Let's Go To Court! - 6: Smiling Bob & the Slender Man Stabbings

Episode Date: March 19, 2018

WARNING: The audio in this episode is rough. What can we say? We were young(ish), dumb, and thought we’d save a little money by sharing one microphone. Yeah. The audio quality improves drastically after episode 9.  Remember those ‘Smiling Bob’ commercials from the early 2000’s? Of course you do. In this episode, Kristin talks about the man who brought us Enzyte, the “once daily tablet for natural male enhancement.” It’s an insane story, full of fake clinical trials, phony customer satisfaction surveys, and a bunch of other fabrications. But oddly, none of those lies are what brought Steve Warshak down. It was the company’s business practices that ultimately took him to prison. Then Brandi talks about the heartbreaking story of two 12-year-old girls who lured their friend into the woods and stabbed her multiple times. They said they did it to please “Slender Man,” a creepy but 100% fictional internet meme. Thankfully, due to determination, grit, and a level of bad-assery we can only try to imagine, Payton Leutner dragged herself to safety and survived. 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: “Thanks, Smilin’ Bob,” Slate.com “The rise and fall of the Cincinnati boner king,” GQ “Sexual Performance Pill” episode, American Greed “Ohio supplement co. founder gets lower prison term” “Orange is the new white-collar,” Fortune “Updating an email law from the last century,” New York Times In this episode, Brandi pulled from: “The Girls Who Tried To Kill For Slender Man” by Abigail Jones, Newsweek “Slender Man Stabbing Survivor’s Parents: ‘She’s Meant to Do Something Special’” by Lauren Effron and Kelley Robinson, ABC News  

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 Enzyte, the once-daily tablet for natural male enhancement. Once we're through, I guarantee you'll experience 25% growth.

And I'll be talking about the Slender Man Stabbing, a case where two girls' obsession with the online folk legend led to a brutal attack on a 12-year-old girl. So, Brandi, let's start this episode with a little honesty. Let's tell our loyal listeners how good we are at podcasting. Here's how good we are. podcasting here's how good we are last week was the first week right that we did it alone like norman didn't norman wasn't here yeah we're like norm we got this yeah we are experts uh-huh per our tagline so we we bought into our own propaganda that's right we bought into our own propaganda. That's right. And so,

um, and plus we thought it was really easy. Like, duh, you hit the record button. You hit the big red button, according to Zach. And so, uh,

I did, but I messed it up somehow. The bomb. Long story short, we, we did an episode last week and we fucking nailed it we however did not record it i think both of our reactions last week when we realized it hadn't recorded

it said so much about who we are because i like threw myself to the ground. I was like, that was the best episode ever. We're never getting it back. It was the best thing that's ever been recorded. And you were like, well, okay. Um, well, there's no sense in us getting upset. We'll just have to rerecord it. I was the five-year-old and you were the mom. And so here we are. I don't know how weird this is going to sound, but we're going to just retell the story. We're just going to do it again. And it's going to be like we're hearing it from the first time.

For the first time? I maybe just said from the first time. At least we're recording it. No worries. No worries there. Okay, here we go brandy this story will shock you because you've never heard it before i am hearing this for the very first time so this is the story of the man behind insight the once daily tablet for natural male enhancement i remember theight commercials very well.

Okay, here's the thing. I don't know what kind of crazy magic they had in those commercials, but those commercials came out like a really long time ago. Yes. But everyone remembers the Smiling Bob commercial. Oh yeah, and like the whistly tune that was like with it yeah for sure was it do do do do do do do do yes yes man i really paid attention to those penis commercials penis commercials so picture it 1996 steven warshack started berkeley premium nutraceuticals in an ohio basement with his mom and his college friends. That's where I run my pharmaceutical company out of. Oh, yeah.

My basement. Nothing reassures people like I made this in my basement like my mom. No, it's not meth. Relax, it's just crack. Everyone be cool. So they get in on penis pills right away and at the time it was super common to advertise those pills in the back of sketchy magazines and i see your face turning because you remember what i'm about to tell you next hit me with it. Okay. Oh, God! Okay. You all are about to hear why that's disgusting to say.

So, he did these really crude advertisements. And, okay. Oh, here's a good thing about recording this for the first time after rehearsing it once. I can say, if you have kids in the car or wherever you are... This is not appropriate for a small... Not even close. It's barely appropriate for not even close it's barely appropriate for us it's not 31 year old wait 30 32 oh 31 thanks a lot yeah i'm 32 i'm 31 i am a baby okay so here's what one of the ads said watch your lover's astonished look as you shoot power

packed gobs of cum up to 13 feet away okay i just need to like digest that for a minute and that's disgusting what i just said word choice information not the gobs of... Uh-huh. In what world is this something that men are wanting to shoot gobs 13 feet across the room? And what woman... I mean, I think the word astonished is where they lose me. Horrified? Horrified. Duck and cover? Yes. Yes. where they lose me horrified horrified um ducking cover yeah yeah watch your lover ducking cover as you shoot power back gobs of gun absolutely we could have really helped them that's right

unfortunately we were in elementary school at the time um another one they had was it'll make you harder than chinese arithmetic okay so i'm just imagining in most scenarios i feel like these are things that a guy would go to the doctor for listen doc my dick is harder than chinese arithmetic and i'm shooting gobs of gum 13 feet across the room please help me you're saying why would anyone want these problems um yeah so so that was how they advertised it um but then 1998 Viagra hits the market. And people went crazy for it. I also recall that. You also recall going crazy for it? Yes, I lost my mind.

I was like, get me that little blue pill. I was 12 in 1998. But you had a lifetime. Sorry, we are definitely cutting that yeah so around this time steven is inspired and he decides i'm going to class things up a bit so in 2001 he introduces enzite and he hires randy spear Randy Spear, which is his former porn star, you would think, with that last name, to direct a much classier ad campaign. So this is the campaign we were talking about. So this wonderful article in GQ went through a list of some of the Smiling Bob commercials.

My favorite part of the article, even though it was great and well-researched, blah, blah, blah. Best part's the headline. The headline is, The Rise and Fall of the Cincinnati Boner King. I mean, I was trying to become the Kansas City Boner King, so. You know what?

No one's claimed that. Nobody's's claimed that i'm trademarking it right now uh-huh tm right now yes so the first ad they have smiling bob you remember this he's running through the airport running through security and the voiceover says bob is not traveling as light as he used to okay now last week you did not compliment me on my impression of the voiceover uh it's amazing it's amazing yes thank you christian fishes for compliments i pretty much just demanded it not even fishing i wasn't like so do you think i sound like the guy no so the other one and this one is like seared into my mind smiling bob at the pool party he jumps off the diving board yes this is what i remember yes and the voiceover guy says bob has a big new spring of confidence a generous swelling of pride and And then the third one, Smiling Bob goes bowling.

Bob is throwing them hard and straight. Okay, but here's the other question I have about that one. That one's insinuating that if you have, like, a curve, it's gonna correct that. The thing is, insight was bullshit in all forms, so, like, sure. Like, whatever your penis problems might be we're here to fix you want to shape like a heart it can do that you want to balloon animals out of it watch your lover's astonished face as you turn it into a small dog so the thing about these ads is like i hate to call them subtle because they weren't subtle.

Yes. But they were a lot more subtle than those other ones. Yes. They really toned it down from shooting 13 feet across the room. Damn right they did. They classed it up big time. Pretty woman themselves. And so, like, they were kind of funny and kind of like winking at what they were doing

and they were everywhere a ton of the articles i read said they were on sports networks bullshit um okay well yeah they were on sports networks but they were everywhere because we weren't watching any sports networks when we were watching, and you and I have both seen all of these commercials. Yes, yes. So, my recollection is they were everywhere. Stephen Warshak spent more than $125 million on TV ads. Wow. Mostly for Insight.

It was crazy. That's a lot. I was going to say shit ton, and then I, like, edited myself for some reason. To class this up? When we have said gobs of cum, like, five times in this episode. Listen, I can say gobs of cum, but you can't say shit ton. This will only work if we good cop, bad cop this whole thing. So, their ads were super impressive and made Insight seem legitimate.

But what else helped with Insight seeming legitimate was a few other things. So, a magazine ad said Insight was developed by Dr. Friedrich Tompkins, a physician with a biology degree from Stanford, and Dr. Michael Moore, a leading urologist from Harvard. And I'm guessing that these people were completely real. Uh-huh. And yeah, they checked out. All of their medical backgrounds and accolades were 100% real. Brandi, I've got some bad news. These two dudes did not exist. So he just created two doctors with really good credentials

too i mean it wasn't just like yeah they got an online medical mail order medical degree so here's another impressive tidbit did you know that insight had a 96% customer satisfaction rate? That is impressive. That is very impressive. If it were real, it'd be really, really impressive. But unfortunately, how they did that was they just made a list of 500 of their customers. They marked 480 of them satisfied or very satisfied. And that was their 96% satisfaction rate.

They didn't ask anybody. They didn't do any kind of polling. Bullshit. Here's another impressive fact that's totally true and you shouldn't doubt it at all. Okay. Men who used Insight saw an average of 24% growth in their dingling. Okay. Here's my big problem with this statistic why not say 25 no yes why not say 25 well i know why they didn't say 25 because 24

is more specific it makes it sound more real yes yeah but who is measuring who's starting off the measurement and then who's recording the 24% growth measurement? No one. No one, yeah. That's the answer. The answer for you is it didn't happen. But you want some accuracy in all this fakery, and I'm sorry, that can't happen. So there was a great article about all this in Slate,

and I loved it because they included an email that Warshak wrote about his advertising strategy. Are you ready for this? I am ready. Picture it, all caps, obviously. Yes. Why wouldn't it be? Get three to four bottles of wine, then sit around and make shit up. That's what I do, but write it all down or you'll forget it the next day.

Holy shit. I gotta say, this is my preferred way to work. up that's what i do but write it all down or you'll forget it the next day holy shit i gotta say this is my preferred way to work get wine and make shit up make shit up i mean there's way less work that goes into it that way to do a clinical trial and you can just make it up so here's the sad thing all of this worked the ads looked legit and i looked every bit as real as viagra but it was natural yeah which equals in a lot of minds safer and you don't have to go to your doctor for it. You don't have to have that embarrassing conversation with your doctor. I have noticed, like, the word natural on any product, I'm always like, oh, good. Oh, good.

Now, what the hell does natural mean? Who knows? Who knows what it means? You're like, oh, this is much healthier. Oh, very good. This is clearly the healthier boner pill. These Cheetos are natural. These natural Cheetos are clearly healthier. So, they were natural.

They were also cheaper than Viagra. And like we said, you didn't have to have that humiliating conversation with your doctor. You just, you know, called someone up. It seemed like there was no risk. The commercials always advertised a free sample and some even had a twice your money back guarantee. So people just kind of thought, well, all I have to pay is shipping and handling. No big deal. People started calling in.

Tons of people. According to Warshack, the number of calls from potential customers went from 26,000 in 2001 to 7.8 million calls in three years. Holy shit. Yes. Oh my gosh. It was insane. Yeah. Turns out everybody wants a bigger penis. You get a bigger penis and you get a bigger penis and you get a bigger penis. And it's all a free sample. But here's the craziest part of this whole story. This story is not about insight being bullshit it's about how they scammed people out of money so it's about the way they ran their business you do such a good job of pretending to be surprised cut that out i am surprised okay

so here was the scam they'd get a customer's credit card info because you know the customer actually the truth is i didn't remember anything you told me last week so it's like wow hearing it for the first time i expect you to commit everything to memory that i say i say so many exciting things what if i could repeat back to you exactly what you said last week would that blow your mind right now i'd be ashamed because i i listened back to these for editing and i'm like i sound like a valley girl but not a cool valley girl not like a california valley girl like the real thing i sound like a midwest valley girl because i started everything so so do i So do I. So then. And I've got my nasally bleeding.

So, so yeah, I'm already ashamed. Too late. It's too late. Beat you to it. Okay, where was I? Oh, so the scam. Here was the scam. They'd get a customer's credit card info because the customer would see the ad.

Are you laughing at the fact that I started with so? And it was like the biggest so that's ever been so. So they'd get the customer's credit card because the customer wanted the free sample. And they'd say, you know, okay, that's fine. You just have to pay for shipping and handling, but the product is free. People would be like, great. They'd hand over their credit card info here was the catch they would set the customer up on a continuity plan so that's one of those things where every month they bill you just renews yeah which obviously is not illegal at all what is illegal is when you put someone on a plan like that and you don't tell them yes i can imagine there would be some legal issues around that. That's considered bad.

Yes. And rude. Just darn rude. Charging you with rudeness. So the customer's credit card would get charged on a monthly basis whether they wanted it to be charged or not. Whether they wanted the product or not. And it was really difficult to get off the continuity program. This is where it gets really fucked up. So for some people, you know, the customer service person would be like, okay, that's fine. You can get off Insight. We're just going to need a notarized note from your doctor

saying that your penis has not grown. Nobody's going to get that. First of all, even if you wanted that, what doctor? Yes. Like, okay, let me check my charts here. Yes, last prostate exam, I measured your penis. Let me remeasure it now. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

I've seen, well, it's not 24%. I've seen about an 8% growth, sir. Or are you just excited to see me? So, of course, nobody wanted to do that. Nobody did that. No! The other thing they did was they would say, oh, you know, obviously people would be fucking pissed when they called in. And so they'd be like, I want to talk to management or whatever. They'd be like, oh, yeah, that's fine.

You can talk to our head of customer service, Michael Johnson. Michael Johnson, who, let's see, did not exist. You have noticed a theme here. And can we just talk about they gave him the last name Johnson? I know. I feel like they really should have kicked it up a notch, though, and named him, like, Richard Johnson. I think they should have just named him, like, Penis. Plus, Bob.

Let's not be subtle at all. Richard R. Penis. What are we taking? All of these calls. Yeah, you just hang on the line. For the definitely real head of customer service. So, it goes without saying, but tons of people start complaining. They are livid.

And calling Berkeley Nutraceuticals doesn't get them anywhere. So since they were having such a tough time getting their money back, they started calling their credit card companies to get the charges removed. This creates an issue for our good pals, Berkeley Nutraceuticals. As a result of all this, Berkeley started getting a really bad chargeback ratio. And the definition of a chargeback is a demand by a credit card provider for a retailer to make good the loss on a fraudulent or disputed transaction. So credit card companies hate these. I assume because they're annoying to deal with. And the fact that they had to do so many of them put Berkeley Nutraceuticals ability

to even accept credit cards at risk. Oh, wow. So that would have that would have just completely crippled their company. That's their whole their whole business plan. Yeah, they have to get your credit card. Yeah, they can put you on the continuity program like if they can't do any of that then they're fucked then they're just a little penis so they they start to kind of realize all right we've got to we've got to do something here because their continuity program is their lifeblood so they they get creative. And by that I mean shittier. So there's an article in Slate that explains exactly what they were doing. So I'm just going to read to you from it. It says, Berkeley went frantic in its attempt to keep the chargeback ratio low. The company double dinged

on charges, splitting transactions into two parts, one product one for shipping billing each separately by 2003 it was triple dinging charges to make the volume of good transactions appear higher if berkeley thought its chargeback ratio was too poor in any given month employees would bill warshack's personal credit cards with a host of one1 transactions until his credit card limits were reached. Warshak would then be reimbursed by the company. Holy shit. Oh, it gets better. So when even more good transactions were needed,

Berkeley simply plucked random customers from its database, charged their credit cards, then immediately refunded the money. In April 2002, for instance, 2,482 customer credit cards were billed $19.95 each, after which the charges were reversed. If people called to complain, Berkeley blamed a computer glitch. Holy shit. Yeah.

Yeah, sorry about that, ma'am. We had a computer glitch. We've already reversed the charge. You'll see that back on your card in three to five business days. Yeah, you would have been great in the call center. And you know, people would be like, oh, okay. Oh, okay. That makes sense.

You would never suspect. I mean, no. Yeah. I would never suspect that a company, which I thought was, you know, on the up and up, was, yeah, doing that. No. I can't believe you didn't try to turn that into a pun

you know that is the one thing i noticed like in all these articles like there was these journalists they were having some fun with friends they were having fun in the american greed episode there was this one part like where they go through the scheme and then the very serious voiceover guy goes we're customers getting the shaft but he didn't say that it was like they gave him the script and he was like i'm not doing this i'm not gonna put that little inflection on there. And what else? I feel like there was one other one where, like, the... Oh, well. No. Well.

The shaft is enough. The shaft. The shaft is plenty. God. Okay, so this was huge. The Better Business Bureau got thousands of complaints about Berkeley. So in 2004 2004 get this the fbi fda irs and the postal inspection service worked together to investigate berkeley okay if any one of those people investigate you you're like

shitting your pants if all of them are investigating you at one time you fucked this is the superhero movie where all of them come together you're not just dealing with batman i like that that's probably the one superhero that you can name oh that's it super you've exhausted me i can't name any others all right so around this time warshack knows that this can't go on forever um because he's supposedly super smart that's right i call bullshit on that i we we talked about this a lot yes i'm really annoyed because everyone says how smart he is and part of me knows he has to be smart. Yes. But I really don't want to go there just because he was lying and stealing.

Yes. And so that doesn't make you a genius. Right. Exactly. To lie to people. Yes. Or does it? or does it anyway did i say the thing about how he's putting a ton of money into his wife's no yeah okay hang on i'm really parched today it's because we don't have that uh

humidifier going which you were like no no no i'm. I'm good today. Okay, so around this time, Warshak knows this can't go on forever. So he starts putting a ton of money into his and his wife's bank account. Starts putting some into a personal account. He's trying to set himself up. Yeah. But the investigative groups keep at it. And on March 16th... He's like a squirrel hiding his nuts away for winter.

Is that your pun? okay you know what i didn't work this in last time but i feel like i should mention it do you think he took insight i doubt it yeah he didn't he because he's so arrogant that he probably thinks that his dick is just fine how it is he's clearly arrogant like look at thinks that his dick is just fine. How it is. He's clearly arrogant. Like, look at this giant scam he ran. Yeah. See, my thought was he knew it didn't work.

Well, yeah, that too. Yeah. Like, but yeah, obviously both. Yes.

Yeah. Cause I'm trying to remember back to that GQ article. Cause the, the woman asked him whether he used it and he did kind of have that attitude of like, well, I don't need this. Things were fine. How dare you? How dare you?

So on March 16th, 2005, 50 armed agents raided Berkeley Nutraceuticals headquarters. They took seven tons of evidence. Oh my God. I'm just picturing them just like piling stuff and it was like 1-800-GOT-JUNK they found a dead cat in there so these guys dug up and gals dug up a ton of dirt. And after a while, they just looked at each other and they said, Let's go to court.

I just want to say for the record that I surprised you with that last time. You did not see it coming. I felt a lot of victory in what we are now calling the lost episode. The lost episode. It was the greatest and best episode of all time. This is just a tribute. That's a Tenacious D reference in case you missed it. Oh, okay.

I did miss it. I was just nodding along. Okay, so in September of 2006, Warshak was indicted on 112 counts of mail, bank, and credit card fraud, plus money laundering and obstruction of justice, and, like, anything else you want to add general rudeness yes douchebaggery and the first degree his mother sister and brother in law and i think some other executives were also charged uh the american greed episode said they took 100 million dollars from customers without their consent holy shit yeah oh my gosh holy shit indeed yes it's a shit ton of money brandy

we talked about this so in january 2008 stephen warsch goes to trial. And it is a doozy. The prosecution argued, and this may have been pre-trial, but I'm throwing it in because it's interesting. They tried to show that this was part of a bigger pattern for Warshak. For example, before he started selling Insight, he sold this thing called THC-free, which is one of those drugs you can take to like mask marijuana in your urine so when you go you know do a drug test for whatever yeah you're clean so a rival company calls orders some of the thc free product supposedly i guess to compare ingredients and what does warsheck do? Double charges them. You betcha. You betcha.

So he charges their credit card a few more times, of course, without their permission, because why would you want permission? They might say no. Right, yes. Yeah. So the prosecution argued that this was him kind of dipping his toe into two things. First, credit cards without permission. Such a fun thing to do.

But then also creating products for customers who would most likely be too embarrassed to complain if the product didn't work. Yeah. Or if you did something shady. Yes. It's like stealing money, like a drug dealer stealing somebody's money. Exactly. Like, what am I going to do? Say I came here to buy crack and call the police when they don't get their crack.

That's how I run my crack house at my basement. Like, I just take the money, push them out the door, and what are they going to do? Not a lot. Nothing. Just straight baby laxatives. Baby laxatives? Yeah, that's what they cut coke with a lot.

That's what people shit their pants. What? Yes. These are things i do not know we're getting outside of my world here come on over i'll show you i'll show you around my crap den you know okay though we joke about about that but like i saw an episode of cops once where a woman really did flag down an officer oh my god i was like okay so you're really calling us here to say your drug dealer stole your money one of the many reasons why i could not be a cop. Yeah. The number of times I'd be like, are you fucking kidding me? Serious?

Okay. So the prosecution really hit home that Warshak was a predator. He was going after men who didn't want to go to the doctor and who would be very embarrassed about their reason for taking insight. They said Warshak purposely went after these guys because he figured they'd be too humiliated to complain. Absolutely. But here's the thing. The prosecution actually rounded up 21 witnesses to the stand who all said they were improperly charged by Berkeley Nutraceuticals. So let's take a moment to just say good on those guys.

Good for you for swallowing that one and just Imit their pride, Kristen. I'm sorry. I saw the look on your face. I'm being so disgusting. This whole episode is nasty. But no, it is good for them because like

in a situation like that, you can't like show up with mirrored sunglasses and then state your name for the court. No, thank you. I'm going to pass on that one. Next question. John Doe. Sir, state your name for the record.

I plead the fifth. I mean, seriously, it would be really embarrassing. Absolutely. It was kind of funny, though. In all these articles I saw, they would usually manage to get one guy on the record. And every guy said the same thing, which is like, oh, I was just going to try it out. I mean, everything was fine. I didn't have any complaints.

Like, you know, they say it could be bigger. And I was like, well, whatever. I know. Yeah, there was more. they say it could be bigger and uh more is more it kind of like that whole everybody having that same story i was thinking about that this weekend there's something about mary was on tv do you remember the scene where ben stiller has to pee and they're they're like driving along so they just pull off into some field and the cops come and there's all these guys having sex with each other and ben stiller shouts i was just going to pee and all the other guys are like

that's what i like to think happened yes one guy came forward and was like hey everything's good with me. I just thought I could be a little bigger. No big deal. I mean, who doesn't want to be bigger? And everyone else was like, me too. Me too. Yes.

What that guy said. I am also fine. Yes. Okay. So, but now that we've laughed, God, this is a bad transition. But like, you know, they're all humans yes um one guy said he got charged every every month for six months and he was deployed in iraq at the time so this sucks that does suck yeah that's terrible yeah what they were doing to people was awful but the real nail

in the coffin was email uh during their investigation, they confiscated a ton of emails from Berkeley Nutraceuticals, and they were very damning. So here's the first one that I'm very excited to read to you. This was from Stephen Warshak. It said, I don't care if the card is taken from grandma's purse so Junior can buy some Enzyte. If the card is good, I want a ship. Oh, my gosh. Ugh, he's so gross. I feel like you can't write that without immediately twirling your mustache. Yes, and, like, petting your cat, like, sitting in your chair and petting your gross, like, big, fat, white, you know, villain cat.

Yes, absolutely. I mean, that is just, that's awful. That is awful. But let me kick it up a notch in the novel department. Here we go. So this one's worse. It's from Jason Cosman, who was Warshak's nephew. So Jason sent out an email with a great new idea.

Here was his idea. When customers call to cancel, let them cancel. Then call the customer back, pretending to be a hospital, doing a survey. Find out through this supposed survey that they used to take Enzyte or whatever drug. And then be like, oh, wait, we have a cheaper and better version of that product. Why don't you give me your credit card information? I'll get you set up. Oh, my gosh so

here's what he wrote oh yikes the poor customer bites thinking he's getting a better deal but he's actually getting taken for a second time like six exclamation points oh god this scheme is beautiful dreamed it up after many a bong hit one night these customers are fish in a barrel man you already spend the media dollars to get them in the barrel and when you when you bought the insight spot don't let them get away so easy exploit the shit out of them holy shit okay this is damning because he used the fucking word exploit like yeah that's it you knew what you were doing yes you wrote about it in an email you were exploiting people and we know that because you said let's exploit people holy shit so what do you think warshack did when he saw that email

from his little he said he said oh, that is not how I want to run my business. We're better than that. That's right. Unfortunately, no. He forwarded that email to some other executives under the subject line, the student has become the teacher. Our company was built on this kind of creative thinking. Thanks for the wake-up call, Jason. Creative thinking! Also, let's not forget, people who put way too much in a subject line are the worst. I know! He writes a whole email in the subject line! I feel like that's arrogant.

It is! To be like, I can't do the body of the email. We're just going to have to deal with this. So the defense said that that was a joke. Oh, sure. So, ha ha ha, ha ha ha. Did we say exploit? That's not what we meant.

Oh, we were horrified. Horrified. The main defense strategy was just to say that Berkeley grew way too big, way too fast, and that these were just operational deficiencies. Um, no. You know how that goes. You just are accidentally double charging people. Oops, I ripped everybody off.

Oops, I did it again. So they just said, we couldn't keep up with some of the problems we did our best hmm there's some things fell through the cracks oh oopsie uh did the jury buy it no i hope not nobody bought that at the end of a six-week trial a jury found him guilty of 93 counts of conspiracy, fraud, and money laundering. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. I can't even believe that that is a possible sentence for those crimes. Because, yes, while they were terrible and he ripped people off, that's a lot longer than some attempted murders get.

Or, I mean, isn't it 25 to life like if you die and kill someone yes five years i think like second degree oh murder i think first degree is like 40 to life do you know that or are you just saying um i don't know if you heard but i'm an expert oh excuse me excuse me i forgot momentarily that we are expert geniuses who are actually recording right now. That's right. As opposed to last week when we were just sitting around talking to each other in front of our laptops. So, yeah. What if we just did this every week and didn't ever record it?

You know, I've been having fun. Right. But here's the thing. We still haven't put one of these episodes up yet. No. and so it kind of feels like that's what we're doing do you feel a little bit like maybe this is the universe's way of telling us that the world isn't ready for our particular brand of i like humor i like that you're framing it as the world isn't ready as opposed to our humor is shitty like we're the only two who are amused by each other. Oh, God, it might be.

We'll find out soon enough. So stay tuned, folks. If it's crickets forever, and then, like, maybe our parents being like, could you not say boners? Maybe could you not say gobs of cum, please? And I'd be like, don't tell them what to do, I'm 32 years old.

I'm going to smack your mom years old Christian what does that mean my mom would be very disappointed by this whole endeavor hey if there's one thing that Sherry Pitts has taught me it is never plead the fifth never plead the fifth but she wanted us to use it as our tagline. Oh my god. Yeah. And we were like, why? It doesn't make sense. But she was adamant. She loved it. Here's the thing, though.

And it's a shame because here I am making fun of her for this, but confidence in a bad idea, that sums me up. Like, no, but I thought of it. You're like, no, this is an excellent idea really really we should all have no let me tell you again because clearly you're not understanding the problem is you not the idea but yeah so we talked about this last time i've like 25 years in prison i mean i don't like this guy yeah i don't like him either but that does seem and the other thing is on the high side they took a ton of money from people but they they took about like a hundred to

two hundred dollars per person so nobody went bankrupt nobody's life was ruined but right it was just being bad to a whole bunch of people. Yes. Okay, but... Oh, wait, let me finish with what else he was sentenced to. He had to surrender $459 million. Oh, shit. And another $44 million for money laundering. Berkeley Nutraceuticals filed for bankruptcy. I wouldn't have to file for bankruptcy.

Yeah, you'd be like... I'd be like, ugh. I mean, I might have to sell my summer home but uh-huh you'd be fine just fine but no i did want to talk to you about something here because you brought up something at the end of our last episode where we were just sitting around with no recording but you brought it up like usually in these cases where customers are being ripped off over some pill, it's targeted at women. Yeah. So this is what's really interesting to me about this is because like I feel like this whole thing has happened before.

Just it's always it's been through diet pills that, you know, they tell you, yeah, they're amazing. They work. Turns out it's just speed and people are having heart attacks yeah but those things are directed specifically at women this was a way to do that same marketing at the other half of the demographic yeah now we hit up the men so maybe that's the part to me that's like maybe he is a little bit smart because maybe nobody else saw this hole in the market nobody was scamming these men maybe but and this is where norman always accuses me of having a tinfoil hat on a number of things so i know that i could be way way off but for like the past week i've been thinking

about how you mentioned that usually this stuff is directed at women and if I were a smarter person I might have looked up those cases and seen like what the sentence was yeah but part of me wondered do you think that that played a role in why he was sentenced to 25 years because like he was going after men and maybe that judge had kind of an emotional reaction I mean I could see that argument yeah and by that you mean i'm totally right no that's not i don't believe that's what i said let's check the tape yeah actually we're not recording so you can't you're just gonna have to remember so yeah i could definitely see that side of it like oh so now you're targeting men i'm a man like this is not this is gonna fly i just wonder like when it feels personal yeah yeah because i

feel like if i were a judge and a whole bunch of women had been ripped off like that'd be hard for me to not right like well that could have been me. Yeah. Not that we're saying that this judge had any problems. We are not speculating on the size of this judge's manhood. Jesus. Speaking of which, at the sentencing, U.S. District Judge S. Arthur Spiegel said, Stephen Warshak was blinded by his by his arrogance greed and his ability to exploit others yeah true sounds about right uh-huh agreed um in the gq interview uh which took place when he was in prison he said and this is like the best quote okay i get it we're all tired of poor customer

service but i'm the only one spending my life in prison over it. No. Like, fuck you. This is not about customer service. You didn't have a poor, you weren't delivering poor customer service. You were ripping people off. Yep. You were ripping people off.

You were lying. That's not like, oopsie, we take a long time to ship. Yes, we wouldn't return something on the 31st day. Like, no. But this whole thing is not over. So Stephen Warshak appealed. And unlike every other appeal we talk about on this podcast, this one actually went somewhere. Oh my gosh.

In his trial, like I said said the emails played a huge role in proving that he was up to some shady shit here's the catch though federal agents got his emails in a not great way oh and i just want to start this off with this appeals case is very important it sets a huge legal precedent. Yeah. There's nothing in it about boners, so I'm just going to skip. It's a lot less interesting. Right, yeah. Our interest was not piqued by this.

Boo! So, the Slate article does a good job showing what the agents did and why they did it. So, I'm going to read a little bit from that article. It says, The government needed a warrant to grab email from people's personal computers. It needed a warrant to wiretap their internet connections in real time. It needed a warrant to read their postal mail and it needed a warrant to tap their phone calls. But when a person's email was stored

off-site on a third-party server, suddenly no warrant was needed. So I'm gonna do my best to describe something kind of complicated, and if I get 50% of this right, I will be impressed. I want a cake. Cookie cake. I demand cake. I demand cake. Basically, what the government did at that particular time was not technically wrong they were operating under the third party doctrine which basically means that if you write an email to norman and it says i don't think kristin recorded this podcast but then you show me that email then suddenly they're kind of like okay well maybe we don't need a warrant maybe we could get a subpoena and getting a subpoena is like a lower standard yeah yeah proofishness proofishness yes that's right absolutely gonna say that official term you will hear that in a court of law that's correct but the thing that was shitty about

this because like you know i explained that and you're like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. You should. Yeah, because, well, what makes sense to me, though, what? Well, yes, that makes sense to me. But where the issue comes in with email is that there's no way to send an email without having a third party involved. Because you have an email provider that you are sending it through. And we all still expect there to be privacy. Some privacy there so yeah so i

understand where this law needs to be updated for modern day communications yeah and that's basically what the court said too they said the agents did violate warshack's fourth amendment rights to privacy but that was sort of fine because the agents were operating under the stored communications act so basically you guys were doing what you knew to be right under this antiquated rule um and then the court was like yeah but from now on you can't do that from now on the government needs a warrant in order to obtain your emails so the cincinnati boner king brought us something really important. Seriously? Yeah.

Thank you very much. Thank you, Cincinnati Boner King. So, they upheld all of Warshak's convictions, but they vacated his sentence because they said, basically, this dude should not have gotten 25 years. There was a bit much. There wasn't that much loss here. Yeah. Which you and I seem to agree on. Yeah. 25 years. Seemed a bit much. There wasn't that much loss here. Yeah. Which you and I seem to agree on. Yeah. 25 years.

Seemed a bit steep. Even though this guy sounds like such an ass. Yeah. But, you know, you don't need to be in jail for that long for being an ass. And I'm just guessing that somebody who is known as the Cincinnati Boner King might not fare that well. Oh, I didn't even think about that in prison. Oh, jeez.

But, you know, though though if he's super smart i wonder if he manipulated everybody i wonder if he was running the prison yeah i can see that i don't know kristen minutes ago you said he wasn't that smart i don't want you know what my problem is i don't want to give him any compliments right absolutely yes no compliments no compliments for the boner kid he flew high for quite a while i am not throwing a compliment his way so his sentence was reduced from 25 years to 10 that seems reasonable yeah where are they now steven warsheck out of prison his mom who was sentenced to two years never served a day brooklyn nutraceuticals settled a class action lawsuit in ohio for 4.7 million dollars they also settled in five other states for about 2.5 million dollars so i didn't even touch those yeah

it felt like we had enough going on. Yeah, definitely. Insight is still on the market. Is it still sold under that name and everything? Uh, why would you ask me something I haven't Googled? I think it is. I mean, it shouldn't be. Right. Uh, but, so, I was shocked by that. Yeah, I'm shocked by that.

I was blown away by that. Um, I had an astonished look on my face. Sorry, I love that you said astonished. Was your lover astonished? Everyone was astonished. Everyone. My lover. The walls were astonished.

The walls were astonished. If these walls could touch. Oh, God. Oh, God. So, on that note, I want to close with a quote from John Masur, the lead investigator on the case. He said, it's not illegal to sell snake oil if people are willing to buy it. That's so true. Yeah, and I think the rule must be, like, as long as it doesn't cause harm, you can sell it to people. That's so true. Yeah. And I think the rule must be like as long as it doesn't cause harm.

Yep. You can sell it to people. That's right. Well, back to the diet pill thing. The majority of those diet pills are still on the market. But they have taken out that speed ingredient. So now they really don't do shit. Yeah. Before they at least, you know, make you work.

You didn't sleep for three days and that's really all that matters if society tells us anything it's as long as you fit into those jeans doesn't matter how many teeth you have or if you got sores on your skin that is so nasty okay this is making me think back to last week when we talked about olestra oh yes okay yeah that's right and that was the stuff that like how long was that on the market not long not yeah not that long it was this thing that at this time felt revolutionary it was an ingredient in like potato chips yeah it was a fat substitute and it was supposed to be a miracle

yeah um it wreaked havoc on your buckle though it caused anal leakage anal leakage and turns out that's where people draw the line yeah Yeah. People are like, we'll do a lot. But when our anuses start leaking, no more. I just love the idea that, like, somebody's slimming down for a hot date. So they eat a bunch of the Olestra. Olene potato chips. Like, well, got the hot date, but I had a leaky butt the whole time. Butthole was dripping the whole time. You know what?

Somehow, this is way nasty. I know! I like that you're so much more disgusted by that than gobs of cum shooting at the wall. That tells me a lot about your personal life, Kristen. That is a good point. You know what? A leaky butthole is grosser, I think. Yeah.

Because I'm just picturing, like, this is so gross. I'm just picturing, like, leaky butthole. You can walk around all day. You know, God's a coming. At least there's a time. There's a time and a place for gobs of cotton, Kristen. Leaky butthole, that's no good. There's no good time time no good place for that

oh so that's my story on insight and we would like to send out an apology to our parents for this second of the show good god it's a good thing thing that we don't have serious, serious jobs. Oh, my God. Well, that was a good one. Thank you. I'm just going to really bring the mood down now and hit us with a heavy one. I have been haunted by this one all week. Yeah.

No, Kristen, this is the first time you're hearing of it. Oh, what? Yes. Slender who? Slender Who? Slender Who. And it was a cute little cartoon? Yeah, absolutely. That some girls enjoyed?

That's right. That's right. No, Kristen. Not at all. Oh, boy. This is the story all about how my life got flipped. Turned upside down. out how my life got flipped turned upside down serious time serious business kristen okay in west philadelphia i'm sorry we are about to talk about something yes horrible um this is how we

make it better this is how we make ourselves feel better about it. We have to bring in the fresh prince. The whole thing, this whole thing is church giggles. Did you ever get church giggles? Oh, yes, absolutely. Yes. Bad stuff. I was about to make a disgusting joke, but I'm going to pass on it. Really?

It's going to be an inappropriate, like, priest joke, so. Ew. Like a molestation joke? Yeah. Oh, my God. Kristen, I didn't make it. you don't get to judge me i censored it i filtered it out i'm just glad that like we've said all this crazy but you're like no not touching it i will not i will not not on ash Wednesday no is, isn't it? I appreciate that.

Okay. This is the story of modern day folklore come to life. It is also the story of mental illness and friendship gone wrong. I'm so sorry. Why are you laughing? Why did you just like make your water bottle like water bottle fart while I'm getting serious here? That was like the noisiest thing from the water bottle like water bottle fart while i'm getting serious here i that was like the noisiest my ring smashed up against the bottle and then i went i'm sorry i'm sorry ma'am i didn't do any of that during yours i know you were so well behaved. Anyway, there's a great Newsweek article by Abigail Jones on this case and another by Lauren Efron and Kelly Robinson for ABC News, where I pulled most of the stuff for this story. We'll link both of them on our website, of course.

on may 31st 2014 two 12 year old girls anisa weir and morgan geyser lured their friend peyton lutner also 12 into the woods of waukesha wisconsin under the guise of playing hide and seek i hate this oh i hate this story so much so once they get into the woods, they push Peyton down. And they tell her to lay face down and they'll hide and then she'll be the seeker. Oh my God. And so she's laying down and then one of the girls like sits on her. And she's like, I can't breathe, I can't breathe. And the two girls are arguing about who's going to stab her first. So they decide that they're going to, they've taken her into those woods to stab her

so they're arguing about who's gonna do it and Peyton's laying there with her face down on the ground she's like I can't breathe I can't breathe and so the girls like let like they get off of her and they're kind of like arguing over who's finally gonna do it and um and she's probably just standing there like what the fuck's going on yes finally um morgan geyser says i'm not gonna do it until you tell me to and where replies go ballistic go crazy do it now and so with that they start stabbing her they stab peyton 19 times they pierce her liver pancreas and stomach and missed an artery near her heart by less than a millimeter. That's insane. The girls would later tell police that Peyton had screamed and yelled, I hate you.

I trusted you during the attack, which is just like heartbreaking. These are girls that were her best friends. Like, ugh. When they were finished, told peyton to lay down um and be quiet and they would go get help except they didn't go for help they left her there to die peyton though she was not going to let herself die there she dragged her injured body out of the woods to a nearby ditch on the side of the road and she's 12 she's 12 she has 19 stab wounds to her body including one right next to her heart a stab

wound through her diaphragm so she can barely breathe crawls her way out of the woods to this patch of grass next to a bicycle path on the side of the road. She's laying there. This bicyclist comes along. He's an older man. I don't know. I would say early 50s maybe. He had been out riding his bike,

and the part of the path that she was laying next to was actually like chained off, and he decided he wanted to go further into the woods, and so he rode around the chain and rode back, and he hears someone say, Help i've been stabbed and he looks over and he sees this girl laying there and so he calls police and he's like you know stay still police are coming police get there um and they ask her on that no kidding he's on a part of the path that's closed and comes across her oh please get there and they say you know who did this to you and she says my best friend oh my god oh so paramedics get on the scene they rush her to the to surgery um doctors had to crack open her chest to repair the wounds near her heart through her diaphragm and to her liver the rest of her wounds were to her extremities so they were really just flesh wounds i mean

that doesn't make it okay they were still i'm sure horribly painful i would be freaking the hell out if i just had one flesh wound i would have lost my fucking mind i feel like that's over paper cut i can't imagine absolutely so she's in surgery for six hours chest cracked open um doctors said that if the stab wound near her heart had been less than a millimeter closer so that is the width of a human hair god she would have died it would have pierced her heart oh my god oh she gets out of surgery she's like a fucking fighter and she's miraculously she recovers. When she gets out of surgery, the first thing she asks as she's waking up is, did they get them? She is on it.

I mean, yes. Yeah. She's awesome. Yes. Morgan and Anissa had in fact been arrested. Police and local agencies had conducted a massive search for the girls while Peyton was in surgery. They found the girls after nearly four hours walking along Interstate 94. On them was a kitchen knife with a five inch blade hidden inside an old purse.

They told police they were on their way to find slender man to live with him in his mansion so who is slender man according to wikipedia slender man is a fictional supernatural character that originated as a creepypasta internet meme created by eric knudsen in june of 2009 for a photoshop contest on the something awful internet forum okay so this contest challenged people to edit regular photographs to give them to make them appear paranormal so knudson entered two black and white photos of groups of children to which he added a tall, thin, wraith-like figure wearing a black suit lurking in the background. So in this picture, this Slenderman is just like this impossibly tall creature. He's got these like very exaggerated, long, skinny limbs. Yeah.

Wearing a suit, but he has no face. He's just like blurry very exaggerated, long, skinny limbs. Yeah. Wearing a suit. But he has no face. He's just like blurry where his face should be. So after you told me about this, I looked them up. Yeah. They're really creepy. They're really creepy. Yeah.

Yes. What do you mean after I told you about this, Kristen? I mean, I'm hearing about this for the first time. Please go into more detail. No idea what's going on. detail no idea what's going on um so something that Knutson did in this in this um photoshop contest to kind of set his entries apart where he added these um captions to him so basically created a whole work of fiction yeah around these pictures so on the first picture the quote read or the caption the caption read we didn't want to go we didn't

want to kill them but its persistent silence and outstretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time 1983 photographer unknown presumed dead right that is creepy it's so creepy the second one read one of two recovered photographs from the sterling library blaze oh i'm sorry the sterling city library blaze notable for being taken the day which 14 children vanished and for what is referred to as the slender man deformities cited as film defects by officials fire at library occurred one week later actual photograph confiscated as evidence 1986 photographer mary thomas missing since june 13th 1986 which worth noting the day after my birthday. Like, the day I was born. Also, might be the Olsen twins' birthday. Might be? Might be.

This has been a source of great pride for you your entire life. They might have been born on June 13th, 1986. Did you feel a special, like, relationship with them? I did. We were just, like, one day apart. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Do you remember when I was, sorry. apart. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep. Do you remember when... Oh, sorry. Oh, no, continue, please. No, this is really stupid. I'm ready for it. Do you remember when one of the twins, I think it was like Mary-Kate, went through her like hobo chic phase in 2005? I think she's still in that phase.

Oh, well. I remember when it was new and I was like, yes! And I tried to imitate it, but the thing is, like, you can... You just look like a hobo. Yeah, exactly. You have to have millions of dollars to do the chic part. Absolutely. I was just...

Just a hobo. Yeah. Just poor country. You just couldn't pull off that stick and handkerchief. That's right. I felt good about it. You smudged makeup all over your chair. It was expensive bronzer.

People can't tell. These photos and their corresponding captions quickly went viral and a modern day folklore was born. viral and a modern day folklore was born people expanded on the tale of slender man creating fan art cosplay and fan fiction known as creepypasta these stories grew at an exponential rate soon a past dating back centuries was created for slender man um people claimed to suck like sightings of him um and a major motion picture was even developed it actually comes out later this year okay do you know how this guy feels about all this yeah so i actually read um a little like interview with him okay and he said like obviously this crime is terrible yeah yeah and but he has become so separated from the origins of slender man that

he didn't even feel you know associated with it anymore because it's grown so much past like what he yeah for him it was probably a few hours yeah absolutely yeah and then it has just grown i mean there's all of these different versions of what slender man does and And, you know, he's somehow he lures children away. But no, there's different versions of what he does with those children. And and so, I mean, it's it's scary. Yeah. It was these creepypasta stories and drawings that drew the attention of Morgan and Anissa. According to Peyton's mother, Stacey Lutner, Morgan and

Peyton were best friends and very close. They spent all day together, then they'd come home and talk on the phone for hours. And if they weren't on the phone, they were messaging online. Peyton's father, Joe, thought this was a normal preteen friendship, but Stacey worried that Morgan was controlling. So I cut aside with Joe here because I think this is very much like what you and I did. We were friends at this age and it's very much what you and I did. Are you trying to say we're normal? No, I agree.

We were just friends at school and then we'd come home and talk on the phone or instant messenger or whatever. And there seemed to be no limit to how long we could talk. No. I mean, I don't know. We would sit on the phone and watch the ricky lake show i remember that so well yeah and jenny jones jenny jones yes she always had my 13 year old daughter dresses two sessions and we always had opinions that's absolutely

her name should have been shanasty not shananey i of course i remember that that was a jerry springer and it was your name shouldn't be shananey it should be shanasty and the audience like lost their minds yes such a good burn um okay so stacy is worried that morgan is controlling um she says that uh morgan and peyton would often get into these little arguments and that would really upset peyton morgan would say something and it would upset peyton and so she would encourage peyton to send morgan an email saying you know you said this or you know but this is how i feel about it and i don't like that

you made me feel this way and whatever. But Peyton wouldn't do this. Peyton would just be like, oh, it's nothing. It'll go, you know, I'm just not gonna say anything about it. It'll go away. Yeah. And Stacey didn't like that. Her daughter was kind of passive about it. She kind of felt like she was maybe, you know, getting, you know, run over a little bit. And so she wanted to make sure her daughter was standing up for herself. But it was just not the way Peyton handled things. She didn't want to do that. Yeah. So their friendship progressed.

And in the sixth grade, another girl entered the picture. Anissa Weir was Morgan's other best friend. Though she and Peyton weren't close, they, of course, had Morgan in common. So Morgan and Peyton were best friends. Morgan and Anissa were best friend. Though she and Peyton weren't close, they of course had Morgan in common. So Morgan and Peyton were best friends. Morgan and Anissa were best friends. So the three of them would hang out fairly regularly. No room for a third person. It's got to be two or five. That's right. That's exactly right. Anissa and Morgan, though, shared a bond different than just friendship. Morgan though shared a bond different than just friendship they shared an obsession with Slender Man Peyton told her mom that Anissa and Morgan talked about Slender Man constantly Morgan even

sent Peyton links to different stories that she wanted her to read um but according to her mom Peyton was scared by them she didn't have any interest in them she just found them scary me too and yeah and was like I don't want to see this stuff. So Stacey told her daughter to ask Morgan to stop sending these stories. And then she went online with her to look at the stories in an effort to kind of dispel her fears. So Stacey says, you know, let's go online. Let's look at these things. So she said, we opened up the computer one night and sat and looked at the site together. And I said, Peytonton let's just read one of these and you tell me does this sound like this it could possibly be real and she said and peyton said

no morgan morgan knows he's real and so stacy said peyton eventually stopped talking about slenderman so she assumed that she told morgan she wasn't interested or that their interest had kind of feigned and you know it was just something that kind of went away she was wrong yeah by this time according to police reports morgan and anisa had begun to plot peyton's murder they decided that they would invite peyton over for a sleepover for Morgan's birthday. And then at 2 a.m., they planned to duct tape her mouth, stab her in the neck, and then run away so they didn't have to look at her in the eyes. Oh, my God. So they invited her to this birthday party like a month in advance. So, like, these girls were planning this for a while.

Peyton asked her mom if she could go to Morgan's birthday party spend the night at her house and she said well who else is going to be there and she said it's just going to be me and Morgan and Anissa and so her mom was like yes absolutely you can do that they'd had sleepovers before you know whatever on the day of the party Peyton is ecstatic she's like jumping with joy and squealing and she's packed her bags and she packed her american girl doll like this to me is so um just makes such a statement about where peyton was in her mind she thought she was going to a fucking sleepover with her friends and gonna play dolls yeah and her friends are fucking plotting her murder to stab her in the neck yes that's it's fucking terrible yeah so um for morgan's birthday they go to skate land

they skate the night away and then they go back to morgan's house they eat pizza and they have a sleepover when it came time to carry out the plan two o'clock in the morning morgan said she had second thoughts and decided they'd give payden one more day to live oh my god it was the following morning that they led her into the woods so the following morning they get up they decide that they're gonna go to the bathroom this is what morgan and nisa decide they going to go to the bathroom at this park. Near where they live. Because it has a drain in the floor. And so they're going to murder her in the bathroom.

And then the blood will just drain away. And so they get to the park. They go. Three of them go into the bathroom. And I just can't even imagine. Where Peyton's mind must be. Like during all this going on. Because Morgan and Anissa have one. like during all this is going on because Morgan

and Anissa have one one idea of what's going on and Peyton has no fucking clue what's happening so they get to this bathroom and like Morgan and Anissa are arguing back and forth about who's gonna do it and whatever and um Morgan has what was what she would later describe as like a full-on breakdown she's like she's decided she can't go through with it she doesn't know how she can do it and she decides she's not going to do it and that's when they come up with the idea to play the hide and seek they're going to get into the woods it'll be easier in the woods for whatever reason and so then they go into the woods and robber um 19 times as i've said i just i can't imagine any of it on from any of their perspectives like yeah you're going you're skating around you're having pizza and then at the back of your mind you're like oh i'm gonna murder i'm gonna murder my friend yeah i don't get it i don't either so i need to stop fucking saying so so many times um i beat

you so like don't worry about it if people complain they'll start with me um upon their arrest both girls were questioned separately and told similar stories to the police. Basically, they both kind of minimalized their play in the versions, but the versions are very similar. So Anissa said that the stabbing was intended to be a sign of dedication to Slenderman. She told police that one must show their dedication to him by killing and that by doing so they would become his proxy and get to live with him in his mansion in the Nicolet National Forest in northern Wisconsin. Oh, good grief.

Anissa said that the idea to prove themselves to Slender, as she called him, which just freaks me the fuck out that she's a nickname for him. Well, they're good buds by this point. She said that the idea to prove themselves was morgan's but that she was excited to prove the skeptics wrong and show that he really did exist so she was tired of people saying this is an imaginary thing she knew that he was real and she was excited to prove to people that he was real so by killing this girl he would appear she would get to go live in his mansion and she could prove to everybody that they were wrong do you think they really believed that i mean i think they did but as we'll see later like mental illness comes

yeah i just oh yeah i mean it's hard to wrap your brain around yeah for sure um when asked by police if she knew what it meant to kill someone anisa responded i believe it's ending a life and i regret it the bad part of me wanted her to die and the good part of me wanted her to live in contradiction to what anisa told police morgan said that she believed that anisa had made the initial move in the attack and that she had just finished it off she initially offered an apology to police but then later said it's weird i don't feel any remorse that is weird yeah it is fucking weird morgan also told police that she believed that they had to kill or that he would kill their families. When asked to clarify who he was that she was referring to, Morgan said she didn't know him, which is a weird fucking response.

Yeah. So she says, we had to kill or he would kill our family. And the police say, who is is this he and she says well i don't know him so then police questioned her directly about slender man and she said she never met him but that he watches her and can read minds and teleport she also told police that she that what she did was probably wrong and asked if it is illegal to stab someone in self-defense. They asked her if that was the case here, and she said no. It's funny to me that she was smart enough to go down that road, but then when they asked her, they were like, okay, is that the case?

And she's like, no, I was just curious. Just in case this happens to a friend. this happens right yeah asking for a friend like both girls this part's really interesting both girls were charged as adults with attempted murder so in wisconsin it is state law that defendants who are at least 10 years of age and are charged with a severe crime must be charged as adults. I'm unsure. I think that's a weird law. I'm wondering where that originates from because how can you have a hard and fast rule? Like 10 is so young. Yeah, I do not like this at all.

Yeah, not at all. I was thinking about this, even though this is definitely the first time I'm hearing this. Yes. But no, I was thinking, I understand some leeway if someone is 17 and a half and they commit a heinous crime. Yes. It's like, okay, if, you know, in a few months you'd be charged as an adult, you premeditated this, all this stuff, you're going to be charged as an adult. adult, you premeditated this, all this stuff. Yeah. You're going to be charged as an adult.

12. You're nowhere near that. You're nowhere near. Yeah. And it almost makes me wonder why even have different. What's the word I'm looking for? Different setups for children. Laws.

All right. That's enough but you know yeah i do i'm not sure yeah because that's such a young age to be like oh well 10's where we fucking draw the line yeah like what is this an outdated law was this made you know in the child labor years like that's what i'm wondering right that really is what i'm doing if it was just on the books for so long and now it's one of those things that no one's bothered to change yeah exactly um the district attorney brad shimmel said of the case most of the time in crime like this with such violence like this there's spur of the moment there's the heat of passion

this time it was calculated it's troubling when someone lashes out in anger it's more troubling when they lash out in cold blood isn't the that the worst kind of killer the cold-blooded killer yes yes it fucking is yes i mean that's i think that's what i was yeah freaking out about about the idea of going to skate world and having pizza and all this stuff and yeah and you're just totally cold you're just thinking well she'll be dead in a few hours right yeah so per state wisconsin law they're charged as um they're charged as adults the prosecutor says we fully expect them to fight this we fully expect them to try and get this lowered to juvenile court and we welcome that fight like bring it on oh um questions still remained about the girl's mental state and their understanding of the crimes of which they were

accused the court would spend hearing after hearing over the next three years making a determination on those factors okay so this part gets a little bit confusing because there were so much of this time was spent um fighting over which court would hear this case yeah if it would go to juvenile court or to adult court and um a lot of these court records are redacted because if it went to juvenile court their names wouldn't be released yeah um so a lot of this is kind of reported as one lawyer said and so it's kind of hard to know who's lawyers fighting what but i did my best to kind of you better lay it out for us um and then the other thing that was kind of interesting about this when they first reported on this case it was still it

was obviously being thought about whether they were going to be brought to trial in juvenile court or adult court and so the initial footage of this stuff the pictures were just of the girls feet and like arms and stuff they kept their faces out of it completely yeah and so looking back on those pictures i encourage you to like go online and look at that it's weird it's just this gives it like a whole nother creepy feel to it like the girls don't have shoes on and some of the like they're in the courthouse and don't have shoes on i don't know huh yeah okay all right so in august of 2014 morgan was ruled incompetent to stand trial due to early onset schizophrenia and opposition oppositional defiance disorder um so that is super young for schizophrenia her father was diagnosed with

schizophrenia um but schizophrenia first falls most common in men and then it usually um comes on like in the like 18 to 22 age range like and isn't it usually later in women yes yeah women yes specifically when it is present in women it's usually later in their lives yes so for her to be diagnosed with schizophrenia at 12 years old is it's pretty crazy yeah at that time she was remanded to the winnebago mental health institute which contrary to what the name might have you believe is not an rv down by the river kristen i am so glad you revived that joke for this week i hated it last week and it's back baby

after receiving treatment and medication for her schizophrenia, Morgan, along with Anissa, was re-evaluated by court-appointed psychiatrists. And in December of 2014, both were deemed competent to stand trial. Then, in February of 2015, a lawyer for one of the girls argued that they should actually be charged with second degree attempted murder rather than first degree because they believed that harm would come to their families if they did not kill peyton he also argued that this meant the case should go down to juvenile court because it was a less severe charge so he says you know they were doing this because they thought that if they didn't do this, Slender Man would come and kill their families. And now, so since it is second degree, that's a less severe charge, so that should bring it down to juvenile court. In March of 2015, after carefully reviewing the laws, statements, and evidence, the judge ruled that he would keep the charges of first degree murder and that both girls would be

tried in adult court in august of that year the judge entered not guilty pleas on both on behalf of both girls as their lawyers refused to enter their pleas so this is pretty crazy to me but basically both lawyers are pissed and so they um are like no we're not gonna fucking interplease for them because we're thinking about appealing because that's fucking bullshit that you say it should be in adult court i like that right yes so um the judge listens to their arguments and in september he stays the case so that the state appeals court could determine if the case should move to juvenile court. So he's like, I understand what you're saying. I want to make sure that we're, you know, we're following everything as we're split to the letter.

So, yeah, let's put a let's put a pin on this. Let's let the appeals court hear it. a pin on this let's let the appeals court hear it um so i mean now we're up to by the time the appeals court rules it's july of 2016 that's so good at one point like people are kind of you know arguing that this has taken way too long it's stretched out so much and the judge is like yes i get your argument but at this point time is irrelevant we really need to make sure that we're doing everything in the best interest of all parties so if this is how long it takes to make sure that all the rules and all the laws are followed this is the time it takes i i don't like that i just i feel like that's you always have to make sure that you're doing the right.

You always have to check off all those boxes. But at the same time, we all have a right to a timely, right, speedy trial. Absolutely. OK, so it's July of 2016. The appeals court rules that the stabbing was not incidental or impulsive, but premeditated and extremely violent so that it will stay in adult court with a charge of first degree murder. I'm sorry, first degree attempted murder. While awaiting the appeal court's decision, Morgan had actually been sent again to the Winnebago Mental Health Institute for a period of four months to stabilize her mental health. So during all of this time the girls both of them were actually

in and out of a mental institute because what would happen with morgan specifically she would be in the mental institute she would be taking her medication she was being heavily monitored she was getting the treatment that she needed and then as soon as she got out she'd stop taking her medicine why and so she'd just regress yeah for whatever reason so when they weren't in the mental health institute they were in a juvenile detention center. And so when she was in there, she wasn't, you know,

taking her medication, she wasn't doing any of that. And so she just kept regressing back. And the same thing with, um, with Anissa. Anissa wasn't, um,

diagnosed with such heavy, like such a heavy diagnosis. There was a psychosis disorder that was, um, believed to be in play. Um, but nothing quite as heavy as schizophrenia because i mean that's that's about as heavy as it gets so during this

time they're just both in and out they're in juvenile detention center they're in the mental health institute they're kind of back and forth by september of 2016 both defendants had entered pleas of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect mental disease or defect is probably the proper pronunciation do you have a mental and their lawyers filed a motion for the girls to be tried separately they also dropped their motions to try and for the girls to be tried separately. They also dropped their motions to try and lower the cases to juvenile court. So at this time, they're basically like, okay, fine.

We'll stop trying to get it lowered to juvenile court. We can try them as adults, but they need to be tried separately. Yeah. And the prosecution didn't argue against it, actually. They're like, yes, you're right. This is better for everybody involved. We'll try them separately and we'll try them in adult court in december of 2016 the judge ruled that yes he agreed as well they were tried to they should be tried separately the separate trials were scheduled for september and october of 2017 so a full almost year away nine months ten months away as the trial date neared for anisa weir

she entered a guilty plea where she agreed that she was a guilty party to an attempted murder but was not responsible by reason of insanity in december of, she was sentenced to up to 25 years in a state mental hospital. Under an agreement with the prosecution, she will have to serve a minimum of three additional years. So on top of what she's served in there already during this whole process, she will have to serve an additional three years in the Mental Health Institute and then will remain under state supervision for the rest of her sentence. So after three years, so that's the minimum that she'll serve. After three years, she'll be reevaluated and it'll be determined that she needs to spend more time here. Can she go under conditional release?

Under conditional release, she'll have regular, you know, treatment. And it's much like much like a parole situation where she's a check in, you know, with state officials and whatever. At her sentencing hearing, she offered this apology. I want everyone to know I deeply regret everything that happened that day. I know that nothing I say is going to make this right, and nothing I say is going to fix what I broke. I am never going to let this happen again. She will be 37 at the end of her supervisory period how do you feel about that

i mean i like the first thing that comes to mind is it's just a reminder of how young she was when this absolutely because i hear 37 i'm like wow that's pretty young but at the same time i mean they're putting her away for a while. Yeah, absolutely. So then in September of 2017, Morgan entered the same plea. She pleaded guilty but was found not responsible by reason of insanity. As part of a plea agreement with the prosecution, she underwent extensive psychiatric evaluation to determine her sentence. So she entered this plea in September. Over the next several months, she was actually underwent like multiple psychiatric evaluations. And then on February 1st, 2018, so just, you know, a couple weeks ago,

she was sentenced to 40 years in a state mental hospital, which is the maximum allowed by law. So it's not a hard 40. She basically could receive conditional release prior to completing those 40 years, but it would be under heavy supervision. And there's no minimum. So like basically she's in this mental institute until they say for either 40 years or until they say okay you're good you're good she will likely

serve the majority of that sentence yeah at her sentencing morgan spoke briefly saying i just want to let bella and her family know that i am sorry and i hope she's doing well okay so this is my fucking problem with this statement bella is a nickname she had for peyton you tried to fucking murder me you don't get to use a nickname agreed agreed we are not on a nickname basis anymore you can call me by my first, middle, and last name only. You do not get to call me. I have minutes on top of that. Yeah, you do not get to call me a fucking nickname.

No. That's. Absolutely not. Yeah. Morgan will be 55 years old at the completion of her sentence. Wow. at the completion of her sentence wow so i think it's worth noting here um that i think peyton's a fucking rock star yes she like pulled herself out of that woods she wasn't gonna let her die and her mom has said um you know this is something that she still still very much deals with on a

daily basis she doesn't trust anyone she can't go to sleep at night unless they're all the door she checks all the doors and all the windows and makes them make sure that they're locked and i think that she will have trust issues for the rest of her life yes while she has physically recovered yeah this will fuck with her head for the rest of her life and i just think that she is a rock star for fighting i don't know that i could have done the same thing okay yeah what what is wrong with us because you and i both last week agreed yeah i i really feel like anytime i watch a scary movie or i see something horrible i think there would be a point where i'd be like you know

what i'm done i'm out absolutely i'm just gonna lay here this is horrible i would like to hope i'd be like her but i just i'm not sure that i would be she's amazing i think she's super amazing rock star baiton yeah for sure wow that was pretty heavy um slightly heavier than mine slightly just slightly a little more serious than that. Zach pitched an idea to me. Okay. He would like us to do a segment called Shit My Husband Said, where he submits a wonderful tale. Uh-huh.

And we would have that sponsored by Puma so that he could get free socks. Because my husband likes disposable socks. Disposable socks? They do not exist, Kristen, in case you're wondering what that is. He wants to wear a brand new pair of socks one time and then never wear it again. What kind of luxurious life is he hoping for? He says that you just never fit your foot right after the first wear. My goodness. Your husband's kind of a diva. He is a diva. And he specifically likes puma socks. Sponsored by Kristen sneezes. Kristen sneez. When you want to be showered with bacteria.

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 a lot of great info from a GQ article by Amy Wallace, an article on Slate.com from Nate Anderson, and an episode of American Greed. And I pulled from a Newsweek article by Abigail Jones and an article by Lauren Efron and Kelly Robinson for ABC News. For a full list of our sources, visit lgtcpodcast.com.

Any errors are, of course, ours. Please don't take our word for it, though. Go read their stuff. Journalism is a fucking dying art. Get your asses out there and read that shit. And pay for it. That's right. Podcast adjourned.