Morbid - Listener Tales 98: Witches!

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

Weirdos! It's Listener Tales- brought TO you, BY you, FOR you, FROM you, and ALLLLL about you! Today we focus on stories about witchcraft. We've got possession, cursed boxes in the woods, tales of familiars, and consequences to not listening to your brujamamas!Don't forget to check out the VIDEO from this episode available on YouTube on 5/29/2025!If you’ve got a listener tale please send it on over to [e-mail] with “Listener Tales” somewhere in the subject line- and if you share pictures- please let us know if we can share them with fellow weirdos! :)  Cowritten by Alaina Urquhart, Ash Kelley & Dave White (Since 10/2022)Produced & Edited by Mikie Sirois (Since 2023)Research by Dave White (Since 10/2022), Alaina Urquhart & Ash KelleyListener Correspondence & Collaboration by Debra LallyListener Tale Video Edited by Aidan McElman (Since 6/2025) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hey guys, we're just jumping on here to let you know this is a collab episode with Jordan. Our favorite Canadian. Exactly, from Nighttime Podcast. We love him. He's Canadian. He's lovely. He says a boot. Insuri.

Insuri. You guys love him too. Our last collab with him was when we did the Battle of the Cryptids. Battle of the Cryptids. But it was more like Can't Fire Tales, I think. Campfire Cryptids, it felt like. Yes, yes. And you guys really dug this.

you really like Jordan, so he's back. He'll always be back. We'll keep having him on because he's lovely. He brings to us today a case that actually happened in Canada, like really close to home for Jordan. It was a would-be crime, a would-be mass shooting that didn't actually end up occurring thanks to border security in Canada. They were able to stop it before it even happened. But the place, planning of this, the lead up to it, and all of that is insane to listen to. And then on top of that, Jordan did like, what, like a six-part series or like even more maybe? Six-plus. Go on to nighttime podcast after you listen to this or before, whatever you want to do, because Jordan did a huge series on this case where he actually talked to Lindsay Savannah

Rath, who is the co-conspirator. The co-conspirator and somebody who would have, you know, committed a huge atrocity, basically. And he was able to have many conversations with her that he recorded. They are mind-blowing. They are chilling. They are bleak. Really wild stuff. He did an amazing job staying like completely unflappable while talking to her about some of the most heinous things ever and the worst thoughts any human could have. So I'm telling you, definitely go listen to Nighttime Podcast. This is the Lindsay Savannah Rath's story. But it's fascinating and chilling. And we're going to have him kind of walk us through it today.

We're going to discuss it. We have a few clips that he brought to us. So we hope you enjoy and we hope this gives you something to think about. Yeah. One of the largest and busiest malls in Atlantic Canada was almost the scene of a horrifying shooting spree Saturday. Police believe Nova Scotia residents James Gamble and Randy Shepard, as well as American Lindsay Suvenorath,

were going to shoot as many people as possible before taking their own lives on Valentine's Day. This appeared to be a group of murderous misfits that were coming here or were living here and prepared to wreak havoc and mayhem on our community. We have averted a true tragedy here in Halifax. Shepard and Suvanna Rath were arrested at the airport moments after her plane landed and mere hours before the plan was to be executed.

The only reason it didn't happen was because of an anonymous tip to police just hours earlier. Hey, weirdos, I'm Elena. I'm Ash. And I'm Jordan. And this is morbid. It's another collab with the nighttime pod. Woo! You were all asking for it.

Everyone was anticipating another Jordan show. Yeah, well, I'm just a little episode because I know you recently had Tobias from Goetstone. Yes. And you wait till now to have me on it. We couldn't have had like a force. I know. We should have brought you on. I know.

I wouldn't have been able to, I wouldn't have been able to talk. I actually, I considered like, should I contact them and just see if I can like tell him I love him? Oh my God. I was like, no, I could like I would just ruin it. I'm way too big of a fan. I think some of his people listen so they can reiterate the message. There you go. They'll send it.

I'm a huge fan. I'm a huge fan. I think the problem is I wouldn't talk to him as Tobias. I would need to talk to him as Papa and keep it all in character. It was a little hard. There were like a couple times where I almost slipped. I honestly had like full-blown cardiac arrest before we went on that. Can a test.

Did you have like a MENTDB? I had a straight up MENT TV. Like there was a point where we couldn't like we were trying to change the name on the Zoom. and I just slid the keyboard over to Ash because my hands were shaking. I was so nervous. She was like, take this. I was like, take this.

I can't type. It was great. Will your listeners know what a Menti B is? Yeah, I think I explained it on the last episode. Okay. If you guys don't know, we're all in a place of Menti B. It's mental breakdown. Yeah.

It's a hot, chic way of saying it. Thanks to TikTok, I think. I'm pretty sure. I don't even feel young anymore. I don't know. She should take credit for it. This is yours. Okay.

This is yours. You own it. now. Yeah. One of our cousins the other day asked me if I made up the word yee. I was like, no. That's true. I did not. But I love it. Should have taken credit for that too. TM these words. I know. T.m them after people make them up. Yeah. Isn't that how it works? Yeah. I think so. But no, I'm happy to be back. It was great. Last time I've heard from so many people who are like, I can't believe you know morbid. So I feel like I'm like arm's length famous now. That's how we feel when we talk to you. Exactly.

Awesome. And everybody loved your voice. I saw so many comments that were like, he has such a soothing voice. Yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, did anyone comment on like my Canadian-ness? Because I get that a lot.

It was all love. Okay, until I'm on like an American show or something, I don't realize how Canadian I sound. Oh, yeah. You're super Canadian. The Canadian of it all is everything. Yeah. I love how you say about. Wow.

I'm not going to say it. Okay. Oh, I can't wait for you to say it. I'm not going to say it. That's going to be in your head. we are talking about something quite dark tonight so that's how I'll say my about that was so American I hated that I hated that a lot oh sorry you got to let it flow oh sorry made up for it but it's true we're talking about something really gnarly and dark today it's something that

Jordan has actually covered on nighttime podcast extensively and actually went so far as to have like an actual interview with one of the perpetrators here, or would be perpetrator, I should say, maybe. Yeah, that's kind of one thing that's weird about this is like perpetrator slash like tried perpetrator, I suppose. Planned perpetrator. Yeah, if it wasn't for bad planning an organization, they would have been a perpetrator. I'm convinced of that.

Yeah, and it's a, but yeah, I did have the perpetrator. her name is Lindsay Sivonaroth. I had her on my show for, I think it's like a seven-part series, and it was a bizarre experience because when you say like a story hits close to home, you know, that's often you understate that, but in this case, I understate it. Like it's Lindsay Suvonaroth and two others plotted a mass shooting at the Halifax shopping center,

which is the mall down the road from my house. And the reason this hits so close to home is not only because it was planned to happen in the food court at the mall down the road from my house, but I was at the mall the day it was that the public learned about it. At the time, my now almost 10-year-old son was like, I don't know, like two or something or three. And it was February, so kind of a crappy time of year. And there's not a lot you can do with a two or three-year-old in February. So we spent a lot of time just like me pushing them in a stroller around the mall as well. I drank coffee and listened to podcasts on my headphones.

Just to sue. We're at the mall. Yeah, just to sue, he would often fall asleep and we'd just kick around and do our thing. But one particular day, Valentine's Day, or actually it was the 13th of February, the mall got evacuated while we're in there. And I'm like, oh, it must be like a bomb threat or something. But no, the story went from the mall's being evacuated to there's like basically SWAT teams everywhere. Then the story spread that a mass shooting was planned to occur at the mall in the food court by an American woman and two local men in Halifax, but it was thwarted thanks to the work of our border security agents. And that's kind of like how the story starts for me.

And when something like, as you could probably attest to, when you cover crime stories and dark stories, often it's on the other part of the world or the other part of the country. country. Sometimes they happen in your own community, but very rarely is it like a story this insane kind of walks onto your doorstep. And I guess that's how it happened for me. That's exactly it too. Is usually like you said, like I once in a while we'll get one like, you know, the Boston Strangler or something around Cape Cod that we're like, wow, okay, that's nuts. I know where that is. But most of the time it feels so removed because it's like, that's in California. That's all the way on the other side of the country from us. Right.

So you can appreciate like the direness of it all and the intensity of it all, but you're like it's so far away that it doesn't even feel like reality. Yeah, exactly. And then in this case, when the story started to come out as to what was planned at the mall, it kind of incorporated all these sort of dark world events kind of came to my doorstep. Like in Halifax, Nova Scotia, it's kind of for the most part of small towns, more big towns. small city, but not the kind of place where you would expect, you know, Colline type of event to happen. So when we heard the news that an American woman that was obsessed with Columbine,

met a guy on the internet with the plan of coming here to just shoot at random in a food court, it was kind of like the stuff that you say never would happen in your hometown. It's like all those things kind of collected in a dark corner of the internet. Yeah. And tried to make their way here. here. And it's, um, when it all went down initially, the news for the most part, like it was reported on, but in a lot of aspects, they just kind of told the basics of the story and moved on being a research, uh, kind of nut with these stories. I just dug really deep into it and tried to learn everything I could about the people involved in, to a much greater degree than I would normally would because again this is something that you know hit so close to home it was a weird

time in a weird a weird story so before before we get into it you listened to the episode what did you think of hearing her describe what she planned to do that is the part that I we were sitting there listening to it with our mouths open like it was like it felt like something from a movie that you would watch the movie and be like that's too much like no one acts like that. That's not, because she was just so cold. And it was also so, it was even scarier because it's like confronting the fact that, because you hear about like serial killers and you're like, they're evil and, you know, that's crazy that that exists in the world. But then when you hear someone like just this young girl talking so coldly about it, it's like, oh, there's really

people that are, you probably pass by on the street that think those thoughts. And that is, the scariest thing I've ever heard. And it's not even like she was talking, she was talking so coldly about it, but she almost has this like sing-songy way to her voice where she's saying these horrible things in this cute voice. Yeah. Yeah, people, a lot of people had asked after I released those episodes if it was like scripted, like as if she was reading scripts or something.

It does feel that way. Yeah, it does. It isn't. She knew what questions I was going to ask her, but she, she just like, maybe when we get a bit into her background, it may have something to do with that she has a background as a writer, that she can kind of organize her thoughts well, but she just speaks very clearly and articulate with very little emotion. Yeah, it's very strange. And this kind of opens up, I guess, what led me to connecting with her. So the story, as far as what the public knows is, when it

initially happened is that an arrest was made at the Halifax airport of a young woman who is coming in from the U.S. with the plan of committing a shooting. She was very quickly whisked the way to prison or to jail like a wall awaiting. I think she was initially charged with uttering threats probably as they did their research. But when her name came out in the news that like this is the woman responsible, her name is Lindsay Suvonaroff, I started Googling. trying to find it like, you know, can I find a Facebook page or Twitter? And I ended up finding a whole trove of usernames that she used and different websites that I have never heard of

that she was writing on. And she was prolific. And I think in the news she was initially portrayed as just this murderous, misfit nutcase from the U.S., which may or may not be true. But what I started finding online that the things that she was writing showed me that there was something pretty unique. There was a lot of, if you know what creepy passes are like short horror stories. I think they called creepy passes. One of the first things that I found that made me think like, whoa, this is, you know, something's interesting is going on here.

Where she had wrote a whole bunch of creepy pastas under a fake name. And there were just these short, super violent, super dark horror stories. And she actually had gained a following online of people who they don't realize who she is in real life and the fact that she's now in prison and in Canada. But they were following her creepy pastas. And to this day, there are a bunch of YouTube videos where people with creepy voices are like reading her short stories. And, you know, I've even gone down in the comments of some of them. And, you know, people don't even realize that the person who originally wrote it. is what they're involved in.

But when I started finding all this different stuff online, I was finding her creepy pastas. She had a YouTube channel where she was doing like, I think they call them a long place where you just play a video game and talk to the camera. I was finding all these things. And I'm like, man, like she doesn't sound, like she sounds like pretty intelligent.

Like this is really weird. And I made, I will say, the fateful decision to write her a letter. And what I wrote her was basically a probably something like a victim impact statement. It was basically like, hi, you know, this is my name. I didn't say I had a podcast, but I was like, I was at the mall that day and kind of told her my experience this and I didn't think I would ever hear back. And it was probably three months later, I got a letter in the mail with her name and the return of your dresses.

That meant have been so wild. Well, and how strange is it that she may have killed you that day, but was willing to court? respond with you later. That's wild. Yeah, that is very, that was wild. And much like when you, if you listen to my episodes with her in it, she's so cold and straight. That's kind of the way she came across in the early letters. And but what I did, I kind of made a point, like I was kind of, I guess I was interested, like, what was someone in the U.S. who's obsessed with Columbine and allegedly believes that they're like the reincarnation of the Columbine shooters? What would them come to Canada?

to some small town and shoot up a mall. So I was kind of like putting all that, a lot of kind of baggage behind me just to try to get them to open up. And in writing with her, in knowing a bit of her background, I was thinking like, yeah,

she's in the short stories and horror. Like, I'll just talk about that stuff and see if she'll start talking to me about her crime. And it only just took a couple letters back and forth. She started complaining about the way she was being portrayed in the media. And I was like,

well, I have a podcast. Well. That's kind of how it started because it was, again, in the media, it was, she was kind of portrayed as like a bogeyman, which again, if you hear her talk, that's maybe that's accurate. Yeah. She, I guess, wanted a different side of it to be shown or at least, I don't know about

a different side, but hopefully she wanted the truth to be shown. And I was able to get a bit of cred with her because at the time, my podcast was played on the local college radio. She was in a jail in Halifax. So from her cell on her radio, she could pick up my show like every Sunday night on the radio. So she, yeah, so she was listening. And I guess was like, yeah, this guy, you know, he'll give me, allow me to tell my,

my story. And that's kind of the genesis for how that series came. It's wild, too, because there's somebody involved in this from the United States, from Illinois. And it's really not a big story here. I didn't know about this story until you told us the story. I was like, wait, what? And once I went into it, I was like, how did we not know about this?

Especially with the obsession with like Columbine and stuff. Columbine is such like a, that's such a tale here. Like that is, everybody knows what that is. I mean, I think she said, wasn't she like seven years old when that happened? Yeah. And I was in high school when that happened. And I was actually homesick from school that day. So I remember watching the entire thing play out on the TV screen and being like, cool, now I have to go back to high school tomorrow.

And like, this is what happened at another high school. And it's so weird to me that she became so absurd. I mean, it's weird to me that anybody becomes obsessed with Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris because what? But she was seven when that happened. Like it didn't, I wouldn't think that would have the effect it would have on her that it has on people who were like kind of in. that adolescent group when that was happening. No, it makes sense. Yeah, but maybe you're a bit more like kind of impressionable

during that formative time in your seven. Like, because like you, I heard about Columbine when I was like in high school, hearing about it when you're seven maybe is different. But the idea of like becoming so fascinated with it and so interested in it that you join like an online subculture slash cult, like the idea of, have you ever got into like Columbiners on your show and the idea of what that is?

We haven't gotten into it on the show, but I have listened to so many things about it just because I could not believe that that is an actual subset of the world. Yeah. Because it's one thing to be interested in something horrible that happened and be like, I'm just, I can't believe this happened. I just want to know about it

and about the people involved and all that. I think we can all, like, we've all been there. Mm-hmm. But to, like, turn that corner into, like, idolization and like glorification and like it's like that's a big line and you just sprinted across it like how did that happen yeah it is it's one thing to closely follow a case or people may say like that's my pet case ad non-sayet or you know this sort of thing but when you have like you know you start getting like a pillow case with the killer's face printed on it and you have his pictures all over your

wall it becomes in sync and that's not okay yeah and That's, I guess, in essence, what the Columbiners are, a largely online community. I'm going to play a short clip because one of the parts that I think frame her story is during my episode, whether one of the questions I asked her is like how you became, how you got into Columbine and what's up with the Columbineers. The way she answered it is so honest and straight that it's important to hear, I think. Can you just tell me about your history of interest with school shootings? Columbine and that culture?

When I first heard of the Columbine shooting, it was when it happened back in 1999. I would have been only seven years old in first grade, I think. But anyway, I heard of it pretty early on in my life. And it was just something that kind of stayed with me. I didn't really have an active interest in it, though, until I was in college. I was working on my novel about the boy who falls in love with death. And I thought, hmm, once he's a teenager, it was. would make sense if there was a school shooting at some point in this novel. And so I started

researching school shootings and I looked up the Columbine shooting and started reading more about that. And again, it was all just academic at first. But then I just found myself more and more identifying with the shooters and what they believed in and things like that. Can you kind of maybe explain when it went even further to becoming, you know, more so a part of your life? Just when I started posting in the Columbine tag and kind of networking with the other people who posted there, I just made so many friends there that I felt I had a lot in common with. And we all, like, connected this one thing. And there were other things, too. But it just became very significant for me.

And which you identify as like a column biner? Back then, yeah. But one thing that people should know is that not all columniners are the same. Some people just have a more casual interest in Columbine. Some people are into researching it as a way of preventing more mass shooting from the future. Other people generally feel very sorry for the shooters and what they went through in life. And others are more supportive of their crime and others just have a general interest in true crime. But I found myself being more supportive of the crime, of course,

and ended there but that is uh the way she ends it with of course of course oh yeah obviously like naturally you would come to that conclusion but it's to hear her describe it as as like a member of that community you can look at it and be like columbiner's like that's a thing that's crazy but to hear someone give that straight of a response yeah i don't know i find i find it chilling everything about it and it's the name too i think it's being Being a column biner feels like you're like a one directioner. You know what I mean? Like you're just like a fan.

Like that to me implies fan. It's like if you think about like like Ripperologist. I was just going to say that. To me that sounds more like someone who researches and is fascinated by that crime. Not somebody who is like supportive of Jack the Ripper. Right. It's like if it was like a Ripperer, like I'd be like, ooh. Like are you like into him?

Like, what is that? It's just, so when she's like, some people that are column biners are just, like, interested in it. But I'm like, no, I don't think that. I feel like somebody who's just interested researching that would not refer to themselves as a column biner. Absolutely not. A column binaologist. A column binaologist. It implies something different.

Yeah, that definitely implies something altogether different. But it's just the fact that these kind of communities can find a home online. Yeah. And in kind of attract other people. It's like, of course, something, like the story we get into, of course something like this is born in a community of people obsessed with Columbine. Of course. I don't know if it's my generation, but what she's describing, at one point she's like the Columbine tag. She's talking about Tumblr.

I guess she used Tumblr. And when you made a post on Tumblr, you could like tag, like hashtag columniner. And then other people who were column biners couldn't like search that tag and see the various posts. That's where a lot of, a lot of this story kind of like lives. It really starts in the column binder community specifically on Tumblr. That was outside of my age group. Tumblr was definitely, Tumblr, I think, came out when I was in my last year of middle school, I want to say.

So I was a big tumbler, I was going to say. I was going to say, I remember you being a Tumblr gal. Yeah, but I was not on that side of Tumblr. What were you looking at a Tumblr? I was looking at more like wander lust posts, like different countries and cats and cool pastries. Okay, much more respectable. Thanks. I see it's a little different.

Yeah. I guess this is probably a good spot to introduce her co-conspirator. Yes. Because it's the story is mainly people who voted here in Nova Scotia. She is seen as the ringleader, Lindsay Sivanarov. And the reason for that is really she is the last one standing basically to take the fall. It really is this whole plot to shoot up the mall in what a lot of people have dubbed the Valentine's Day massacre because their plan was to do it on Valentine's Day. It was mainly the planning of Lindsay Suvonaroth in a young man from Nova Scotia from the Halifax area that she met online named James Gamble.

They actually met through the column binder tag. They interacted on Tumblr on these posts with the hashtag column binder. The reason he's less of a part of the story is because he's not alive to answer for the crime, I suppose. It's really the only person who dies in this whole story is James, and ultimately it's self-inflicted. But I'm going to play another clip, and this is Lindsay describing meeting James, and I think this will get us on our way into the story when we hear how these two come together. Do you remember how you first actually made contact with each other, like the first messages you sent? Well, it's got to be this little meme.

You know, there's this one blog called Just Girlie, things and they just like was really I don't know things that just seem really dumb to me and one of the things that they posted was like this image of two girls and it says not being able to live without your

best friend so I made a meme of that like I have that image and then below it is a picture of the Columbine shooters and they're dead I posted that to my blog and I put it in the Columbine tag and James found me through that post and he started following

me and I started following him after that. His blog was called Shallow Existances. He obviously posted a lot of material related to Columbine. He also posted things from the different horror movies he liked. I kind of told my friends in my Skype group about him and one of my friends on the Skype group, like encouraged me to start chatting with him. And I'm just like, okay, I'll give it a try. And so I just sent a quick message to James saying I thought he was really cool. And I don't know, he, you know, he, He replied to that and I eventually asked him, like, if he had any other, any other, he gave me his Facebook account. He originally began as just friends, planning to meet up in real life.

And the context of that meeting would be exactly what these feelings were. I thought it was just planning a murder. Wow. That one line, because when I heard that the first time when I listened to the episode, I was like, oh. Like that was the part where it was just like, oh, I thought it was just adrenaline from, planning a murder. She's like, you know how that is. Yeah. Yeah. It's either love or adrenaline from planning a murder. And even that's one of the few times that she gives inflection in her voice. She gets that from planning a murder. And you know what it's just straight. Yeah. And it makes sense to me

that when you started corresponding with her with letters, how quickly she was like, you know, I really don't like how I'm portrayed in the media and started like letting things out quickly. because it seems like that's exactly what happened with James Gamble is it's like she's like all of a sudden I was like we should die together like out of it and it's like you've never even met this man like so strange what is that pathology that you're just so quickly like I'm going to just open up and do these crazy things one thing that's wild about this is as you heard in that clip there she's like you know I got him I contacted him on Tumblr we started talking on Facebook that actually when she faced her charges here in Nova Scotia I attended the court hearings and stuff as she was being charged with attempted murder really the sole piece of evidence against her is the transcript of their chat logs on Facebook what's crazy about it is they had one or two messages on Tumblr they moved to Facebook and that is the only spot they talked they never talked on the phone they didn't go on Skype for months they were on Facebook day and night Facebook

messenger writing back and forth and and I have the full like logs of their conversation which tell the story from like you know hey where are you from and end with like I'm getting on a plane and coming there like we're going to kill your parents and it's it's what's wild about it it only takes a couple pages into the conversation before they start saying like let's meet up and kill people oh my wow how do you just say that and think the person you're speaking to is going to be like Hell yeah, buddy. We always say that when there's like pairs of serial killers or killers at all. Like when you, oh, every time we've covered a pair, we're always like, how did they find

each other? Like, how do you just open up to someone and be like, you know, I've really always wanted to kill someone and then be like, oh, I hope you react the way I want you to. It's like, what? How does that happen? Here's how it happens for them. Because since I have the logs and run them several times, you can see it. And the way it happens is just too bizarre to even be true.

So get this. It's, uh, it's, it's Christmas Eve. Uh, didn't think that's where it was going to start. Yeah, it happens on Christmas Eve. He's in his, her bedroom. He's in his, and she's in her bedroom in the U.S. He's in the bedroom of his parents' house in Nova Scotia. They're up late at night chatting.

It's, they've only been talking for maybe two days at this point. And they're talking about, uh, Lindsay had just got a new jacket, this like trench coat. She sends him a picture and he's like, that's a great coat. And they start talking about where you can get coats like this, Army Navy surplus store. And he's like, oh, you know, I got combat boots at an Army Navy surplus store. And then they start talking about, you know, the different outfits they like to wear. And at one point, Lindsay says, you know, you must look pretty intimidating with that.

Like, do you ever, like, scare people? Because he's describing, like, wearing combat boots in a long trench coat and stuff. And he's like, yeah, I do. And she's like, well, we should do it together. sometime. And yeah, and he says, well, actually, she's like, yeah, it would be great to do it together sometime and scare some people. And then he says, I'd actually have thought about doing it on a major scale one day. I have everything I need. And she's like, oh. And then he starts describing the guns that he has, that his father's guns are like in an unlocked cabinet. So he says. And he's already,

like, you can, he's all, James Gamble has already begun planning this. And immediately she's like, I mean, that's how it starts. No conversation about should I, could I? It's just, yeah, I'll do it. It's aesthetic. And then for, yeah, and then just for months after that, there are conversation focused on what are we going to wear when we shoot up the place?

What music will we listen to? We need to come up with a playlist. We'll publish the playlist online. What songs are going to be on the playlist? You know, all these sorts of things. And intermixed with a ton of sexting kind of stuff. intermixed with their belief that they are the reincarnation of Eric Harris and Dylan Kleboldt, the column line shooters.

You were alive when they died. That doesn't even make sense. Well, in their chat, they're even referring to each other. Lindsay and James are referring to each other using Eric and Dylan's nicknames, Reb and Vodka. So they will, Lindsay will say to him like, good night, Reb, and he'll say, like, goodnight vodka. Wow. Like calling each other. What a pet name.

Because I know she had said like he's the Dylan to my Eric or something like that. And I was like, oh, yeah, no. And the way that they described what they were going to wear. And she says, what did she say? It was serial killer sheik. School shooter. School shooter. Excuse me.

Yeah, that was. That's how she described it. What? Fortunately for the people of Halifax, they were much more concerned and spent way more time talking about what they're what they'll wear, what they'll say to the people as they're shooting. then they talked about like how will we get to the mall like actual logistics which is why it failed partially so that's good yeah exactly and now the one thing about her story that I think may help contextualize some of this is when I was going through Lindsay's background and you know finding stuff about her online I had learned of course that she was a member of the Columbiner subculture and had made a whole bunch of memes and

short stories and stuff kind of set in that world. But another side kind of revealed itself, and I think that may help understand her and James' connection, is that shortly before she met James, Lindsay had an online relationship end badly. And when I say end badly, I mean like nuclear meltdown badly. And that it evolves into Lindsay spending months making videos and memes and drawing her online exis new girlfriend being cut up and all this stuff. It goes on. Like some of the stuff that I found is like there is one video I came across where it's like six minutes long of the sound is just someone screaming. And the video is just a slideshow of drawings of exes, new girlfriend.

you know, being raped, having her head cut off, uh, bleeding on the floor with swastikas all over her face, uh, that are also like bleeding, you know, this sort of thing. And, uh, and what's interesting is when I did my interview with her and made this episode or this series of episodes, asking her questions like, you know, what guns were you going to use? And, you know, why were you so concerned about what you're aware? She would answer those like nothing. But anytime I've ever asked her things like, why Valentine's,

day. Was there anything, was this inspired at all or motivated maybe by your breakup? She simply couldn't answer it. She'd either hang up the phone or say, I can't do this today. And she like, would not answer. Oh, yeah. Like, and I'm talking like, I probably had six tries at asking her about this breakup before she finally said like, you know, one or two sentences about it. So although it has never really come out in the news that this is a big part of it, I'm absolutely certain that it plays a role in the whole story. And just not to give us a big sidetrack is this online boyfriend is also quite notable, not because of his relationship with Lindsay, but he's actually like this kind of mystery guy that's very well known for people who research the far right and neo-Nazism.

What he is, I think he's a Russian guy. I don't know if anyone Zeefer figured out who he is, but he's a Russian guy that started a chat group in website called Iron March. And it's a spot where a lot of like kind of white nationalist, white supremacist kind of people were chatting at the time. And it became, I don't know, like the eBay of neo-Nazism. And eventually some, a group. called Adam Woffin, which is a registered terrorist entity in Canada and the U.S., was formed

in that chat group. And they see this guy that Lindsay was dating or whatever online. He goes by the name Slavros. They see him in some of the books he wrote as almost like this kind of godfather of that world. So he's notable, even aside from his connection to her. But it's just weird that she manages to have her own story taking place at Amal in Halifax, but also be connected to this larger story of like, you know, white supremacist terrorist groups, which is quite bizarre.

Before he met her, he wrote a book that is, I don't know if it's like a how-to, or not the how-to, but it's more like an ideological kind of story about a white supremacist who goes on to do something horrible. Jesus. And Lindsay also meets Slavros through Tumblr. He was putting up artwork of like Nazi stuff. So she ended up connecting with him on there as well and joined up with, you know, his kind of Nazi people. She's in the Columbineer world. But ultimately, she's like alone in her bedroom with a laptop all day and all night in these dark places online. So I guess it's not too much of a surprise that, you know, it goes in this direction.

I just think the breakup. Yeah, the breakup definitely plays a part in this. And just seeing her reaction to that breakup, it's not one of those like, I'm angry, I'm sad, like normal, you know, like any kind of breakup you go through. Hearing that she was like making this art about the new girlfriend and it's like all this like horrifically violent shit. It's like that that right there should have been like the biggest red flag to everybody. Like that is not a rational, sane reaction to a breakup. It is one thing to have like, go, we get really sad, eat a lot of ice cream, like, be angry about the new girlfriend because you can't just get past your own jealousy. Like, I get that.

But like doing that, going that far and to put those like the images that you are creating in your own brain about this actual human being out there like that kind of shows you this violence. violence was not something that she was just like forced into because of circumstance or like felt like she could identify with because of circumstance. It's like that seems like it's just innately who she is. It's a violent person. It even like cements the theory further when you find out that one of her plans was to shoot somebody and say you look fat when you're bleeding. Yeah. Like you know that was anger. Like now knowing that the breakup happened and that's what she was doing. I feel like that's anger from that situation being placed in this situation. Yeah. I'll play the clip of her describing what they were going to do in the mall. So she'll

describe, when you hear her describe her victims or her intended victims, knowing the background, I think it makes a lot more sense. James had some weapons. You had a location decided. When in your conversations with James, I'm sure you were talking about what was what you were going to do. what was it going to happen. What were you planning inside the mall? What were you planning to do? If this had it worked out, what would you both have done? I left most of the strategy to James, because again, it was his area. I wasn't familiar with the Halifax Chopping Center. So his idea was that we go into the food court bathrooms. We change into the clothes we were going to wear. We get our weapons ready. and then we just kind of come out and open fire on the food court.

Did you have any plan as far as who you would target or what you would say or whatnot? Like, did you have a plan in that regard? We were just going to shoot pretty much whoever we saw, but we both kind of like had this sort of ideal victim in our heads, people that we would especially want to kill. James just wanted to He really James really wanted to kill middle-aged women

Especially those who might have been Christian Those who might have had a family Things like that And I there were several different kinds of people I wanted to target One was maybe anybody who was particularly Justgenic looking I just have these ideas about eugenics And like what kind of features mean that someone

has good genetics versus bad. And I don't know, anybody with like poor-looking genetics would just be a target for me. And another thing I was thinking of was, I don't know, maybe shooting some basic bitches and being like, ha-ha, you look fat when you bleed. What the fuck? That will never not be the most shocking thing ever. And this, I mean, it's all very scary, but the scariest part is that you ask her the question and she goes, hmm.

Like she's thinking back to the day. You can tell she's right there again. And it sounds kind of like a positive. I'm like, hmm. Yeah, she's reminiscing for a second. Exactly. Reminiscent. That's the perfect way to describe it.

Yeah. In that clip, I didn't realize that clip didn't. Maybe I didn't include it in the episode, but I do remember her having, making a statement about like seeing a couple at a table in shooting the guy or no, shooting the girl. in letting the guy live. Maybe I, because I heavily edited. Because she said the way these interviews work,

it was probably four or five, no, actually more like 10 separate interviews because we were doing it through the prison phone. And anytime a guard came, she'd have to like end the call or we'd run out of time and we'd have to wait a week to talk again. But anyway, I had like, at the end of it,

I just had a ton of audio of her talking. And so much of it, It was just so intense that I just wasn't going to use it, especially the stuff that had to do with, like, race in this. Like, she talked a lot about that sort of stuff. And I was just like, you know, there's no way I'm getting into any of this stuff. In my episode, I asked her, like, she's an, she's of Asian descent. I asked her what led her to be, identify as like a white supremacist neo-Nazi. And she explained, like, how she came to form.

these beliefs. And then she went on and on about what her beliefs were. But I left out any part she talked about her beliefs. I left that out, but included how she got it. Yeah. So it's like you get the background, but you don't get the propaganda. And in her description there of the victims, when she's talking about like someone looking disgenic or something, I think that's getting into some of the kind of Nazi stuff. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. It's shocking. And it sounds too like she in the media, because if you look up things about her and her background, if you just do like a very surface level search, they do the thing where they're like, she was bullied her whole life, she didn't have any friends, she never hung out with anybody. She never got invited to a birthday

parties. And like, it makes you like, oh no, like that's sad for that little child. And they did that to Dylan and Eric too. They did the like, they were bullied. They never had friends and like they snapped and this is it. And then when you actually go back or you hear from people who were around them while they were growing up, like, they were like, that was not the case. Usually it's just like, no, they were just an asshole. Like, it's just like they were not like they had friends. Like they had friends. They went places. It was fine. But it's just this like weird created past that we keep giving these people. And it's so weird. And not only is it a past, it almost feels like it's giving them a past. Like, well, it happened because this. They were upset, you know.

Yeah, I got a weird story about her and with that. So in, if you read about Lindsay, you'll read a bit about like her background and bullying and stuff. And I think where a lot of that came from is when she was being sentenced in, in the courts, her, I think her mom, as well as her grandfather wrote letters to the judge basically pleading for mercy in the sentencing. And those letters were handed on to the press and were reported on. And so I think a lot about, you know, this bullying and this rough background probably comes from statement, these letters that her mom and granddad's intending it for the judge. But listen to this story. So in when I was preparing for this, I was sending her letters back and forth with different questions and just trying to like get her to

help me kind of with my research. And she kept bringing up whenever I was asking her about her past, There was this one name she brought up multiple times saying things like, you know, I had a pretty good childhood. I got along with most people except for this bitch named and she'd say the name. This bitch tried to ruin my life and she'd say the name. A month later, I'd have a letter. She'd mention, you know, in pasting, she'd mention like, I hope that bitch blah, blah, blah, dies. I hope it's okay that I'm saying that word. She said it.

Anyway. Like it was her, not me. Yeah, anyway, so I'm like, I wasn't too interested because she's just saying this name and passing. But as I was kind of planning my series and seeing which direction it go, I thought, like, I'm going to contact this person and see what they have to say and see like, you know, what their side of their beef with Lindsay is. I found a girl, and it was a pretty unique name. I found it the person on Facebook and I wrote to them. And I'm like, hi, I'm a journalist in Nova Scotia. You probably know why I'm reaching out to you.

I want to connect with you. and, you know, ask you a few questions if you'd like to chat. And they write to me like minutes later and they're like, I have no idea why you're writing me. And then I was like, oh, do you not know? Like, yeah, I was like, do you not know what happened to Nova Scotia last year with, with Lindsay Sivanaroth? And this girl writes to me. She's like, I have no idea who that is.

No, like you must have the wrong person. And then I was like, are you, you know, so and so from like the Chicago area? And she's like, yeah. And I was like, did you go to this school? And she's like, yeah. And then I was like, well, the reason. And I tell her, I was like, the reason I'm writing to you is Lindsay has brought you up a whole bunch of times. She's accused you of, like, stealing a boyfriend and spreading rumors about her.

And this girl that I'm talking to, she's like, I have no idea who you're talking about. And as I go further to describe it, I was like, it gave like an age. I told her kind of what Lindsay was into in school. Like what kind of extracurricular activity, like theater and drama and all this stuff. Anyway, the girl ends up saying she's like, she's like, it's funny. that you say all that. I remember dating this guy. We went on like two or three dates and he mentioned something about having like a crazy ex-girlfriend and I think she was Asian and her name like may have been Lindsay. I don't know. Oh my God. And and that was it. And it turns out like that was the

connection. She went on with a two dates with some guy that was like in a class of Lindsay. But she, Lindsay like eight years later has brought this girl up repeatedly as like she ruined my life. That is so scary. I know. And that's what the girl said. She's like, should I be like calling the police or something? Yeah.

Well, she's in jail in Canada 25 years. Oh my God. But how scary would that be to hear? Like from that girl? She's probably like, what? Because you're like, she's brought you up a lot. Yeah. I don't even know who she is.

Like, what? Wow. What a social commentary. And I sent her like a link to the article. And I'm like, well, this is what Lindsay's up to do now. She's like, holy crap. Oh, my God. She must have been terrified.

Yeah, but yeah, but as you heard in the clips there that we played, so we hear Lindsay get into Columbine, she's busy on Tumblr, she meets this guy, James, they start talking, come up with a plan to meet up in person, and the context of that meetup would be a mass shooting. They, the plan to go to the mall actually wasn't their first plan. This is something I didn't get too much into the episode, but it was actually almost everything was James's idea. He was, his original idea was to commit the mass shooting at an elementary school next to his house.

Oh my God. Yeah. Lindsay talked him out of that saying, you know, it's too much like Columbine. People will think we're copying. Love that that was her reasoning. Yeah. Like not like, it's elementary school children. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like, no, people won't respect us. Yeah. The next plan James had come up with was. was to do it at a hospital and specifically go to the wards where the areas where people are really sick, that way they can't fight back, like where there's like elderly people laying in beds. Oh my God. The evil?

That is like truly wild. Yeah. When she didn't like the way she said, I think what she told me is, or what she said in the episode is like, I don't know what kind of message that would send. I don't like it. The next plan was a library because at Halifax at the time that they were planning this head. and just opened a major library downtown Halifax that were very proud of that was very expensive and beautiful.

And it's kind of like the centerpiece of our downtown. He floated the idea of let's do it at the library. And she didn't like that idea because she didn't want it to be seen as an attack against knowledge. The last choice was we should we should do it at a mall. And she said, yeah, like retail, capitalism. It was like they were trying to find. a meaning as they were planning it?

Like they didn't actually have one. And that's, I remember her saying like, I want to clarify something about mass shootings. Like she was like, I think y'all, you have it wrong. And she's like that whole thing about this isn't an attack on like certain people. And it's not an attack on like the individuals that we murder in cold blood. It's like a message. And this is supposed to be against like a bigger entity. And she was going into it saying it like, does this make it better everybody?

Like, do you know, like, does this kind of like validate what's going? Like, we're not going against the people. We're murdering. It's just a bigger message. So it makes sense that she's like, like, you can understand that that's the way her mind works. It's like that's not a big enough message or that's going to look like it's against the individuals and not this bigger, like, splashy message. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's like she was kind of tasked with coming up with the ideological meaning of everything as far as their plan went. They didn't just innately have that. They had to like come up with it later. That's wild. Yeah, we need to find like, fit this into some sort of a narrative what we're planning here. But with him, if you read the Facebook messages that they send back and forth, it's obvious like what he wants to do, James Gamble, is just kill people and kill himself. It's almost like his plan from the very beginning is like, it's almost as soon as they meet. It's like, I want to commit suicide, but kill other people first.

Let's do it. And it's almost like through the chats, Lindsay's kind of dragging it out where it's at any point he seems like, well, you know, he would do it anytime, multiple times. He says, I'm just going to kill myself tonight. And she'll chat him, talk him out of it. Like, just wait a little bit. And I'm going to get the money together to come to Canada. She was selling, like, toys and like collectibles that she had trying to drum up the money to get a plane ticket as they're, you know, he's, James is getting mad at her because it's taking her so long to get the money together. and he's sending her.

Yeah, when you read the logs, the chat logs, it's just so wild. But eventually what their plan is, she gets enough money to buy a one-way ticket to Halifax. She packs a bag with, I think what she had in her bag was one of those masks that cover the lower part of your face and has a skull on it. Oh, yeah. She had a little hat with a swastika on it, a leather trench coat. and then like a couple books that were one was a comic book called like i think it was called like something the homicidal maniac or something and then the other was this kind of uh it's a the author's name is nietzsche and he writes this kind of i guess like ideological stuff but

her plan is to get on an airplane with this in her backpack come to halifax what they're going to do is james gamble is going to be at home in Halifax. He's going to kill his parents as she lands. And then there's a third co-conspirator. His name is Randy Shepard. He's a good friend of James. Lindsay really has no contact with Randy,

other than I think they sent like one or two messages back and forth. But Randy's role in all this is kind of almost like a cheerleader, encouraging it a little bit. But he's like going to the mall with James to kind of plan, you know, where they're going to do it and how it's going to all work. he's kind of helping with logistics, but one of the things he was tasked with doing is going to the airport, picking up Lindsay, taking her to James's house because he had access to a car. This whole situation, fortunately, all fails at this point because when you come, when you travel internationally on a one-way ticket with next to no luggage or money, it's going to throw up a flag or two. Looks a little weird.

They're going to question it. Here's Lindsay describing the plot coming to an end. First thing I had to do was get past customs. And the thing was, I was asleep for pretty much the whole flight, so I didn't really have the time to fill out the form. So I just filled it out as quickly as possible. I didn't really think of a convincing cover story or anything. So when I got to customs, the agent there,

he thought something was off because I had very little much. me with me very, very few items and that I only had a one-way ticket. So I ended up being detained. And I had to speak to CBSA. There was this one lady there. She was just horrible. She was just, she just kept questioning me about what I was going to do. And I'm just like, I'm here to, I mean, just here to me, my boyfriend. We're going to spend Valentine's Day together. And she's like, what are you going to do, though? And I'm just saying they're thinking, lady you seriously don't know what people do on valentine's day has it been that long and then from there i ended up yes being detained and they were going through like all of my stuff and i guess they really

didn't like some of the items that i had with me they didn't like my books they didn't like the little hat that i had that had a swastika on it and so from there um the police actually came and i ended up being arrested for uttering threats. When they arrested you, did they explain what was going on? And did they explain that they knew of your plan? He said that they knew what I was doing, that they had read through all of my, all of my logs and things like that and strange. Because I was arrested for uttering threats.

I did not utter any actual threat. I knew the legal definition of a threat. And I knew that I had done no such thing. So I thought, okay, I actually might get away with them. that. Girl. Yeah. It's like that's sad.

You hear people like complain about air travel, but her, her complains about like the Canadian border service agency. It's like they had all these questions. They didn't like my clothes. It didn't like it sounds like such an inconvenient thing. That's and she's like, this woman was horrible. And she just kept asking me what we were going to do. And she's like insulting the lady being like,

hasn't been that long. And it's like, girl. Like, you know in your head that you are planning to murder people. And this woman is caught on to you. And you're like, oh, she's horrible. And it's like, what? What? What?

That's so delusional. It's like outrageous. And she's like, they didn't like my stuff. They didn't like your white supremacy stuff. Like, gee, I wonder why. I forget the dollar amount, but I think she had like, it was something like 25 bucks on her. a couple books trench coat and yeah but regardless at this point the Canadian border service agency basically got her the police are coming and this is where James leaves the story is in all this

what ends up happening is Lindsay's in a little room at the airport getting questioned Randy Shepard James's friend the third kind of co-conspirator is out in the waiting area like kind of waiting for her to you know come out of security or whatever so he can draw driver, he's kind of lingering around way after her flight has cleared out and everyone else is off. Meanwhile, the police are researching who the third is, who's James. They're sending a team to James's house to try to talk to him. They arrest Randy at the airport. They send a team to James' house to try to confront him and talk to him.

I think he wasn't answering the phone. They block off his neighborhood. They send a vehicle up to James' front door. I believe they are talking through a loudspeaker, like telling him to come out. They hear one gunshot. And that is the end of James' role in the story. He died using one of the weapons they plan to bring to the mall with a self-inflicted gunshot. And he dies as far as how the police and border services caught onto them.

This is this whole other mystery within this story. I won't get too deep into it, but in short, in Canada, we have this thing called Crime Stoppers, and it's a service where you can dial like a 1-800 number and report a crime or give information related to a crime, and you can get a reward from crime stoppers. I don't know if you got that in the States, I'm sure you have something. Yeah. Okay. So shortly after her arrest, and this is making big news that this plot to commit a shooting was foiled,

it comes out that a tip to crime stoppers is what just hours before she landed is what set off the whole thing and what alerted border service security to the plot. I asked her about this and Lindsay said, or actually before I asked her, one other thing that came is a lot of people were saying before he killed himself, James Gamble called in the tip. and the news kind of caught on to that story and there's been a few articles that were written as if James kind of did the right thing in his last moments. Which doesn't really make sense. Like if you're going to, if you're going to do something wrong like he was planning, simply by killing yourself, takes yourself out of the equation. The crime stoppers tip would be irrelevant.

But what Lindsay says when I asked her, I said, do you think James called in the tip? Who do you think did it? she told me that the tip, whoever called it in, they didn't know very much. They only really knew her first name and that she was coming from the U.S. So Lindsay suspected it was one of the many people they told online about what they were planning. That's what I wanted. Yeah, because they were making, they were like starting to advertise it. They had Tumblr posts where they were saying like, you know, February 14th that's going down.

And there'd be like this kind of almost looks like a movie poster kind of advertising their mass shooting. They were kind of promoting it online and not making much of a secret about it. Wow. So she believes that somebody who saw this sort of stuff that they were putting out online that knew just a little bit about her, maybe called it in. But she also tells me that the police and border services didn't realize that a crime stopper's tip had come in until well after they took her into custody. It's not that they were there waiting for her. She came through sketchy. They took her into custody and then put two and two together after the fact that there was also a tip about someone coming here to kill people at a mall.

Wow. But it's kind of a wild end. Yeah. That's kind of where I come in. So back at the beginning, I talk about at the mall and I have to leave the mall. That's kind of like at this point as this is going down that the mall was evacuated. So it's kind of wild. but what's, I don't know if you've ever had an experience with this sort of thing, but

usually when someone pleads guilty to a crime, they do so with an agreed statement of facts, which is basically like, you know, here's what happened, I did this, that, and the other thing, I'm guilty. And that's the end of it. In Lindsay's case, she pled guilty, but she didn't provide an agreed statement of facts. She didn't really tell anyone what she did. The way she told people what she did is by coming on my podcast and telling the whole story. And she did this while she was awaiting trial, which is kind of crazy.

I was like, I was kind of thinking as I was recording and putting this episode out like, she's supposed to go to court for this stuff and she's going to like admit to it all in the podcast. But right after I released the episode, I had RCMP, which is like our police came to my house. I don't know how they fail me, but they came to my house with. this thing called the production order, which is basically a warrant. Yeah. And the order was like, we want all of those recordings, everything she's ever sent you. Oh, my God.

Here. Did she have a lawyer? Yeah. And I was like, she did. And I was thinking like, I'm guessing she didn't tell the lawyer what she was doing. But she, I think she, to her own fault, I'm sure, she made her own decisions throughout all this. I'm going to, even the story of how she comes to pleading guilty is interesting. This will be one last clip I'll play.

This is her describing her decision to plead guilty. And I had mentioned really the only evidence against her was these Facebook logs where they planned everything out. The whole trial kind of rested on whether or not those logs could be admissible. What's of this? I knew that mine was a very, very odd case, pre-evidence aside from that. So I thought I actually had pretty good chances. My lawyer seemed pretty confident that he would be able to get those logs excluded because the police had made several mistakes in acquiring that evidence.

So I was very, very hopeful at first. I remember my lawyer telling me about the judge that we ended up having for this case, and he really did not sound hopeful about it given what he knew about that judge. But I thought we should take our chances with it anyway. just wanted to see what would happen on that particular date where we were supposed to try and get the logs excluded. Of course, that ended up being shot down, and that's when I changed my plea to guilty. She doesn't think through things, logically, which is like an understatement, obviously. But it's like that, and then you think about like, she's talking about on the plane ride, she's like, oh, I fell asleep,

which is like you fell asleep on the way to your mass murder. That's wild. And then she was like, and I didn't really come up. up with a cover story. And it's like, you didn't plan that part? Like, I'm glad you didn't. But like, what is your brain doing? And then it's like this.

She's like, yeah, I just figured we should see. Like, what? Yeah. And there's a lot of other, yeah, it's like she made the legal decision. Now we'll take our chances. Yeah. Let me handle this. Up to this point, I've been bang on with how this is all played out.

But yeah, but that's one, like, in putting these series together and releasing it, it's ethically, like, I think if she had have done any, of this stuff I don't think I would have wanted to make this series but since some parts of it are so laughable yeah it's it makes it easier to talk about but at the same time it's people like this that actually make it happen and fortunately in Canada like I think this story is an ad like as you really get into the story it's an ad for how effective gun control can be because in their earliest points when they're talking about committing the shooting they talk about will we do it at your place and in Nova Scotia or my place in Illinois.

And the only reason they decided to do it in Nova Scotia is James had access to guns that his father owned. It was like a hunting rifle and a shotgun. But both of the guns that they had, and they didn't have enough money to buy really anything better. So it was pointless to go to Illinois and try to buy guns because we now have guns and we don't have money. But the problem that they were running into and they're planning is the only ammunition,

they had was ammunition designed for like shooting like birds and stuff. So they needed to buy different ammunition for the shotgun that would be powerful enough to like kill a deer slash kill a human. But neither, well, Lindsay obviously, but James also didn't have a firearm's license. So he couldn't buy the ammunition. So he was going on Facebook in his different online places. And any friends he had, he was kind of asking like, can you get ammunition? Like, do you have a firearm license? They couldn't find anyone.

to get them ammunition. So in the end, what their plan was, was to go to the mall with this old hunting rifle and a handful of bullets in a shotgun with the type of bullet or shell that would be designed to kill, again, like a partridge or something. So unless they shot you point blank, you wouldn't have died from that anyway.

Wow. Lindsay is, at the time that she did this, I don't know, like 95 pounds, that shotgun, And if she had a shot at once, she probably would have been on her back with somebody on top of her punching her out. Exactly. Yeah. And it was also, even the rifle was the kind where you would shoot it. And then you have to take a bullet out of your pocket, put it in the gun, reload it.

Oh, my God. Shoot it again. Like, this is not, like, a mass shooting that you see in TV with, like, military U.S. kind of guns. Like, several rounds at a time. I'm thankful that they were so bad at planning this. but also what? Like how do you, I just don't understand

how they put this together. Yeah. Well, that's kind of the question is like, is this like a larp that has gone way too far? Yeah. If you read their chats, there's so much, like there's this mix of like fantasy and reality,

in sexting and sending nude photos. But everything is in this context of, and we're going to go. a bunch of people at the mall. Yeah. If it had to just, yeah, if it had to just end it at some point, it'd be like, whoa, that's like a really sick fantasy these two had. But this was to the point where like he was about to kill his parents, but his dad stayed

home from work so he couldn't do it. She got on the plane. Like they had the intent. I have no question. They had the intent to go and kill people. But the other thing is even if she made it to his house, how were, they didn't have like any way to get to the mall with these. big guns.

They would have had to, like, get on the bus. And they also had plans of bringing Molotov cocktails, like the beer bottle with gas in it. You can't take, like, a duffel bag of cans of gas on the bus with a shotgun. That's in, I think that's all due to, one, the fact that, like, clearly they are who they are. And two, I think it was because they had two completely different reasonings for doing this. Right. Like, they came together two completely different messed up people. And he just wanted to hurt people and then kill himself.

That's what it sounds like. That's why he was just always ready to do it. Because he was like, this really doesn't mean a lot to me. I just want to hurt people. I want to cause chaos. And then I want to leave. And she was trying to find this like, meaning. Big meaning and this big message to send to the world.

And it's like, so they were meeting on these completely conflicting ideas. So it was never going to actually come to fruition the way that I think is, especially that she thought it would. Yeah, it's certainly. And it's like you got it bang on. Like during the planning, whenever they would come into trouble, like maybe there'd be at sale on airfare and he would be like, you know, buy a ticket now.

And if she didn't have the money at one point, this is what happened. And he was, you know, so upset. He's like, I'm just going to kill myself. I'm just going to do it today. It's not worth waiting. And she talks him off the ledge. Next little issue comes up, he's going to kill himself. She'd talk him off the ledge, like, wait for me.

But meanwhile, she is like writing and dream. drafting like manifestos with this vision like everyone is going to remember me. But she'd change your opinion. So she'd rewrite it and never ended up releasing it. It ended up, she had a manifesto sort of thing, basically done saved as a draft on like her Tumblr blog with a plan of maybe finishing it when she was at Jamesus and scheduling it to publish after they did their shooting. But obviously they didn't get there.

Now, I think people who hear her talk and hear her. story or probably take comfort in knowing she's in prison, she actually got a much harsher sentence than I think a lot of people would have expected. She, in Canada, she got life in prison. Thank goodness. For attempted murder, it's, it would be, that's a unique punishment or unique sentence. Life in prison in Canada is 25 years, but she's eligible for parole. I think about another five, I think she has no parole eligibility for 10 years, maybe. So I think another five years she can apply. Yeah, but there's some weird aspects to it.

So here's one is she was never charged with a crime in the United States. She's not a Canadian. So what happens is when she gets out of prison, she gets deported out of Canada to the U.S. Where she has no criminal record. Oh, great. She's not facing charges. Yeah, and when you look through the history of situations like this,

it seems like people who are international inmates in Canadian prisons often get paroled pretty quickly so that way we can boot them out of here and not pay. So it's like that's going to be an interesting layer to this is when she walks away, Scott Free in five years to, you know, I don't know how much faith you have in Canada's rehabilitation system, but a lot of people are repeat offenders over here. So I don't know. It's interesting to think about that side of things. Yeah, that's a scary aspect of it.

Yeah, let's not put our heads there. Yeah. Let's not go there. That'll lead us into a mentee be. Yeah. And just to set the scene for that, since she's been in prison, she's been in the news for sending neo-Nazi essays to this kind of like infamous old man Nazi in the United States. He published a bunch of them in some Nazi groups. And you may find articles about that.

So she's still in that world. Oh. So that's a little. Concerning. You would think that maybe they would keep an eye on what she's writing in prison. I think in prison they can't keep an eye on much. It's a mess over here with how our prisons work. And it's with overcrowding and prisoners escaping and getting outweighs and, you know,

and reoffending immediately, basically, it seems like it's, there's justifiably a lot of criticism on Canada's justice system. one other aspect of this. I'm curious what you'll say about this. And you may not have come across much of this, but I certainly have because since publishing those episodes, I hear from so many people who ask me like, do you have photos of her? Do you have? In my episode, she talks about how she wrote a book about her crime.

It's kind of like a dramatization where it's like she wrote a book where if she didn't get caught on the border as to what would happen. And we talk a little bit about that in the episode. So I've had a lot of people write me asking for that. But I've also had a lot of people writing me who wanted me to, you know, what's her address? How can I reach her? And some of these people will have like profile picks that are like her image and stuff. Oh my.

And I can I can confidently tell you that when she did this, a part of her motivation was to generate like interest in her and maybe a bit of fandom. You only need to search her name on Twitter or any kind of dark place, and you'll find that Lindsay Suvonroth fans. Absolutely mind-boggling. Truly. And you just see the cycle can let go. That's what it is. It just begins again. I feel like the internet started as this great idea and this great place of like knowledge and sharing and communicating.

That'll be so beautiful. My goodness, has it taken just a nosedive. The other thing is, at this point, there's no FBI guys on our phones. Everybody's like, oh, the FBI guy is listening to me in my car. I'm like, the FBI guy is not there. The ad sales team is there to sell you some chickfil-a or something, but they're not watching what you're doing on the internet. No.

No. But just as one side tangent, do you believe our phones are watching and listening to us for marketing purposes? Yes. Okay. I was at a used bookstore last week, okay? My, as we're looking around, there's this book that my son sees on the shelf and he pulls it off and he's like, oh, I read this in school. It's called, I think it was called Kastronauts and it's about cats that go to space or something. He's like, catchernauts. I saw this at school. This is a good book. And I was like, oh, yeah, never heard of it. But I'm not going to buy it now. It's seven bucks. We put it back on the shelf, walk away. Literally like three hours later, that's the first time I've ever heard of Kachronauts, never said it. in my life before that. Hours later, I'm like sliding through Facebook, doom scrolling or whatever. And sure enough, an ad pops up for like a new catcher not's book. Yeah.

That happened to me the other day. I was, we got, we were literally getting Cheesecake Factory. Like Elena texted me her order. I put the order on. I'm driving to Cheesecake Factory. We're talking about cheesecake. Like, we're actively going to get it. And then while we were waiting for the curbside order, I'm going through my Instagram.

And I get an. for cheesecake, like the cheesecake factory. I'm like, I don't need that. I'm here. You've done your job. There's no way they're not. It's so creepy. It is creepy. But I guess ultimately, the internet serves people for direct advertising to us

and provides a platform for people to complain about politics and a platform for people to provide mass shootings. Yeah. Is there anything else good? I think we got to get rid of it. Because even like when it comes to like research and stuff now, I'm like, just look for a book. Like I'm like, I don't need it anymore.

I think we should go back to the drawing board. Yeah. When it comes to the internet. It's not working, guys. Bring me back to a razor phone. There's a, yeah, there's a comedy clip that resonated with me. I think it was, I could be wrong. I think it was Bill Burr as the comedian.

I love Bill Burr. He was making a joke about people coming to him with conspiracy. theories and telling them like, you know, this is, you know, whatever, 9-11 is real, like, this sort of thing. And he says, my, the way I handle it now is if anyone wants to tell me about something they heard, I just stopped them and say, did you hear it in a library? Yep. And if they didn't hear it in a library, I don't want to hear it.

Yeah. He's like, at least there, there's like some mild editorial oversight of what gets in a book and what gets in there where the internet has none of that. So unless it's in a library, I don't even want to know about it. It's exactly. Yeah, it's a good way to do it. It is. I like it.

Because especially at this point, it's like anybody can say anything. And it's fact. And often do. And often do. So it's like, this is what you hear happening. And it's like this little haven for really angry, really lonely and really violent people, unfortunately. Yeah. And the trend is only getting worse.

And this is something that came up briefly. in Lindsay's and James's story, but I see it often now, more often than not, is when someone commits a match shooting, they oftentimes they want to have it out there. They want people to know what they did. And in Lindsay and James's case, they had planned to take photos and upload them as they were kind of doing it. So that way in real time people could see. But what is kind of like the new movement is people will live stream themselves doing it. And over the last few years, there's been multiple mass shooters who, who had like a GoPro on filming and live streaming it

or their phone note as they were doing it. And I think that only serves, I don't know, to encourage more people to do it in tremendous, spectacular, horrific ways. Exactly. And it's the, it's the aesthetic of it all. Like the internet is very much about, like, aesthetic and, like, curating something that isn't real. And it's like, so these people just, they can create,

like, she created the system. aesthetic of like I'm school shooter chic and that's that's what I like it just all fits into it and that's why they were so concerned with the aesthetic of it all like what are we going to wear what are we going to say because this is I want it talked about on the internet and so we have to make sure that it's cool and that it fits within this aesthetic that we've created or what are we doing and they didn't come up with the actual logistics of it because why does that matter yeah fortunately and And now they're seen as like despite all of their how they want it to be portrayed and stuff, they are seen. I think for who they really are, which is sick people who I dare say are evil.

And I think it's that simple. But it very easily could have been something altogether different. Were it not for, I don't know, maybe more lax security at the border at the airport that night? maybe like fortunately they didn't have the right firearms even if they if they got here but it only takes no one someone to get something better in Canada so many times there's you'll hear of a mass shooting in Canada or some event and it's just a gun that was brought in from another country or modified or something but it's it was this I think event is as close as it as it could have gotten and it thankfully since no one no innocent victims were killed it allows a semi-comfortable

place to view this story from above and kind of see what makes something like this happen. And it's not like in the end of hearing her story you're going to understand that you're probably going to come a bit closer to getting like what kind of people can end up in this situation. Yeah. Right. Piecing it together. And I think, yeah, and I think the type of people that end up in this situation probably

live in all our communities. We just don't know them because they're sitting in their parents' basements on their laptops stewing about something that happened seven years ago. Exactly. That nobody else even remembers. Yeah. which is really scary. Absolutely.

Wow. It's morbid, I dare say it's morbid. It is very morbid. It is very morbid. What a story? And the fact, again, that we over here, we had like no idea. No, like, this was not a big story. The first time we heard of it was you bringing it up to us.

Yeah. Yeah, that happens with a lot of Canadian stories. I think the news cycle and almost the news ecosystem in Canada doesn't necessarily communicate with other parts of the world. So something that's a huge story here, I'll do it on my podcast or something, and people in the U.S. or anywhere else, they have no idea what I'm talking about. But when you talk about the American cases, everybody knows them. Like, say, Adnan, Syed from Syria, like everybody in the world would know that story.

But the Canadian equivalent to that, people would be like, what are you talking about? Yeah, they'll be like, what are you talking about? I've never heard of that. But this, when it happened at the mall in Halifax, it was, even in other parts of Canada, it's probably not as well known as it is as it is here. course, but I think just our style of reporting and the way stories are told in the news, it just works a little bit different here. It's, I would say, less dramatic as kind of the typical American style news reporting.

Exactly. If this was, if this had have happened in the U.S., the reporting would have been completely different. There would have been in-court photos and 911 calls aired. It would have been very focused on her and her looks. and like femme fatal and all that. Like she would have been named everything she probably wanted to be named. She would have been louded as basically. Yeah.

But it didn't really happen here. So it's probably good. Yeah, but the book was thrown at her. And I think that makes a strong statement to other people who would plan something like this. But I do think the type of person who will plan something like this is not going to care about a life sentence. That's true. That's very true. because, I mean, they were both planning to shoot each other at the end of this.

Yeah, their plan was to go, was to lose their virginity and then commit suicide together. Oh, my. In the heat, as it's all happening. So that's a pretty ambitious way to go out. That's very ambitious. Also, cool of her to be so mean about the lady at the airport saying, how long has it been? Yeah. Pop me kettle.

Right. Come on. But I just think that clip of her talking about the girl at Border Service, so she was genuinely outraged at how awful this girl was to her. And it's almost like Lindsay just went a step away from saying like, just let me go kill people at the mall. You've been giving me such a hard time over nothing. Like this woman's just good at her job.

She's actually doing me. Suspects what you are actually going to do and are planning to do. And that's one of those situations too where, she has these moments of being so like self-reflective in a way. Like when she talks about how she had a very normal childhood and nothing really happened, like there was no real big trauma in her home or anything like that. And she says like, so you never would have known that I'd go down. Like there's no red flags to say I would go down this path.

And it's like, that's like really self-aware in a weird way. Like just being like, yeah, this is who I am and I don't know why. And then she'll do those things where it's like, God, this woman wouldn't let me just like, get out of the airport and go murder people. And it's like, how are you so dense in that scenario, but like can actually reflect on your own, like almost break your own fourth wall in another sentence. One last little story to tell you.

This one was kind of wild too is when she, I was releasing my episodes just as her trial was happening. She ends as you hear she pleads guilty. After the Facebook chat was deemed admissible as evidence, She pleads guilty to the crime. A couple of, like maybe a couple months later, she was to be sentenced. I attended her sentencing as well. And I think she saw me in there.

And right after the sentencing hearing is over, I go home. It's maybe 25 minutes earlier that she was actually sentenced to my phone rings, and it's the jail. Oh, my God. So I answer it. So I'm so stressed. Yeah. And I'm like, hello. And it's Lindsay.

And I'm thinking, like, people were thinking she'd get like, seven years in jail. She gets a life sentence with 25 years. So I'm thinking like, oh my God, like this is going to be an intense phone call. And I was like, oh, hi, Lindsay. And I'm like, I think I said something like, I don't think I need to ask how you're doing today. And she said, well, let me tell you, when you go to the courtroom or when you go to the courthouse, they got to take them from jail to the courthouse. When you go to the courthouse, they have a Tim Horton's in there. Every time I go there, I get to get a chicken sandwich. Today, they gave me a chicken salad sandwich.

On the worst day of my life, I get a chicken salad sandwich. And she was like raging that they gave her, not like grilled chicken, but like chicken salad. And I'm like, oh, yeah. And I was like, oh, and then you got a life sentence. And she's like, yeah, she's like, well, it's like you don't get out often and get to get food like that.

So she's just like she couldn't let it go. What? She's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that sucks. But like, I got chicken salad. But to play devil's advocate, though, there is a huge difference between a chicken sandwich and a chicken salad. That is very true. It's chicken salad. It looks like a chicken sandwich that someone else ate.

Justice for chicken salad. I love it while you still have a good chicken salad. It tastes good. It doesn't look good, though. I will admit that. But weighing it against, you know, got the wrong sandwich, got 20 more years in prison than I was expecting. I think the sandwich wouldn't be my priority. Yeah, I don't think I would even remember the sandwich, to be quite honest.

Wow. I also don't think I'd just be calling people. No. No. Especially people you don't like actually know. But I was going to say, maybe you would call your family or something. But that's kind of her M.O. Like, that's her life.

It's just like latching on to people that she has these like strange relationships with. I think the reason she called me is because she probably wanted to hear. what was being reported in the news. And she probably didn't want to call her mom and be like, will you Google me, mom, and see what they're saying? Yeah, let me know. But she was asked me. And on occasion, I don't anymore, but for a while they're on occasion,

I'd get a call from her. Just at random, when something major in the world happened, and she would ask me, you know, what is it being reported in the news? Can you read me an article, like about my appeal being denied, you know, that sort of thing. But it's bizarre. Man. Wow.

Jordan, thank you for bringing that story to us because, again, a lot of people probably haven't heard it. And thank you for bringing us those clips because those are just, there's no way you could just tell us about those clips. Like, you have to hear it. And you have to hear her voice. Yeah. Yeah. And her tone. People wouldn't believe the story if you just told it without the clips.

I appreciate you having me on. I'm a little starstruck, Elena. I looked at the New York Times bestsellers list today. So I saw a fellow podcaster. So congratulations. I'll congratulate you on air. I think you're not, as of today, we're recording this on the 23rd of September. Are you number one today?

Today, number one in the Wall Street Journal, baby. What did I say? I said New York Times, I'm number two on the New York Times bestseller list. But like technically number one, if you asked me. I was able to. That's just amazing. Did you ever see? Thank you.

the day because I like I could probably project my own kind of memories of it I like when you started a podcast did you think people were going to listen no not at all when you started writing a book did you think you'd even finish no not at all so we're alike because I also will write an amazing book never but you actually do this stuff I honestly I never thought I would finish it one and two if I finished it I was like okay I'm just going to put that on the shelf and be like wow I finished that. So there's that. Bye. Never thought it would be published. I feel like I know a rock star. And let me read you why. This was a headline I saw in the news. And I just, you couldn't make up a more amazing headline. The headline, this is in USA Today. It says morbid podcaster and autopsy technician Elena Urghart makes killer debut on bestsellers list. I love the words. I love it. It's just amazing. So she's a podcaster? A morbid podcast or an autopsy tech who has a bestseller book? It's like, are you real?

It's so bizarre. You're like a new, I don't know if you grew up with GI Joe, but you're like this new like member of like COBO or something. Oh, I love that. I'll take that. We were just talking about GI Joe this morning. That's a weird. Yeah, we were. That's weird full circle moment.

Weird. Oh, you're, I listen in on your phones with the marketing people. See, you know it. Call back. All right. Well, it's been a pleasure. always happy to chat with you girls. I want to have you on nighttime soon. Yes, we would love to. And you're always welcome back here. Duh. Awesome. Free more nights. Perfect.