should be tried as an adult or a juvenile. So I know the current law in Wisconsin. I don't know. And I know that this current law went into effect like in 1996 or 1997. So I don't know the law at the time that this crime was committed. But I'm guessing it's fairly close to what it is now. of Wisconsin, if you are over the age of 10 years old and you are charged with a violent felony, homicide, attempted homicide, you are automatically tried as an adult.

Yikes. Yes. You cannot be tried at all if you're under the age of 10. But if you're over the age of 10 or 10 or older, you are automatically tried as an adult. Well, 10-year year olds are so mature. This is nuts to me. OK, the defense can argue to lower it to juvenile court, but they bear the burden of proving that that is not only best for the defendant, but also best for the community. Boy, that's a really hard argument to make.

Yes. How do you even make that argument about for the community? Right, exactly. Yeah. Oh. I hate shit like this. I know. Yeah. Oh. I hate shit like this. I know. Yeah.

So there were a bunch of hearings going back and forth about if he should be tried as an adult or juvenile. And ultimately it was determined that he would be tried as an adult. Yeah. So that was one delay. The next delay was he got a new attorney. So that took a lot of time to get a new attorney up to speed and all of that. And then the next delay was determining his mental state at the time of these. Was he insane? And so he went under extensive psychological evaluation. And over that time, so I found an article that talks about this time where this is going

on, where it's like two years have gone by and like this case has not moved forward at all from the outside perspective. Right. And so Ruth's family was interviewed at that time. And they're like, we just don't understand. Like, we just want justice. We want to know what happened to our family. Like, what is going on?

We want to know what happened to our family. Like what is going on? And so finally a trial date was set. But then like just days before the trial was supposed to start, it was announced that the prosecution had offered some type of deal to Bruce. And so this is the way it basically worked. So Bruce agreed to plead guilty to the murders of Rick and Ruth, but then not guilty by reason of insanity for the murders of the three younger girls. Yes. So there was a big hearing. They called it a trial on this episode, but it wasn't really a trial.

There was no jury. It was just before a judge. And it was really just the defense presenting their evidence of why he should be declared insane when it came to those three crimes. So at that trial, the defense, they disagreed with Jesse's version of events. They said it didn't happen in the order that he said it happened in. OK. That Bruce had actually killed Rick and Ruth first and then he had killed the three girls because in his mind they wouldn't be able to handle having witnessed that and they'd be better off dead than continuing to live without their mother. Boy, oh boy. And the court agreed. The court agreed with the psychologist's determination

on this. And it's such an interesting thing to me to be found guilty of like to to plead guilty to two of the murders, but then be deemed insane for three of them. Yeah, because it's seen as a moment by moment thing. Yeah. So the specific psychologist who testified at this at this trial, at this hearing, whatever you want to call it, at this plea sentencing thing. Really, it's if the judge is going to accept the plea is really what is happening here. And so at this hearing, he said that basically Bruce was suffering from PTSD for multiple reasons. From killing his dad and Ruth was one version of PTSD, but then also from the extended abuse that he had received at the hands of his father.

Right. And so he was not culpable for the murders of the three little girls, Heidi, Mindy, and Crystal. Okay. I mean, is this even going to make a difference, though? I mean, if you're... You murdered two people when sane. I mean, surely you get life in prison. You're being tried as an adult.

Why even go down this route? What's the deal? Okay. So he was sentenced to life in prison, Why even go down this route? What's the deal? Okay. So he was sentenced to life in prison but at a mental institute. Oh, I see. Yes. Okay.

So he was given two life sentences to be served consecutively for the murders of Rick and Ruth. And then life at the mental facility for the murders of the three girls. Any time served at the mental health institute would count toward prison time. Oh, wow. And the judge did not sentence him to life without the possibility of parole. So he spoke about this at the sentencing. So the judge in this case is Judge James Erickson. And he said that initially he considered the option of sentencing Bruce Brenizer to concurrent life terms. the option of sentencing Bruce Brenizer to concurrent life terms. But he ultimately ruled otherwise because of the severity of the crime. So initially, all the terms were going to run concurrently. And then he thought, nope, I have to run them consecutively. This is just too brutal

of a crime. This is too bad. But then he said that he really thought that Bruce Brenizer needed a light at the end of the tunnel. And so he decided to sentence him with the possibility of parole. So this is such an interesting sentence to me because it's really ambiguous. To me, it sounds like the judge is taking into account his age. Exactly. Which I think is really important. Absolutely. Yeah, you absolutely should. A 15-year-old doesn't just go and do this for no reason. Yeah. You know, that 15-year-old has had tremendous trauma. Absolutely. Yeah. So anytime he

spends at the mental health center will count toward his prison sentence. He was also credited for two years that he served in the county jail before this plea agreement was made. Yeah. At the sentencing, Judge Erickson told Bruce, I want you to have some incentive. I want you to see

some light at the end of the tunnel. And then he was taken into custody and he was led away. And as he was led away, Ruth's mother yelled in the courtroom, I hope you rot in hell, you son of a bitch. Yeah. Yeah. And it'd be very easy to have those feelings toward the person who killed your daughter and your grandchildren. Well, yeah. And it puts a whole new light on that thing about how Ruth was threatening to take herself and her children out of the situation. She obviously knew that they were in danger on some level. I mean, this was clearly not just, we're butt and head.

Right. Oh, things are rough with a teenager. No. Yeah. There was more than that. She knew something was going on. Yeah. Oh.

Mm-hmm. Just horrible. Yeah. So Bruce Brenizer was sent to the Mendota Mental Health Institute in Madison, Wisconsin to serve his consecutive life sentences. And in 2013, so 20 years, he served there. In 2013, he was transferred from the Mental Health Institute to the state prison in Wapun. I guarantee that's not how it's pronounced because nothing in Wisconsin is pronounced how you think it's pronounced. Probably Cushing's probably not even right.

Yeah, not how we think it's pronounced. W-A-U-P-U-N, Wappen. You've come to the right place. I mean, there's no debating that. So he was transferred to prison in 2013, but he appealed that. Oh, yeah, that Supreme Court decision. Let's hear about it, Brandi. No, so he wasn't sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

He was sentenced to life. So, no, he can't appeal for resentencing. But what he appealed on was saying that basically the hospital lacked the jurisdiction to send him to prison because his sentence was really ambiguous. He was sentenced to life at the mental institute and he has not served that. Right. And in 2017, the appeals court agreed and said, no, no one really has the jurisdiction to end your sentence here except for the court. Like it would have to be it would have to go through the court system.

Like the mental hospital can't just decide it's time for you to go to prison and the prison can't just decide it's time for you to go there. Like there has to be a court order saying. OK. And so he was sent back to the Mental Health Institute. And there he remains today. He's 48 years old. He became eligible for parole in January of this year.

But as far as I found, he has not gone before a parole board at this point. Wow. Mm-hmm. And that is the story of a family annihilator, a teenage family annihilator. It's, ugh. I have such a tough time with these crimes that are committed by juveniles. So do I. Because I just.

I totally agree. I don't think it's right to try them as adults. I don't either. I don't either. Science tells us, we know that their brains are not fully formed, that they can't do proper reasoning, that they don't have the proper grasp on the finality of decisions. Yeah. So now we can't try them as adults. And again, you can't tell me that things were even remotely OK. Obviously not. You know, obviously not you know obviously not yeah

oh that's terrible yeah it's horrible at one point when bruce was going through these like the psychoanalysis to determine his state of mind and all of that he said that his plan was to kill himself after all of this and that Jesse talked him out of it and told him not to. Yeah. Yeah. It was very – the deal that Jesse got is seen as very controversial. People really thought that he deserved to serve some time for his involvement. Right.

And gosh, I mean – What if he had just gone and talked to his dad and mom and said, this is what Bruce said to me. I'm really concerned. I mean, who knows? Who knows? Who knows what would have happened? Yeah. Yeah. Who knows what would have happened if Bruce would have said, I want to go live with my mom. And instead of threatening to harm himself, Rick would have said, I want to go live with my mom, and instead of threatening to harm himself, Rick would have said, okay, let's try it out. What, Kristen?

I'm afraid to say what I'm thinking. But I'll say it, and maybe we'll have to cut it or bleep it. But if he had been the type of parent to respond that way, this never would have happened. Exactly.

No, you're exactly right. I don't think that's that controversial question. I think we can leave that in there. It is victim blaming. Well, it's victim blaming. I do get that. But he was abusive.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that is kind of... Yeah, we'll see. We'll see how we feel about that. Yeah. Yeah, that is kind of. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see how we feel about that. Hey, folks, if you're listening to this. Yeah. Yeah, it is really hard because you're talking about someone who abused his kid.

Probably all of his kids. Yeah, there's no way. There's no way. He only abused Bruce. I almost called him Rick. These damn names. It's because kids aren't supposed

to be called Bruce. Yeah. That's another unpopular opinion that we're going to have to cut or bleep. That's right. For sure.

Unless you call them Brucie and they have to eat an entire chocolate cake in front of the whole school. I liked that too much. You can do it, Brucie! You know, I remember seeing that

as a kid and thinking, I could do that. That's not so bad. Me too! Now? Now though I'm like, oh my god, I can get half a piece of that thing and that thing's so fucking rich. Now I Now, though, I'm like, oh, my God, I can get half a piece of that thing, and that thing's so fucking rich. No. Now, I see. But at the time, I was like, whatever. Hand me a fork.

Yeah. With pleasure. With pleasure, I need that. Yeah. Mrs. Trunchbull or whatever. That's right. Mrs. Trunchbull. Uh-huh.

Yeah. Ugh. Well. Anyway, I'm sorry for that case. Boy. I do think the court stuff is pretty interesting. I've never heard of a deal like that. Hey, you.

Can we force you to do a light one? Is it possible? Is it in your DNA? I'll consider it. She's not going to consider it. It's really not going to happen. She'll maybe Google a little something and then go, well, that's not interesting to me because I'm fucked up royally, is what she'll say to herself. Sounds accurate.

Oh, Lord. Well, should we take some questions from our Discord, madam? To get in the Discord, all you have to do is sign up for our Patreon at the $5 level or higher. That's how you get all those meaty boy bonus episodes. And you get into our 90s style chat room, which is the Discord, and we ask for questions when we record episodes, and then you

send in some, and we pick some, and we read them, and then we answer them. That's quite the explanation you're giving over there. I'm not finished. We say the words that you want to hear, and sometimes we say words you don't want to hear, and that's okay. I'm done with this bit.

Okay. Don't worry. Forever Nude wants to know, what's your most irrational anxiety? Mine is architecture anxiety. I expect tall or old buildings to collapse at any moment. It hasn't happened yet, but you never know. Oh, my gosh. My nephew has that. Really?

Yes. Yeah. Like if he's in a stadium, like it is overwhelming to him because he considers like the weight of all the people on the structure. And I mean, yes. Yeah. He has really serious anxiety about it. Yeah. Mine is and will always be that a snake is hiding in my toilet ready to bite my vagina i always check yeah so i know they're always yeah i don't have the snake thing i'm i'm not i mean i would hate that that would be fucking terrible i'm not like i'm signing up for that but that's not that doesn't get on my list my list is that a spider is going to be hiding laying wait, if you will, inside of something. A blanket, a towel I'm wrapping my hair in, the corner of the shower curtain.

So I am just, I shake everything vigorously before it ever comes in contact with my body. No shit. I believe it because I've seen you when you encounter a spider. It is wild. Folks, you've not seen fear until Brandy has seen one. Let when you encounter a spider. It is wild. Yeah. Folks, you've not seen fear until Brandy has seen it. Let me tell you a story. I don't know if you can handle the story.

This is a spider trigger warning, folks. Is this the story from high school? No. No. People know my origin story. Okay. I've told my spider origin story on this podcast before. I know, but you've got a fresh one for us?

No, it's not fresh. Oh. origin story on this podcast before. I was about to stop you. I know, but you've got a fresh one for us? No, it's not fresh. Oh. But I think it's the, oddly enough, my other horror story is the origin of my arachnophobia, for sure. I have legitimate arachnophobia. Yes, you do. This is my origin story, I believe, for why I shake things before I put them on my body in any way. I was in cosmetology school. I lived in an apartment with my sister Casey.

The apartment complex had beautiful landscaping. The most beautiful landscaping you've ever seen in your life. Okay. Beautiful. I believe you. Okay. All right. But because they had all this beautiful landscaping, there were lots of spiders around all the time.

Okay. Hated it. Yeah. But they sprayed and stuff. But when they sprayed, the spiders would come in the house. Mm-hmm. Okay. So I already have this legitimate fear of spiders.

One night, I'm like up late, can't sleep. You know, I'm living my best life because I'm in my first apartment all by myself. Oh, yeah. You were really running wild. I'm doing, yeah. How much meth did you do that night? No meth. Zero meth. What I was doing was late night beauty treatments.

Oh, yeah. What were you doing? I mean, it was like 2 o'clock in the morning. I was doing like a hair mask. Yeah, yeah. Intense hair mask. Love it. Because I was in cosmetology school and boy was my hair fucked. Sure. Because when you can get anything done to your hair in cosmetology school, you do too much. You do too much.

My hair was so fucked. So I was doing this protein treatment on my hair. I had to wash it and then I had to put this thing on and then I had to wrap it in a towel and keep track of the heat. So I do all of that. I take the shower, wash the hair, put the mask on. I go out to wrap it in the towel. Put the towel

on. I've got music playing. I'm bopping away in my little bathroom in front of the mirror. And all of a sudden, out of the towel, onto my fucking face, crawled a spider bigger than a quarter. Bigger than a quarter.

I cannot believe you've never told this story before. Is it like too scary? It's so traumatizing. Yes. Oh, yeah. It's so traumatizing. I whipped that fucking towel off, somehow managed to get the spider with it, and I threw it into the bathtub. I cannot imagine.

I screamed like I was being murdered. Yeah. And then I think I washed the spider down the drain. But ever since that moment, clothing, blanket, towel, shower curtain, shaking vigorously before any part of it, before I enter it, before it touches me. Shower. That's really the only one I'm entering. I also make David abide by this rule. If he's going to put a blanket on me, he has to shake it before he puts it on me.

Sure. It's a hard rule for me. Yeah. Well, we've all got our boundaries. That's right. I still remember we were in high school. We were camping in, I think, Florida. Yeah.

And we were in like the campground shower house. Yeah. Which, surprise, surprise, had a spider in it. Yeah. And I still, you lost. It was in my shower stall. I mean, it was really high up. It was.

It was very high up. Everybody, okay. I respect the fear. Yes. Okay. Because I'm just, I'm always ready for a snake to bite onto my vagina. Yeah. But this spider was really far away from you.

It was. But it was above my shower stall. Yes. That is when a spider is scariest. Okay. Anyway, the point is that thing could drop out on me and i'm fucking nude kristin i am defenseless you already hate that you're nude they're correct it's bad enough that you're naked correct

anyway i'm glad you survived when did you know that i was a never nude kristin did you clock it when we were growing up because girls typically change in front of each other a lot but like i can't recall a time that i have changed in front of you no i so, my most vivid memory of you being a real never knew is, you know, you're right. It's funny because from having college roommates and all that stuff, I realized I'm more on the comfortable side where like, I'm not going to go hide in a bathroom. I'm not, you know, I'll go to a corner and you know, if you glance over, I really don't care.

Yeah. Enjoy. Yeah. God bless. Soak it in. Love it. I just went on a trip this weekend to tell you I was. Enjoy. Yeah. God bless. Soak it in. Love it. I just went on a trip this weekend to tell her I was some girlfriends. Yeah.

And it was funny because, you know, they'd be like, okay, I'm changing over here. Don't look. Yeah. And, you know, when I'd get naked, I'd be like, well. Here I am. Well, and, you know, how long is this going to take? Right. I'm not leisurely about it.

You're not waltzing around the room nude. No. Okay. But I mean, I figure if they glance at a tit, you know. Yeah. I'm sure they've seen worse. But not better. Damn right.

No, so my memory of you being a never nude. Do you remember, okay, we were in Laura's basement. You were wearing those pants that were the style at the time. Tearaway pants. And we started joking about ripping them off of you. And oh my God, it became so clear that you were petrified. Wait, do you know what day that was? Do you know?

Yes, I know. I wasn't going to embarrass you. Oh, I don't care. that was? Do you know? Yes, I know. I wasn't going to embarrass you. Oh, I don't care. I think I've told that story on the podcast before. Yeah. I wet my pants that night. She wet her pants laughing at me. Yeah, tee peeing.

Yeah. Yes. Oh, the irony. Yes. Yeah, so I did. So I had no underwear on under those because I had peed my underwear and I'd forgotten to pack underwear for the sleepover. So yeah, I remember that so clearly.

Yeah. Being terrified that you guys were going to pull my tear-away pants off. Yeah. And I remember eventually, like, when it became clear, like, that you were legit scared. Not, yes. Being like, Brandi, no one wants to pull your pants off. No one wants to pull your pants off, we promise. Like, Brandy, no one wants to pull your pants off. No one wants to pull your pants off, we promise.

But yeah, I think that was the, definitely, that's a moment that stands out. It's like, whoa, she's not like the other girls. No, no. I learned at Girl Scout camp when I was nine, maybe. I think I was nine when I went to Girl Scout camp. How to put my bathing suit on and then take my underwear off after it was already on. Dear God, that's really complicated. It's pretty easy.

I could do it. Now I think. When did you realize you were in every... I think probably then at Girl Scout camp. I remember when we were in middle school and we had to do the scoliosis checks. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Being horrified by that. Oh, gosh, I didn't give a shit.

You had to get naked in the locker room. Well, yeah, but... It's terrible. Okay. Not fully nude, though. Yeah. Yes, you did. You were only in a towel.

That was the rule. You had to go completely stripped down. Then you had a towel. Well, yeah. To me, that's not. Okay, but those towels were tiny, and I am not. You know what? As a tall one, I can relate because you're making a decision.

Yeah. Is my bad jowl or my tits? Exactly. It's a real tough call. Yeah. Is my bad tits or bad tits? Yeah, exactly. It's a real tough call. Yeah. Usually I do about half of both. See, I got a lot on the bottom. Sure.

So, like, mine would cover the tits fine, but then there's just a real wide opening right here where the towel does not meet. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. All right. Well, I needed some full coverage towels in that locker room. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. All right. Well. I needed some full coverage towels in that locker room. Mm-hmm.

So when did you notice that other people were way more comfortable with nudity than you? Oh, yeah. I think as young as middle school. Yeah. Because some girls would just be traipsing around there. Whores, we called them. No. No. Oh, a lot to unpack there.

So much. Ooh. Filled to the brim with farts, wants to know Brandy, when did you start successfully potty training London? My daughter is two and a half and has absolutely zero interest in the potty. Dot, dot, dot. Nothing works. Not even bribes.

Yeah. London is still not fully potty trained, and she's over three years old. So I talked to her doctor about it at her three-year-old doctor appointment because London is the exact same way. She has zero fucking interest in potty training. Well, what's easier than shit in your pants? Okay. Here's the most frustrating part about it. She knows how to do it.

Oh, yeah. And she's choosing not to. When we started potty training, we set up a whole reward system. Yeah. She's very into Paw Patrol. So we bought all of the Paw Patrol characters and their vehicles and we set them all out for her to see so that she could earn them by going potty. Uh-huh. That seems like such a good strategy. Right? Yeah. Yeah. It seemed great at first. Yeah. Uh-huh. That seems like such a good strategy. Yeah. Yeah, it seemed great at first. Yeah.

That fucker. And then I say that with the most love ever. Absolutely. Earned her three favorite Paw Patrols and then fucking stopped. Has not, like, has not stuck to potty training since. So when I talked to her doctor about it it she told us to take three months off like not talk about potty training at all okay just do like a total reset

so we have just reached the three month mark so we are we are tiptoeing back and i had a a heart-to-heart with london yeah in fact, that she it is really difficult to change diapers for her now because she's got she's big. She's a fucking three year old. She's like and how I really need her to start using the potty. And she said, OK, mommy. Yeah. And then she peed her pants. Shit her pants.

I OK. I realize you're in the thick of this right now it's not right of me to well I'm I'm just gonna say that is amazing that she chose her favorite oh I think it's fucking hilarious honestly yes and it's just so London London is her own person and she's gonna do what she wants to do well and it's like, I'm pretty damn intelligent. Yeah, she's so fucking, yes. Clearly, I know what's going on and I'm going to get exactly what I want from this storefront that you have put out for me. I know eventually I'll get those other toys.

They'll go on clearance. And in the meantime, I'm just going to shit myself. Shit myself, yeah. And you're going to clean it. Mm-hmm. Yep. So really, you have no advice. I have zero advice.

Actually, if you have advice for me. I'd love to hear it. God, that's rough. Ooh, FrozenLikeAGrape wants to know, I'm watching the Twilight movies with my 14-year-old. Do you all like them? Which is your favorite? They're so awful and I'm here for all of them. I loved it.

I read all of the Twilight books. I saw all the Twilight movies, most of them in the theater, which sounds horrible to me. Now, I'm like not the least bit interested in seeing a movie in a theater anymore. Oh, really? No. Yeah. Because I got to do something else while I'm watching a movie. I have to be able to keep my hands busy.

Yeah. And you can only give so many handjobs in a movie theater before they arrest you. So that's a joke. I've never given a handjob in a movie theater. Just the blowjobs. Stop it. No. So, yeah, I think the Twilight movies are terrible, but they're wonderful at the same time.

You know, I never read the Twilight books and never watched Twilight. Oh, okay. Sorry. You're too cool for school. No. Okay. No. It wasn't like a statement you were making by not doing it.

You know what? I'm sure it was at the time, but I'm past that now. I'm past the was at the time, but I'm past that now. I'm past the statement making about stuff. You enjoy something. Go ahead. Well, that's not who I am either. I'm still very judgmental. I'm trying to pretend to be a cool girl right now. Please excuse me. Try it on that personality very briefly. I'm done with it. High Priestess of Costco wants to know what's your take on the Delta diarrhea flight. Have you heard of this?

Oh, my God, no. What are you talking about? A Delta flight had to be grounded. Oh, no. Because someone had diarrhea all over the plane. What do you mean? Down the aisle of the plane. It became a biohazard.

They had to ground the plane and get everyone off of it. How do you have diarrhea down the aisle? I don't know. This was one person or a mass event? One person. One person. Wow. I hate to admit how curious I am.

I can tell. I can tell admit how curious I am. I can tell. I can tell you want to know everything, Kristen. There's a tiniest part of you that's like, hmm, I would have liked to be on that flight. No, no, no, no, no, no. I would not like to have been on that flight. But I would like to read like a very detailed article. Like we're talking like in the Atlantic. I saw a picture on Twitter that I was not able to authenticate. Did it look like a poop snake? But it did not look like a poop snake. But it claimed to be a shot of the inside of the plane following the incident. And it was, if it is actually the picture, it was a lot of diarrhea.

Describe it. All down the aisle, Kristen. That's not possible. Those aisles are so long. It's all down the aisle. That's not how we. Are we talking through the pants? I don't know.

That's what I wondered. Like, was this an intentional diarrhea eat? I mean, we've covered this on the podcast. We have. I believe that was your case that you covered. No. I believe so. It would have to be intentional.

Has to be. Yeah. Angry poopers. They're out there, folks. Oof. Well, I tell you what, I am very glad we're getting to the end of the episode so that I can Google that extensively. And pretend to be a little less interested now and be like, oh, let's move on. Right?

No one wants to hear about that. Ooh. Actual cannibal Shia LaBeouf wants to know, would either of you share a toothbrush with your spouse if you had to? Sure. I would, too. I mean, I don't really love the idea of it, but like. Well, no. It'd be weird if you were excited about it. Yeah, but if we had to, sure.

Yeah. Yeah. You wouldn't believe the stuff we do. Oh, my God. We're talking kissing on the lips. You ever heard of a French kiss? Oh, okay. Oh, holy shit.

Okay. This is from Amisipole. It says, I've been dating someone on and off for nearly a year, and I think he may have fathered a child over the summer while we were suddenly not seeing each other. It lines up with her getting pregnant while we were still together in the fall slash winter. We had been trying to make things work again recently when I found this out. I haven't confronted him with the information I discovered yet. I know it's probably going to be the end for us after I confront him, but I want to do this with logic and not emotion.

I feel emotional, but I'm trying to avoid that and just speak truthfully. Any advice on what to say, how to say it, and how to present the info I found? Okay. Well, yeah, first of all, holy shit. I'm sorry you're going through that. That's a lot. Yeah, that sounds like a lot. Yes. Honestly, the only reason I wanted to answer this question was because of the thing about I want to do this with logic and not emotion. I just, I just want to say it is perfectly fine and valid to be emotional about this and to express that emotion. Absolutely. I think it would be nearly impossible not to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You don't need to be real worried about how you, well, I don't know. I just, I just feel like this is not

on you to like present this in a perfect way to him. I totally agree. Yeah. Worry about taking care of yourself. Absolutely. And good luck. Yeah. And if. What? Nothing. Brandy's saying. And if you feel like it might make you feel better to take him a drink while you do it. And, you know, got X-Lax inx in it or something okay maybe don't do that

i'm just picturing like a dumb and dumber moment sure yeah i like a little colon blow i i wow um yeah you didn't think that was the direction I was going? No. I was like, oh, my God. Bring him a drink. Like, what the fuck? I know we're mad at him. We're all on your side, Amisipol. But God damn.

Okay. Yeah, I'm perfectly fine with him shitting his pants. No, don't give him a drink with colon blow in it. Oh, I'm okay with that. I thought you were going to, like, drug him or something. No, I don't want to drug him. I just want him to shit his brains out for a day. Yeah, think about what you did on the toilet.

While you're on the toilet. Or maybe not on the toilet. Maybe you have to pull over on the side of the road. Maybe his toilet's all clogged up. Maybe he's full of snakes. Maybe. All right. Don't do any of that.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. don't do any of that I'm sorry ooh elderly Bigfoot asks if you could know any one government secret what would it be oh shit well how do you answer that question I want

to know about the aliens I mean they just told us okay this is how fucked up our world is right now because the government was like yeah yeah, okay. Just like two weeks ago, they were like, yeah, okay, aliens are real. And like, nobody did fucking shit about it. Everybody's just like, yeah, we kind of knew it already.

Well, what are you going to do about it? I mean. What do you mean? I mean, what are you going to do? Everybody was just like, yeah, yeah, we already knew. What, are you going to get the spare bedroom ready? Like, maybe. Yeah, I want to know all the shit about the aliens.

Maybe I can't handle it, though. Maybe it scares me. It does scare me. I'm already scared. That's what you like about it. It is. I love alien movies. That doesn't surprise me at all.

Very into them. Okay. See, I'd have to have all the files in front of me. I'd have to take a gander at the file names. At the choices. You want to know some choices. Yeah, I want to know some options. But they're labeled with code names.

You're not going to know what they are anyway. Yeah, that's fine. Okay. That's fine. You want to see what's exciting. You know, sometimes I think they get real cute with the code names. Yeah. Don't you?

Yeah. Yeah. So I, now, I'll say this. If they get me with an intriguing code name and I open it up, it's a bunch of tax stuff. Yeah, that's going to be really disappointing. I'm going to throw that file down, demand a do-over, and they'll say, ma'am, that's not how this works. And I'll be escorted off the premises while you read the alien files. Alien files.

And you'll be like, yeah. And my brain just literally blows out of my head. Like I'm an alien and Mars attacks. Yeah. That's what's going to happen to me. I probably can't handle it. Probably not. Probably not.

Oh, goodbye, Serena. It's good B-I. I'm guessing that's goodbye, Serena. It's almost soup season. You ready, Kristen? What do you mean almost? Are you making soups? I had soup two days ago.

It was delicious. Did you make it or did you go get it somewhere? Well, when I was out of town. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a very hot day and I had soup. You had soup on a hot day? I love soup. You're freaking weird.

How often do I have to say this? I love soup. I have actually been worried today because I've been really anxious to make some soup. But you know, you got to cook it up and let it cool. And I'm like, when will the recording end? Will I have time to make soup? These are the questions I ask myself. All right. You understand how tough it is for me? I do understand. Yeah. So in conclusion, there's no such thing as soup season. All seasons are soup season.

Soup in the morning, soup in the evening, soup at summertime. When soup is on a bagel, you can eat soup anytime. I'd love soup on a bagel. Soup, bagel on the side that I dip in. Yeah, fuck yeah. That sounds amazing. Yeah. Okay.

Why do you seem scared? I mean, I do like soup, but I don't eat soup in the summer. Yeah, most don't. I'm a fall super. Yeah, you're an inferior being for sure. The aliens and I love soup. I have been thinking about some chilies and some soups. Yeah. Yeah. To me, it is almost soup and chili season.

And I'm very excited about it. Yeah. I want to make a crock pot of some. Oh, my gosh. My mouth just watered. I know. Mine too. I make this taco chicken chili.

It's so fucking good. It's like you cook it all day in the crock pot. It's like black beans it all day in the crock pot. It's like black beans and corn and tomatoes and then you put your chicken breast on top and then a packet of taco seasoning in there and then you just let it simmer

simmer simmer. Pull that chicken out shred it. Mix it back in. Sprinkle a little cheese over it when you put it in your bowl. Some people like sour cream. Not me. I don't like sour cream. I don't fuck with that shit. Chives? No, I'm not a chiver either but I bet a lot of people would like it that way. No, I'm telling you. Chives.

I'm telling you. You eat chives. Cheese, sour cream, chives. Tortilla chips. Yeah. Oh, the little strips. And the little tricks. No, just the strips. Ooh. Brazilian Blowout asks, maybe this is weird, but what is it like being married? I feel like I have a lot of friends who all they do is complain about their spouse.

And I'm someone who has never been close to marriage in any way with someone. It kind of scares me that it seems like most people I know don't really seem to like the person they're married to. It seems like you both truly love your husbands. Yeah. Yeah. I love being married. Yeah. It's funny.

I remember being kind of scared to get married, which I think you probably should be. Yeah. You shouldn't just. Yeah. I never experienced that. I was a child bride. Yeah. Well, that was a

choice wasn't it i'm sorry that was fine it's fine i can handle it no i i think and maybe part of it is like if you feel a little i don't know if you don't fully trust. Yeah. There's something to me about being married that has made me really relax into the relationship. And it's just gotten better every year, which I know is weird. I know it's not. So that's so funny because I do think that's David's take on our marriage. Like he was he couldn't wait for us to like actually like finally get married. Right. Because to him, it's like, oh, we're here now we're you know this is final but to me i felt married to him like without actually being

married because we combined our lives and we had a kid together and yeah see to me yeah it never it didn't feel yeah i it's funny when people, well, it's just a piece of paper. First of all, fuck off. You're kidding. No, it's way more than that. It's so different. It's so much more, yes. To me, it's always like, well, you know, yeah, we've combined everything.

You know, there's no legally binding thing here. And it does make a difference. But yeah, I really like being married. Me too. I love it. Yeah. I think I'll get a second husband and a third husband. Oh, great.

You're going to consider. Just because I like being married so much. Polygamy. Excellent. Yeah. I'm so happy for you. Well, God spoke to me. How does Norm feel about the idea of brother husbands?

I'm so glad you asked. God doesn't actually speak to men. Oh, okay. Yeah, so he's going to be just fine with it. He's going to be really supportive. He's actually going to financially support the whole thing while I go find a younger husband. Hotter husband.

Absolutely. Each husband will be younger and hotter than the next. And people will look at me and go, how is this happening? And it's just happening. Yeah. Okay. Don't even question it.

All right. I'm not a narcissist. No. With ramen noodle hair. No, that's Cody Brown. Oh, anyhow. Oh, boy.

First of all, this is the most amazing discord name. Okay. Lieutenant Dangles Funeral Shorts. Hell yeah. Those are fancy. Asks, would you be excited to be called to jury duty? If so, what kind of case would you hope to serve on? I would love to be called for jury duty, but I don't think excited is the right word for it because I feel like I would take it very seriously.

And I think that's important in the jury system. Yeah. So in theory, I want to sit on a jury. Yes. But in reality, I know how it would go for me. Yeah. I have to be somewhere. Right.

At a certain time. Right. I would hate that. Yes. Yeah, you would hate that. I would absolutely hate it. Yeah. Also, I do think that you would find out that court is way more boring.

It's so boring. It's so boring. So fucking boring. Yeah. I'd be yelling out, get to the good shit, you know. And they'd say, ma'am. Get kicked off. Maybe that's the solution.

I have to get kicked off. You get kicked off the jury. Yeah. I don't think they'd probably let us be on a jury. I think they would. You don't think it'd be a conflict of interest? I think they're way more loosey-goosey than you might imagine. Although, you know, who knows?

Who knows? Maybe. I just had to update my voter registration because I changed my name legally. And so I think that puts me back in. Brandy Pond. That puts me back in the jury puller thing. I'm sorry. Are you envisioning like a bingo thing? Yeah. Yes. I'm sorry. Are you envisioning like a bingo thing?

Yes. Really big one. Yeah. Well, naturally. And you're right. You shouldn't question that at all. They definitely don't have that on their computer anywhere. Should we move on to some Supreme Court inductions?

Yes, we shall. Everyone, to get inducted on this podcast, all you have to do is sign up for our Patreon at the $7 level or higher. And I will continue to explain this as Brandi gets to the Supreme Court induction page and finds the right episode. She's way behind. Where I thought it was and something else entirely was there. She is now on a pornography website. And uh-oh, she's found a new kink. No. Okay, so we're reading your names and your first celebrity crushes.

Claudia. Snufkin from the Moomin series. I don't know. I'm picturing a swerve, but like a sexy swerve. Okay. All right. Julia. John Corbett on Northern Exposure. Pre-Sex in Julia. John Corbett on Northern Exposure.

Pre-Sex and the City John Corbett, eh? Right. Oh. Katie. Ryan Gosling in Young Hercules. Barb. Mickey Dolenz of The Monkees. Taylor Decker.

Orlando Bloom. Megan. Zac Efron. Sarah Lynn. Hilary Duff. Tori Oberender. Jesse McCartney. Sarah Lynn. Tori Oberender. Jess H. Jonathan Taylor Thomas.

Brandi Saddlemyer. Jonathan Taylor Thomas. Ooh, back to back JTTs. Meg Ryan. That's right. Meg Ryan, huge fan of the podcast. You heard it here first. Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock in Speed.

Who knew Meg Ryan was so into Speed? Grace. Erin Carter. Heather Miller. Shaq. Oh, Heather. Ben Roach. Drool.

Oh, gosh. Keep it together, Heather. He used to have a vending machine of Nestle Crunch Bars in his house. So you tell me if you have a crush on Chef Kristen. That really does seem like a thing that would have activated you. Absolutely. As a kid, just like, oh my God. Oh my God.

How do I get to this man's house? Tori Hall. Robert Patterson. Taylor Lemans. Zac Efron. Jamie Kathleen. Shane West. Welcome to the Supreme Court.

I went high that time. That surprised me even. How did that surprise you? It wasn't a plan. It was just coming did that surprise you? It wasn't a plan. It was just coming from inside the house. It wasn't a plan. It was my vocal cords did it all on their own. Okay.

Thank you, everyone, for all of your support. We appreciate it so much. If you're looking for other ways to support us, please find us on social media. We are on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Patreon. Please remember to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen. And then head on over to Apple Podcasts and leave us a five-star rating and review. Then be sure to join us next week. When I'll be next week.

We're on a whole new podcast. I had no control of it. Okay. Podcast adjourned. And now for a note about our process. I copy and paste from the best sources on the web and sometimes Wikipedia. So we owe a huge thank you to the real experts. I got my info from an episode of Family Massacre, the Chicago Tribune, the Oshkosh Northwestern, the Leader Telegram, the Star Tribune, and CBS News. For a full list

of our sources, visit lgtcpodcast.com. Any errors are, of course, ours, but please don't take our word for it. Go. Read their stuff.