Let's Go To Court! - 53: Drug Dealer Jesse James Hollywood & Andrea Yates

Episode Date: January 30, 2019

Jesse James Hollywood was a suburban Los Angeles pot dealer. At just 20 years old, he owned his own home, pulled in a grand a week, and had a couple of his old little league friends to sell his drugs and do his bidding. Jesse thought he was hot shit. So when one of his henchmen refused to fall in line, Jesse decided to send him a message. He kidnapped the man’s 15-year-old brother, Nicholas Markowitz, and later learned from a family lawyer that the justice system doesn’t go easy on kidnappers. What Jesse did next landed him on the FBI’s Most Wanted List. Then Kristin really bums us out with the story of Andrea Yates, a deeply troubled Texas mother who drowned her five children in her bathtub. Andrea’s story shocked and disturbed the nation, but it also raised important questions about Andrea’s mental state. By the time she murdered her children, she’d been hospitalized, she’d attempted suicide, she’d withheld food from her children, and she’d been prescribed antipsychotic drugs. Both the prosecution and the defense agreed that Andrea was mentally ill, but would the jury find her not guilty by reason of insanity? And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes 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, Kristin pulled from: “Profile of Andrea Yates,” Thoughtco.com “Andrea Yates,” episode of Mugshots “Where is Andrea Yates’ Husband Now?” People.com “Andrea Yates,” Wikipedia Newspapers.com “Defense derides psychiatrist as a witness for hire,” Los Angeles Times “Andrea Yates case turns on trail error,” Los Angeles Times In this episode, Brandi pulled from: “The Last Ride of Jesse James Hollywood” by Jesse Katz, Los Angeles Magazine “The Real Story Behind Alpha Dog” episode Dateline “Defendant Denies Killing Teen” by Sue Fox, Los Angeles Times “Prosecutor Okayed for Jesse James Hollywood Trial” by Chris Meagher, Santa Barbara Independent “Witness Rundown in Hollywood Trial” by Amy Silverstein and Chris Meagher, Santa Barbara Independent “Jesse James Hollywood Tells His Story” by Chris Meagher, Santa Barbara Independent “Hollywood Jury Deliberating” by Chris Meagher, Santa Barbara Independent “Verdict In: Hollywood Guilty of Murder and Kidnapping” by Chris Meagher, Santa Barbara Independent “The Murder of Nicholas Markowitz” wikipedia.org “Jesse James Hollywood” wikipedia.org “Joshua Lynn” wikipedia.org  

One semester of law school. One semester of criminal justice. Two experts! I'm Kristen Pitts. I'm Brandi Egan. Let's go to court! On this episode, I'll talk about Andrea Yates. And I'll be talking about how a

20-year-old suburban Los Angeles drug dealer landed himself on the FBI's most wanted list. Whoa! Whoa is right. Okay, you had the most descriptive title of all time. And yours was like, I'm talking about Andrea Yates.

Do you know Andrea Yates? I do. Exactly. How do you describe her and not be tacky and horrible? A horrible mother. Yeah, I guess I could have said that. I'll be talking about a horrible mother. Oh, come on. Not at all related.

Just related in the sense that this is a mom story. My mom called because she'd been listening to the podcast. And she said, you know, you and Brandy would be terrible on Shark Tank. Wow. Because you gave away 50% of your business to Norm. And I was like, hold on. No, no, no no we did not give norm anything there was no negotiation it was a eminent domain situation yeah he just snapped it up

um yeah i'm pretty upset about it yeah well i tried to do some negotiations with him. He didn't even respond to my tweets. I noticed that. I was like, damn. He treated you like a common troll. That's right. Kristen, I'm glad I have you here today. Are you going to have me here for like the next five years telling this story? Okay, yes.

First of all, I believe this is the longest case I've ever covered on this podcast. So fucking get ready. Get comfy. I hope you got on your stretchy pants. Yeah, you know I do. No, but before we get to the case, I have a correction from last week's episode. Okay. And it's on your case, so boy is your face going to be red. Oh, damn it! Oh, no! What did I do? your face gonna be red what did i do i um we've gotten some messages from some pretty pissed listeners aka my mother and my father both text me about this what you said that pam dauber later

went on to star in morgan mindy she started morgan mindy prior to my sister Sam. She was the big draw on my sister Sam because she had previously been Mindy. Well. Boy, is your face red. Seriously, both my mom and my dad text me to tell me that. Well, I've never been so humiliated in all

my life. Yeah, I'm going to take that one. Can uh offer an apology to yeah i'm very very tim and lynn very sorry to tim and lynn and to all the millions of people who listened to that episode and were very offended um my second note on that episode oh no did i have another no no no this is just a uh we talked about Miami, Oklahoma. Yes. Okay. I love this.

So we were wondering if it's like the Las Vegas of the Midwest. And it kind of is. So one of our listeners. Well, and to back up, three of the people in your. Yes. In the case that I covered, my last Johnson County case, the Hobson murder. Three marriages in that case happened in Miami, Oklahoma. And we're like, what the fuck is going on in Miami, Oklahoma?

So one of our listeners, Stacy, actually like a friend of mine in real life, she messaged me, as did my mom and my dad both messaged me about this too. So the deal with Miami, Oklahoma is that there's no waiting period to get married so you can go there and you can get married the same day and it is the closest courthouse where they to the kansas city metro that has that so that is why it makes so much sense i thought it was the weirdest so did i yeah but it makes total sense and there's like a whole bunch of like justices of the peace and stuff there because there is no waiting period. So there's all kinds of people performing same day ceremonies there.

Is there still a waiting period in Kansas City? Oh, yeah. In Kansas, I know there is. I think it's five days. Three days or five days. Were you and Zach just itching? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

I think that might have been the crabs. That's romantic. You know, you're supposed to get the crabs after you get married. Oh, okay. Morgan Mindy before, crabs after. That's such a sweet story. No, but I guess like a lot of pregnant teenagers would go to miami oklahoma to get married as well well that's grim shotgun weddings yeah yeah oh yeah so thank you to stacy and my dad and mom

who all clarified that for us your mom and dad are really good fact checkers i know yeah let's hire them on i think it's hilarious because podcast i think it's hilarious because obviously I've mentioned before, my parents are divorced, so it's not like they talk to each other. But they both on the very same day text me the exact same information about Pam Dauber and about Miami, Oklahoma. All right. Enough of this jibber jabbering. I've got to get into this fucking case or we will be here for three days.

We should mention we're recording at night now. Yeah. chaperone i've got to get into this fucking case or we will be here for three days we should mention we're recording at night now so yeah um yeah i might nod off here at the table what time do you normally go to sleep oh i don't go i late okay yeah well then we'll be here all night what song is that fiance right i don know. I didn't recognize it. I'm sorry. I do have to tell you this real quick because I text you about this the other day. So for those of you that don't know, which why would you know this about us? Kristen and I, when we were younger, we're very into the Spice Girls.

I feel like people should have guessed that anyway the other day we had a 90s station on at the salon and to become one by the spice girls came on i have not heard that song in probably 20 years yeah 18 years yeah i knew every fucking word still. I am concerned about that because imagine what this brain could do if it wasn't clogged up with all those Spice Girls lyrics. If it didn't have Spice World memorized. How many times do you think we watched Spice World? Oh, so many times. And you know, one time it came on TV like a couple years ago. Yeah.

And I felt the same way. Very disturbed that I knew everything. All of it. Yeah. It's not a good movie. No, it's really not. I remember, I don't know if you remember this. So we'd been singing To Become One for forever.

Yeah. And then like we hit a point where we were like, oh my God. Oh my God, this is about them having sex. Yes. Like we hit a point where we were like, oh, my God, this is about them having sex. We had no idea it was literally about sex. We were not very savvy. No.

Kids. In our defense, we were like 11 when we started listening to it. But have you ever heard anything more clear in your life? No, it's like tonight is the night when two become one yeah i need someone like i've never needed love before i'm gonna make love to you sorry i spat because i was so excited um fun fact for everybody keeping track put this in your note your notebook of fun facts about brandy um Spice Girls cassette tape. First cassette tape I ever bought with my own money. I'm going to cut that.

That's embarrassing. As a personal favor to you. Okay. Enough of this, Kristen. Alright, alright, alright. Let's talk about a drug dealer. Okay. Enough of this, Kristen. All right, all right, all right. Let's talk about a drug dealer. Okay. Hold on, I'm making this big so I'm not distracted by the other shit on my screen.

Pause for dramatic effect. I feel like I have the loudest margarita of all time right now. Yeah, should we maybe say that we're also drinking margaritas while we're recording? Because we don't usually drink alcohol while we record. But we did in the last episode, so what's happening? So, I hadn't even finished one margarita yet. I'd had like half when I told Norman to go snuggle show. So, we're off to a rocky start.

It is rough right from the beginning. Okay. The majority of this information comes from two sources. One is an amazing article in Los Angeles Magazine. Yes, Los Angeles Magazine. Is that a thing? No question mark on the end. Yes.

And the second is an episode of Dateline. A note here, though. This episode of Dateline. A note here, though. This episode of Dateline is not actually available online anywhere. The only form of it that is available is a transcript of it. So I haven't actually seen the episode. I've read the episode. Just for, you know, full transparency here. Why would anyone need to know?

I don't know. Where did you find the transcript? I don't know. Where did you find the transcript? I don't know. I just found it. Yeah, okay. Okay. Are you ready? Yeah.

Okay. Jesse James Hollywood. Oh. That's a made up name. That is his real name on his birth certificate in your fucking face, Kristen. I'm already wrong. Mork and Mindy came before my sister Sam. You ignorant slut.

Jesse James Hollywood couldn't believe his luck. Here he was with a van full of his henchmen. Hench guys? Hench boys? They were about 20 years old. Henchmen. You can only say henchmen. I like hench boys.

I feel like Norman would vote for hench boys. Who cares what Norman would vote for? He votes for a lot of crazy stuff. So he's here with a van full of his hench boys and they're on their way to find ben markowitz to teach him a lesson oh no and there right in front of him was markowitz's 15 year old brother nick walking down the street man jesse thought to himself roughing up ben's brother sure would send him a message. But snatching him? Yeah, that would surely get my point across.

So it was August 6, 2000, and Jesse had set out that day with the intention of showing Ben Markowitz, who was boss. Jesse was a 20-year-old privileged kid from the west hill suburb of los angeles he was also like a mid-level pot dealer and he thought he was hot shit naturally he drove a tricked out honda civic think like fast and the furious okay he owned his own home a modest three-bedroom two-bath ranch but fuck at 20 years old in los angeles um i don't have two bathrooms i am a great drug i have two bathrooms yeah i only have two bedrooms do you and zach go to your separate bathrooms and shout to each other? Fuck yeah, we go to our separate bathrooms.

No, we don't really shout to each other, though. We do use separate bathrooms. Well, yeah, why wouldn't you? Exactly. He's a disgusting boy who I love very much. You really saved it. Just for the record. Just for the record.

And he was also making upwards of $1,000 a week cash tax-free. Wow. He was living his best life. I mean, if that's mid-level pot dealer, okay. You don't think that's mid-level? That seems pretty good. I mean, I think that's mid-level. 52 grand a year tax-free?

Yeah. Okay. Okay. So as Jesse's business grew, so he's this pot dealer just kind of dealing here and there, but it keeps growing and growing. He enlists his old Little League friends to sell drugs for him. Among them were Ryan Hoyt, Jesse Ruge, R-U-G-G-E. I'm not exactly sure how it's pronounced. William Skidmore and Ben Markowitz.

Here was the problem, though. He would just give them some pot. Would they smoke at home? It was their job to sell it and give them the money back but yeah they were a bunch of fucking potheads so they kept smoking their product and so ryan hoyt and ben markowitz owed jesse some money because they couldn't pay for the product that he'd given them let alone turn around and give him a profit right so ryan hoyt to pay off his debt had turned into kind of like the errand boy of the group he was constantly cleaning um jesse's house any errands that he had doing his laundry

cleaning up the dog shit in the backyard. Anything Jesse James Hollywood wanted done, Ryan Hoyt had to do it because he was in debt to him. Okay. Ben Markowitz, though. There was one big difference between him and Ryan. He wasn't scared of Jesse. He wasn't scared of anything. He was like, fuck off. Like, I'll get you the money

when I have the money. You don't scare me. And so by August of 2000, things had gotten really out of control between Jesse and Ben. Yes, they'd been friends for years. But Jesse was pissed about this money that Ben owed him. So one day, Jesse and his girlfriend went to the restaurant where Ben's girlfriend worked. They sat in her section, they ate, they drank, they racked up a bill of over $50, and then instead of paying, they wrote on the receipt, take this off Ben's tab. Ooh, that sucks.

Yes. That sucks so bad. So Ben was fucking pissed. Yeah. And Ben was a little bit crazy. So Ben went to Jesse's house and shattered his windows with an iron pipe. Oh, God. Yeah.

Like all of the windows? Like all of like the back windows of the house yeah yeah he's like you don't fucking scare me come talk to me don't threaten my girlfriend wow yeah and so it's august 6th jesse had decided i'm moving out of this fucking house i'm a little bit scared of ben clearly he's a little bit off uh-huh but on my way i'm gonna try and go to his house the plan was to either go to his house and talk to him or go to his house and rough him up or go to his house and shatter his own windows they were gonna improv it yeah okay yeah figure out when they got there but instead instead, on the way, they come across Ben's 15-year-old

brother, Nick. He just happened to be walking down the street. So Nick's just a regular 15-year-old kid in a pretty well-to-do suburb, but he liked to smoke pot and pop some Valium every now and again. And he had stayed out too late the night before and he knew he was going to get in trouble with his mom that morning. So he had snuck out of his window when he heard his mom coming to his room. Oh, God. Yes. So it's, it's like noon, one o'clock, maybe, but he had been asleep in his room and he knew his mom was coming to wake him up and confront him about whatever had gone on the night before him missing curfew or whatever and so instead of dealing with her his overbearing mom uh-huh he snuck out of the house yeah she sounds really awful yeah saying don't take value don't smoke pot yeah so when they saw

nick walking around along the side of the road they pulled the van they were in up on the curb next to him they jumped out and how many of them were there there's three of them in the van god it's jesse james hollywood jesse rugue and william skidmore so they get out of the van jesse shoves nick up against a tree, pins him there. And Jesse Ruge and William Skidmore start beating him up. And then they throw him into the van. They kidnap him. So when this happens, there's a mother driving home from church with her two children in the car with her.

And she sees this go down. And she's like's like kids we're gonna remember this license plate she doesn't have a cell phone yeah so it's 2000 so yeah not not i mean people had them but it would not everybody had them yet by that point it's not like they are now and so she and her kids chant the license plate number all the way home. What an awesome woman. Okay. Yes. Yes. She gets home. They call the police.

She said, I saw this boy. He was getting beat up. And then three men shoved him into a white van. This is the license plate. I think this is a kidnapping. Whatever. Yeah. So this gets somehow coded wrong and it gets dispatched as an assault rather than a kidnapping

and then it the police like go to the scene they don't see anything there and it's not followed up on at all you're kidding me nope yeah so he's been kidnapped. Someone witnessed it. Call the police with the license plate number and nothing happens. That's terrible. Nick would come in contact with up to 32 witnesses who knew he had been kidnapped. And they didn't notify the police because Nicholas appeared to be safe and having fun. So as soon as he got pushed into the van, he starts to panic. He's like, what's going on? Who are you guys? And then he recognizes who they are as friends of his older brother, Ben.

Ben is actually his half brother okay it's his dad's son from a previous marriage and he's five years older than nick so he definitely looks up to him but there'd been a lot of tumultuous stuff in the family because ben was into drugs and he was a little bit crazy and whatever and so he hadn't been real welcome at the house, but Nick loved him. And so Nick's like, okay, I recognize these people. What the fuck's going on? And they tell him, hey, we're just going to hold you for a little while. We're trying to send Ben a message.

He owes me some money. Here, smoke some pot. Here, pop a Valium. You're cool. You're just going to party with us for a little bit, and we'll get you home safe tomorrow. And so he's like, okay, like, I trust Ben. Ben will for sure, you know, I'm sure you guys just, like, call him,

let him know what's going on. He'll get you the money. I'll go home. No big deal. How much money are we talking about? Should I reveal that to you now, or do you want to know what happens no you should not okay okay an undisclosed amount of money at this point okay so they take nick initially to like a friend's house in santa barbara which is just north of where they were like i think like 70 miles so

like an hour away he stays there for a cup like a day they were planning, I think like 70 miles. So like an hour away. He stays there for a day. They were planning to go to some festival, whatever. They end up partying at like several different houses for the next couple of days. And Nick is left on his own a lot of the time. Right. He's smoking pot. He's hanging out with girls.

He's playing video games. He was super into video games. He loved Goldeneye oh yeah okay played that all the time his like screen name like an instant messenger and stuff was remag which is gamer backwards oh wow yeah okay yeah so he was super into video games so he was like they were drinking they were smoking pot constantly smoking pot constantly. Like not a bad time. Not a bad time. OK.

Not a bad time. And he was concerned at first, but they assured him, you know, everything's cool. We're going to get this squared away with your brother. We'll get you home tomorrow. Right. Each day. That was kind of story. We'll get you home tomorrow.

Right. So he starts to get a little bit worried about what his parents think is going on and and it didn't take long for the markowitz's to figure out that nick was missing but they had had issues with him in the past he had used drugs and he'd stayed out and run away for a day or whatever and so like a day and a half, two days went by before they even reported him missing. No. Because they just went out looking for him. Uh-huh. Yeah.

At some point during all of this, things start to go kind of bad. Ben figures out that they have taken Nick and he flips the fuck out, obviously. It's like, I'm going to find you. I'm going to kill you. To Jesse. Yeah. And Jesse's like, oh shit, this is not the message that I thought that this was going to send.

I thought you were going to be afraid. Yes. Not angry and willing to kill me. Yeah, he's like, I'm going to hunt you down. So they're constantly changing where they're staying like every few hours because Ben might find out where they are. Right. Nick becomes very close with a couple of people during this time. they're staying like every few hours because Ben might find out where they are.

Nick becomes very close with a couple of people during this time. One of them is Jesse Ruge. Jesse's the one that is kind of left in charge of Nick. He's around him constantly. He's the only one that's kind of there with him the whole time. Jesse James Hollywood leaves pretty quickly after they kidnap him. And so he's been the one that was in charge of him. And they become very friendly. And Jesse Rube keeps assuring Nick that everything's fine.

They're going to get everything squared away. He's going to get to go home. And he's like, he's totally trusting Jesse. He's like, yeah, you know, that's cool. I'm cool. I'm having a good time. Like, it's no big deal. But at some point, kind of the weight of this decision that he's made is starting to weigh

on Jesse James Hollywood, because he calls his family lawyer. And he's like, oh, my God. Hey, hypothetically speaking here, if someone were to kidnap someone else and then like ask someone for ransom and for their return, how much trouble would that person be in? Oh, not much at all. Don't worry about it. Hashtag asking for a friend. And the lawyer is like a big fucking trouble.

Yeah. Anybody involved in that would be facing life in prison. And then the lawyer pressed play on the Lindbergh baby kidnapping episode of the LGTB podcast. That's exactly right. And so Jesse James Hollywood's like, fuck. How did, what an idiot. How did he not know that that was a terrible idea? I think he really thought that Ben would be like, oh my God, here's.

That it'd be over in like a few hours. Here's your money. Give me back my brother. Not, I'm going to fuck. I'm not scared i'm gonna fuck i'm not scared of you i'm still not scared of you i'm gonna hunt you down and i'm gonna fucking kill you give me my brother yeah i think it he just really first of all i think he made a terrible spur of the moment decision when he saw this kid walking down the street and didn't think through what the consequences were going to be and then he totally misread what ben markowitz's reaction was going to be so when he finds this out that

they're like in deep fucking trouble uh-huh he's like i don't i don't know what else to do i think i gotta get rid of this kid what do you mean get rid of what do you think i mean get rid of no yeah and so he's gonna murder the kid that's what i mean get rid of yes kristin thank you for that is decoding that okay but that's so much worse yeah it's fucking worse drop the kid off at home and pray for the best so he calls jesse rug jesse james hollywood calls jesse rug and he's like i think we gotta get rid of this kid and jesse rug has become pretty attached to this kid by now and he's like what the fuck are you talking about how about i stick 200 in this kid's pocket put him on a bus and tell him not to say anything

yeah and then a few days he comes home and tells his parents he ran away yeah perfect yeah and jesse's like jesse james hollywood's like yeah yeah i think that'll work give me the night to think about it but yeah i think that's what we'll do i I think we'll do that tomorrow. And Jesse Ruggs like, great. So that night, he's like, great, Nick's going home tomorrow. Let's have a party. So they go and they rent a room at the Lemon Tree Inn because it has a big pool outside and they throw a massive party. So this is where I don't know, all of the people that they've already been partying with and new people. This is where the mass vast majority of these 32 witnesses see Nick and they know the story. They know what's going on.

They know that he's been kidnapped, but he's like, really guys, it's cool. And they're like, are you really safe? Is everything okay? And he's like,

really, it's cool. This is all going to get straight. I'm going home tomorrow. Like, it's really fine. Everything's fine. Don't worry about me.

Yeah. He starts hanging out. like he's gotten pretty close with this kid um Graham Presley during this time who Graham Presley was like a 17 year old kid so pretty close to Nick's age and I don't really know what his connection to the group was but he just kind of like hung out in the group yeah they'd become pretty friendly and then this friend of of Graham's Natasha like Nick and Natasha were kind of like hitting it off. And they went like skinny dipping in the hotel pool together. Nick is like living his dream life.

He's partying. He's got no parents around. His girls are interested in him. He's like this. He's the stolen kid. Like, yeah. Yeah. And he's going home tomorrow.

The stolen kid. Like. Yeah. Yeah. And he's going home tomorrow. So. Meanwhile, while this party is going on at the Lemon Tree Inn, Jesse James Hollywood's had that talk with Jesse Ruge. And he's like, yeah, yeah, tomorrow.

That's fine. We're going to stick him on a bus, whatever. In the meantime, he calls Ryan Hoyt. And he's like, hey, I got something I need you to take care of. You take care of this and your debt to me is erased. No. And his debt is a few thousand dollars, 2000,

6,000, somewhere between that. He's like, your debt to me is erased. And Ryan's like, yeah, whatever. What do you, what do you need me to do he's like i need you to get rid of the kid yeah and he's like okay so that night it's hold on i have no idea where i am you have been you love this story i love this story um i know you love a story when you don't even look at your notes.

Yeah, I haven't even looked at my notes. So by this time, it's August 9th. So three days since they took him, since they initially shoved Nick Markowitz into the van. Jesse meets up with Ryan Hoyt, and he gives him a duffel bag with a tech nine in it so that's like a semi-automatic pistol okay but it's been modified to make it a fully automatic weapon I don't fucking know what that means but why don't you know these things so he's like gives him this duffel bag take care of the kid your debt to me will be erased and ryan hoyt has been in debt to jesse james hollywood forever yeah and so the idea that he's not going to have to be the whipping boy the

errand boy anymore is so great to him that he doesn't even think about the fact that the that he's gonna kill a kid over it oh my god so he goes to the party and he picks up graham presley the 17 year old kid that nick was really good friends with you know he'd kind of bonded with or whatever and he's like hey um jesse has a project for us i need your help and so graham gets in the car with him and they drive out to the Santa Inez Mountains. Y-N-E-Z. How do you think that's pronounced? Inez, Inez, Inez. Inez.

I think so. Yeah, Inez. So they drive out to the Santa Inez Mountains and they hike up this trail called the Lizard's Mouth Trail and they go just like past this boulder kind of off to this area that they believe is remote and ryan hoyt makes graham presley dig a grave this 17 year old kid he's like hey it's not me this is what jesse wants yeah and so graham does it because he's terrified. So he digs this hole and he knows what's happening. Yeah. They get back in the car. They go back. They go back to the party. And this time, Ryan and Graham pick up Nick and Jesse and they go back.

back and uh and jesse is like what's going on he's talking to ryan and ryan's like this is what this is what we got to do this is what jesse james hollywood wants us to do and jesse's just like he's freaked out but he doesn't know what else to do in the meantime he's telling nick everything's fine he's like no we just got to go do this thing real quick it's no big deal everything's fine you're going home tomorrow i promise oh my. So they get back to the mountains. Graham Presley stays in the car. He refuses to get out of the car because he knows what's about to happen. So Ryan and Jesse Ruge walk Nick up the trail and take him off the trail. And they're standing there at this hole.

And Nick starts to freak out. Well, yeah. He's like, Jesse, what's going on? You told me to freak out well yeah he's like he's like Jesse what's going on you told me everything was fine and Jesse's like everything is fine everything is fine you know just do this for me you know it's no big deal everything's still fine and he starts to duct tape Nick's hands behind his back so he ducts tape he duct tapes Nick's hands behind his back and Nick is obviously panicking and he started to cry puts duct tape over his mouth and then ryan hits nick over the head with a shovel and nick falls into the grave oh and then

ryan hoyt pulls the trigger of the tech nine one time and like nine bullets come out and spray across nick's body and he dies instantly. Jesse Ruge is traumatized by what's happened, but. This is the cost of being in a group of drug dealers is basically what he tells himself. I officially don't feel sorry for him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I agree. Ryan Hoyt is like fucking walking on sunshine because he's free. Because he got out of a $2,000 debt. Yeah, he's free of debt. It could have been as big as $6,000, Kristen. I don't know. Oh, that changes everything. Yes.

I'd kill three children for no i would kill no children so they're thinking that they have done this perfectly nobody's looking for this kid they buried him in the perfect spot very remote area of the mountains they dug the hole at night right that is correct okay then it's not remote because you think it's remote at night but then the daylight comes and you want to go home you know what i knew i was slipping into a song but i could not figure out which one but right am i right you're completely right it turns out that the super remote area that they dug this hole is just like a couple of feet off the trail well you know people stay totally on

the trails and they don't nobody ventures off of it yeah so three days later some hikers come across the trail when they are when they are investigating a smell oh no so they're hiking it's the fucking mountains in california it's hot as shit it's fucking august yeah it's only been three days but the sun has just done a number yeah the smell is horrible wait they didn't cover his body they did but just like with a light layer of okay yeah yeah yeah and it's fucking hot as shit as i already mentioned is it hot in california no it's a fucking hot as shit okay so august 12th a group of hikers discovered the remote grave. And so they smelled a smell.

They were following like a swarm of flies. They see a bloody pant leg hanging out of this mound of dirt. And they immediately call police. Because it was so hot, the body had decomposed at a very rapid rate. And so it took two days for them to identify the body. They were able to identify it by matching a partial fingerprint because even his fingerprints had started to decompose. So they had a partial fingerprint that they were able to match from an arrest record from a time when Nick was busted with pot. And that's how they determined that it was Nicholas Markowitz's body.

Wow. On Monday, August 14th, detectives went to the Markowitz home. It was pretty early in the morning. It was like 630. Jeff Markowitz, Nick's dad, heard a car pull up and he looked out the window and he saw men in suits and he told Susan. And Susan said, they found Nick's body. Nick's dead. She said she knew. Yeah. Immediately. So police come in and they let them know obviously that they have found his body but that's

all they know at that point they didn't really know anything else i believe like i mentioned earlier that ben had reason to believe that jesse was involved in nick going missing but i don't think he had relayed that information to his parents right because he didn't obviously want to be to let them know that he was somehow involved or responsible or whatever yeah so on august 15th a story about the discovery of the body ran in the paper along with a picture of nick at his bar mitzvah and natasha the 17 year old girl that he was that Nick was partying with at the Lemon Tree Inn, saw the picture and immediately recognized him, obviously. She called up Jesse Ruge and she's like, what the fuck is this? You told me he went home. You told me everything was okay.

And he's like, calm down, calm down. It's not what you think at all. Oh, okay. And she's like. What is it? No. She's like, calm down, calm down. It's not what you think at all. Oh, OK. And she's like, what is it? No. She's like, no, I'm not. You're not going to spill that bullshit to me.

So she immediately went to her mother's law office. Her mom happened to be a lawyer. Oh, God. Went to her mother's law office, and she talked to an attorney who arranged a grant of immunity for her. And by 4 o'clock that afternoon natasha was sitting in front of detectives telling them everything she knew wow yeah she was like nope i i am involved in this like and this kid did not deserve this i'm gonna i'm gonna give them the names of everybody involved. So the following day, August 16th, Jesse Ruge, Graham Presley, William Skidmore,

and Ryan Hoyt were arrested. She'd given them their names up right away. And they all talked. They were attempting to minimize their role and they were implicating each other. Yeah. But when police were making their arrest, they couldn't locate Jesse James Hollywood. It seemed he'd gone on the run. It turns out that in the days after Nick's murder, Jesse was making plans to skip town.

He collected on old debts and drained his bank account of more than $24,000. 20 years old. Yeah. Drug dealer. All right, fine. After draining his bank account, he drove to Palm Springs to pick up his girlfriend, Michelle, and then the two headed to Vegas, where they checked into the Bellagio. Odd choice for someone wanting to lay low. Let's head to a place with the most possible surveillance cameras on the planet.

Yes, yeah. But they only stayed there a day or two. By the time Nick's body was discovered, Jesse and Michelle had already hit the road for Colorado. Jesse had spent his childhood and early teen years there and a good family friend still lived in the Colorado Springs area. Richard Dispenza was a high school football coach. He'd recently been named his high school's teacher of the year and was founder of a tobacco free group at the school. And this was the family friend. Okay.

When Jesse's father had learned of the discovery of Nick's body, he called Dispenza in Colorado and told him Jesse was in some trouble. So Richard prepared to let Jesse and Michelle stay with him for a couple of days. When the arrests of his posse were made in LA, Jesse knew authorities would be coming for him soon. And he was unsure how trackable his movements had been to this time. So Jesse put Michelle on a plane back to LA and Dispenza put Jesse up at a

Ramada Inn in Colorado Springs. Whoa. Upstanding citizen teacher, dude. Yup. Is aiding and abetting? Yup. Okay. Jesse was still at that motel when Santa Barbara detectives knocked on Richard Dispenza's door the next day to question him.

tell when Santa Barbara detectives knocked on Richard Dispenza's door the next day to question him. As you just said, Dispenza was a very well-liked and respected high school teacher, but he was also Jesse James Hollywood's godfather. So when detectives asked if he knew where Jesse was, he lied. Yes, I do know. He lied. Oh. He had the power to end the manhunt right then, but he decided to protect his godson. And it was a decision he'd ultimately pay for, as he later received three years of probation and 480 hours of community service for harboring a fugitive. That seems really light to me.

I agree. I think it seems very light. I think that dude sounds like a dumbass and he should lose his teaching license. Especially when you hear how long Jesse was able to stay on the run. Wait, did he lose his teaching license? I did not come across that information. I don't know.

I feel like it would have said that he did, but it did not say that. Okay. On August 20th, after Dispenza had been paid a visit by detectives, Jesse left the motel on foot. He walked to the house of Chaz Salisbury. Salisbury. Chaz Salisbury. Hmm.

Hmm. Sounds like steak. It does. Somebody say steak. What's that from? Deuce Bigelow. I did not see that movie you're really missing out no i was i was kind of afraid you were about to tell me yes you did we saw it together i don't think we did okay we might have i don't think so time would be right but time would be

right yeah subject matter. Also, right. Yes. So he goes, he leaves the motel on foot. He goes to Chaz Salisbury's house. Chaz Salisbury was a childhood friend that he hadn't seen in years. And he just like shows up at his doorstep. Jesse told Chaz and his mom,

some sob story about how he'd been mugged in Vegas and needed to get back there. So Chaz agreed to drive him. I got mugged in Vegas and needed to get back there. So Chaz agreed to drive him. Yeah. I got mugged in Vegas. But somehow I'm here and I need to get back to Vegas. Yeah, I don't fucking know. Doesn't make any sense to me.

For our international listeners, Las Vegas and Colorado are not close. Not close at all. Several hours apart. Not close. Not close at all. Several hours apart. But Chaz, being a good old childhood friend, agreed to drive Jesse back to Vegas. You're kidding me.

No. Yes. So they get in the car and they drive to Vegas. When Jesse and Chaz arrived in Vegas, though, Jesse convinced him to keep driving and take him back to LA. On the way from Vegas to LA, Jesse spilled the whole story to Chaz. He told him how they snatched Nick as a way to get even with Ben. And only after he'd taken him did he bother to think about what the consequences of those actions might be. Jesse told Chaz what the lawyer had told him about that anyone had being involved was facing life in prison. And that at that point he figured he was in enough trouble already.

He better get rid of the kid. I don't understand that logic. That is so stupid. Yeah. I mean, you really think you're going to get away with murder, right? Yeah.

And that that's better than just taking the punishment? Exactly. I truly do not get the logic. Yeah. By the time they reached L.A., Chaz was like shitting his pants. Well, no kidding. He knew too much. He was like, am I wrapped up in this now too?

Yes, you are, Chaz. And he knew what Jesse was capable of. Yep. Jesse asked Chaz to drop him off at the home of John Roberts or Old John, as Jesse called him. Old John was a family friend of the Hollywoods. And he was the kind of guy who knew how to get things. He was an old school chicago guy with lots of connections old john was watching a baseball game on tv that day in august when he

looked up to see jesse standing at his front door so chas like drops him off at the door and he's like skirt skirt like yeah getting the fuck out of here so So, John is at home. He looks up. Jesse's standing at his front door. I believe there was a screen door open and Jesse was standing on one side of the screen door. So it's this door

that you put like on the outside of a regular door. I have no idea what you're talking about. So he sees Jesse standing there and he grabs him and he pulls him inside. He slams the door shut. And he's like, what the fuck are you doing here? Everyone is looking for you.

Yeah. And he's like looking outside to see if anybody saw Jesse standing there. And it seemed like nobody had. John's official statement to police later would be that Jesse asked for a fake ID and a place to stay for a couple of days. But that John, of course, told him no. No, I could not help you with those things, Jesse. And you may not stay here. Please leave.

Was he busy reading his Bible when Jesse walked in? Right. Right. So a week after Chaz had dropped Jesse off at John's and then skirt skirted out of there, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office showed up at John's house with a search warrant. They rang the bell and they believed that they could hear voices inside, but no one came to the door. So they called in the SWAT team. And just as the SWAT team was about to force entry into the home, old John came out claiming to have been asleep. Yeah, I'm sure.

So the FBI swarms in, or I guess it's the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office. Get it right, Brady. I'm sorry. I like the idea of the FBI swarming in, but they're not involved yet. Okay. So the SWAT team swarms in. They probably, even though the door's open now, I think they bust through windows.

Absolutely. Go down the chimney. Absolutely. Santa Claus style. They were convinced that Jesse was hiding in there somewhere. They searched the house top to bottom, and when they didn't find him, they bombed the house with tear gas.

Whoa. Still, no Jesse emerged. Whoa. Yeah. They were 100% convinced that he was in this house. Uh-huh. Jesse James Hollywood had vanished off the face of the earth. But that didn't keep him from being indicted for the kidnapping and murder of Nicholas Markowitz, and he was placed on the FBI's most wanted list.

Hell yeah! Many parties would spend the next several years searching for Jesse. Several years? Yup. Among them was Susan Markowitz, Nick's mom. She dedicated her life to finding Jesse. She passed out posters and cards with Jesse's picture on it wherever she went. She helped organize a $50,000 reward for information leading to his arrest. Finding Jesse became her only purpose in life. But the search was fruitless for years, and Susan was battling with serious issues with mental health following her son's death. I bet she was. She battled with suicidal thoughts and tendencies and was hospitalized 12 times for attempting to take her own life.

Oh, gosh. She mixed pills with alcohol and made multiple attempts to cut her wrists. Ugh. Oh, gosh. Ugh. Yeah. His trial began in November of 2001 with the prosecution seeking the death penalty. The video of Hoyt's interview with detectives following his arrest was played for the jury. In it, Ryan had initially attempted to minimize his role in the murder and emphasize the fact that he had not been present during the kidnapping. So he wasn't in the van and emphasized the fact that he had not been present during the kidnapping. So he wasn't in the van during the kidnapping. He was actually at Jesse James Hollywood's house that he was moving out of cleaning up the glass from the shattered windows that Ben had

broken the day before. So he was not present for the kidnapping. I love it. I wasn't there for the kidnapping. Did the murder. Right. So he's like, I wasn't even there for the kidnapping. But murder right so he's like i wasn't even there for the kidnapping but when investigators told him that the others were saying that he was the one that that dug the grave and put the duct tape on nick before he was shot ryan was ind him oh what yes yes i just spat i mean what a fucking idiot yeah the only thing the only thing i did was kill him don't get me on that duct tape charge what the fuck so they have this on video and they play it at his trial and did the police open mouth kiss him after that they had to be so excited shit so to rebut the information on this

tape hoyt took the stand in his own defense oh And he testified that he had suffered amnesia for several days after his arrest and claimed that he had no memory of being interrogated, let alone confessing to murdering Nick. You know what that kid does? He watches soap operas. Right. Because where else would you come up with that? Oh, amnesia.

Yeah. No, didn't go to a doctor for it. No, can't confirm it with the medical community but that's what happened to me so he told the court i did not kill nicholas markowitz i have never pulled a trigger in my life he also testified that his only role he had. When he unzipped it and used it? He said,

I feel guilty about it because whether I knew it or not, I brought the means to this kid's end. To rebut Hoyt's claims of amnesia, the prosecution called forensic psychologist David Glazer, who testified that he believed Hoyt was lying, plain and simple. Hoyt was lying, plain and simple. Yeah. Glazer testified that amnesia is usually not absolute, meaning that people often recall snippets of past events when prompted with verbal or written cues. But when he examined Hoyt for more than three hours, Glazer found his memory solid and clear, with the exception of a two-day period after he was arrested where he claims to remember nothing. I mean, it's not even a very good no claim no that's simply not consistent with how the brain works glazer testified he also testified that phony amnesia is fairly common in murder cases yep yep the defense put up their own forensic psychologist, Michael Kania, who testified that people who confess to crimes they did not commit may have low self-confidence and high anxiety. They tend to trust authority, try to be helpful or seek to protect others. He believed that Hoyt fit this profile. I mean, I believe that.

I do, too. Yeah. Yeah. Same. I don't I believe that over amnesia. Yeah, same. I don't believe that it was a false confession, though. No, I don't either. As for the amnesia, Kaniya concluded, oh, I'm sorry, Kaniya conceded that the complete memory loss Hoyt described

was very unusual, but he said it could have resulted from the emotional trauma of being arrested and questioned. Doubt it. Ryan Hoyt's trial lasted three weeks, and on November 20, 2001, after eight hours of deliberation, a jury found him guilty of kidnapping and first-degree murder. He was sentenced to death and currently sits on San Quentin's death row. Jesse Ruge was the next to be tried,

and in May of 2002, he was found guilty of aggravated kidnapping for ransom with special circumstances, but was acquitted of murder. In September of that year, he was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after seven years. Wow. His initial bid for parole in 2008 was denied, but in July of 2013, he went in front of the parole board again, and this time they voted for his release. They said he showed genuine remorse for his crime and no longer posed a threat to society. Due to the violent nature of the crime in which he was involved,

California Governor Jerry Brown asked them to review the case again. And in October of 2013, they again voted to release Jesse Ruge. On October 24, 2013, Ruge was released from prison after serving 11 years. How do you feel about that? Okay, I feel one way, but there's a lot of information that I've not given you yet that makes me feel that way. So let's circle back to that. Let's act when we'll actually circle back to it.

We will not pull a Kristen. Don't worry. We'll totally talk about it later. Susan Markowitz was outraged by Ruge's release. She said it was unacceptable and that it simply wasn't fair that his parents would get a reunion that she never would. I think it's easy to understand

her feelings there. William Skidmore, who was present for the kidnapping but not the murder, took a deal in September of 2002. In exchange for his guilty plea, he was sentenced to just nine years in prison. He was released in April of 2009 after serving just under seven years. Graham Presley, who was just 17 at the time of the murder,

was the next to be tried. Graham's case was interesting because he had not been present for the kidnapping, and he had become perhaps the closest to Nick during that time that they had held him captive. But it was believed that he was the one who had dug the grave that Nick was found in. Mm-hmm. In July of 2002, he was acquitted of kidnapping, but the jury hung eight to four in favor of acquittal on the charge of murder. In October of 2002, Presley was retried, and this time a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder. Originally, with that charge, with that conviction, he was facing up to 18 years in prison.

But his attorney fought hard to have him sentenced as a juvenile and was successful. Wow. Yes. That was a good attorney. At Presley's sentencing, the judge said, I am not assured that he would survive in an adult state facility. And so he was sentenced to be incarcerated

by the California Youth Authority until the age of 25. Is he white? Yeah, he is. Yeah, I'm sure the outcome would not be the same. No, no. He was released in 2007. So all the time that these trials were going on. Yeah, where the hell is Jesse James Hollywood?

Was still nowhere to be found. He was featured multiple times on both America's Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries. Yes. But detectives had very little to go on. They were sure his parents were filtering him money. Yeah. But they couldn't prove it. were filtering him money.

Yeah. But they couldn't prove it. And as far as where he had disappeared to, they had tracked him to Canada but had lost him from there. Man. Two years after the murder, during the summer of 2002, when the trials of Jesse's co-defendants

were in full swing, detectives got a tip that Jesse was in Brazil. Detectives would never say where this tip came from just that they had reason to believe that jesse had learned of a loophole law in brazil that he believed would protect him from being extradited if he could father a child with a native brazilian how the hell would that work. Isn't that the craziest thing? Yes. Detectives did everything they could to follow this lead, but it dead ended in Rio. Susan Markowitz was devastated.

She thought like this was what they needed. They were like on his trail. But investigators made her a promise. They would find Jesse and bring him home. She would get justice for her son they promised her they would not give up until they brought him back wow another couple of agonizing years went by and it was spring of 2005 oh my gosh Before detectives found themselves back in Brazil following up a new lead. Hold on. That law, he thought, applied.

Yes. That's not a real thing, right? It used to be a real thing. Seriously? Yes. So a bunch of sketchy guys would go to Brazil? So there's actually kind of a famous case that is the reason the law no longer exists. But I'm going to cover it, so I'm not going to tell you about it.

Okay, awesome. Awesome. All right. All right. So it's 2005, and they find themselves back in Brazil following up a new lead. This time, though, they were in the resort town of Saquarema. There, detectives have narrowed in on a young Canadian man named Michael Costa-Giraud. Mike taught English to the locals and lived with Marcia Reis, a Brazilian native 10 years his senior.

And when detectives tracked down the couple, Marcia just happened to be six months pregnant with Michael's child. Only Michael wasn't Michael. He was jesse james hollywood in march of 2005 jesse james hollywood was arrested in brazil jesse attempted to argue that he couldn't be extradited because marcia was pregnant but detectives informed him that not only had that loophole law he'd heard of changed, he'd also entered the country illegally on a fake Canadian passport, so he wasn't protected at all. This kid's information is way off. He thinks kidnapping is no big deal. No kidding. He thinks he can go to Brazil and impregnate someone and be all good. Yeah. Wow. Okay. so they had gotten this tip that he was in this resort town and so they'd actually

contacted this mike jerro pretending to be his cousin uh-huh they like called him uh-huh and said that it was like jesse james hollywood's cousin yeah and that she was like Jesse James Hollywood's cousin. Yeah. And that she was going to come visit him. Uh-huh. And he was like, okay, yeah, come visit me. Like they posed very well as this fake long lost cousin that he was somewhat familiar with. And so they set up a meeting at some mall in Brazil. Oh my God. And they, he went there to meet her and they were able to take him into custody.

I love it. Yes. So he finds out he's not protected at all. So they bring him back to the United States and the Markowitz's were thrilled that they'd finally get the justice that they had been hoping for for five years now. Yeah. But trying Jesse James Hollywood

for the murder of Nicholas Markowitz would be anything but quick. The biggest delay came from Hollywood. The place, not the person. What? In the time between the completion of the other trials and the capture of Jesse,

a movie about the case had been developed. Though the movie changed the names of everyone involved, it stuck very closely to the facts of the case. The reason it was able to do so was because the prosecutor, Ron Zonin, was serving as an unpaid consultant on the film and had supplied all of the case files.

on the film and had supplied all of the case files. The Markowitz family had also been working with director Nick Cassavetes on the movie. When asked about this by Chris Hansen, who does this episode of Dateline, which it's a good fucking thing I didn't have to watch it because I don't like Chris Hansen. You don't like Chris Hansen? I do not like Chris Hansen. I know you love Chris Hansen. I like it when he's got his pronounce of all the creepy things i don't like chris hansen it's like it's um yeah he's like well there's that guy you really josh mankiewicz fucking hate

josh mankiewicz chris hansen right under there what is it that you don't like about chris hansen i don't know i just really don't like him smug yeah yeah yeah he's smug he is he's very smug man so it's like josh mankowitz chris hansen and then fucking keith morrison's way up here just i on my arm doesn't even reach far enough to show you how i can tell you're upset with your stubby little arms. That's right. So this movie is being developed. The prosecutor is giving the director all of the case files for this entire, all of the trials.

And the Markowitz family is working with them. And so when Chris Hansen asked them about it, Jeff Markowitz, Nick's dad, said that he knew the movie was likely to glamorize the bad guy because that's just how movies work. But he hoped that at the very least, the tragedy of their son's death would come across in the film. This movie is Alpha Dog. It stars Justin Timberlake, Emile Hirsch,ton yelkin sharon stone and bruce willis just

to name a few and that's a good movie i remember 100 sure you've never seen it you know it was in theaters obviously and uh i remember going to the theater you've never seen this movie um so i have seen this movie probably 25 times seriously zach and i what this movie came out while zach and i were dating it was before we were married oh my gosh we loved this movie we watched it all the time i have never heard of it. It's really good. I believe it. So this is what I didn't say earlier. So what I was going to say earlier, my opinion of

Jesse Ruge is greatly influenced by this movie because it paints him as a very sympathetic character and he's played by Justin Timberlake. I knew you were going to say that. So that's why I can't really give you

a clear opinion of what I think of him because based on just how he is portrayed in the movie. Yeah, which you've seen a million times. A million times. I think that, yeah, he truly was very remorseful about what happened and it's not how he wanted things to happen at all um but i don't i don't know that that's true in real life maybe he got off super fucking easy i don't know yeah so this movie was slated for a 2006 release but in december of 2005

jesse james hollywood's attorney james bl, filed a motion to block its release. Blatt said that the ability for his client to get a fair trial would be greatly impacted by its release, especially since the prosecutor assigned to his client's case had contributed to it. And should a juror see the film, it would greatly impact their ability to remain impartial. Okay. Yeah. The motion to block the movie's release was denied, but the prosecution did agree to dismiss any potential juror who had seen the film. Yeah.

I think that's fair. Yeah. Yeah. Next, the defense filed a motion to get prosecutor Ron Zonen, Zonen, Z-O-N-E-N. Why do you always ask me how?

How would you pronounce it? I'm always wrong. I think Zonin. Zonin. So they filed a motion to get prosecutor Ron Zonin removed from the case, stating that his involvement in the film created a conflict of interest. Zonin argued that there was no conflict of interest at all and that he had only consulted on the movie because he felt that its release would help aid in the capture of Jesse James Hollywood. Well, and if all he did was say what happened and share files, I don't think that's that bad. This argument would drag on forever. In fact, it went all the way to the California Supreme Court.

Supreme Court! But on May 12, 2008, the California Supreme Court ruled that no conflict of interest existed. And Senior Deputy D.A. Zonin was free to prosecute the case. Yeah, I agree. In the opinion, Justin Catherine Wettigar Justice Catherine? What did I say? Justin Catherine.ettigar. Justice Catherine? What did I say?

Justin Catherine. Oh, yes. Justice Catherine. Weird matching names there. Justin Catherine. Justice Catherine Wettigar wrote that they were not pleased with Zonin's actions. We find his acknowledged actions in turning over his case files without so much as an attempt to screen them

for confidential information highly inappropriate and disturbing. I mean, yeah, that's his ego on full display, I think. But we found no reason to believe that there's any conflict of interest and he's free to argue the case. I think that's totally well oh yeah justin catherine nailed it justin catherine totally nailed it despite this ruling though district attorney christy stanley decided to remove zonin

from the case out of an abundance of caution and to avoid further distraction she didn't want there to be an appeal. Yeah. Okay. Yep. He was replaced by Joshua Lynn, the chief trial deputy for Santa Barbara County. On May 15th, 2009, the murder trial of Jesse James Hollywood was finally underway. About damn time. It had been nine years since the murder. For reference, Graham Presley and William Skidmore had both already been released from prison at this point. Okay, that's not funny, but it is kind of funny. Right? That's ridiculous. That's ridiculous. Yeah.

During his opening statement, Joshua Lynn stood before a jury of nine women and three men holding a large picture of Nick. He told them that Nick was just a regular teen trying to find his place in life. Yes, he smoked marijuana. Yes, he fought with his parents. But he was just a regular kid. And Jesse James Hollywood masterminded his kidnapping and murder. And Jesse James Hollywood masterminded his kidnapping and murder. Jesse James Hollywood killed Nicholas Markowitz like he pulled the trigger himself.

The evidence will show Mr. Hollywood is a ruthless coward, Lynn told the jury. The trial drew capacity crowds every day. And Nick's parents were there in the front row watching the whole thing. Among those to testify was one of Jesse's co-defendants, Graham Presley, and several of his former friends, including Chaz, who drove Jesse from Colorado to California. Jesse's former girlfriend, who had initially gone on the run with him, testified. She testified that she was still in love with him, which is really sad for her. Oh, God. Kind of gross, yeah.

Honey. Yeah. You can do better, I promise. I don't know you at all, and I assure you, you can do better. Find literally any guy who's not involved in the murder of a child and you're good. So she testified, as did the lawyer who he had called and asked the hypothetical question to. Really? What about attorney-client privilege? Yeah, I don't know.

Huh. Okay. Yeah. That is an interesting question. Thank you. Yeah. And yet we don't have the expertise to answer it. We don't have the expertise to answer that.

Maybe both your mom and dad yeah they'll probably text me and fill me in ben markowitz also testified nick's brother the testimony went on for weeks then on june 22nd 2009 jesse 2009, Jesse James Hollywood took the stand in his own defense. What a fucking idiot. Of course he did. He told the court that he felt terrible for everyone involved in the case. Oh, sure. Yeah. But that he never ordered anyone to kill Nick.

He testified that after Ryan Hoyt had killed Nick, he had called Jesse and told him that he and Jesse Rook had fucked up, that they'd done something bad. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm sure that's exactly how that went down. Yeah. I'm sure Ryan Hoyt took it upon himself to kill that fucking kid. Yeah.

The kid that's cleaning up, the guy that's cleaning up the dog shit in your backyard, I'm so sure. Yeah. On cross-examination, Joshua Lynn held up an 8x10 picture of a schoolboy with a sheepish crooked smile. Who's this a picture of? he asked Jesse. It's a picture of Nicholas Markowitz, Jesse answered.

Do you realize that in your three hours of direct examination today, you rarely mentioned Nick's name? Lynn asked him. And Hollywood stammered but didn't really answer and lynn continued on how much force did you have to use when you pinned nick up against that tree and let rugen skidmore punch on him before throwing him in the van jesse answered i had to use a significant amount of force nick is taller than me nick was taller than you lynn corrected he was taller than you mr hollywood i think that's pretty uh that's pretty good good yeah that's really good. Yeah. That's really good. Closing arguments took place on July 1st, 2009. Joshua Lynn stood in front of the jury and called Jesse James Hollywood a child killer and king of the thugs.

He asked the jury to deliver justice, saying the case was not really about the defendant at all. That it was about a 15-year-old boy named Nicholas Markowitz who would still be alive today if it weren't for a chance meeting with Jesse James Hollywood. God, that's so sad. Oh, it's so sad. Before concluding, Lynn held up three gruesome pictures of Nick's bullet-riddled body as it lay in the shallow grave. Look at Nick Markowitz, he told the jury. This is what was left of Nick. The jury began deliberating on the case on July 3rd, and Wednesday, July 8th, they returned with a verdict. Wow, that took a long time. There was a weekend in there.

Oh, okay. They still, they did deliberate for a few days, but there was a weekend in there. Well, they did deliberate for a few days, but there was a weekend in there. They found Jesse James Hollywood guilty of first-degree murder with special circumstances, and they also found him guilty of the kidnapping. The special circumstances conviction meant he was eligible for the death penalty. The penalty phase began on July 13th, and the defense put forward several character witnesses for Jesse, including his mother and grandfather, who testified that he was a good person with a kind soul but judge

Brian Hill instructed the jury not to base their sentencing decision simply on the sympathy they might feel for the defendant's family yeah in contrast Nick's family delivered victim impact statements to the court. Ben Markowitz sobbed on the stand, riddled with guilt for his responsibility in his brother's death. He trusted me, he said through tears, and looked up to me like my son does now. It's just then I was such a piece of shit that I didn't respect it. God, that's so sad. Yeah, that you don't get a chance to be better with it. Oh. God, that's so sad. Yeah.

That you don't get a chance to be better with somebody. Yeah. Oh, it's devastating. Susan, Nick's mother, testified that her life was devoid of joy with Nick in it. She said she's completely had to detach from the life that she had before to even be able to get out of bed every day. On Wednesday, July 15th, after just under two days of deliberation, the jury recommended a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Really? They didn't give him the death penalty. Okay.

of parole. Really? They didn't give him the death penalty. Okay. What do you think about that? That he didn't get the death penalty, but Ryan Hoyt did. Well, Ryan Hoyt's the one who actually did the murder, right? Yeah, but he wouldn't have done it if Jesse hadn't told him to. Still. Yeah.

Yeah. So I'm not for the death penalty. Right. At all, but the thing that would piss me off a lot as a juror is that he ran away and he got away with it for so long. And so to me, that would kick it up an entire another notch. But yeah, I think you do have to take into account that he wasn't the one who pulled the trigger. Yeah. Yeah.

I think it's very interesting that he didn't get the death penalty and Ryan Hoyt did. I'm surprised that he didn't get the death penalty and Ryan Hoyt did. I'm surprised that he didn't get the death penalty. I am too. Yeah. Jesse has appealed his sentence twice, once on the grounds that he should not have been found guilty because Nick could have left any time of his own free will and chose not to. No. Man, talk about blaming the victim.

Good God. All of his appeals have been denied and he remains in prison. He is incarcerated at the Calapatria State Prison in California. In January of 2014, Jesse married Melinda Enos, a woman who had been writing him following his conviction. They married in the visiting room of the prison. The Markowitz family

also filed a civil suit against Hollywood and were awarded $11.2 million in damages. They'll never see any of that money. That's the case of Jesse James Hollywood. Oh, that was sad. Yeah. So the movie

Alpha Dog, so it sticks almost exactly to the actual story. Okay, let me look it up right now. The big difference is that they changed the character names. Oh, it only has a 54% on Rotten Tomato a 54 i think it's really good other people disagree um i 50 i'm shocked i really liked it okay well you need to start

rating this stuff but it definitely so the thing that the markowitz has said that it glamorizes the bad guy i it definitely does not glamorize jesse james hollywood okay but for sure you feel sympathetic towards jesse rughe in the are you sure those weren't just like your feelings for justin timber i don't think so i don't think so all right okay that was good. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. So yeah. So Zach and I used to watch that movie a lot.

Was that like your every weekend thing? Yeah. It's like one of our favorite movies when we were dating. Yeah. Man. Yeah. You know what? Norman and I used to watch a lot when we were dating.

Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders? Oh, no. He hates that. Oh, okay. Give or go on YouTube and look up hamster on a piano. What? It's this hamster that's

on its back on a piano eating popcorn and there's this song that goes along with it. It goes, hamster on a piano. Hamster on a piano. Anyway, we watched the shit out of that video oh my god oh that's interesting uh i guess i'll have to see it um what do you think longest case i've ever covered no i don't know i mean hang on it's definitely it's my longest um episode write

up to date for sure whoa word count wise we've been we've been talking for an hour and a half yeah now granted the first we started a little early with the chit chat no that's a lot yeah it was a long case it was good though thank though. Thank you. I definitely have to pee. Had you heard of that case? No. Okay. No. Okay, go pee.

I mean, I love that movie and all. Shut up! Why are you looking like that? I don't know. I think I've had too many margaritas. One and a half. Are we a couple of lightweights? We definitely are.

Well, so spoiler alert alert you know what this is about do you think everyone knows what it's about i think so it's pretty high profile okay so i almost did this when i did my mom series i you know when i was doing this one you know i texted you because i was like this this has brandy written all over, it was a little too depressing for me. Well, you know how I sometimes will. Okay. I found this one in a funny, upbeat way. Oh, great. Explain that.

You're going to have to wait till the end. Okay. And I swear I will get to it. Okay. But yada, yada, yada. I found it in this funny way. I was like, oh, well, that'll be kind of fun. And then I looked it up.

It was like, oh, shit. Oh, geez. But then I was in too deep. Yeah. So here we go. Yeah. So first of all, some shout outs to ThoughtCo.com, which is a site I'd never been to before. But they had a really good profile on Andrea Yates.

And also there was a show that I'd also never heard of called Mugshots. And they did an episode on Andrea Yates. Yeah. So those two things. I thought it was a TV show called Mothers Who Drown Their Children. Oh, God. It's one of those IT shows shows they got a show about everything hopefully she'd be like the only one right no i can think of another one right off the top of my

head i'm sure there's a lot jeez there was a local case just the other day. She was just sentenced like two days ago. And it was a Lawrence case. Oh. You have surely heard it because she has the craziest name. Damn it. What the fuck's her name? Well, obviously. It's like Dinglehopper.

It is not. Dingledyne! It is Sharon Dingledyne. Okay, that's even funnier. Dingledyne? Dingledyne! Oh no. Yeah, and it's Sharon with like a bunch of extra letters in it.

Well, that's the start of your problems. S-C-H-A-R-O-N. No, wrong, wrong. Anyway, my point is that there would be plenty of material for mothers who drown their children coming this fall on Investigation Discovery. That sounds horrible. I'm just saying. Here we go.

Andrea Yates was bright, but deeply troubled. She was born in Hallsville, Texas, and she was the youngest of five children. As a teenager, she did super well in school. She was the captain of her swim team. She was the class valedictorian, and she was an officer in the Honor Society. and she was an officer in the Honor Society. But at the same time, she struggled with bulimia and depression and at one point talked to a friend about committing suicide. Yikes.

But, like a lot of people who struggle with their mental health, she just soldiered on. After high school, she went to school for nursing, and all through the mid-80s and early 90s, she worked as a registered nurse at the MD Anderson Cancer Center. What? I'm listening! You did a creepy lip lick. My lips feel so chapped all of a sudden. Really?

Yeah, I think it's because I just fucking talked so much. You need to lube them up. Are you a Carmex family or a Chapstick family? I'm a Blistex family. Whoa. You bougie. That stuff's too minty. No.

Yeah, it's too minty. Yes, it is too minty. No, that is wrong. You gotta go Carmex. Oh, you want to just put straight petroleum on your lips? Yes, it's highly effective. You could do a rectal exam with that stuff. And I do.

Bend over, Norm, and get the Carmex out. We save money by doing our own rectal exams. Still not sure what I'm looking for. So she's got a good job as a nurse. And in 1989, she met a dude, Rusty Yates. Rusty. Rusty. Did he have red hair?

No, but by law, all Rustys should be redheads. I yes i hate the name rusty it's not my favorite at the time both of them were healing from broken hearts why did i that's such a stupid i love it so they were both like 25 rustyy was fresh off of a breakup. And Andrea didn't even start dating anyone until after college. So like she started dating at 23 and she was fresh off a breakup. So the two of them found comfort in each other's arms. Wow. They hung out a ton and spent their time like any 20-something couple does. They prayed a lot and studied the Bible.

I thought maybe they went to concerts and movies. No, no. Wait, wait. What was your relationship like with Zach early on? How much time did you spend studying the Bible together? Just, you know, endless minutes. Okay. So they had an instant connection. They moved in together,

got married in 1993, and bought a house in Friendswood, Texas. Oh no. Oh no. I don't think I'd like to live there with my friends. Okay this is reminding me of the thing you sent me this week. It's the meme of Kermit passed out because he laughed at his own joke.

Yeah. So their goal was to have as many babies as nature allowed yeah it's a heavy goal i cannot imagine oh no thanks right uh they didn't waste time they got got married in April of 1993, and Andrea gave birth to their son Noah in February of 1994. Wow. I mean, off to the races.

At this point, Rusty got a new job in Florida, so they moved out of their four bedroom house and into a 38 foot travel trailer in Seminole, Florida. Do you ever watch Squidbillies? I've seen it before, yes.

Granny on there always calls it semen holes. And I had to tell myself not to call it semen holes and i had to tell myself not to call it steam semen hole in december of 1995 andrea gives birth again this time to a boy named john around this time her mental health starts to decline she stops doing the stuff that was just for her, like jogging and swimming. And oh, by the way, she's living in a 38-foot travel trailer. Just saying.

With three fucking babies! Yeah. Whew! Wait, are they at three yet? Yeah! No. They've got their son Noah, they've got a boy named John. No, they've just got two right now.

No! You already told us two. And then you said... No. No, no, no. Hold on. That margarita's kicking in too hard for you, Missy. I swear you said two kids already.

And then added John. Let me back it up. They got married in April of 93. They have Noah in February of 94. They moved to Florida. Oh, okay. Mm-hmm. Excuse me. Mm-hmm. I apologize. they have noah in february of 94 they moved florida oh okay this is my morgan mendy moment i'll let you know if i accept later

in december oh wait shit i already said that okay then in september 1997, she gave birth to another boy. They named him Paul. Child number three. By this point, they had three young children. They moved back to Houston. They did not get a house. They moved into a 350-square-foot bus that was built in 1978. Why? By the way, Rusty worked for NASA, so he

was, like, this was... Doing alright! Yeah, this was just like a, hey, won't it be fun to really push ourselves to the limit here? Oh my gosh. Rusty bought the van from, or I'm sorry,

the bus. I heard it was a bus. It was a bus. I heard they had three children and it was a bus. See, I would call it an RV, but whatever. Everybody else is calling it a bus. Potato. Potato. Either way, you don't want to live in it with your thousands of children. No.

Rusty bought the bus from a traveling minister named Michael Warnecki. Yes. Yeah, that's exactly how that's pronounced. Rusty and Michael had known each other since the mid-80s. And Michael was a bit of a kooky dude. Rusty thought some of Michael... How kooky was he? He was so kooky that he thought all women were sluts and Jezebel.

I'm sorry, was that not as light as it was supposed to be? I don't think so. So, Rusty thought that some of Michael's religious views were a bit much, but not Andrea. Andrea was all in. Michael preached that the role of women is derived from the sin of Eve and that bad mothers who are going to hell create bad children who will go to hell. Oh my gosh. Yes, that's just the way the cookie crumbles, oh lord. He also believed that medicine and doctors were evil.

He believed that today's churches kind of suck and that they can't really save anyone. I think they're all a little too liberal for his taste. Andrea was like, mm-hmm, yep, nothing insane about that. I'm right there with ya. By the way, this episode of Mugshots, they showed some footage. This guy would make videos of himself with, like, a devil mask on. Oh, my gosh. Very weird. Very weird.

She got so into this guy's worldview that her family and Rusty's family started to worry. to this guy's worldview that her family and Rusty's family started to worry. Then, in February of 1999, Andrea gave birth to their fourth child, Luke. Somewhere in all this, Andrea and Rusty decide that they're going to homeschool the kids. And by they, we mean Andrea. I'm not the least bit surprised by that. And by the way, she was also doing a lot of caregiving for her father who had Alzheimer's. So, shit sandwich on top of shit sandwich. It's at this point that Andrea breaks down. On June 16th, 1999, Andrea called Rusty and said, I need you to come home right now. When he got home,

he found Andrea shaking and chewing her fingers. The next day, she tried to commit suicide by ingesting a bunch of her dad's pills. Oh, gosh. So obviously she was taken to the hospital. And from there, hospital staff transferred her to the psych unit. And they were like,

all right, you definitely have major depressive disorder. And they released her on June 24th with a prescription for antidepressants. But she didn't take them because remember medicine is evil. Doctors are evil. Satan, Satan, Satan, Satan, Satan, Satan. Right. Woo. Yeah. Then things got a whole lot worse. She started self-mutilating, which I always thought it was just called cutting, but...

Self-mutilation? Yeah. That's probably the more correct term. Yeah. Okay. And having all these irrational thoughts. She thought that her children were eating too much food, so she stopped feeding them. Oh my gosh. She thought that the characters on

TV were talking directly to her children. And that there were video cameras in the bus recording her every move. Is that lime okay? Did you make this with tequila out of your haunted cabinet? No, it's the pre-mixed stuff. Why? Because my lime just moved and nothing has touched it in there. That's because a ghost is drinking that margarita with you.

We found out that the original owner of this home died in the home. Are you being serious right now? Yeah. Are you just trying to scare me with the haunted cabinet? No, I'm being serious. Oh my god, he lives right there. He lives in the cabinet that I brought in. Yeah, he's moved into your cabinet. Maybe he died right there. That'd be a weird place to die. Well, I'm sorry. Do you know where he died? I mean, I would assume you die on a couch in bed, not in the corner of the dining room. Maybe a couch was set up right there.

Why would there be a couch in the dining room? I don't know. Maybe in his old age, they converted this into his hospital room to care for him, and he died in his hospital bed right there. He wasn't very old. Oh.

Sorry, that was my haunted house noise. It wasn't very good. It was terrible, in fact. Worst haunted house noise I've ever heard. I will take it. So, oh, now here we go. Oh, shit. Well, I guess it wasn't super light talking about a dead man in my house.

Is it going to get heavy right now? Yeah. my house is it gonna get heavy right now yeah so on july 20th she held a knife to her throat and begged rusty to let her kill herself oh my gosh i know this poor woman i mean it was terrible too much yeah so she goes back to the hospital and stayed there for 10 days while she was there she was put on an antipsychotic drug, and Rusty was so relieved by the results. He felt like he had the old Andrea back. Before Andrea was released, her psychiatrist, Dr. Starbranch,

put her on outpatient care and prescribed her another drug, and she said, hey, do me a favor. Don't have another kid. Because I'm pretty sure that if you have another kid, it's going to bring on another psychotic episode. It'll be bad news all around. All caps highlighted. Don't have another kid. Yeah.

And so she went home and she was like, great, I'm going to get on a regular birth control regimen. Starting up my pills right now so we're not gonna have sex for a month because you know it takes that long to kick in and then we can do it till we're blue in the face rusty and not procreate it went a little better than you're thinking okay so by this point andrea's family's super worried about her well yeah yeah and they're looking at rusty like dude you are a computer engineer for nasa you have four young children buy a fucking house yeah get out the bus get out of your 1978 bus. So he did. And not surprisingly, it really helped. Andrea started swimming again.

She reconnected with friends. Things seemed a whole lot better. But then, in March of 2000, the sources I see point to Rusty encouraged Andrea to get pregnant again and to stop taking the antipsychotic drug that Dr. Starbranch prescribed her. Oh, no. Yeah.

And she complied. In November of 2000, Andrea gave birth to her fifth child, a girl named Mary. Andrea did okay, but then that spring her dad died, and Andrea lost all the progress that she'd made. She refused to speak, refused to feed Mary, refused to ingest any liquids. Oh, my gosh. All she would do was read the Bible.

Wow. All the sources said feverishly read the Bible, which I think is such a... What does that mean? I know. Yeah, very creepy. Ooh, that does sound very creepy. Yeah. Paints a picture for sure.

Mm-hmm. So this time she goes to a different hospital gets a different doctor she gets psychiatrist mohammed saeed and he put her on an anti-psychotic yeah the same one the previous psychiatrist had prescribed but then he took her off of it because by his estimation she wasn't psychotic he released her she came back a few months later, stayed for 10 days, and at the end of that stay, Dr. Saeed told her to think positive thoughts,

told her to go see a psychologist, and he told Rusty, do not leave her alone with the kids. Mm-hmm. Of course, okay, Rusty claims that he was never warned by any of the psychiatrists that Andrea might hurt their children. I feel really conflicted about this because some places really, it's like they almost hold him responsible for this, and I don't think that's fair. Well, that's not fair.

No. But, I mean mean she was starving the kids and trying to yeah come on you gotta yeah you should have picked up on those cues buddy yep so andrea's back at home with the kids she's clearly struggling and rusty's mom steps in to help rusty thought things were going okay ish so he started leaving the kids alone with Andrea for short periods of time. We're talking like an hour in the evening, an hour in the morning. Then, on June 20th, 2001, Rusty left the house to go to work. His mom was scheduled to arrive in about an hour, and that's when Andrea filled up the bathtub and drowned all of her five children.

Ugh. Yeah. So all these sources go into detail. Like, and I'm not really, I mean, you get the picture. That's plenty. Yep. Yep. So, skipping over some stuff, she drowned them one by one, put them in bed, and then she called the police.

What'd she tell the police? That's, okay, it's super weird. Because I listened to some of the 911 call. So the dispatcher's like, what's the problem? And Andrea goes, I just need them to come. I need an officer. And, of course, the dispatcher keeps pressing her, like, you know, what's going on?

What's wrong? And really all Andrea would say was, I need officers. I need an officer. And so finally the dispatcher was like, are you ill? And Andrea was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, just kind of anything. So super weird. She hangs up with the dispatcher.

Then she calls Rusty. Pretty soon, officers arrived at the Yates home. And Andrea told them everything. She said, I just killed my children. Oh, my gosh. Then Rusty arrived. And when he realized what had happened, he collapsed to the ground. So he, I don't think, was allowed to go into the house at this point.

So he was just out on the lawn. That's fucking terrible. Yeah. He was out on the lawn, like, going up to windows, trying to shout into the house to try to figure out what was happening. Police took Andrea out the back door so that she and Rusty wouldn't have contact. And they brought her back to the station to interview her. An officer asked her, when you drew the bathwater, what was your intent?

What were you about to do? And she said, drown the children. The next day, word spread. The crime was all over the children. The next day, word spread. The crime was all over the news. People could not believe that a mom would do this to her children. But people also couldn't believe Rusty. Do you remember what I'm about to say? Okay.

So this is the day after all his children were murdered. He stood in front of his home with a framed picture of the entire family and he just seemed really calm and here's what he said i'm supportive of her i mean it's hard you know like i said because i'm torn one side of me blames her because she did it you know but the other side of me says well you know she didn't because that wasn't her she wasn't in her right frame of mind oh my gosh yeah it was just like super duper calm to the point that i was like was he on some kind of medication to help him through i mean it was just that's odd i watched it and i was like that is the way I would talk about like, well, we had the leftover spaghetti in the fridge.

I wanted it for lunch. I came down and Norm had eaten it. I'm kind of mad, but I can't be totally mad because he's also hungry. Yeah, exactly. Oh my gosh. So immediately people are like, this is weird. Yeah. Super weird.

Meanwhile, Andrea said, I don't want to plead not guilty. I am guilty. I want to be punished. I deserve to be punished. The defense had Dr. Lucy. But there's ever an argument for not reasoned by guilty of insanity. Those words were so mixed up. Not reasoned by guilty of insanity.

Not guilty by reason of insanity. Were all of those words like those magnets? He just got mixed up. I agree with you. So the defense had Dr. Lucy Puryear, a psychiatrist, come in and evaluate Andrea. And Dr. Puryear said, if there was ever a case of not reason but guilty of insanity. No, so this doctor said, Andrea is the sickest person I've ever seen in my life.

She thought, this woman clearly has postpartum psychosis. Yeah. So the defense is like, all right, we need to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, as Brandy suggested so eloquently. But the prosecution was having none of it they were like okay yes andrea yates is clearly mentally ill but she knew right from wrong at the time she killed her children and that's what it comes down to in texas really yeah so i'd be know, like, what the different laws are in different states for this. But in Texas, you can only be not guilty by reason of insanity if you could not tell that what you were doing was wrong in the moment you were doing it. Wow. It didn't really matter, like, your past history.

If you're in psychosis? I think it's dumb. That's crazy. I think that needs to change. Yeah. Because how the hell do you determine that? I have no idea. I mean, can't you just look at her history and be like, well...

Well, couldn't she think it's fine in the moment that she's doing it? And the moment she's done, realize it was wrong? How do you delineate that? Yeah, I don't know. How could you prove? Because by the time she calls 911, she knows it was wrong how do you delineate that yeah i don't know how could you prove because by the time she calls 9-1-1 she knows it was wrong but in that moment when she did it she couldn't maybe didn't know that wow yeah yeah but by now we're a few days out from the crime and they have a bunch of psychiatrists examining

andrea and they get her on medication to stabilize her and that's when she starts to tell them the reason she killed her children. She said she felt like if she killed them while they were still young and innocent that maybe God would let them come to heaven.

She felt like she was a really bad mom and they were going down a bad path. That's the same thing john list said oh god he felt like he killed his kids so that they would make it to heaven because on the path that they were on they would all go to hell except i think john list is full of shit i don't think oh i think she 100 believes it yeah i don't know john i think john list probably believed it too really i do see i don't because he went on the run for all those years andrea yates yeah immediately yeah called yeah i know i think that he 100 knew what was wrong to kill them yeah but he believed that he

was killing them so that they would go to heaven. But if he believed that, then he would know, okay, I need to be punished for murdering my family now, so I need to turn myself in. I don't need to go start a whole new life. A whole new life. Yeah. I mean, I get what you're saying. Well, podcast adjourned. So, at this point, the prosecution is like, and we'd like the death penalty. Kaylin Williford was the assistant district attorney.

And she basically said, look, if Andrea Yates had gone off and killed a neighbor's five children because she thought they were going to go to hell, would people show any sympathy at all? No. No, they wouldn't. But when a mother does it to her own children, we just can't conceive that it could be a purely evil act. No, I don't think that's true. No? I think you could see it as a purely evil act,

but you can't look at it without taking her mental state into consideration. I'd be interested to know what the prosecution, like if you were to sit down and talk with them, like not with cameras on them, what their real views are, because like they were so black and white in this. Yeah. And come on,

you can't be that dumb can't be yeah yeah you cannot look at it as a purely evil act you have to take the psychosis into consideration yeah i i just don't see how you can look at it otherwise well what if you really want to win a case a few months later a jury said, she's competent to stand trial. The defense was like, holy shit, here we go. So they put on a mock trial just to see kind of what they're up against, how things might work out. It did not go well. Yeah, I imagine it did not.

It's Texas. Yeah. And also, I feel like we've come a long way with kind of awareness of mental health yeah i think that yeah this time there was very little understanding this was like 2000 i think so like 20 years ago yeah 2000 really that late i think so yeah don't question me i mean it's your fucking case, Kristen. Yeah, or Google it. Hang on. I'm pretty sure it's 2000. That's a disgusting laugh. Hang on.

2001. Wow, her hair does not look very 2001-y. You don't think so? What does 2001 hair look like? I think it reads a lot more 1995. Well, when you've got this many children and you're living in a trailer, I mean... A bus, Kristen. A bus. I'm sorry. I feel like you don't have time to do the hair.

I'm just picturing her in a short-sleeved, floor-length floral dress, which reads 1995 to me. Yeah. Yeah. With like, you remember like the spaghetti strap long sleeve dress with like the little white cap sleeve shirt underneath. Yeah. Yeah. So this happened in 2001. Okay. Moving on. So the mock trial doesn't go well because the defense like does all they can. They point out everything to show how mentally

disturbed andrea was they had their expert witnesses blah blah blah but the practice jury just could not get over the fact that she'd killed her kids so the defense is like oh boy then the real trial comes and the prosecution was ready they were like okay we're just going to try her now for three of the children's murders and if they here was their strategy they figure they try to get her for three if the jury says not guilty by reason of insanity then they try her again for the other two just to make sure they get her that's crazy i yeah wow it's pretty intense yeah both sides agreed that meant that andrea was mentally ill this all came yeah i mean how could you not this all came down to was she saying did she know right from wrong at the moment?

And Assistant District Attorney Joe Omby told the jury, hey, here's something that speaks to her state of mind. Here's something that shows how sane she was. She planned this. She waited for the exact right moment between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. to kill her children. She prepared for this. You know, so she waited until Rusty was gone. She knew and 10 a.m. to kill her children. She prepared for this. You know, so she waited until Rusty was gone. She knew she'd have that hour.

Which. I don't think that proves she's sane. I don't either. I think it proves she was able to plan. Yeah. But. But if you're thinking, OK, I've got this plan. I've got this hour window to save my children's souls yeah that's yeah that doesn't

make her sane it means that maybe you can tell time yeah yeah i you know that other people would try i don't think that means shit the defense showed the jury footage of her interviews with psychiatrists where she talked about cartoon characters literally talking to her children they had footage of her talking about satan being in her and wanting to kill satan the defense was pissed that the police didn't videotape her confession because how she acted in the moments after her children's death might really help the jury see what she was like in that moment they were also concerned about how she acted at trial because by that point she was medicated and she looked stable yeah so one of the

psychiatrists who was interviewed said basically as crazy as this sounds it might have been to her legal advantage to not be well medicated. Keep her in a state of psychosis. And yeah, make her look unstable to the jury. Yeah. So that was kind of what the defense had going. Can I look up a picture of her real quick? Yeah,

sure. Yeah. I mean, the picture that I'm thinking of is definitely when the kids, I mean, I think pretty before she killed the kids, obviously. So yeah.

Hmm. Okay. Yeah. Hmm. Okay, continue, sorry. But the prosecution had their own psychiatrist, Dr. Park Dietz, who you might remember. Yeah, that name is very familiar. So I talked about him in our last episode. Yeah.

The Rebecca Schaefer murder case. For that trial, he testified for the defense about the psychology. At a lower fee than he usually does. So he was. But he wasn't trying to advance his career, Kristen. No. He's just a good man. Yes.

So he testified about the psychology of celebrity stalkers and the prosecutor marcia clark was basically like basically like shut up you're a fame-hungry pseudo expert i hate you goodbye yeah so but you know in the meantime he's he continues to be this kind of expert witness. Yeah. Really respected in his field. So he gets there. He's like, hello, everyone. It's me. And he says, I interviewed Andrea. And I think she knew right from wrong.

I asked her. I'm sorry. He's an expert in celebrity stalking. Apparently he branched out. You know, that was a few years. That was like early 90s. Oh my gosh. He goes, I asked her why she called the police after she killed her kids.

And she said, that's who you call when you've done something wrong. She knew after she did it. Yeah. I don't think that that shows that she was, she knew right from wrong in the moment when she was doing it. Then Dr. Dietz dropped a bombshell. He was like, by the way, jury, have any of you heard of a little show called Law and Order? Well, guess fucking what? Andrea has.

She enjoys the program immensely. And you know something? They did an episode where a mom drowns all of her children, pleads insanity, and then gets acquitted. And you know what? It aired before June 20th. Oh, my gosh. So he's saying she's faking it.

Yeah. She got the idea from TV. She put it into motion and now she's trying to trick everybody. Holy shit. That's a pretty bold accusation. Yeah. What would it do for you if you were on the jury? Oh, I think it would give me some questions.

Oh, I would be like, oh, okay. If I was on the fence. Yeah. Yeah. Holy shit. So the trial lasted three and a half weeks they went into closing arguments and the prosecution talked on and on about the law and order episode because you know yeah good stuff the jury deliberated for three and a half hours and they found andrea guilty of capital murder. Really?

Three days later, the jury got back together to decide whether Andrea should get the death penalty. Defense attorney Wendell Odom talked about the 11 doctors who'd all testified about Andrea's mental illness. He said, if a truck driver has a stroke and runs over five children, you wouldn't convict him of murder, would you? But somehow we treat mental health different. Mental illness is a disease. It's a defect. Yeah, I mean, I agree with that. Then he took aim at Park Dietz. He said, that guy loves famous trials. You know what he does?

He does this. People hire him to come testify for them at $500 an hour. So the defense just like that. Plus travel expenses, I bet. Oh, yeah. And he's not staying at the Super 8. No, definitely not. So the defense just railed against Park Diaz. But deep down inside, I think they loved him. Really? Because?

This is fucking nuts. Okay. Because the jury deliberated whether to give Andrea the death penalty on a Friday. And that morning, both the defense and the prosecution learned something huge

about Park Dietz's testimony. The Law & Order episode thing was total bullshit. No episode. He made it up! No such episode existed holy shit yeah yeah fucking mistrial uh-huh did they move to have a mistrial declared well see that's the thing so holy. Holy shit. I know.

Okay. This was the light thing. So, you know, last week I was looking into Park Dietz because I was like, there's something about this guy. He just, you know, there's just something about him. So I went to his like to like his Wikipedia page or something. And I started reading through all the things he's testified about. And then I got to the Andrea Yates one with this made up law and order episode and i was like oh my god how did he think he was gonna get away with that i'll get to his explanation later and don't let me not get to it later you

better get to it okay or i'll get to you you do know what that means i'm gonna get the ghost to come attack you so the jury has already found andrea guilty the court decides to move forward forward with sentencing but they instruct the jury to disregard all the law and order stuff which come on i think you've already found her guilty you can't undo that no they deliberated for 40 minutes and they sentenced her to life in prison but the defense was like awesome brandy suggested we try to go for a mistrial i think we'll do it yeah so the appellate court unanimously agreed that the false testimony could have easily swayed the jury. So they're like, absolutely new trial.

This time, just like last time, she pleads not guilty by reason of insanity. Oh, OK. I am going to pause here. So Park Diaz apparently was like a consultant for Law & Order. So sometimes, like, I assume they'd like sent him scripts. He'd kind of weigh in with his legal expertise. He later explained

that he had kind of mishmashed two different episodes together. But, I mean, he just really fucked it all up. Yeah. Holy shit. The other thing was,

I read this article where he was really kind of angry and defensive about his reputation kind of going to shit over this. But, I mean, dude. Wow. You really messed up. Yeah. Because he was like, I offered to pay out of my own pocket to fly back and re-testify. I was like, yeah, buddy, that's like the least you can do, but okay.

So, new trial. This time, just like last time, she pleads not guilty by reason of insanity. And she's allowed to go out on bail as long as she stays in a mental health facility. So she goes to trial. And it was very similar to the first, so I'm not going to rehash it. So I did look up on and on newspapers.com where the prosecution was like yeah we're gonna we're gonna call park diez again i couldn't find anything because i thought okay well that's crazy i wouldn't call him again yeah but um they said they were gonna do it i didn't find any article about his testimony.

So I wonder if they just decided not to do that. Because it was, yeah. Yeah. I don't know why they would call him again. No. Yeah. Fool me once with a fake episode of Law & Order. Shame on you.

So this time the jury found her. Guilty. so this time the jury found her guilty not reasoned by guilty of insanity so she was committed to a mental hospital i completely think that law and order thing would have been a huge deciding factor yes absolutely, absolutely. Holy shit. Yeah, so she was Yeah, they found her not guilty. Yeah. She'll be held there until she's deemed to no longer be a threat. She's still there now? Oh yeah.

Andrea's attorney called it a watershed event in the treatment of mental illness. In between the You know what? I assume she's still there, actually. I don't know that. As of June 20th, 2018. What? She is still in... Oh, she's still in, yes. The

facility in Purille, Texas. Perville State Hospital. So in between the two trials, Rusty and Andrea divorced. But in 2015, he did an interview with Oprah and said that he still calls Andrea on the phone and visits her about once a year in the mental hospital. Once a year, really? Yeah.

He says he has always blamed her illness for the kids' deaths. Yeah. I believe he has since gotten remarried, but he's gotten divorced again. So that's the story of Andrea Yates. I think for sure not guilty by reason of Andrea Yates. I think for sure. Not guilty by reason of insanity. Yeah.

Yeah. And I don't, I don't like that. So many people like seem to be blaming rusty entirely for this. I mean, that's just, yeah, no,

I don't think rusty could have done. I, she would have found an opportunity to i think rusty probably could have done better yeah um but i think that to me that's guilty of not being the best spouse yeah uh which is not criminal. Name practice. Oh, my gosh. That sucked. Yeah, sorry. I mean, you did a great, but that is a heavy one. It was one of those things, though, like, I didn't have her name memorized.

So when I saw that thing about the Law & Order episode, I was like, hilarious. This will be great. There's a bunch of dead kids in this case it turns out should we talk about how last week we went out for our anniversary episode and we were nearly killed by an order of hot wings oh my gosh okay

yes let's please we had a celebratory dinner. Went to a great happy hour. Half price appetizers. Who can pass that up? We got 8,000 wings for five bucks and we all shit our pants. So the deal was it was you, me and Norm and and we were gonna just order some appetizers wait for zach to get entrees yeah so you know we get our wings and i mean we the second she set them down

on the table it's like yeah they don't look great yeah they looked kind of not quite cooked they yeah they looked a bit off but did that stop us from eating them? Well, it slowed you and me. Slowed us down. Not Norm. Norm took the brunt of the punishment from the wings. So I was trying to add it up. I had two wings.

I had two wings. Norm had six. Yeah. And there were still wings left on the plate, which I have never in my life cut myself off from hot wings that shows how bad yes me neither i love hot wings yeah so we were sitting there we had our appetizer we zach arrived we had our entree oh and zach turned down the wings when he got just by looking at them yeah he was like was like, I think, because we're like, hey, there's some wings left.

And he's like, no, I think I'm good. You know, they looked kind of like plastic toddler food. They did. So all of a sudden, maybe I'll cut this

if Norm doesn't want me to go into this much detail, but like, you know, we're all sitting there, we're all talking and Norm's like, I gotta go to the bathroom

and just beelines. Yeah. Comes comes back sits for five whole seconds yeah i don't know he's like my guys gotta go to the bathroom again and so then we were like really worried like oh my god was it his entree yeah if it's the hot wings we're all going down so you dropped us off at our house uh and then like half an hour you texted me in all caps it's the wings well when i dropped you off you and i were trying to decide if our tummies were rumbling. Well, because part of me is like, am I paranoid? Am I just like really anxious because I feel like there's a chance something bad is happening? No, turns out no.

Not paranoia. It was in fact the wings. We nearly died, folks, having some celebratory hot wings. But do we look better now that we've had that colon cleanse from those wings? Oh, God! So that was our anniversary dinner. Boy. Man, I have to tell you about something that's deeply troubling

to me. Oh, okay. Go ahead. Casey had a dream that she and you and my dad all played taboo and did not invite me to join in. That is hilarious. I love it.

You know what I think would be torture for you? Like all of us playing taboo and you're like behind a glass partition. So you can watch us like messing up and not playing well. And you can't, we can't hear you. That would literally be torture. Yeah. And then I'd be like,

Hey, here's some hot wings from that place. We ate it last week. We'll be eating good wings. Yeah. You guys have tower tavern wings. I'm having diarrhea wings uh tower tavern is a restaurant in kansas city they have amazing they have the best wings it's

not where we got the celebratory obviously not clearly not why we didn't go there i don't know the thing we kept talking about was like why the hell did we try this other place yeah at tower tavern you can get the wings like charred and then their sauce is so good and they don't skimp on it there's pools of it on the plate still when you're done yep now here's the big question will you eat another wing oh 100 you think that's turning me off of wings you know how normal i won't eat wings from that place again yeah of course well i don't know that i want to eat i don't want to eat anything from that place again first of all there were multiple issues with this yeah first of all um we thought that they had like hot boxed the place before we got there turned out that i think the people behind us were just like super potheads because holy shit, it smelled like they were smoking pot like right then and they weren't.

No. But it was so strong. I could tell by the amount of food they were eating. Okay. Then a little while later, problem two came along. When the table, same table, new group of people, we were there for a while. Oh, I forgot about this. Caught delivered a stinky vagina on a plate.

Brandy! I don't know what the fuck they ordered, but it smelled like the worst, fishiest smell I've ever smelled in my life. It was truly horrific. It was horrible. It was some kind of fish. And I mean, it was astounding. It was like your eyes water. So the waitress brought that over and i'm thinking how are the other people at that

table allowing that person to eat that i know and jen you turned to sack and said sack close your legs and then norm got mad at us norm that immature. Norm thought we were being very inappropriate. He did not care for our fish jokes at all. I thought the restaurant was being inappropriate. I did too. Trying to serve that shit up. Oh my God. I wonder how sick that lady got.

Oh. Who knows if she lived to tell the tale. Seriously. I mean, that was horrifying. It was so bad oh my gosh i do wonder if we are more loud than we think we are oh i guarantee we are oh well okay were you gonna try and defend us well i thought we were kind of whispering about how it smelled like a vagina i mean maybe maybe that was a psa to that lady i think i wanted that lady to like

realize that i think her fish had turned into a vagina shout out to everyone who's listening to this at work shout out to everyone who's eating fish may your fish be fragrant in a good way in a good way yes i hope it smells like lemon butter oh okay we can't no yeah no more stinky i had i had forgotten all about that. That was bad. Yeah. Bad, bad, real bad. You know what wasn't bad, bad, real bad? What? All of the love we have gotten on social media for celebrating our one year anniversary.

It's been really exciting. Thank you to everyone who sent us messages and comments and all of that good stuff. Yeah, that was so sweet. It was. It felt like everybody was celebrating with us. Yeah, it was really, really fun. We had a really good time reading all of that and made us decide we'd put out more episodes. We were thinking of giving it up.

We were on the fence. After those hot wings took us out, we were like, is this a sign? This is a sign that the podcast shall come to an end. Norman, our 50% owner, almost died that night at the restaurant oh that's that's bad when you got the restaurant poops oh that's what i told norm i said okay worst case scenario is you get sick when you're still at the restaurant and then someone else comes in the bathroom while you're there. Oh, yeah.

But luckily, he found a private bathroom and he was, he had his own private party. If Norman has a superpower, it is finding private bathrooms. Wow. I mean, yeah, I don't know how impressive that is. I think it's pretty impressive. Like, every workplace he's ever been to, you know, he always finds the private place. Minus the time that the guy stuck his eyeball in his. It's because.

So, Norman always talks about, like. It's the best story. Maybe we should wait and have him tell it. But, like, okay. So, you know, in bathroom stalls, sometimes through terrible engineering, there's a gap. And so I guess some guy, when Norman was on the toilet, came and knocked on the stall door. Norman said, occupied. And the guy stuck his eyeball in that crack.

He wanted to see who was in there. I mean, that is just beyond discourteous. That is fucking disgusting. What is the matter with you? I think that he said, this is what I imagine happened with that guy. That guy knocked on the stall. And he's like, Norm's like, occupied. And that guy was like, holy shit, is that the gaming store?

I wonder if he'll sign something. But seriously, folks, thank you for all of the love and support you've sent to us. If you are not following us on social media, what the fuck is wrong with you? Find us. You're just like the guy peeping in through the crack of that bathroom stall. That is right. You might as well be peeping in the crack.

So please, find us on Facebook. Find us on Twitter. Find us on Instagram. We're in all of those places, we promise. And on YouTube. Yeah, we're also on YouTube. Don't be a crack peeper. Follow us on social media.

And then be sure to join us next week. When we'll be experts on two whole new topics. Podcast adjourned. And now for a note about our process. I read a bunch of stuff, then regurgitate it all back up in my very limited vocabulary. And 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. For this episode, I got my info from newspapers.com, the Associated Press, thoughtco.com, and the Andrea Yates episode of Mugshots.

And I got my info from an episode of Dateline, an amazing article in Los Angeles Magazine by Jesse Katz, the Santa Barbara Independent, the Los Angeles Times, and Wikipedia. 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.