My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 143 - DeSabotage

Episode Date: October 18, 2018

Karen and Georgia cover the truth behind poisoned Halloween candy and the murder of Carol Stuart.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We at Wondery live, breathe and downright obsess over true crime and now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C on Facebook and listen to True Crime on Wondery and Amazon Music, Exhibit C. It's Truly Criminal. Hello and welcome. This is my favorite murder. It's a true crime comedy podcast that we do for you bi-weekly. Weekly. It's weekly. Oh. Well, then the other one. Right. It's twice a week. Yeah, so twice a week, but this is the long-form version. This is the real one. The other one's fake. It's fake. It's more of a holdover. Yeah. But this is the real deal. Right. And that's Karen Kilgera. And that's Georgia Hartstark. And that's who we are. Stephen Ray Morris is holding

down the ones and twos. Stephen's there. Elvis is on my lap. All is right with the world. That's right. You have your nice mug of tea. I'm literally drinking some. What Georgia described as lemon balm tea. So I hope there's a little bit of melted lip balm now. I hope that's what you gave me as a gift. My gift to you. Oh, can I tell you, you know, all these dumb tea bags with their dumb tea things and their dumb quotes and shit. Yeah. This one just says be curious. Fuck you. We're curious about what the fuck lemon balm tea is. Also, I'm going to. Yeah. You know, don't fucking tell me. Because if they think that you're just like this boring person in the middle of your life and then you need tea to come tell you how to live your fucking life. Listen, lemon balm. You don't know

me. You don't know my family. Stay out of it. You don't know my level of curiosity. I'm up your ass. I've already Googled you. Right. Lemon balm tea. What if your name is Jonathan Van Ness and you have a podcast about being curious already? And Jonathan Van Ness is like, I need to do more for you tea. Yeah. He's like, oh, I guess I should cancel my podcast because I'm not curious enough according to tea. Sorry, lemon balm. Jesus. Tea. What more do you want from our lives? Get out of our face. Hey, speaking of fall things in all the fall, living your life tea things. Yeah. We'd like to give a shout out to Circleville Ohio and their Circleville pumpkin show, which is really a festival. So I don't know why they call it a show. I mean, I feel like that's part of the

part of the charm of the Circleville pumpkin show is that they think they're a show and it you can go. It's October 17th to the 20th in Circleville. We're not going, but you should fucking tell we would go. I would. A lot of people have tweeted and said, are you guys going to make a surprise? I wish. And I truly would do. I would love nothing more, but we have to go up to the Pacific Northwest this weekend. So we can't. That'll be great. That'll be balmy and lemony too. Yeah. There's going to be tons of lemon balm tea up there. But please, if you're anywhere near Circleville Ohio, which means near Columbus, it's Columbus. That's where it came out of our live Columbus show last year. The Circleville pumpkin murders. No, the Circleville letter, the letter writer,

the mysterious letter writer, then did for Drunk History. Oh, right. Two that I forgot while you were telling the story. That's how drunk I was. You had a recovered drunk memory, which is the best. Everyone to know if the show is real. If people really get drunk on it, just know I couldn't remember that I had done that. I had to remember the story until you're like, this is hold on a second. I'm having horrible memories of this. And just in case you were in, if you're a pageant person, you can run for Circleville Miss Pumpkin, right, Steven? Is it Miss Pumpkin? Yeah, I believe it's Miss Pumpkin and then there's Little Miss Pumpkin. I'm going to run for Little Miss Pumpkin. There's two ways to be beautiful at the Circleville Pumpkin show. Get over there and see what you,

how you rate. Wear a murderino so you can identify other murderino people. You guys can all gather. I hope there's fried pumpkin there because that's absolutely my favorite food in the world. Is fried pumpkin? Anything with pumpkin in it I want to eat. And I don't mean pumpkin spice. Fuck pumpkin spice. Okay. When I get tempura and that fucking piece of pumpkin is in there fried. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm going out of my mind. I see that it is very delicious. I agree. One, Steven. Say it. Oh, there's a pet parade. Oh, my God. On Friday. Next level. Holy shit. Pets will be there in their costumes. There's no reason not to go to Circleville Pumpkin show. Elvis, I'm dressing you up in solidarity. And sending you out in a FedEx box. Sorry, buddy.

You're going to appear as a FedEx box at the Circleville Pumpkin show this weekend. What if Elvis burst like a cake burst out of a FedEx box? Like a stripper. Like the stripper he is. We have more news to announce. Yeah, more. That's their project. We have our own project. What's do you want to go first? Want me to go first? Well, I guess that's pretty big news. A couple people have tweeted and asked us this when we announced the book. We wrote a book called Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered. It's being written as a, or like... It was a dual memoir. Dual memoir. Which I think is might be the first of its kind. That's right. And we're just here to announce now. We get to announce. We will be reading our own

audio book. Of course we will be. I mean, who the fuck else is going to do it? We suggested Paul Giamatti. But he's very busy on billions. Apparently. So go to Audible or anywhere that you listen to your audio books. And you can pre-order it. Pre-order that shit and then get ready for us to read you a book. You're going to get so sick of our voices. It's going to be really embarrassing like reading some of that shit out loud. I'm going to love every moment of it. I'm going to cherish my own instrument and listen to myself for the first time ever. We should have an alternative Paul Giamatti version. Just in case people don't want to listen to us. If anyone is Paul Giamatti's agent or representative, cousin would be great. Like

you could get him at Thanksgiving. Linda Giamatti. Linda. Ney. Ney. What's her new last name? McGillicuddy. Linda, we would love it if you would hook us up and have Paul. I think he would actually nail it. Get him nice and drunk on vodka and lemon balm tea. Okay. Really, that's a new thing. That's a new cocktail. Did you just make that up? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, it's just vodka with lemon balm tea. Vodka and hot tea. Put some bitters in there. That's actually going to be nice for your throat. It might be kind of bitter as it is. That's true. And get Paul Giamatti to sign the papers. We'll send them to you, Linda. God, this is... Linda, thanks so much for doing this job with us. We really appreciate all the work you do. That's right. You'll get a special thank you

in the notes. Linda McGillicuddy Giamatti. You are our new manager. Meredith, you're fired. Sorry. Oh, I also... Oh, hey, don't fast forward yet. This is really exciting. Today, which is Thursday, which is tomorrow for us. Our new line of fucking merch is coming out. Fall merch. Fall merch that also includes the much fucking anticipated pet merch. Finally, you can talk about it. Yeah. So a bunch of new shit's coming out to Thursday today. Myfavoritmurder.com and then go to the store. There's a bunch of new quotes. Like, you've seen some of them at the live shows. What in the fucking fuck? Classic. Spell it like you say it. Great. Fucking hooray. And then... Fucking hooray is a really cool kind of disco letter that I love. Yeah, it's all really cool font that we specifically

made people change 14 times until they're satisfied with it because that's how we are. A little closer, a little closer. And then very excited to announce our two new special... They're called Classic Eco Jersey Jogger Pants. The fucking sweatpants people. Sweatpants, baby. And one of them says, fuck you, I'm married. And I could not be more excited to get these for myself. Hey, are you a newlywed or an oldlywed? Is your friend about to get married and she needs something to wear on her wedding day, getting dressed up in the photos? Or do you have a sibling that's just been married for 30 years and is totally over it? Well, it sounds like you need to get these sweatpants. So there's two sweatpants and then our fucking pet line, which is so exciting.

We... Karen has a... Oh my god, you guys have to see this. So it's the dog, Karen's dogs. I'm coming out with a fiercely private t-shirt of Frank and George that Chris Fairbanks drew who I do... The other podcast, Do You Need A Ride With? And he is an amazing graphic designer and illustrator. So he drew a picture of George drinking water out of the glass, like the video that I posted about six months ago on Twitter. And then a picture of Frank, who's basically... I think he's smoking a cigar. It looks like a cigar. He's smoking a cigar. And it says, in beautiful font... It's like such a cool punk rock shirt. I love it. But then, hey, if you're not a dog person and you're a cat person, our friend, Michael Ramstead, who created the really beautiful

chalk outline, like cartoony drawings of us that we use all the time in life. The earliest, I think, drawing of us. Yeah, that he did for us. And we were like, can we buy that from you? We love it. He's so talented. He did an Elvis design for us. Elvis want a cookie and it's fucking cool. It's so cute. It's got Elvis on it. I love it. And then we also have those that are available for pets for dogs, t-shirts. Your dog can wear a shirt of my dog. And then if your dog is an asshole or hates everyone, there's one that says, here's the thing. Fuck everyone. That's a dog shirt. Yes. I don't need to tell you. There's even more. It's really good stuff for the pet line. Yeah. Colors, bowls. Exactly. My favorite

murder.com. Go to the store. It'll be up there. We're very excited to be bringing you merch. And there's more to come. So merch that appeals to you. And we're very excited to be getting so much beautiful art and things that you guys create and make about this show. One of which, a person named Kali Lawson, who is Kali Lawson Art on Instagram, drew a picture of Cody the Chainsaw Chicken, which was a story that we just did, like this week on the mini set. Oh yeah. It came out Monday. And I think she immediately drew this picture and it is hauntingly beautiful. Gorgeous. It's a child on a BMX bike with a chainsaw, a slung over his shoulder. Just how you described him that you wanted him to be looking up at a fucking utility pole. You don't

even see his face and the way he's looking at it with like reverence and awe. He's about to do some shit. And he's like, little ears are sticking out because he's a, oh, it's beautiful. Thank you, Kali Lawson so much. It's a wonderful, it's a wonderful picture. Yeah. And thank you once again to Nick Terry, who has made yet another hilarious video of the wheatwool conversation we had about Georgia not being able to whistle. And what's his Instagram? He started a new Instagram of just the Instagram, MFM animations. Yeah. You can find them all in one place. That's cool. MFM underscore animated. Okay. Wow. Instagram. That's so great. Thank you, Nick Terry. And he'll be at our Seattle show. So we should give him a shout out there. Oh, very cool. Okay. Finally,

we'll stop talking. Speaking about live shows. We're not going to fucking ever stop talking. Oh, I forgot that that's our whole podcast. That's all this is. Halloween show. It's on Halloween. You've heard of it. It's at the Microsoft theater. It's going to be literally fucking huge, 7,000 fucking people. What's up, Los Angeles? I'm terrified. Karen and I are dressing up as a surprise costume. And we want everyone's been asking, should we dress up? Yes. We highly recommend dressing up in costume. Every person I run into is like, I'm going. I immediately ask what you're going to dress up as. It's going to be great. So yes, dress up, Steven. I love that you did this. I just wanted to just so people, you know, it's our costumes could be very colorful and I just

didn't want anyone to get kicked out, you know? Good. Just in case. An essential part of their costume. Yeah. So if, yeah, hatchets, probably don't pay. Any weaponry of any kind do not bring it with you, even though you're Michael Myers and you're like, but it's my thing. Don't bring a knife. Yeah. So yeah, it's all that common sense stuff. And then I guess if you want to bring like a poster or a banner, a red flag, it has to be smaller than 11 by 17 and not on a pole. That seemed like the most important thing. Okay. No, but not on a pole. So like not on a stick or anything or don't bring a stick. Or don't let it strip for a living. Either way. I mean, if you can make a living stripping, go for it. Ain't no thing, maybe. No. That's a Missy Elliott

quote. Yeah. And that's pretty much it. Shoes for safety. Please wear shoes. That's basically it. You can't go with the barefoot kintessa. Oh my God, is someone going to do it now? The, maybe a zombie barefoot kintessa. I love it. Okay. Okay. This is an email that got sent. And this is off of our last, the last live show we posted was from Durham and I did the Lawson family murders. And that was the story. Well, I'll just read this to you. Hi, hilarious people in your menageries. I loved seeing you in Charlotte. I gave you the treasure chest with a mini Elvis for Georgia and $2 coins for Karen. I have that mini Elvis. It was at the bottom of the bag when I unpacked. You stole it. It was just in the bag. I'll give it back. Damn it.

So listening to your live Durham episode though, I was horrified slash delighted to hear Karen tell the story of the Lawson family murders. I'm an English teacher. And while I currently teach college English, my very first teaching position was at North Stokes High School, a stone's throw from the old Lawson family property. I knew nothing about it. But on Halloween that first year, when I let the kids tell scary stories, instead of, you know, teaching them things, the kids collectively told me the entire Lawson family murder story. I love that this class full of kids was like, yeah, and then my mom says, I love it. High school because I'm imagining children in her. She first high school. Yes. Well, I'm like, my mom told me she said the kids

collectively. Yeah. It's much cuter if it's first graders. Okay. So I didn't believe it at first, but I did notice that I had quite a few students with the last name and come to find out that many of them were descendants of the Lawson family. They all knew the gory details because they'd all grown up hearing their parents talk about it. One student get ready, has a great aunt who all caps still owns her stolen cake raisin. No. Yep. Preserved in a small glass box. Holy shit. I tell the story. There was a cake that was on the on the table when these murders happened. It was a Christmas cake and it had raisins sprinkled on the top. Bro. Georgia was very upset about raisins on a cake. Yes. We talked about it forever. Someone ended up buying that

cake and keeping it for a while. Apparently this person's great aunt stole the cake a raisin off the cake when she did her walkthrough and kept it in glass, in a glass box. Okay. So we're back to the letter. That was all me talking. Okay. Naturally, I demanded to see it and she brought it in for show a week later. The kids offered to take me to the pain road location, but I declined because, you know, teenagers are teenagers are already scary enough. Another weird connection. The pain family that the road is named red pain was my great uncle. Wow. Of which she's saying the pain family that the road is named after. Got it. Red pain is her great uncle. That's a terrifying name. Best Susan. Then she then she tells a whole big long ghost story that I can't

get into now, but we will save it for a different mini. So please do. Yeah. I got a ton of letters of people from that same show who were like, yeah, that's, those are my family members to the store, the bitter blood murders, which I'll read it at a hometown at some point. I think that happens when it's like the small town. Yeah. That's what's, that's what's so scary about picking murders for live shows is that you don't want something like the Dublin show when someone goes, that's my, what did they say? That's my cousin. Like, Oh, no, are you mad at me? They were so into it. They were great. Cool. All right. Anything else? I think that's, well, oh, this was just an email from the, um, the, this is actually awesome. This is the Minneapolis murder Reno group. And

it says, dear MFM fam, inspired by the Yoga Reno's, I hosted a social movement, um, a couple of social movement classes yesterday at six degrees in Minneapolis, which I guess is yoga studio. We raised $500 for, and we also showed that even when the world seems inextricably fucked, we can still do things to support ourselves and others. My fellow teachers wanted to in on the do good thing. So now I'm organizing a full series every second Sunday of every month. One of our teachers will host a free class with donations going to a nonprofit they care about the next two are already scheduled with November donations going to benefit Tubman, a local group helping over 25,000 victims of trauma each year from fleeing war-torn areas to

experiencing sex trafficking and intimate partner violence. And in December camp Bovee, a summer camp for city kids who live in poverty and otherwise wouldn't get the two experience the super fun of getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, trying to wash the campfire smell from your hair and writing pitiful letters home begging for parents to come pick them up. You know, fun summer camp shit, SSDGM letter. Oh my God, that's beautiful. So the yoga, that's the coolest thing that people are really kind of building this in that is just our, in our passing, I want to get into yoga. Now suddenly people are like, we're going to be doing some shit. It's a great way to like do something for yourself. Even if you, if you don't feel, you know, people sometimes don't

do things because they don't feel worth self care. So it's like, well, I'm doing something for someone else. So it's a great way. It's not about you selfish. It's a good Kickstarter. So good job Minneapolis murdering us. Thank you for taking that. And I would just like to say, yes, the yoga has fallen away, but the swimming has taken over. Amazing. And I just ordered, based on someone's recommendation on Twitter, I just ordered a waterproof iPod that I can listen to while I swim my laps. That's a thing. Your chain, I'll swim now too. Now I won't, but I might. You could try. I could try. It's really, here's what I'll say. Not drinking coffee and swimming is like the most relaxed and low key I've been in three fucking years. Wow.

Congratulations. Thank you. I'll drink my canned wine to that. I also just, just on a personal note, don't slammed my elbow into the wall right before I left my house to come over here. And it feels broken and like, it feels like my entire arm is broken. Oh shit. You know when you like hit, it's red. I was, is it? I was walking full speed into the kitchen and just was putting my purse over my shoulder at the same time and clunked into it. Just right on the edge. It looks broken. It's broken. It looks like it's falling off. Oh gangrene. I say gangrene. Now I'm doing the Scarecrow from Wizard of Oz. Yeah, it's pretty fucking. All right. That's just a personal update. No, I love it. I appreciate it. It feels like we

haven't recorded one of these in so long. I know. Want to get it all out. That's right. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. And that's exactly right. Looking for a better cooking routine with meal planning, shopping and prepping handled. Hello Fresh has you covered. Hello Fresh makes home cooking easy and affordable so you can stay on track and on budget in the new year. Hello Fresh meals are convenient, seasonal and delicious. Stay cozy all winter long with classic comfort foods available weekly. Why stop with just dinner? Now you can enjoy Hello Fresh's expanded menu of quick lunch solutions, weekend brunch, simple side dishes and amazing desserts. Karen January is going to be my month for Hello Fresh. I am so sick of takeout. I miss cooking

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ever seen. Our newest series is all about the incomparable diva Whitney Houston. Whitney's voice defined a generation and even after her death, her talent remains unmatched, but her incredible success hit a deeply private pain. In our series Whitney Houston destiny of a diva will tell you how she hid her true self to make everyone around her happy and how the pressure to be all things to all people led her down a dark path. Follow even the rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. I'm first even said right. Okay, that's right. You ready? I think so. Should we do this? Let's do it. All right. Hey, it's mid October. Oh, my sister's birthday is today. Happy birthday, Lee. Happy birthday, Lee.

It's been it's mid October. Everyone's favorite time of year Halloween. Everyone loves it. Yes or no? Absolutely. Are you going to? Are you about to tell me the plot of the movie of Halloween? I am going to read you the original screenplay of the movie Halloween. Love nothing more. There's so much silence. I was just like, I didn't really prepare this week. So no, no, but I am going to I am going to go in a weird direction and I'm going to describe and explain some instances and the instances of and the urban legend and the truthyness to it of poison Halloween candy. Yes. This is great. Yay. Glad you're here with me. Listen, I would like to go ahead and thank almost exclusively Snopes.com. Nice. One of my favorite time wasters back when I had a desk job.

Yeah. And our old friend Wikipedia. Best info right there. That as a married couple is all you need on the Internet. I mean, you're the smartest person in the fucking room. Yes. At your desk. You could actually use Snopes on Wikipedia. Oh my God. Not a bad idea. No. I just thought of that for myself. Snopesapedia. What if that's a new thing? Who would somebody invent this this new third thing and then give us a cut? Yeah. And then we'll just read from that. No, I'm not. I'm kind of okay. I'm not. Okay. So let's start with let's start with it. All right. So the stories of crazy people passing out poison candy or a candy that has razor blades or needles in it has been around for fucking decades as an urban legend.

And it makes sense because every every 364 days of the year we tell kids don't take candy from strangers. That's right. And then one day we're like, go get free candy from strangers. It's a can the candy purge is really where every all the rules are gone. That's right. You could do what you want and you can stab people. It's very confusing for children. It's so crazy. And you can stab people. What isn't fucking confusing for children? I mean, kids are pretty stupid. It's and everyone lies to them constant. That's right. Just constant lying. That's exactly right. So actually I didn't know this and Snopes told me and Landers, you know, go ask and Landers, what was it called? Dear Abbey. Thank you. They each, you know, it's two sisters. That's right.

Each has columns. So one was Dear Abbey and one was and Landers, I think. Okay. I think they're two different because one is Dear Abbey is Abigail Vampire. Okay. Then Ann is go ask and Landers, you know, or column. She published a column in 1995 that said, quote, in recent years, there have been reports of people with twisted minds putting razor blades and poison in taffy apples and Halloween candy, which is like, well, you're spreading that. Go ask and and also sorry, Ann, but taffy apples are from 1920. So this is all bullshit. Okay. And according to Snopes, since 1959, there have been around 80 reports of sharp objects in food and some hospitals and police departments, they've started to offer to x-ray the candy in children's that they got

before eating, which sounds like a blast for kids. And actually, I first heard about that when Vince told me about it. Oh, really? When he was a kid in Michigan, outside of Detroit, they get dressed up and go trick-or-treating and then not get home and go through any other candy, then go to the police station and have it fucking x-rayed. And I asked him for more details and he's like, no, it just happened like every year. So that was standard in his town? I think it was standard in his town. He's like, it sucked that it was also true that my like his family all worked in the police department. So I think that they like insisted upon it. Yeah. But yeah, it was standard. That's what kids did. That's amazing. I yeah, I always thought all of that was bullshit.

I thought that was just as much a story as the where's the blades themselves. That part's true. I don't know if it's still happening, but I imagine there's got to be some towns. All I remember is my mom now. Now I know being high and stealing my fucking candy when I got home. Good shit. Yeah, that's right. Sorry, mom. She grabbed those Snickers. She's like, oh, you can have the sweet tart. She knows. Yeah, thanks, mom. I don't want the fucking whoppers or whatever. But the majority of those reports turned out to be hoaxes. And even when the stories were true, it was usually a family member fucking with someone else in their family or a little kid being like, look, there's poison on it. But he had like dipped it in poison and not eaten it and shown them.

And then just being a little shithead. Go to your room. Forever. Forever, little shit. Okay. So I'm going to tell you some stories of when it was true-ish, you know, kind of. Okay. And maybe that helped help the rumors abound. Sure. Well, because you only really need one of those stories for people to freak out because it's like it's somebody once a year is going to try to kill your child with a hidden thing. And a lot of these are like something happened and it blew up in the media. And then when they found out what really happened, that didn't get covered as much. So in people's minds, it's true. Yeah. So let's start in 1964. The normal media cycle. Right. So 1964, Helen Fleel, I don't know how to, P F E I L. Spell it like you say it. Yeah, that looks,

I think fleet. Fleel is good. In Greenlaw, New York, she was a housewife and she got caught handing out packages of indedible, inedible treats in what she described as a joke. She had become annoyed that a bunch of trick-or-treaters were showing up that were like teenagers and too old to be trick-or-treating. Yeah. And so she was pissed off at them. And so she was like, I'm going to make up these little packages to give out to the fucking little bratty 16-year-olds. Okay. And the packages were dog biscuits, steel wool pads, and arsenic laced ant poison buttons. Oh no. So she'd like, I don't know, somehow do that. She was crazy. She was crazy and kind of a bitch. Okay. Right? Yeah, you can't give people arsenic of any kind. Even if it's a joke. Even

as a hilarious joke. Oh, jokey prank. But they were clearly marked poison and labeled with the skull and crossbones. So like... Yeah, but you could have just written that somewhere and been like, get it. I'm trying to poison you and not actually do it. Yeah. Like what if one of the kids have eaten it? You know, teenagers, they're really stupid. Carol would have been like, oh, well, haha. Yeah. I'm so funny. So she told the teenagers that the packages were a joke when she handed it out. It sounds like she was just trying to be the cool ant. Oh, okay. And it got in it. And then... I mean, she was a little high. Yeah. Right. No one was harmed at all. But even so, the potential to harm was there. So she was charged by the police. She pled guilty to endangering

children and eventually received a suspended sentence. Wow, dang it. Helen. Oh no. She really regretted that hilarious joke. Jokes on you, Helen. Helen, I get it. When you're always trying to be funny, it really fucks your life up. I get you. In 1970, two days after Halloween, a five-year-old kid named Kevin lapsed into a coma and died four days after, four days later. And it came out that he, his family said that he had eaten some Halloween candy that was shown when they tested it. It had been sprinkled with heroin. Oh my God. Right. It's so awful. It was reported as a real-life example of what happens on Halloween, but was less likely was reported, was that when police investigated further, they found that the boy had gotten into his uncle's heroin stash, consumed it,

and in an attempt to cover for the, for the uncle had sprinkled the candy themselves with heroin. Oh no. I know. That's just, that's just tragic all around. It's horrible, but it's, you know, in people's minds, that's, there was a connection there. Right. It's awful. In 1990, a seven-year-old Santa Monica girl named Ariel died on October 31st on Halloween while trick-or-treating, like while she was trick-or-treating the police were feared a mass random poisoning. So they immediately conducted an intense door-to-door search on the street where she had collapsed. They thought other kids might have gotten poisoned Halloween candy. So they blocked off the street. They took all the kids candy and questioned everyone for several hours and interviewed

residents and, and Halloween trick-or-treaters. What? I mean, yeah. The only kind. The only kind of trick-or-treaters. But in the end, it turned out that Ariel had actually died of congenital heart failure. It was just a fucking huge coincidence. So it's, well, here's the thing now. That's insanely tragic. So I don't mind that it's like, guess what? Halloween's canceled. Yeah. Because it's like, this is the worst thing that could happen. And you shouldn't just pretend like it didn't happen. It's awful. So it's just awful. 1991. Another suspected Halloween poisoning occurred in Washington, DC. A 31-year-old named Kevin Michael Cherry of Montgomery County died shortly after eating some of his kids Halloween candy. Oh no. And parents lost their shit, dumped all

their kids candy. And, but later it was determined that by an autopsy that he had died of congenital heart failure as well. Oh, wow. Yeah. But natural causes essentially. Yeah. So then in 1996, seven-year-old, seven-year-old named Ferdinand of San Jose, California, collapsed on Halloween after eating candy and cookies he was given while trick-or-treating. Initial urine analysis. Urine analysis? Is that urine analysis? I don't know. At the hospital showed traces of cocaine in a system. Oh no. So everyone loses their shit, throw away all their candy, but then tests come back and it was negative to cocaine and the first results were wrong. So the media had already picked on a lot, but later they found out

that he had died of natural causes as well. Oh, God. I know. Oh, it's just the worst. Yeah. Well, and it makes sense that like the media also has this big story. It's like cells, papers, and then the truth of it is just tragic. It's just tragic and heartbreaking, so they put it in a little column as a follow-up. Yeah. That no one even pays attention to because also everyone's already got. It doesn't make sense to just beg for free candy from strangers. No. It's a weird tradition that we do. Yeah. So people are, I feel like at any bad news, people are just like, well, let's just throw it all away. Yeah. Do you give out, do you like stock your, no one comes down our street because there's, it's a more popular like four blocks over. Oh, yeah. And so everyone on

our street goes totally dark. People pretend, everyone pretends they're not home. Love it. And I've had one trick-or-treater. It was the cutest. It was a little like a four-year-old girl. And I think her a slightly older brother and I just gave each of them half the bowl of candy. I love it. I was just like, you guys are the only ones. And they were like, this is our favorite house. I want to live in a place one day that does trick-or-treating. Yeah. Like I just have never lived in a place that does that. It's very, you know, what's the cutest? Well, in my hometown, Petaluma, it's really big on D street, which is the street with all the big old Victorian houses. And people go crazy. They make their houses haunted houses. They make like, it's just total

tradition and it's really fun. Someday I need to go hang out with my nephews on that day instead of just not see what they're into. Right. Sort of going to all your parties. My fun things in my live show. Actually, I'm not coming to a live show. I'm going to go trick-or-treating with my nephews. Okay. I'll bring Nora down to co-host with me. Great. Sounds great. She's like, actually, I'd rather trick-or-treat. Yeah. Nora's like, I have plans over on D street. Thanks anyway. In the year 2000, a dude named James Joseph Smith of Minneapolis stuck needles in the Snickers bars that he handed out. This is the one we've all heard of. To trick-or-treaters. What year was it? Sorry. This is 2000. I'm sure it's happened before that. Yeah.

There were several children who bit into the candy bars, but there was only one teenager who was pricked by one of the needles and it wasn't like bad. But if I'm pricked by a needle, I'm like, I'm dying. Take me to the hospital. Yes. And also, like a needle in your mouth, anywhere in your mouth is very upsetting. Terrible. But police charged Smith with one count of adulterating a substance with intent to cause harm or illness. I mean, that's really throw the book at him. Yeah. How about charging him with just being a fucking creep? A creepy dude and a dick. And an asshole. And keep your children away from him. 30 to 60 years. Boom. For those charges. That's so good. Did you know that? Sounds harsh, but have you ever met a creepy dick?

Yeah, you'd want them to go away for 30 years too. Promise you. Minimum. Then in the town of Hercules, California, that's near you-ish. Not really. Okay, great. In 2000, again, some tricker treaters. So these tricker treaters come home and they're like, Mommy, Daddy, why are these little snickers, the individual miniature snicker bars, like done up like little packets and there's some like, there's some weird oregano in them. So they find these little packets of pot tied up in these fucking snickers bars. Like packages. Oh, like when they open the snickers, it's pot? Yeah. So that really did happen. And the police are like, wait, what the fuck? The homeowners apparently weren't my mom because they were like bummed about it. Yeah. Because they called somebody. What if

that was the whole time my mom was like, I'll take this one, this one, and this one. It was just her dealer. You had just been drug running for your mom in the 70s, 80s. Yeah. Mom, I don't think it's October 31st. Just go out with your pillowcase. Go trick or treat down the street. So they find the house where they had gotten the little bags of pot and the homeowner was like, wait, what the fuck? Like the homeowner legit didn't know what was going on and the police believed him. He's telling the truth. Turns out this dude worked in the dead letter office at the local post office. And he had found a bag of miniature snickers in the dead post stuff. You know what I mean? Yeah. And he had found that with along some like canned food and the post office was like, here, take

this to the local charity. But he was like, well, I'm just going to take these snickers and pass them out at Halloween. But it turned out that the candy was probably just someone's attempt at smuggling pop through the mail. And what a great attempt it was. Great. Yeah. This guy should go to prison for being a stupid idiot and stealing from the charity too. I don't know. He kind of loved him. His name's Herb. He's just kind of like he didn't, he knew he had to have candy for the treaters, but he didn't want to spend that five bucks. And he's also not, he's giving it away. It's not like he's making money off of it. And he clearly didn't open, like he's actually a miracle case in my opinion. He didn't open and try to eat any of them himself to then know. He could have

made a lot of money off of that and given that to charity. Dude, that's what you give the teenagers. Right. And show them first, make them give you some money. Karen's got it planned. I've got it. Okay. Finally, we've gotten to the real fucking deal. Okay, here we go. Yes. Wait, can I just say this? Cause this is just reminding me, and I can't remember if I've told you, but one time when we were trigger treating on D street, before it was like as commercial as it is now, that was just the real eighties deal. Sure. We were with our friends and their babysitter. So we were like eight or whatever. And then this was like a 15 year old girl that was eating all your candy. No, no, no. She was super chilled. She would just like let us walk up and she would stand at the

end of like the walkway and wait for us. And we walked up to this one house and it was the oldest lady and she had a little group. Like I still remember all of it. A moss green bowl and it had like eight little just cookies, like powdered sugar cookies. I couldn't tell if they were packaged or she'd made them, but she was like, here you go. And we all were like, thank you. Of course, we didn't want them. But we're like, thanks so much. And we walked back, kind of holding them like uncomfortably. And we get to the end of the thing and the 15 year old sees them all in our hand and she just slaps each cookie out of each of our hands. She was like, put that down, throw that away. Like that. Because they were like homemade. Yes. And because they were covered in white

powder. She's like, she fucking like was like, wipe your hands off, do this. And like had this thing where like she saved her life. And what if she did? But we were like that old lady, it made me laugh for so long because I was like, if you had seen this old lady, she would be the last person you would think that would ever murder you with her lemon drop cookies. But this girl was just like, throw it away. Like went into full babysitter mode. It was the best. I'm just picturing grandma come out the next morning and see her cookies like laying waste on the sidewalk in front of her and her heart breaking. Yeah. And that's how she did. So sad. All right, let's get to the real deal. Okay. October 31st, a.k.a. Halloween 1974. Here we are. Ronald Mark Orion, this fucking dude,

takes his two kids, Timothy and Elizabeth, trick or treating in Pasadena, Texas with their neighbor dude and the neighbor's two children coming along with them. What's up? We're all going trick or treating. Fun. Great. They stop at one of the places they stop, nobody answers the door. And so everyone runs ahead except for fucking good old Ronald Mark O'Brien, who's like, I'm gonna catch up with you guys. When he does catch up with them, he's like, oh, they someone answered the door finally. And he gave me these pixie sticks. So he gives he produces five 21 inch pixie sticks. And he gives two of this pixie. He gives one pixie stick to each of his kids and one each to the neighbor's kids. And then they get home and

they see an a 10 year old kid that they knew from church and Brian's like, oh, here's the last pixie stick to this guy. So he passes out five pixie sticks that he apparently got from this ghost neighbor. Okay. Before bed that night, that his son, eight year old Timothy asks to eat some of the candy it collected. He chooses a pixie stick. And which is I call bullshit, because no fucking kid wants a pixie stick. No, he has trouble getting the candy open in the powder out. So his dad helps him with it. He says it tastes bitter. So he gives him Kool-Aid to wash away the taste. And Timothy immediately complains that his stomach hurt. And he goes to the bathroom. He begins vomiting and convulsing. And then he goes limp. Oh, I know. And little Timothy O'Brien

dies on the way to the hospital less than an hour after consuming the candy. Shit. Of course, the community goes fucking ape shit. Parents in the area bring their kids candy to the police thinking it was laced with poison. And initially police didn't suspect this dude, Ronald, any with any wrongdoing until Timothy's autopsy reveals that the pixie stick he consumes was laced with a fatal dose of potassium cyanide. Oh my God. They go to find the other pixie sticks, the like four other ones and fucking thank God, none of the kids had eaten them. But when they go to the big kid's house, they couldn't find the pixie stick in his bag of candy. The parents are freaking out. Where's the pixie stick? They go upstairs to the kid's room. He's sleeping on his bed and

he's holding the pixie stick. He had tried to open it, but it had been shut in such a way. That he couldn't open it. He couldn't get it open. So he just fucking fell asleep probably from sugar. He was 10. Oh my God. That's a miracle. Yeah. He was it was sitting with him. That mother cried so hard and she slapped everyone around her. Can you just slapping them? Damn it. Don't ever scare me like that again. Don't you ever pixie. She's slapping the pixie stick back and forth across its face. Oh my God. She rubs a little of it on her teeth just to make sure. Let's see. Okay. So all five of the pixie sticks, it turns out they had all been tampered with. They had been opened and the top two inches had been refilled with cyanide powder and then

resealed with a staple, which is why this kid couldn't open the fucking thing. According to a pathologist who tested the pixie sticks, the candy consumed by Timothy contained enough cyanide to kill two adults while the other four cyanide, the other poor candies contained dosages that would kill three to four adults. Jesus Christ. Even stronger. Police investigated Ronald and learned that he was over a hundred thousand dollars in debt and he had a history and this is 1974 money, which we know is that's a million dollars in today. It's easily a million dollars. And he had a history of being unable to hold down a job. He was going to get fired soon. His car was about to be repossessed. He had defaulted on several

bank loans and the family home was about to be foreclosed on. And of course, he had also taken out life insurance policies for a large sum of money on his children, despite his insurers being like, why do you want to take out another $20,000 on your kids? It was like up to $60,000 that he had taken out on, I think, each of his kids. So he's just an awful psychopath. He's a fucking piece of shit at his trial. He can, he maintained his innocence throughout this whole thing, including at his trial, obviously. His defense was mainly that, hey, man, look at all these decades of urban legends about mad poisoners on Halloween. It must have been some fucking crazy poisoner. And look how much like legend or like how much history there is of that. So you can't blame me.

It's a known thing that everyone does. Just like all this stuff I just read to you. And it didn't fucking work. Because it's not really true. It's not true. The case was circumstantial completely, but still Ronald O'Brien was convicted of the murder of his son Timothy in May 1975. He received a death sentence and was executed by lethal injection on March 31st. It should have been fucking Halloween 1984. And that is some stories of fucking candy being laced on Halloween. So the one real one is like the worst creepiest. The one real one is like true as fuck, which is why it can keep being told. Because it's like, it's true, but it's not what you think it is. It's true. But then it's just, it's the lie of like, but this is what people do. Right.

Which is like, no, they don't, they kill their kids and their family for fucking life insurance money. That's what they do. That's what, that's the truth of it. Yeah. The husband did it. That's the real trick. And it's not a treat. The trick of life is that their life is no treat. So this was one of the stories. And I think I told you when we were in Medford, Massachusetts, it's from there. But it is one of these stories. And I remember the first time I saw this on you know, which nightline or whichever true crime kind of magazine show. And it was one of the most shocking true crime stories I'd ever seen on TV. And really a huge bummer. And I figured for our live show, it would be such a bummer. Yeah, everyone's like,

why didn't you do this one all the time? And it's like, because you can't tell an audience full of people the most huge bummer you've ever heard. Well, you can, but then it's just real quiet. Yeah. And it's a real bummer. And we don't get to have any fun. And so when we, that's why we like to do like more historical or the weirder ones. Because then there's, there's, you can have a little more fun. This is, this is one of the worst and most fucked up crimes. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. And it's the murder of Carol Stewart. So all of the information that I got in these stories, I got from two articles. One was written for Boston Magazine by a guy named David J. Krychek, I believe is the way you pronounce his last name.

And the other is was written by Roberto Scalise for Boston.com. And they were both of them are just full of information. And I'm, you know, there's lots of poll quotes and big chunks of just their writing such they, they put it together really nicely and, and concise sleep. So it's the night of October 23rd, 1989. And a 29 year old Chuck Stewart and his 30 year old wife, Carol, are driving home in their Toyota Cressida from a birthing class at Brigham and Women's Hospital. Carol's seven months pregnant with their first child at 843 p.m. The state police dispatcher game, Gary McLaughlin gets a phone call from Chuck Stewart's car phone and he says, my wife's been shot. I've been shot. So the dispatcher asks if Carol's breathing and Chuck says,

I just hear gurgling. And then basically for the next 13 minutes, this dispatcher tries to get Chuck to say where he is in the city. And Chuck is saying, I can see a busy street ahead of me. I can't, I'm in so much pain. And the guy's going, look at a street sign. Look at this. We're trying to find you and the guy's just screaming and going crazy. Did you listen to it? No, but they had it and I have a picture of one of the newspaper head like an article that was a front page article. And they have the, what do you call that? Transcript. The transcript of it as the beginning of the article. And it's just the guy going, Chuck, look up for me. Tell me what street you're on, like anything. And it takes 13 minutes. Holy shit. And the guy assumes this guy

is in shock. So he sounds lucid. He's speaking in a lucid way, but he's, he's in shock and he's been shot in the gut basically. So when police finally do find them, the car is at the corner of St. Alfonso Street in Horton Way, Horton Way. And they're, so they're just blocks from that hospital where they were taking their birthing class. Now this is so fucked up. So the paramedics get there and they have a camera crew from the show rescue 911, riding along with them. No. Yes. So they all get out of the ambulance and start working on these guys in the car and there's, and basically there's footage of it. Jesus Christ. Yeah. And I watched the shit out of that show as a kid. Yeah. I don't know if it actually, I don't know if it made it onto the real

show, but the pictures, like there's pictures from that. So there is footage. There is footage. I don't know where it ended up living that shows Carol pregnant with a gaping head wound being cut from her seatbelt and laid onto a stretcher as the EMT is compressing her chest and trying to get a heartbeat going. Oh my God. So they rush her back to bring him in women's hospital. The doctors, they have, they take the baby out. It's, so it's only, it's under four pounds and they put the baby on life support. Oh my God. Chuck is taken to Boston City Hospital. This isn't this area of Boston where there's, it truly like hospitals everywhere. Because everyone's going to school and shit and learning and things. It's all kinds of colleges and all kinds of hospitals.

So Chuck goes to Boston City and he, he then undergoes six hours of surgery on his bowel, bowel, gallbladder and liver and he has substantial damage, but, and it's in critical condition, but he survives. Unfortunately, Carol does not. She's pronounced dead at 3 a.m. on October 24th, 1989. So four days later on October 28th, Carol is buried in Medford, Massachusetts, which was the town. Oh my God. The area we're in. Yeah. Because that's where she was from. Oh honey. More than 800 people, including Boston Mayor Ray Flynn, Governor Michael Dukakis and Cardinal Bernard Law attend her funeral. Wow. And Chuck is still in the hospital, but he manages to write a eulogy for his wife's funeral and it is read by a family friend and this is what they read.

Good night, sweet wife, my love. God has called you to his hands not to take you away from me or the happiness and gladness you brought to me, but to bring you away from the cruelty and the violence that fills this world. He said that for us to truly believe, we must know that his will was done and that there was some right in the meanest of acts. In our souls, we must forgive this sinner because he would too. He capital HG. My life will be more empty without you as will the lives of your family and friends. You have brought joy and kindness to every life you've touched and now you sleep away from me. I will never again know the feeling of your hand in mine, but I will always feel you. I miss you and I love you, your husband, Chuck. I want to cry

and get really sad and emotional, but I'm scared he did it. So I feel not ready to cry about that. Yeah, I would stay in a neutral place for now. That's what I, but I don't want to ruin it for you. No, that's okay. I feel like this, the pattern of these things is ruined. Yeah, it's ruined. I'm like, do I feel for him and cry or do? Okay. Here's, can I point out why I think your instincts are telling you, hey, dry those eyes. Okay. Because the line in our souls, we must forgive this sinner because he would too. Just, just something I italics. I'd like to go ahead and allow Vince to have hate in his soul for whoever kills me one day for the rest of his life. And that's fine. Yeah. Because when we're so quick to forgive the sinner,

like this is still the funeral. Let's get, let's get past this, everyone. Yeah. Let's give it a year. Okay. So two of Chuck's brothers act as pallbearers, carrying Carol's casket during the services. And then on November 9th, at 17 days old, their baby dies of respiratory failure. So it's two deaths. So the one when the police talked to Charles Stewart, he tells them, get ready. Here I am. Boston 1989. You got a car phone, bro. A black man with a raspy voice invaded their car that night. He said the man took cash, the car keys, jewelry, and Carol's Gucci bag. But before he left, he started saying he thought that Chuck was 50. He thought he was playing close cop. And then he shot both of them. Jesus.

And Chuck said that on the first shot, he ducked and that's why the first bullet hit him in the abdomen. And the second shot hit Carol in the head, killing her and ultimately the unborn baby. So when all of this hits the newspapers the next day, the city goes into a complete furor. The Boston Herald runs a headline that says, quote, a terrible night with this huge picture where, and it's a really disturbing picture. Carol is slumped toward the driver's seat, her hair is in her face, her mouth is open, there is blood on her shirt. While Charles, who's in the driver's seat is his shirt has blood, it's ripped open, he's grimacing, and it looks like he's fighting to get out of the car. It's really graphic because it's

fucking front page story, it's headline news and because this was the height of the crack epidemic in America. So all black neighborhoods pretty much in like, you know, or major urban areas were just overrun with violence and crime because of the crack epidemic. And then on top of that, this rescue 911 footage and pictures like this really made it real. It was just like, you know, this random shooting, this random crime and here it is. A pregnant woman. A pregnant woman. A couple leaving their birthing car or whatever.

The ultimate in innocence and the ultimate in whiteness, these two people. And here's why it's okay for your racism to exist. 100%. It just underlines the story. So in David Karajak's article, he says quote, but with a black perpetrator and white victims, it fit comfortably into this nation's deep rooted prejudice is about race and crime. Yeah. In Boston, white paranoia was running high as the crack epidemic intensified violent crime in black neighborhoods like Roxbury. But it wasn't long before an ugly racist murmur

underscored white Boston's empathy for the stewards. Mayor Ray Flynn seemed to sanction that attitude when he pledged to quote, get the animals responsible. Yeah. In the fucking press within days, there are calls by lawmakers to reinstate the death penalty. Jesus. Frank Bellotti, a former Massachusetts attorney general who was running for governor told the press quote, I'd pull the switch myself. Wow. And along with those incendiary statements, the press was comparing the stewards

to the Kennedys with the Boston Herald running an article about their lives with the headline, quote, dreams of Camelot. Oh my God. Yeah. So she was really beautiful. And he, they were really successful. They lived in a really nice part of town. And this was that kind of thing where they symbolized like the up and coming white couple. Right.

Um, so basically Charles Stewart Jr. and Carol D. Miotti Stewart met in 1980. They were both working at a restaurant in Revia, which is Chuck's hometown. Revia. I would not, I don't know how that's spelled, but I would have not probably said that. I'm giving it the accent. I'm giving it the Revia accent because it's Revia. But they say Revia. You know, like, did you see the movie? Is it the boxer, the fighter? Yeah.

Yeah. Christian Bale. So good. I think that took the president. Revia. Oh my God. So Carol is from Medford, as I said. So is the Black Dahlia, by the way.

Oh, that's right. And so she graduated from Boston College. Then she went to Suffolk Law School and graduated from there. The two of them got married in 1985. And she went on to a lucrative career as a tax attorney. And Chuck is, becomes the manager of a fur salon on Newberry Street. Jesus. He makes six figures a year being the manager of a fur salon.

I mean, people like their fur. It's pretty. I'm covered in it right now. And I didn't even have to pay anything for it. Yeah, seriously. If you look at my spot pants, it looks like I'm the manager of a fur salon as well. But mine's volunteer. Right.

Okay. So they live in, no, they don't live in Revia. I want them to. They live in, it looks, it is spelled reading, but I bet it's redding or some bullshit like that. Spell it like you say it. The neighbors were later quoted in the paper to say that they remembered the couple quote lingering over a goodbye kiss each work day morning.

She'd had no idea. She married a monster. This kind of is reminding me of the, what's the Bay Area one recently? Scott Peterson. Scott Peterson. Yeah. Lucy Peterson. Exactly.

Cause they're both pregnant. Yeah. Okay. So, Chuck's car keys, they turn up in a mission, in the mission hill projects in Roxbury, weird. And so police add a hundred extra officers to go start kicking indoors and randomly frisking young black men looking for the quote black man with the raspy voice and the black sweatsuit with a red stripe.

Yeah, you can't do that. They do. And city councilor David Scondress was quoted as saying, quote, you can't help but wonder if what you're watching is a class situation that it's all right for the poor to put up with an enormous amount of shootings and killings. But presumably if you're white, upper income and suburban, maybe that changes things. That's sad. And Leslie Harris, a public defender familiar with the case is quoted in the Boston Globe

is saying, quote, the police kept telling the kids that they'd have to come to take a ride with them. The way they intimidated these kids into making statements, some head should roll. Shit. And they really did do that too, because two weeks after the shooting, a 15 year old boy ends up telling police that his uncle, Willie Bennett, had bragged that he was the killer. The boy immediately recanted, but the police didn't care because they already had the name. And they 39 year old Willie Bennett was also the perfect suspect.

He had spent most of his adult life in jail and he had a long rap sheet with instances of violent crime, including he once threatened a cop with a shotgun in 1981. So it was, it was open and shut right there on November 11th. The Boston Herald gets the scoop and they print that Willie Bennett is a prime suspect. And then a Norfolk prosecutor named Louis Sabadini calls Bennett a mad dog running a muck in the press on December 28th. Chuck Stewart picks Bennett out of a police lineup. And when he did, they say that he had a strong physical reaction when he saw Willie Bennett

in the lineup. Yeah. So it looks like everyone's like we have our man in this case is solved until the twist. On January 3rd, 1990, Chuck Stewart's 23 year old brother Matthew contacts the DA and asks for a meeting. And in that meeting, he confesses to a shocking secret. Turns out the murderer was not a black man in a black sweatsuit with a raspy voice. Carol Stewart and her unborn child had been shot in cold blood by none other than the

grieving husband himself, Chuck fucking Stewart. Dude, this 23 year old brother comes forward and is like. And listen to this shit. Oh my God. Tell me everything. He says that his brother asked him to drive by the scene and take the purse that had the gun and the jewelry in it and then go drive the drive and throw the that purse with all that evidence in it off the Dizzy Bridge and into the Pines River.

And his brother paid him $10,000 to do that. And so basically he said he didn't know that Chuck was going to shoot Carol. He just had agreed to come by and do this thing for $10,000. So had she already been shot when he did it? Yeah, he must have because he was getting rid of the gun. Right. But Matthew said he didn't know that that was the plan. He was just there and then was given this bag.

Holy shit. But once he was there, he knew what happened. And he kept doing his stuff. Yeah. So but he basically so. Oh God, is there a video of his interrogation or confession? Oh, I don't know. I want to watch that.

But there's pictures of him in the paper. Uh huh. So basically he then kind of talked to the press after this. Did he carry her fucking casket? Yeah. That's the next thing I was going to read. Okay. Is that no, no, no.

Him and his brother, who he confessed to two days later, their older brother, Michael, he went and he told him that this was actually a murder. And then they went and carried her casket at her funeral knowing the truth. Oh, I want to see photos of them carrying the caskets. Yeah, there's you can find all of this. I mean, that's the craziest thing about this entire crime is it was so meticulously and insanely covered in the in the paper that like every moment of this crime is in the paper. And Matthew says that he finally came forward when he realized Charles had fingered Willie Bennett

for the crime and that he knew an innocent man was going to go to jail for the murder that his brother had committed. Wow. And a year later, Matthew Stewart was found guilty of obstruction of justice and insurance fraud. So he did time for this, for being a part of basically aiding and abetting. Okay, so now the fucking DA and the authorities know that it's actually Chuck Stewart. It's that it's like the hardest 180 that all of those people who are like hell bent on the storyline that they have to fucking give it up. They have to turn it around. So there's a citywide manhunt for Chuck Stewart. And it turns out that he had checked in at the Sheridan and Braintree in Room 231. And on the night of January 3rd, he he calls down to the

front desks and asks for a 430 a.m. wake up call. Oh, no. And sunrise on January 4th, 1990, commuters report an unoccupied Nissan Maxima is stopped on the lower deck of the Tobin Bridge. It's Chuck Stewart's new car that he had bought with the insurance, the life insurance payout of Carroll's life insurance. Authorities find a note on the front seat that Stewart wrote that said, quote, my life has been nothing but a battle for the last four months. Oh, you poor fucking baby. Whatever this new accusation is, it has beaten me. I've been sapped of my strength. So he doesn't cop to it. He doesn't admit it. He acts like he's been pushed to this because of this accusation where his brother told the truth. Then Chuck Stewart jumped to his death from the Tobin Bridge

into the Mystic River. Did he fake it? He really did it. People saw him. They pulled the body out. They pulled, did they pull a body out? That was my next question. They pulled his body out of the river. How have I yelled this so often? How have I never heard of this? You know, isn't it crazy? I remember seeing this story when I was like in my early 20s and the turn, the way they set up that turn was so perfect because they make you get racist. They make you go, get him. Yes. Yeah. You see like Willie Bennett was brought into, they had him in court for the charges and he's sitting there like in his jail clothes and he's kind of got his hand on his head and it is like, but of course, when you look at that through the eyes of someone before all of this

information, it's like there's the monster that killed those poor people. Well, stories like this make you check and reevaluate what you believe the media tells you and what in the biases you have once you see that everything is a story that's portrayed a certain way. Yes. That, you know, might not even be close to the truth. Yeah. And it's the implicit bias thing where as a white person, you're reading the news in a way where you don't have, you know, you don't have automatic empathy for people of color or somebody that's different from you that might be seeing this from a totally different... Or the minute you hear that they were on crack or the minute you hear that they were a sex worker... Or that they lived in the

projects in Mission Hill... Right. They don't deserve as much empathy as you do or they deserve things that happen to them when really these are all things that have been thrown at us, including the quote, crack epidemic, which you look into it, it was a systematic way to make black people, you know, less powerful to... Addict them to drugs, send them to jail. Exactly. It was, I mean, fucking look it up, man. I know. Oh, I mean, and here's the thing too, you know, these are stories, these kinds of stories, I think we avoid a lot of the time because it's gross injustice. It's gross racism. We don't want to fuck it up. We don't want to tell the story wrong. We don't want to get the information wrong or whatever. But I think the way everything

is happening in this country right now, it's part of that saying of people just dropping the fucking storyline that you're holding on to that you're innocent or you didn't do anything you're not racist. Or you're safe because you live in a good neighborhood and you don't live in, you know, the... Or somehow you're immune to things because, you know... But that basically, that you should be immune to it. Yeah. That these kind of crimes, that kind of crime is okay. Yeah. If it's happening in that bad, quote, unquote, bad part of town, it's not your problem if it's happening over there. But if it comes into your part of town, then, you know, everyone should go crazy. Right. So it's obviously a huge, huge issue in the justice system in this country.

It's a huge issue when you talk about it happening for black people, for happening for Native Americans. I mean, it's for sex workers, all of it. It's just that you're treated differently if you're different than the status quo. And if you're marginalized and you're not empowered and you don't have fucking money as we all know. We need to look into why those things are happening and why people don't have money and why people are addicted to crack and have to sell crack and have to go into sex work or want to go into sex work, of course. And also kind of more immediately, we have to stop privatized prisons. Yeah. That people make money for arresting disenfranchised people who have no support, no money and no representation. Yeah. And then

those people are lost in the system and people make money off of it. That should not happen. It's the same thing of why one person of color will go to prison for selling a certain amount of a small amount of weed and another fucking white person will talk about the soaps and lotions that they sell that and their weed brownie parties and shit. And it's fine. And it's all fine. It's not okay. It's not okay. And I think these days that's all coming to the surface. People's voices are being raised who need to be heard and need to be listened to or we're all learning about this as like suburban white gals of a certain age. We are now coming to understanding about this in a way that we just didn't know before, didn't ever understand,

didn't have to have empathy for before because it simply wasn't in our lives. Right. Okay. So all so 73 days after the shooting, all of this news breaks, everybody is cold. Does he immediately like how quickly from when they find out to when he jumps off the bridge? It's like a day. Okay. And the Boston Globe has a headline that reads from nightmare to reality, a city is reeling. So it's continuing to play out in the press. And Mayor Flynn calls the case, quote, a giant fraud on this city. The police and the press and the authorities all blame each other. And lots of people claim after the fact that they were skeptical skeptical of Chuck Stewart all along. But of course, there's very little evidence of that,

especially since all of it was in the press, every moment of it, you had your chance to be skeptical. And none of those people were skeptical. In the least, they not only were skeptical, he was fucking John F. Kennedy. Yeah, right. The New York Times wrote on January 6 1990, quote, a vicious round of finger pointing began here today as prosecutors, the police and the news media began tracing the trail of faulty assumptions, disregarded suspicions, blunders, and perhaps even lies that put the wrong man at the center of one of the most highly publicized and emotionally charged murder cases in this city's history. Jesus. End quote. Mayor Flynn went to the Bennett home to apologize to Willie Bennett and his family, telling Mrs. Bennett that quote, what has taken

place has been very unfortunate. I don't know nothing to do with fortune, fortunate or not. Not at all. The Bennett family later said that Mayor Flynn only stayed a couple of minutes and wouldn't sit down when offered a seat. Thanks for the fucking extension of yourself. Soon news of Charles Stewart's activities in the weeks before and after the murder comes spilling out of the shadows. Just days before he jumped to his death, he was in Peabody buying jewelry for his secret younger girlfriend. Come on. There's also a story that he was angry that having a baby would cut Carol's paycheck from the family coffers. So Charles Stewart murdered his wife and baby and took $82,000 for all of that trouble,

had full surgery and then ends up three months later killing himself. And then in September 2011, Matthew Stewart, his younger brother, died from a drug overdose in a Cambridge homeless shelter. Jesus. Obviously, his life was entirely destroyed by the entire thing. I'll finish with this full quote from David J. Krijak's article. I'm sorry. I know I'm pronouncing that wrong. Quote, whatever it's Genesis, the crime picked from open Boston, the crime picked open Boston's racial scab 13 years after the busing riots and Stanley Foreman's famous photo of a white teenager using old glory as a lance against Ted Lance Mark, a black man. When Stewart's deceptions were exposed, the globe called him quote, a world class con man. But he really wasn't.

Prisons are full of spouse killers after all. But Boston's police and the public enabled Stewart with their eagerness to accept his story. Michael Curry, president of the Boston NAACP, is not sure that the case would play out any differently today. Quote, it still has relevance. We still live every day with the preconceived notions of black and brown boys as quote potential criminals. Stewart played on those prejudices. He said to himself, if I had to accuse somebody of a crime, who would I accuse? And where would it be? A black man in Roxbury, Dorchester, Matapan? He knew everyone would believe him. And you know what? He was right. Jesus. And that's the story of the murder of Carol Stewart. Holy fucking shit. Isn't that fucked? Oh my God, dude. I mean,

Willie Bennett was a dead man. He was gone. Like that he was going to go to prison for the rest. He was going to be killed in prison. They wanted to reinstate the death penalty. So fucked up. I feel, yeah, it's so fucked up. The brother is also a tragic fucking character in it. I mean, because he did the right thing. That's the same. I'm surprised he didn't get immunity for testifying against his brother, but it wouldn't have mattered. It would have been off the table at that. I mean, maybe there was going to, but because there wasn't a trial, they needed to give someone, right? Get someone. Yeah. And yeah, you know, those cops were like, get somebody. Somebody has to do something to somebody. And unity probably became off the table once he.

And I bet you he didn't, they didn't seem like maybe his brother had money, but they, like in the pictures where he's pointing to things and stuff, it's not like they seem like this rich family. If he didn't have a good lawyer, that wasn't going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. And you can't reward a person for aiding and abetting a crime. I mean, I totally get that. And I, but still, yeah. Holy shit balls. I know it was fucked up. It's pretty fucked. Great job. Thank you. I mean, as I was reading it, I, I went back and forth and back and forth because it's like, I don't, I don't want to continually ignore those stories that seem to be like they, they, they seem to be problematic in and of themselves, but they do need to get talked about. And,

and there are the stories that like, I think we try to do the outer edges of these are the crazy. Yeah. These are the crazy crime stories, but these are actually just the tragic, standard, you know, yeah, injustice based type of stories. Yeah. And if you want to, I feel like that a crime epidemic, I mean, the crack epidemic thing is like, look in the way, look at the way this opioid epidemic is being handled, which is mainly white people versus the way that crack epidemic was handled. And you'll see how big of a difference you're, you're treated depending on your race because people are going to prison for dealing opioids. People are getting, you know, rehab and being constantly treated with kid gloves for the opioid crisis, which is

awful. I completely agree. But yeah, there was never an article in like the New York Times about how do we help these people with the crack epidemic. It was just send them to prison and look at these crack addicted people. It's a perfect dehumanizing tool. Right. And everybody felt most, most people, white people fell for it or just bought that story. Yeah. Yeah. Well, great job. Thank you. Should we do a fucking hooray? Yeah, that's the time. I know mine. Okay. I just keep touching my elbow. Oh, my broken elbow. My broken elbow. It's fucking the new season of Schitt's Creek has come out. Your baby. My baby, I watched it. I accidentally woke up at 530, which I do sometimes. Oh, God. And then I remembered that it had come out and I watched it.

I think I watched all of it, at least like almost all of it before work. And then I came home and finished it. And it's just as beautiful and hilarious and great as it was last time, even more so. And it's just, if you haven't gotten into Schitt's Creek, it's a little diamond waiting for you. I'm excited to watch it. I love that it's waiting there for me. Oh, and I got a sweatshirt. Do you, have you watched it? No. Oh, okay. What's it say? There's just, there's a family store that they open. Oh, and you got a sweatshirt on it? It's called Rose's Apothecary and I got sent a sweatshirt on it and I was so excited. Have you worn it? I want people to like to call it out. No, because it just turned cold like yesterday. Oh, yeah, that's true. It's cold by like 72. Yeah,

exactly. A light wind kicked up yesterday. I had, so my fucking hooray, I woke up the other day late in the morning like I do and I had this and I did the whole like, God, you got to wake up earlier and get more shit done. And I had this epiphany that I like one out of 10 effort. I'm, I consistently work at like a six, a good six and considering my life, that's gone pretty well. But my new thing is that I want to just put one extra point of effort into my life. And I made it kind of all seem doable. Yeah. In this like, all you have to do is walk for a half. Like what is, what is the one point of effort more than what you're doing right now? Like, don't start drinking at five, start drinking at eight or take tonight off or yeah,

go for a walk is the one point of extra effort. Don't flake today on this thing. It's like, that's good. So I'm doing that and I'm thinking that that might help some people too because I'm always like, you have to be a 10. If you're not a 10, you're not fucking good enough. That's the, that's the trick of perfectionism is if you're not perfect, fuck it. Right. Which is the, which is deadly. Yeah. You know, it's so funny. It's very true because since I started swimming and it was very difficult for me to not be able to brag about swimming is an extra two points. You get another and once you do that, right, you fold in this effort, then all the rest of the day, like the hardest thing about writing in a room is that

there's literally a table filled with all the good stuff from Trader Joe's that just sits behind me all day. What? Tell me like what? Oh, the, well, there's every type of chip. Like we have, there's just like a chip station light. Yes. Oh, I'm glad I, I'm so glad I read a TV writer. It's because you sit there thinking and while you're thinking, you think you can't think of anything. So you eat chips or like there's just like a big, that new quote, shareable bag of M&Ms. There's all kinds of things. My thing is I did my, I already did my thing. It makes me feel really good. Now I'm just going to like, I drink some tea and try to not graze. That's great. Yeah, because you don't want to, you don't want to, um, what's the word like sabotage? Yes. Do you

want to de sabotage? De sabotage my swimming efforts. So that's, yeah. So I look at it and it's like, I don't ever have to be a 10. Me as a six or seven has done pretty fucking good in her life and I have a good and happy life. If I give half or one point of effort more, how great would that be? Exactly. So I'm going to do that. That's great. I don't know what to call it yet. One point more. One point more. One point extra, extra effort. One point of extra effort. It falls off the tongue. It just, it just falls face first off the tongue. It's perfect. Um, so I think that's great. That's also because you know that I believe the Japanese have a thing called kaizen and that's just small improvements daily. And it's essentially like you'd, like it's exactly

what you're saying, which is you don't have to be the perfect consummate housewife. Just do the dishes like real time. That's my thing. My dad, all growing up, my dad would always go, clean as you go, clean as you go. And I never do it. I just let things pile up. Yeah. And lately I've been cleaning as I go. Yeah. Let's do that with our lives. Let's clean our lives as we go. Let's clean as we go. It feels better. Also, new season, if someone knows something is really good. Also, if you're sick of listening about murder all the time, but you still have true crime and which I'm listening with Vince now because he doesn't like murder, right? But he, we are listening to last scene podcast, which I also found in Boston. Scene, S C E N. Last scene,

S E N. Like the last time I saw something. Last scene is a podcast from the Boston Globe about the 28 year unsolved art heist of Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Yes. It's fucking good and it's true crime, but it's not murder, which is great. I think I looked that story up. That's how I found it. When we're in town, we're like, what murder can I say? Look up all these crimes. Yes. And I found last scene and I'm like, that one's great. Was that the one where they were dressed like cops? They broke into a museum. They're dressed like cops. There's some great characters in it. I fucking highly recommend this podcast. That sounds really good. And of course, someone knows something, which is immediately making me cry. Already hosted by hot Canadian

lumberjack with all the empathy, David Rigen. With just a great voice. Great cadence. And you just want to be there with him while he discovers things. Yeah, he's great. New season, I love it. We're not getting paid even. David, you owe us money. David, we fully support you. And also, can I just say this? This is from, this is leftover long ago, but at the London show that we did in May, so long ago now, I did Jack the Ripper and had kind of an emotional meltdown while I had it. Didn't really realize what a bad idea that would be. It was great. It was fine, but it was one of those bad, it was just a bad feeling area. And then it was, but it was a great show. And we met great

people at that meet and greet was epic. Every person we met at the London meet and greet was a one more fascinating character. That's where the Italians were. Oh, yeah. And all kinds of people. Anyway, a woman, and I'm sorry I don't have your name. You recommended the book to me. They all love Jack. And it is the best. I've been listening to it on audiobook since she recommended it because it is so dense. And it's the guy. Oh, look it up. Can you look it up, Steven? Sorry. They don't, they all love Jack. It's the Jack the Ripper. Oh, and it's written by the guy who wrote the movie with nail and I that brilliant movie. It's a it's an 80s like cult movie. And it is one of my favorite movies of all time. It's it's about two actors that are

totally on drugs that try to leave London and just get out into the country for the weekend. And it's beyond hilarious. So Bruce Robinson, Bruce Robinson is the writer of the movie with nail and I and he has written this scathing expose about ripperology and the bullshit that has been put out and what the truth of like Jack the Ripper was. And I've been listening to it on and off because it's so dense and the writing is so good. Like he quote somebody and he says like it's somebody he's somebody that's telling a lie and covering something up. And so he does the thing and he writes blah, blah, blah and say the guy's name is Dan Smith. He goes blah, blah, blah, Dan Smith's shitmouth. Like it's writing like that where I keep going

back and re listening to whole chunks because the writing is unbelievably great. Are you just are we just having a conversation right now over pints because he's being he is such a bitch about like how basically over the years where biology has been taking the lies that have been put out and just gone yes, yes, yes and this adding on and adding on bullshit like Halloween fucking candy poisoning. It's a total Halloween candy poisoning situation. Meanwhile, Bruce Robinson goes in and does the research and is like it's blatantly obvious what the situation is. I highly recommend what's it called again. They all love Jack by Bruce Robinson. I recommend you do it on audio because the guy that reads the audio book is so talented and does goes in and out in and

out of voices. It's great. And anyway, thank you to the person. Please email if you are the person who recommended that book to me so I can say your name because it was it was such a great recommendation but it's the kind of thing that like a year later I'm like I finally read it. I finally did listen to it. We get a lot of really good recommendations and gifts. Yeah. And everything and life. Best life. Tweeted us what your what your one point extra would be. Oh, nice. Maybe. Right. Like my one point extra is that I will do the dishes as they come. Sure. That's not mine. The example is example. A clean as you go or a yeah, whatever. Drinking more hot tea. Remember, tea is a medicine. Yeah. And add some vodka if you're me.

Jesus. I feel like an alcoholic this episode. I'm really not. Also, if you're going to add anything to a hot drink, don't let it be vodka. I don't know why you keep saying that. Rum. Rum. And maybe Malibu coconut rum. We're not also not getting paid by them. We should be. Hey, thanks for listening. Things is even for editing of so much shit out. You guys don't even fucking understand how much even doing his work tonight and then finding names that we can't remember all the stuff. I mean, we always need you to do that. And that's kind of standard. I now don't even attempt to look things up. I'm just like just kind of look over my shoulder. He's already got his phone up. Thanks for listening. You guys are the fucking best.

You guys really so many great things are happening in our lives. We get we say this all the time to at the live shows, but yeah, we mean it to you guys too at home. We don't go to live shows and maybe aren't even interested. We really feel very, very grateful for all the things that we have because of the way that the show exploded. It's super nuts. Our lives are nuts because of it. Yeah, but in the best possible way. Yeah, we're just very grateful. So thank you. We're grateful that you guys have found each other and started this community and we just get to be peripherally part of it and enjoy it and and hear stories about it. Your stories and see you guys make connections and raise money for good causes and, you know, find yourselves and go to

therapy and get tattoos, get cool tattoo party and get and have art that gets made. And we're lucky to be part of it. We really appreciate it. And it's very cool to be part of the podcast, The Wave of the Future, which is podcasting. Everyone knows it. Everyone knows it. Get on board. Listen, stay sexy and don't get murdered. Goodbye. Elvis, you want a cookie?