My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 170 - Habeas Delicious

Episode Date: April 25, 2019

Karen and Georgia cover the murder of Helle Crafts and the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse.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. Oh, now it's an emergency mode. Throw up on it. It's got two settings. Okay, cool. Okay. Can you see me? I can. Can you see me? Right down the galley, right down the gauntlet. Let's keep eye contact this entire episode. Okay. Hello. Welcome to my favorite murder. It's a true crime comedy podcast. That's right. You've been waiting for since last Wednesday. That's Karen Kilgara. I mean, Thursday. Thursday, Thursday, Thursday. That's George

a hard start. We don't know what day it is. It doesn't matter what day it is. We told you already. Stop being superficial. Today. Oh, you love Wednesday. Oh, I love calendars. Look at me mark my calendars. I'm sewing the calendars like you don't even know. Those squares contain all my plans. Multitudes. Today, which is a Wednesday, right, is, is it Tuesday? No, no, no, it's Wednesday. Okay. Today is a year since the Golden State Killer was caught. Do you remember? Happy birthday, Karen. Happy Golden State birthday, George. Thank you. I will tell you this right now. I know exactly where I was driving when I saw it on Twitter, and thank you again to that person on Twitter that alerted me at 11 o'clock at night,

driving home from something. I remember that. Downmore Park. I fucking look at Twitter. Someone says, could it be this is really happening? Then the texts begin. You start, you text me. You're the one who informed me. Thank you very much. That's that's not for it. I live for it. It's now two that you've told me were caught cold cases that were solved. So you're on a roll. Thank you. It's my dream to be that person, to be your personal newscaster. Look out for the Delphi murders when they catch him because that's going to matter. So I need you to tell me that will be three. Okay. Yeah, it was really exciting. I think I woke up from a nap at 11. Yep, that's right. And I think you and I were like not talking right then. Yes. I think we were like had, we

had just come off. Was it the European tour? Yeah. Was it there was something where it was like book and tour and too much of each other. Stress, stress, stress. And I was just like, okay, we need to take a, you know, just the week to ourselves. Can I please have one day? That's the thing I like to say. And then the Golden State Killer getting caught brought us back together. Yep. I was just like immediately. I know you want to talk to me. That's right. I know I'm the only person you want to talk to right now. That's right. Called you. And these are the sinews that hold the muscles of the exoskeleton, endoskeleton of our relationship together. That's right. And this podcast, it is like the ocean where the tide goes out, but baby, it comes back in.

That's right. Every time. Save our waters. Clean up here. Please get the plastic shit out of our ocean. Cut up your six pack plastic can. Seagulls beak is going to get caught in that. Is that what you want on your content? It's hilarious. It's going to look like a Victorian or a, what would that be? No. Like a seagull. I thought that was the, the point is that we're dressing up birds of the ocean as like, uh, what is it from the 1500s? It's like avant-garde, garb. Yes. Avant-garde, like Grace Jones or, uh, the restoration, the 1500s. That's right. Why would I even make a statement like that? Let's say the 1500s. And so it is. The 1500s were either the restoration, the Renaissance, or those two things are the same. This is my point. You

don't need to name the Renaissance two things. There are many history podcasts that you can immediately hang up on this one and turn that on if you want. And do it. And we wish you would. And we wish you well doing it. We do. Oh, I have a quick, um, podcast recommendation that I just started listening to when we were on the plane home from St. Louis and I fucking binge it. There's like only four episodes. Okay. It's called The Ballad of Billy Balls. And it's- Oh, yes. You've been talking about that. Oh, and Crime Town put it out. It's like their neck, their new season of their crime. And it's hosted by Io Tillit Wright and he's just such a badass. It's such a fucking good podcast. It's like, it's like CB, they're trying to solve a

like CBGB era fucking rockers murder with the girlfriend of the rocker, murder rocker involved. And Io Tillit is also involved and you don't know how until the third episode, but it's so fucking good. I love it so much. Awesome. Yeah. I actually, I guess if we're going to do it, let's do podcast corner. Let's do it. Let's do it. This is our new thing. Because I have been listening to so many more lately than normal. I went back as I'd never listened to Atlanta Monster. Right. Which I oftentimes, I just stay silent because I'm like, sometimes I'm like, enough. I can't. But I've always been fascinated with the Wayne Williams and the Atlanta Child Killer case and how they used to when it was just the American Justice episodes type of treatment.

It was this thing of it was an open and shut case that caught them on the bridge, Da Da Da. Wayne Williams, period. But there was other, then there were a couple other shows that would fold in this thing of isn't that convenient that on the last night of the stakeout on this bridge, they caught this guy. Isn't that convenient? Isn't that convenient? You know, what were they trying to step around? What race issue were they trying to avoid blowing up? Yeah. Whatever. And it was the 80s, right? So that shit was already blown up. It was already in Atlanta. Royling. Yes. And in the South. Anyway, I just, I blaze through it. Obviously, I'm late to the party. So who cares about this? But I just, Payne Lindsay is great, a great

podcaster and did such a good job with this investigation and opening those doors instead of going conspiracy theory or like putting that tinge on it. It's pulling in this very now modern look of like, hey, white people, you never look at anything this way because you are, you know, coming from this bias of you don't know what it's like to feel this like police oppression or this police abuse constant abuse constant neglect. Or you think that the community, the, you know, black community thinks of their children differently than you would or somehow it's not as important because it's a child who doesn't look like your child. Yes. So, you know, looking at it in that way of like, it's just as important. Yes. And those children

deserve justice just as much as any fucking white kid does. And it's, it's the travesty of when social oppression, it then creates these victims who are entirely innocent. And that's another really lovely theme is that innocence, these innocent children, just because they're out at 11 o'clock at night or whatever, just because their home lives weren't ideal, they were innocent children. So it's so good if you haven't, which everyone already has. This is like me recommending friends is a great sitcom to watch, but I just really, it blazed through it and really liked it. I love it. And that's podcast corner. To talk more about podcasts real quick, Murder Squad, their new episode this week has them,

this fucking Paul Holes and Billy Jensen talking about the Golden State Killer, which is like how they met. It's like their fucking thing, you know. It's their origin story. And they have a survivor on the, that they interview. And she's just an incredible woman and her amazing son. You got the podcast. You have the phone line, which has this week is Christmas Doe and Dennis Doe, two children who were murdered in Georgia in their cold cases. And then this podcast will kill you this week is doing the Zika virus. Oh, how nice. I just love it. I do love the, how the kind of like the concentric circles of interest around,

like it's like, I like true crime, but I also like other fucked up things that happen. I love it. That don't necessarily belong in that little circle, but they definitely belong in that outer circle. It's like societal woes is my favorite thing. Sure. However they come down that pipe. And pretty soon exactly right network is going to have yet another podcast. We have like so many coming called a podcast. Did I? While I was grabbing my boobs. Did you notice that? She's dirty, dirty. Yeah. Sorry. No, I interrupted you. You another podcast that what? I don't know. We'll have a lot of podcasts coming up soon. So stay tuned. Make sure you follow. Can you do that exactly right network?

Can you follow a network on iTunes? I don't. Well, you subscribe to the network? No, to every individual show probably. You can subscribe to exactly right on Twitter. And there you go is the one posting all those Twitter updates of all the shows and Instagram. Do it, please. We fight about Twitter and Instagram. We are opposing teams. One is on jokes only and words only. One is pictures. That's right. What else? Anything? Yes. Yeah, it was. You were like in a very serious moment. No, no. It was just something before it was about that. It was like going around it. Twitter. Lizzo. Always. She retweeted you. That was exciting. That was crazy. She but her album had come out. So she was kind of retweeting

everybody that was talking about it. Yeah, but she also retweeted Courtney Barnett, who is one of my favorite singer songwriters. So good. Everybody loves Lizzo right now. She is the it girl of the moment. That's right. Oh, I was going to say something great. Oh, fan cult. We have a fan cult. We're doing all kinds of exciting things. There's contests coming. There's going to be like, we're giving away like a lunchbox. It's really weird, but like a book, like based on our book. So like the fan cult and the book. It's book swag. Yeah, book swag. It comes out May 28th. I'm sure we're going to be giving away a lot of signed copies. All this shit. Yeah, but fan cult only. We have to be exclusive about it. Yeah. I mean, we'll give

you a few too. We can't afford it. Exclusive. Okay. All right. Exclusive. Exclusive. But basically it's join the insider circle so you know everything that we're doing. Yeah. And it's better than it used to be. Okay. Should we get started? Yep. Who's first? Oh, this again. Me? Based on the weekend, Stephen? No, based on the Power Rangers. Okay. I think the first thing. Based on reality. We have to do it based on what the listener's reality, not our reality. I always forget which one's which. I know. What is reality? I truly know. I mean, believe me. Okay. I'm doing. Okay, bye. I do. I'm doing the murder of Hella Crafts, aka the Woodchipper murder, aka the first episode of

Forensic Files. No. Yes. Amazing. And I was like up all night, what murder do I do? Because the one I did ended up being too gruesome and I'm like, you can't fucking do that, Georgia. So I was like looking for a new one and I was like, why would the first episode of Forensic Files is? Found it. I was like, oh my God, how have we not done this? This is, I love this idea. Right? It's so smart. Thank you. I'm very smart. And this is before Forensic Files had started naming their episodes really weird shit, like, you know, skirting the issues. Yes. It's always a bad pun. Right. And this was just called the disappearance of Hella Crafts. Okay. And her name is Hella. H-E-L-L-E is how you spell it, but it's Hella. Okay. So I got a lot of info from morbidology.com.

There's an article by Emily Thompson. And also, of course, our friend Murderpedia. Yes. Especially an article by Mark Gatto. Hella Crafts was born Heller Lork Nielsen on July 4th, 1947. She grew up in a small village in Denmark. Okay. And she's vibrant. She's outgoing. She made friends easily. She's super fucking smart. By the time when she was a teenager, she had learned French and English and was able to understand German, Norwegian and Swedish. So I know only three of those. And I, that's a lie. I'm not even great at English. Do you remember when we were in Scandinavia trying to pronounce those fucking city names? Skiorgans. Oh, yeah. And there were, my favorite was, and I know we've told this story, but going

up and making people in the front row tell us how to pronounce it. Meanwhile, they were speaking absolutely perfect like California English, where they're like, don't worry about it. We don't really care. We're like, oh my God. Or they were all like expats who didn't know how to say it either, or they had just come to, you know, Amsterdam to see us. Yeah, they were just on vacation. It was hilarious. Stop asking a shit. So yeah, she would have been good at that. So by the time she was 20, Hella is a beautiful young woman. I showed Vence a photo and I was like, who does she look like? Because I need to explain. And he immediately was like Emily Watson. Oh, wow. So the actress Emily Watson were in East Coast, like housewife. That's what she looked like.

Awesome. And it's exactly like her. She became a Dutch stewardess. How do we say now not stewardess, flight attendant? Flight attendant or air hostess? I'm not sure. I'm going to go flight attendant. Okay. And then she and she loved discovering new places. It was like a perfect job for her because she was so outgoing and friendly and everyone fucking loved her, of course. Then she found out that Pan America Airlines Pan Am Pan Am was hiring. Sure. She applied along with 200 other people for eight spaces available and she got one. Yeah, which is sorry to say, but that is kind of like a beauty contest because back then that's kind of what it was. It was like the hooters of the air. But not in an objectification way. You also

had to be a good hostess. Yes. You had to really, you had to be good at like up close customer service. Don't they have like a Pan Am experience here in LA somewhere where you can do like the whole, you have dinner as if you were on a Pan Am flight from the 60s? No. So I follow this incredible woman. Her name is Allison Martino. She's the daughter of Al Martino, who was this singer in the fucking 50s and 60s, like old Los Angeles crew and her type of dude. And she does use like crazy experiences and tells you all this history of LA. So she went on this Pan Am experience and it's like they serve you the food they would have served you. We have to do that. Stephen, you looked it up and what did you find? Air Hollywood's Pan Am Experience is a

weekly retro themed event for aviation enthusiasts and people looking for a new fine dining experience. I am. You always say. You always say. I always with my long fake nails point at you and say. With your Capri. Yes. Georgia, hold on. Let me take a sip of this wine spritzer. Okay. Well, we'll go. Please. It's gonna be in my favorite murder event. Outing. The field trips are beginning. That's right. And then we have to do reports on field trips. Yeah. Stephen's our bus driver. Great. Okay. Okay. Where were we? I don't fucking know. She becomes a Pan Am. That's right. She won out of 200 people. She got top eight. That's right. So she sent to Miami for training and it was there on May 24th, 1969. The height probably of Miami at the time. Yeah.

That she met 31 year old Richard Crafts. Crafts like I'm crafting. Okay. He's a pilot for Eastern Airlines and to me, there's not a lot of photos of him, but I wrote if Mr. Rogers were a dick and an insurance salesman. That's what he looks like. So Mr. Rogers, but more tan and more buff. Yeah. And like not friendly face. The warmth is gone. The warmth is gone. And he's trying to sell you that shitty stocks. Okay. He's trying to get you to get in on this Ponzi scheme. He's a Ponzi type. Exactly. Okay. So like fucking RIP to Mr. Rogers and I'm sorry to desecrate your beautiful name. But we need a baseline. That's right. Thank you. When he met Hela in 1969, he was already engaged to someone else, but they hooked up. They maintain an on again off again relationship for

the next few years. They fought all the time for friends said sometimes in public, her friends didn't like him. They're like, you can get any fucking dude and you're in this Mr. Rogers looking motherfucker. And they're like, you need to join adult children of alcoholics or some shit like that because clearly you're chaos addict. That's right. Yeah. Chaos addict. That's good. Oh, you're pointing. Can I say that you're pointing at yourself? Sure. You pointed at yourself with gusto. I love chaos. Oh, are you? Yes. Oh my God. How are we friends? I don't, I don't know. You know what? Maybe I love chaos addicts. I don't think you mind chaos yourself. I know. Yeah. But it's weird. It's like, you don't want to. You don't want to think of yourself

that way. Yeah. But for me, that's the thing of like being late or not turning things in or whatever. It's like, now what's going to happen? Oh, so there's a little bit of I'm pretending that that somehow means I'm in control, which I'm not. I feel like I'm chaotic and I have anxiety about it and I hate it and I don't want to be. Right. Same. Okay. That's what that means. But there's almost like if it's what you grew up with. Oh, then it feels like mother's milk. So you kind of go like it's my baseline. Dude. And you don't want it to be. Can I shame? Can I side anecdote? Please. And I meant to mention this. My mom got married. Yes. Last week after having been with my now new stepdad, which is the weird. I've never had a stepparent in my life. And what's your new line?

What's my new line? You're not my real dad. You're not my real dad, John. But we love John. She's been with him for like 15 years. He's the best fucking person. I adore him. I get a text message on Tuesday to 14 other people. It was a group text, including phone numbers I didn't have in my phone. So fucking strangers to me. And my mom said, surprise, we got married. Who fucking does it? And when I said to her, you know, I was just like, that's so Janet. It's fine. I'm so happy for you. Wonderful, wonderful. And then later when we talked, it was like, you know, I really would have loved a phone call like just to tell me that this happened. And she's just like, oh, I'm such a bad mom. Oh, you are unique. You know, did that. Well, here's the thing though. She's the kind of

person that like it is deadly to be wrong for her. It's deadly to be wrong. And you can't even like just even put in one suggestion in the suggestion box. The only one is, yeah, I could see why you would want that. Right. I know. You didn't have to do it. Just understand that. Just hear what I'm saying and like readjust your perspective. My mom was the exact same way where any time I would just be like, you know what kind of sucks? And she'd be like, oh, I'm sorry, you get everything you want. All that where it was like, no complaint was valid. Which is why when then that comes up for me and where I just like, you then just time travel into having these fights because you did that when you were 11 with the person that was in charge of reality. Jesus Christ. All right,

go ahead. How are we successful based on our fucking. Oh my life. Seriously. You let your bed on fire as a like four year old. I live my fucking life on fire, friend. I was just telling somebody this where I was just like right up till this podcast got popular. I was sliding down the face of the mountain into the fucking death pool. Like I was done. And you were like, hands up excited like on a roller coaster. Like here we go. Fuck it all. Who and then we both pulled each other up. Yep. Thank you. Hey, thank you. Thank you, Karen. Thank you, Georgia. Thank you, Karen. Where were Janet? We're calling Janet. God damn it. Dammit, Janet. Okay. Blah, blah, blah. They're together. It's volatile. They probably shouldn't have been. But then in 1975, Hella found out that

she was pregnant. Oh, and they decided to get married. Sure. Okay. They bought a one level ranch house in the city of Newtown, Newtown, where Helen had her first child. And then over the next few years, she had two more. So they have three kids together. Richard picks up a second job as an auxiliary police officer. Is that a security guard? I think it's like, yeah, it's like a part time cop, which shouldn't be a thing without all the like, you don't get all the bells and whistles. You don't know how to do anything, but you have a gun. That's right. But like, he also was like kind of a dick about it. Like he bought the exact same kind of police car that they had and then put like wires and shit on it. Like he and he just would come to the station

even when he wasn't on shift. Like he really wanted it. And he was like, really enforced whatever fucking baby, whatever he had enforced the any power, any baby power that he had, he like double time. Oh, yeah. So it's like, oh, so you can tell you can, you can write up someone a citation, right? But it isn't really a ticket and they're like, yeah, I'll fucking write citations all day all day about every little thing. And it's like, calm down, dude. Yeah. So yeah. So it's great. He's doing that. She's continuing to work as a airline flight attendant, flight attendant. Yes. And according to more than their looks, I'm sorry, I've said the thing about your time in the sixties. It was, yeah, the late sixties when it was kind of like, yeah,

it's a known thing. And it's like, yeah, yeah, you're good. Thanks. So I looked it up, of course, on our, my favorite reader Gmail and found a murdery note named Maggie B. Her mother back then, baby sat for the craft's children. Wow. And she said Richard was a quote bit of an oddball. And that Hella was very sweet, very pretty Swedish woman with a thick accent. And fuck him. I said, I added that part. So the marriage is rocky, of course. Richard starts cheating on her even before they're married. When he's asked why they got married, he said quote, Hella was pregnant at the time we were married. It was too far advanced for a doctor to perform an abortion. And we decided to get married. So the most romantic just in romance at the height of,

it's called like a deep human soul connection. Yes. When you get married because it's too late to get an abortion. That's what Oprah calls a deep human, deep human soul connection minus an abortion. Yeah. So during their marriage, Richard was just fucking cheating all the time. He has all these affairs. He would disappear for days at a time and never say where he was. And he also bought a shit ton of guns for whatever reason. Because that's sexy for his dates. Yeah. Oh, and because he's an auxiliary policeman. So he's like obsessed with guns. They made a pretty good wage because of being in the airline industry is good. And so he didn't give her any money. He spent all the money on fucking guns and shit. Wow. And then the months leading up to

her disappearance, Hella had discovered phone calls to an unknown number. And she's like, he's fucking doing it again. Like she'd kind of ignored it because of the kids and stuff. And he probably promised he wasn't doing it anymore. So to confirm her suspicions, she hires a private detective. He's a former Connecticut cop. His name is Keith Mayo. Okay. Which I love. He'd be played Mayo. Like I've heard of his clinic. That's amazing. That's right. It has all the best mayonnaise. That's right. This guy's the best. He'd be played by a young mustachioed apology. Amati. Hello. Which I think any role, any movie that my favorite murder makes is going to have apology in it. We got to. And also just

in terms of being a utility character actor, you can slap a very slight toupee on him and he's a completely different person. Yep. You can paint him blue. You can do whatever it takes. And the biopic of blue man group. Paint him blue. Blue man group, fucking avatar. That's right. Or his great film, Big Fat Liar, which my entire family is obsessed with. Or his cameo in the forthcoming book, Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murdered, the audiobook. That's right. I don't, is that known yet? Did we talk about it? I think we have talked about it, but we might as well brag on it a little bit more. Apology Amati is doing, is helping us read our audiobook here and there. Here and there. He reached out to us and we were like, hi, can, will you do this? Is this really you? Are you making

fun of us? Yes. And he was like, yes, yes, no. I think that's right. Okay. The end. Apology Amati. You'll see. Oh, you'll see. You'll see when you listen to the audiobook. And yes, we read it too. Okay. So Keith Mayo confirms that not only is Richard having another affair, he's had one girlfriend in particular in New Jersey who he had been seeing for years. Oh, I hate that. Look, I hate that so much. It's so fucking mean to the other person. It's so mean to pretend that you're doing, to pretend that you are sharing a reality when you're not. Yeah. I think that's so fucking shitty. Like to trick the person into thinking that their life is what is one thing and it turns out it's a good point. Like just tell them that their knife, like you have to go crazy when you

find that out, right? Yes, because then suddenly it's just like, it's one thing to have an affair with people you don't care about. And it's like, oh, he can't stop fucking whatever. Yes. But to be posted up with a totally other person and just have like a secret life. I feel like I love you and spending all your emotional fucking energy on them. And it's nightmare. It's just everyone's worst nightmare. It's like you're keeping something from me and it's terrible. Well, this guy was really doing it and didn't clearly didn't care about how it impacted and was fucking around too. So it's like, he was even fucking the secret girl. I mean, fucking over the secret girlfriend. It's like no one's safe with El Martino, whatever the hell his name is. No, that's the father of

the Instagram. I'm sorry. Shit, I'm so sorry. What's his name? Sorry. What's the husband's name? Richard Crafts. Thank you. Okay. No one's safe with Richard Crafts. Stephen, that's an easy pull. No, it's not. Leave it. Okay. Leave it. We're here. We're raw. We're un... We're flawed and wrong. We love chaos. Yeah, chaos reigns. We accuse people of shit. Okay. So now that she has proof of his infidelity, she files for divorce and she told her friends that she had feared for her life and that and they kind of believed her because she told them, you know, she had confided in her friends about what a dick he was and she had appeared in public multiple times with bruises on her face. So her divorce lawyer said that she told them that, quote, if anything happened to me,

not quote, if anything happened to me, we should not believe that it was an accident. Which is like, uh... How many times have we said that though? So many times. Every time. Women who know what's coming. That's right. It's the worst. It's so sad. And she also told her lawyer that Richard had a ton of guns and that he had physically abused her in the past. So despite the fact that he was cheating on her, she decided to attain a no-fault divorce as opposed to charge him with adultery and I'm sh... You know, I can imagine it's just like, let's make this as... Like, let's not fucking make him angry. Like, let's make this as easy as possible. It's not like make him react in any way. It sucks so bad. Yeah. She's just trying to slide

out the door and close it behind her so she can get out like free and clear. That's right. So she did that. And she was concerned about the children as well how he would react. The divorce papers were written up but they're never served because on November 18th, 1986, 39-year-old Hella returns from working on a flight from Germany and she's dropped off at her house by two other flight attendants and they knew about the Rocky relationship with Richard. So when they dropped her off and she was like, oh shit, he's home because I think they still live together. They understood. So it was the last time anyone aside from her husband saw her alive. So her friends become concerned when they haven't heard from Hella and Richard starts telling everyone a different fucking story

like she was on another flight or she was at home in Denmark with her mom and her mom's like, uh, no dudes, she's not home with me and probably like just like that and other... He gave different stories to everyone. So one of Hella's co-workers named Rita didn't believe Richard's bullshit and was worried about her friend. So she reports Hella missing on the first of December two weeks after she had gone missing. So when the police questioned Richard who by now is an actual policeman with the neighboring county, he gives them a bunch of bullshit. He passes a lie detector test and so they're like, great. And they didn't fucking worry about it. And so here's the here comes fucking Mr. Mayo, Keith Mayo, who like got hired for this job of proving that he was

cheating and he was like, fuck this shit. He's like, I'm getting involved. This is bullshit. He was worried about his client. So he decided he needed to find evidence to convince the police to take Hella's disappearance seriously. He finds in the papers provided by Hella, he finds a receipt for a chainsaw and then he learns that the au pair, the au pair tells him that Richard had cut out pieces of his bedroom rug and discarded them at a local dump. Thank you au pair. That's right. Seriously, that was some key fucking evidence. Yeah, she's definitely mandatory in this whole case. Okay, nice. So he's like, we're going to the dump. This guy, this fucking private investigator,

he with the help of a local trash, trash pickup crew, they find out which dump the craft's trash would have been taken to and they go it's like two hours east of Newtown. He recoup recruits a few helpers and for the next several days, they search the mountain of trash at the dump. Can you imagine? Yeah, they do succeed in locating a portion of rug that's nearly identical to the rug at the craft's residence. And it's taken to the state police laboratory in Meridan led by a young forensics investigator for the state police, none other than, and it's the first episode of Forensic Files, Dr. Henry Lee. There he is. There he is. He should be on the first episode of Forensic Files. This took place in, the Forensic Files was

aired in 1996. So we were, I was 16 when I'm sure I first fucking saw this. I was flying on Diet Pills, age 26. And Henry Lee was just a bright-eyed bushy-tailed forensics dude. That's amazing. Yeah. He's one of the count, the country's foremost forensic scientists already, though. So, Hella's friends also kept up a nonstop campaign of calling the police for updates about the investigation because they fucking knew that she wouldn't have just disappeared and left her children behind. No, of course. And as a result, the state's attorney's office, so they, they fucking usurp the local cops. They decide that the investigation should be handled in total by the Connecticut state police. So they take the fucking case away. That's what that's for.

That's right. So when they looked into his behavior finally without note, because they didn't know him and didn't give a shit, right? They weren't buddies. They look into his behavior right after she disappeared and they find some strange shit. So aside from several pieces of the carpet in the bedroom that had been removed, he had completely remodeled their bedroom and then Dr. Lee performed, of course, it's the first episode of Forensic Files, a luminal test in various locations. They test positive for the presence of blood and among Richard's credit card records, they find that he had purchased a new freezer, chainsaw he had bought also. They find that he had rented a 2,700 pound wood chipper in a U-Haul truck shortly before Hela disappeared.

He also has numerous affairs continued after Hela disappeared and never once he mentioned to any of these fucking women who knew he was married that his wife was missing. So, and then Hela's car is found in an employee airport parking lot. So when the story of Hela's disappearance finally starts making the news because someone's fucking taking it seriously, the snowplow driver comes forward and he's like, I know Richard. I've, you know, he knew him by sight. I saw Mr. Crafts using the wood chipper near the lake in the early morning hours of the, like right after she disappeared. It was a, there had been a severe winter storm that had hit Connecticut and it was snow and sleet everywhere, gusty winds. And so they were emergency snow plowing the roads and he drives

past this U-Haul and he sees a fucking wood chipper attached to it. And then he sees this Richard Crafts and he's like, that's fucking weird. That's weird out in the middle of this post snowstorm day. Right. So when he finds out that his wife is missing, he comes forward. Good. Good job snow plow guy. That's right. I like to call you Mr. Plow. Because name again is Mr. Plow. Thank you. Okay. Police go to the scene of where the wood chipper was seen and they find there's a scattering of wood chips under a layer of dead leaves and among those wood chips, they also find a human thumb, a fingertip with the nail attached covered in pink nail polish, 2660, 2660 strands of blonde hair, a big toe, 69 slivers of human bone, a truncated piece

of human skull, five droplets of human blood, and a mailing label with Helicraft's name on it and two teeth. So awful. That's all that's fucking left. Also slight sidebar, but wood chippers themselves are frightening machines. Okay. So those kinds of things are always around growing up because like my aunt, not go out to farm, so they were and we lived on Eucalyptus Avenue and there was a Eucalyptus Grove between our house and my aunt Jean's house. So they just have to go into the creek every year and cut down trees and then put them in the wood chipper. Okay. And there's a famous family story of them doing it. My dad, my uncle, Steve and my cousin, Stevie and I think Stevie was like a 17 or 18 and they were throwing stuff in the wood chipper and

Stevie threw a branch it caught in his sleeve and pull and then he started his arm started going into the wood chipper connected to this branch that was by like basically gravity pulling him in and my dad turned around and yanked him back out basically like saved his arm. Holy shit. And a thing that happened when they came back and retold the story, they were all white like completely pale gray and we're just like and you're my cousin Stevie who was such an asshole growing up and he like turned to me and I said she's like your dad saved my arm. He saved my arm. He didn't save his arm. He probably would have bled out. Yeah. Your arm gets chewed off in there. It's just going to be massive amounts of blood loss if you're out in the middle of the

fucking farm and you have to what is like a half an hour to town. You're so right. Also that's a nice revive where the guy gets his arms cut off in the combine and but he lives and he gets they get reattached but also it's the thing of in that moment like I think about this all the time I freeze sometimes when things like that happen like if somebody screams or there's a loud noise oftentimes it'll be like wait what's going on but I think because my dad was a fireman he just had that thing of you do not you just act for sure don't judge it and you don't panic either he probably has had so much experience and not panicking whereas like we don't see shit like that all the time so we do panic yeah they're just close calls close calls it's and woodchippers are just

so scary so scary well this motherfucker yeah so okay and in total Dr. Henry Lee's team found just a total of three ounces of human remains wow total so Dr. Henry Lee determined that the O type blood positive was a match to Hellas and that the bone fragments belong to a human and a forensic odontologist was able to identify the two of his belonging to helicrafts so they confirmed that it was her body um in addition they uncovered a submerged chainsaw in the host satanic river or house satanic river it's house satanic yes that's it that's the one the chainsaw had blonde hairs intertwined in the chains and inside the rented u-hole van they also found a clump of human tissue like material attested positive for human blood fucking monster so this

guy was like a monster and messy and like not good just disgusting yeah he didn't even he was like a mile from his house he'd like didn't even he was so cocky that he would never get caught that he just didn't even fucking care psychopath yeah so based on this information of course helicrafts is pronounced dead and 50-year-old Richard is arrested when he arrives home from a Christmas ski trip with his children wow right after their mother goes disappeared goes disappearing that's what it is that's what it is prosecutors they face a double burden because not only did they have to convince the jury that hello was actually dead because they didn't have quote unquote a body right which had never happened that there's never been a trial in Connecticut

up until this point where there wasn't a body um and a murder trial and they also had to convince the jury that Richard was the one who killed her so there was no physical body and the motive they argued was that Richard didn't want to get a divorce of course um they theorize that Richard's Richard first struck hella unconscious with something blunt in their bedroom and then he carried her body to the body to the freezer where he left her to freeze assuming because it's easier and less messy to put through the woodchipper which is so fucking awful disgusting like to think that through in those details and then it's also your wife and the mother of your children I mean it is the thing of this is the difference where you can this is the difference of when

you have a conscience and when you don't right because thinking about the scene from Fargo where you of the woodchipper I get sick and like I don't want to think about it anymore and the person who's being woodchipped is a fucking supposed to terrible character it's a terrible character but also it's like it's a it's a prop leg yeah you know it's as fake as it can be and I don't like thinking about it yeah and the person who puts him through is like a dead-eyed monster yes and that's and this person did it to his fucking life yeah which is sick um so he then took hell his body to the river where he was seen by the snow plower thank god mr plow and chopped into several pieces with the chainsaw and then put through the woodchipper

were sickening I mean think about your children they're going to have to fucking grow up knowing this he doesn't think about anybody of course not the police believe that he then um put this scattered the pieces in the river and around the surrounding area so during his trial the couple's housekeeper Don Thomas tells the courtroom that on the day of hella's disappearance Richard had allowed her to go home early and she testified that Richard had removed a freezer and a carpet with a large black stain from their home just a couple days after hella disappeared I fucking love these witnesses they're all like I love them with my heart it's bananas um when Don is asked about the peculiar when Don is like Richard what's that fucking stain mr crafts whatever he's like I spilled

kerosene and I I don't want you to clean it I'm just gonna cut the fucking carpet out yeah just oh you mean because you had your hurricane lamp up in the bedroom right you fucking piece of shit hella's friend Susan Loston tells the court that Richard had physically abused hella before and that he had lied he had said his colon cancer had come back and when hella called the doctor to confirm that it turned out he was lying to get her to not go through with a divorce oh god that's right then Richard Kraft's own brother-in-law testified that when the state police divers started looking for his wife in the rivers he said quote let them dive there's no body it's gone there's no brother-in-law to them after a hundred fucking witnesses and 650 exhibits are presented

in a 53-day trial which I guess is a very fucking long time the the jury deliberates for 17 days and on July 15th 1988 a mistrial is fucking called declared yes because there was one motherfucking jury member who it was 11 to 1 in favor of conviction one jury member walks out because he refuses to vote to convict so it was a mistrial he was just somehow like I don't think that fan was Mitch McConnell fucking piece of shit the prosecutors bless their hearts they're like fuck you we're doing this again like they were oh thank god thank god they were like fuck you fuck you fuck you so the second trial scheduled for the following year this time the prosecution is able to successfully argue that hella had been murdered and it took only eight

hours to reach a unanimous verdict three years and two days since hella was last seen alive the jury found that Richard was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt few and at a sentencing he says quote a great deal has been said about my apparent lack of emotion I have feelings like everyone else which is like how do you you think you do that's a weird psychopath thing where it's like this is how everyone feels about things right you don't know what other people's emotions are and the blindness yeah to when you finally go to say something it's all about oh my god this is so hard for me right you're not even smart enough to not do the thing that psychopaths always do which is I've been through a lot yeah in this trial where it's like you idiot yeah you're

pointing back at yourself again totally it's like that these people are so manipulating and cunning and fucking like uh what's like nefarious mentally ill yes but then they're like pretty stupid because they don't think they don't think with empathy and with an open mind okay that's the one it's hubris they think it's what you said they think they're smarter than everybody so there's no in their mind there's no way they can mess up right because they have already thought it all through and they know everything right nightmare so um he maintained his innocence and continued to say that hella had just disappeared at a sentencing Richard's own fucking sister who by then had custody of the couple's three children I know she urged the judge to impose the maximum sentence

his own sister shit he sentenced to 50 years in prison yay Keith Mayo let's find out I was like what happened to Keith Mayo though and so I googled him um he sent a registered letter to the police commissioner commission chairman asking for an independent investigation to why the new town police did not take hella's missing persons report seriously so he called for an investigation of the condor to the police department's detective bureau which is like you'd fucking double down like he yes he didn't even be involved in any of this but he was like I'm gonna follow this through yeah just so fucking he cared amazing sadly in 1999 at 46 years old Keith Mayo died from injuries suffered in a car accident oh no I was so bummed when I saw that that's so young I know he was

survived by his wife and three children helicrafts murder was a landmark case it advanced forensic science greatly it involved serology radiology ballistics hair and fiber experts and FBI experts and it was the first case in which somebody was convicted of murder with nobody in the state of Connecticut it's not called habeas I've been trying to think of it corpus delicti for real yeah here's how I was going to think of it delicti yes that's delicti corpus delicti because I just saw them talking about it on another forensic files when we were on tour yeah I think I watched that one too we were watching it at the same time the one skip holensworth was on oh skip um but I kept thinking how funny it is what delicti may sound like delicious body yeah delectable yeah so

as I was trying to think of it like I was gonna sound so smart if I could come up with habeas corpus delicti but I was like like habeas delicious like I kept thinking of it I'm like just don't no no I only know it because I listened to um no stone unturned the study of the um what are they called no stone unturned which is the story of neck research who find bodies that um that have been hidden and because of that they can try the murderers because they have a body okay right a couple years ago Joel Cohen admitted in a huffington post article that the woodshipper scene in fargo is directly inspired by the murders of the murder of helicraft that makes perfect sense and the earliest richard can be released is august 2021 when he'll be 84 years old

so let's fucking keith mayo that shit and keep him in prison they will I know especially I mean like it's infamous yeah and he's 80 where's he gonna go now totally and that's the story of the murder of helicrafts wow god great idea thanks I'm just gonna start doing that unsolved mysteries first episode cold case files first episode I love that though because you know James Charles the um makeup guy that me and Nora my niece Nora love to watch together he did that same thing where he went to the first youtube makeup tutorial and did it along with the woman who did the first youtube makeup tutorial legend it was it's the funniest it made us laugh so hard because it was like clearly from like 1996 or whatever and I think it was bobby brown I think it was like

or jane irons someone was like you know it's a great idea to everyone's like why are you bothering with that yeah exactly and they're like no come on throw some bronze around yeah no one's gonna watch this and he did it along with and he couldn't get over that she was applying foundation with her fingers he was so grossed out it was really amazing 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 so much I haven't lifted a knife or a pan since like early fall so I can't wait to get back in the kitchen and hello fresh makes it so easy and also makes it so that my food tastes good which is hard to do on my own it gives you everything everything you need so get up to 20 free meals with purchase plus free shipping on your first box at hello fresh dot ca slash murder 20 with code murder 20 that's up to 20 free meals plus free shipping on your first box when you go to hello fresh dot ca slash murder 20 and use code murder 20 goodbye hey i'm mike quarry the host of wonder is podcast against the odds in our next

season three mask men hijack a school bus full of children in the sleepy farm town of chow chilla california they bury the children and their bus driver deep underground planning to hold them for ransom local police and the fbi marshal a search effort but the trail quickly runs dry as the air supply for the trapped children dwindles a pair of unlikely heroes emerges follow against the odds wherever you get your podcasts you can listen ad free on the amazon music or wondery app okay is it my turn it's your turn okay um this was one I was thinking of doing for st louis for the live show too dark or big or heavy or whatever so I didn't do it so it's so funny that like it's still dark and big and heavy we just don't have to hear the audience silence when you

see something terrible that's the only difference right yeah our live show is is more comedic I would say it's like on the the scale tips toward comedic as opposed to true crime because because it's a fucking live show yeah and it's the and that's the fun part we definitely do the dark part but it's fun but it's also hard to to say all these horrible things and then have no reaction from the audience or well yeah it's a one once you're in a live show setting and vibe you just want those fucking laughs and that's I mean I don't know what you want that's what I want that that's all I want I don't want to talk about the horrible things so tell me right now okay so in privacy with just Stephen watching yeah it's so much easier to tell you about the Kansas City

Hyatt walkway collapse in 1981 do you know about this dude I never heard of it and because sometimes I go like oh maybe there's a disaster that's like you know something to talk about and these ones are awful and it's it's human error and it's and it's innocent live so like you know yeah it's very difficult to talk about can I tell you though which is so weird the one I ended up I had a murder I said and I changed my mind last minute because it was too gruesome mine was when I was going to do in Nashville but was too gruesome for that it was the interstate 75 largest car crash in American history I why would you remember that one yes was it is it because of the fog yeah yes that's the fog from the paper mill so it's it's not in murder but it's it's um what's it called

when you don't pay attention enough uh when you're like you mean like human error yeah yeah yeah yes exactly so there's not it's not like there's a villain or a bad guy right like this could have you could have been you no no no yes and the and it's uh like passive murder because the paper plants didn't give a shit and just like let this stuff happen for years and years yes man slaughter I think they call it okay I mean um well I'll do it sometime in the future that's what you mean are you sure you haven't done that because that sounds super familiar probably have let's be honest I had to make Steven look up the one I just did right before we recorded because I was like I bet I've done this before you're just look I probably have hey look look don't judge me

listen okay okay so we're in this fucked up story but it's 1981 so let me set a little picture for you I'm so into this I'm so here for this okay thank you it's 81 it's not just before which everything when we're talking about things like this we're always like it's before the internet or whatever but this is so far back 81 is like when everything was brown tan or moss green the world was muted muted dimmer boring flat pre-video games this was like go outside and ride your bike or you're fucked or watch bugs money cartoons from 1944 right and I love Lucy yeah go go try to play pong and that's that was an exciting video game that's right we begged my dad for fucking pong yeah and then Atari came out we're like no no we want

Atari and then he waited three years and got us pong because Jim fought he's he fought it and fought it and fought it and and he would always go like we'd be like dad please can we get cable can we please have HBO and he'd be like we have it at the firehouse you and you don't need it you don't miss it like I'll kill you you're living the greatest life at the firehouse and coming home and anyway that's not what this is about great 1981 okay the Iran hostage crisis finally comes to a close the Yorkshire Ripper is caught post-it notes are invented oh so this is a time where it's like we're not even talking about like digital this or digital that we're talking about posted notes hadn't even been around that was nuts life-starting yeah like you know like pre-posted notes like

it's fucking piece of paper with like light glue on the back and you can't even figure that out revolutionary pre-80s if people are like look it's just a little square I could do anything I want with it meanwhile we had just gotten over the invention of whiteout or like I can change pen mistakes incredible yeah and every paper that you wrote it that I wrote in sixth grade weighed six pounds because you had so much whiteout on it Jesus and also Jay and I were just talking this morning about how calculators and I was like remember how hilarious it was when you would write boobs by writing 80085 on a calculator or boobless or boobless there's a couple things you could do and that to us was like that was Twitter that was the height holding up a calculator that

said boobs was like fucking a tweet storm that's right this was full on crow magnan era the life the first flight of this space shuttle columbia happened this was this was when the AIDS virus was identified first identified which I remember seeing on the news which was already killing people but they finally identified they finally fucking said it was happening and then Reagan just made sure that everyone was okay afterwards right no no no no no he fucking ignored it for years and years and decades please goodbye sorry goodbye um lady diana spencer married oh you can edit that out no no no I mean that's no you're exactly right and that is the world we lived in yeah also and I'll just as a side note to lady diana spencer marrying charles the prince

of wales there was such a lady die in prince charles fever that took over america in 1981 except in my grandma's house and literally if you talked about it if you brought it up if it came on the news she would get so fucking pissed why because the irish were oppressed by the british there is no such thing as the anglophilia that I fucking in very in betrayal of my grandma and you know loving all things british is so offensive to the irish side of the family because the reason the irish family emigrated out of longford and gallway was because the brown coats were the the british soldiers were in ireland beating the shit out of children my grandfather as a child was made to dig ditches for british soldiers instead of going to school jesus they were

it was crazy and they were awful and so far enough the charm did not come through so it was I had the weirdest perspective as an 11 year old about because everyone's like I want to get my hair cut like lady die or whatever and I was like it's this is all wrong you shouldn't be doing she's like good people she's breaking commemorative plates in her kitchen floor like literally like spit on the ground type of like oh my god switching off tv it was amazing I love fucking love my grandma okay anyway so in may of 19 this so we're gonna go back a little bit for the the plans of this hyatt regency kansas city um in may of 1978 construction begins um it is in the crown center district by union station um it's going to be 40 stories tall and it's going to feature a

multi-story lobby atrium okay so like open air and the glass it's that all that and again this was before this um in the late 70s early 80s all ceilings were much lower than they should have been and all everything was brown carpet right it was like the inside of a depressing wall everywhere yes and it was all like the world was closing in on you in uh fucking earth tones and shades of earth tones and here comes hyatt with the sweeping grand ceiling look at the sky oh my god the plants are growing so tall so yeah they're trying to be modern and you know atrium it up got it um so the engineers um design floating walkways that are going to hang from the ceiling within the atrium at the second third and fourth floors connecting the north and south wings of the hotel so obviously

this thing is massive and it's basically like it's going to be this futuristic and so they had these little bridges running across the open air to like get from this side of the thing to this side you can look down it's beautiful you can look up it's still beautiful you know that kind of thing exactly okay this is your atrium like you know fancy big hotel experience yeah you're exactly right so four story walkway sits directly above the second story walkway while the third story walkway is offset from them okay so they basically you know doing that that kind of thing got it they were playing with levels i'll talk about architecture later um i wish you would in 2025 so so as the building starts there's delays and setbacks which happens during all construction

but for this one it was pretty bad most notably at one point a 2,700 square foot portion of the roof collapses while they're building it so miraculously no one was hurt in that accident but it causes a significant delay in construction so finally on july 1st 1980 the hotel officially opens so for the next year everything's regular business as usual um normal hotel atrium walk floating walkway ship got it um then on the evening of friday july 17th 1981 there's a crowd of roughly 1600 people who have gathered in the lobby atrium area for the tea dance that the hotel put on for guests and whoever wanted to come like regularly yes i'm not sure dance a tea dance so it was basically an evening early evening like it was apparently we looked it up i of course

clicked that link on wikipedia where it's like what the fuck is a tea dance yeah and basically like after you know um sorry to go back grandma and to british um culture but um after tea there was a common thing like in tea rooms they would have dances so it'd be like early evening fancy okay dress fancy people right socializing right post tea socializing got it um and that's kind of what this was so why would you want to speak to anyone else in the hotel room if you're one of those people right what the fuck yeah so there's there's us upstairs in their rooms safely watching forensic files loving life but then there's a bunch of people a ton of fucking people 1600 people downstairs having a tea dance basically pretending to be fancy being social yeah and doing in the new

newly built 40 story hotel that's like for them elegance got it so and then of course the rest of the hotel is business as usual so there's foot traffic and there's people everywhere um there's about 40 people standing on or walking across the second story walkway and about 16 to 20 people on the fourth story walkway so you have to also imagine that you've gone up and say your rooms are there whatever but you can look out over these walkways and see the lobby and see what everyone's doing down there i don't want to you have to picture it now get it bring yourself in your mind's eye hear the music there's it's the last place you'd ever think anything bad but yeah a tea dance yeah suddenly at 7 0 5 p.m patrons of the hotel and this is so sick of

me here are popping noises ring out from the fourth story walkway the walkway itself drops several inches pauses for a moment and then collapses completely onto the second story walkway that sits below it and upon impact the fourth story takes the second story walkway out with it and both of them come crashing down onto the tea dance and the lobby below how long of a period was it the seconds that that whole thing happened right it was basically like this had been well i'll tell you a little bit about it but yes it was like and then crash this is why i don't ever want to leave the house i know and these stories don't help so keep going so here we go so lock in and feel this fear and then let it go later okay so of course the people in the lobby

the people at this fucking tea dance are immediately buried in a massive pile of steel concrete and glass so it's bad news obviously emergency vehicles arrive on the scene firefighters and this is bad too the firefighters use their jacks to lift and remove the rubble and to rescue people but of course there's so much rubble and it's so heavy because there's so much steel they have to get local construction companies to come and bring their own jacks concrete saws jackhammers torches generators even cranes to get in and start lifting this rubble off of survivors any type of machinery that would help that rescue mission got brought in so everybody just like it was like the the call went out i'm picturing the remember the was it 94 earthquake

when the twin uh bridges the in the bay area the bay area double story bridges yeah was that column that was the 89 earthquake okay thank you and the bay bridge collapsed the top layer collapsed onto the bottom right and i just remember watching the news and uh horrifying horrifying yes i was nine and i watched the news for the rest of course why wouldn't a nine-year-old be watching the nightly news right um of course you were also uh if you haven't just to slightly silver line that one having nothing to do with the tragedy of that but the new bay bridge is so beautiful and amazing to drive over if you hadn't had the chance the way they the top level as you're going from the berkeley side into san francisco has these spanners like it is so beautiful and

amazing to drive over now every time i do it i i love it who knew karen was a bridgehead i'm i'm kind of into bridges and connecting with people what who who what who is that girl oh no okay so the chief of kansas city's emergency medical system was named dr joseph i'm just gonna say wacker lee great or waker lee okay thank you for my permission he leads the search and rescue mission so um so at his direction first responders they set up a morgue in the exhibition area of the hotel on the ground floor basically that's right by there they have to use the hotel's driveway and front lawn as the triage centers that's how many people have been injured or killed um so the victims with the most severe injuries obviously are treated first anyone who can still

walk is told to just get off the site immediately like i've just taken away wow um so the triage was basically dedicated to the very very wounded or mortally wounded and that was basically just they needed people out yeah to minimize the chaos chaos okay so there are living people buried in the rubble obviously and the first responders have to dig down to them and in doing so they come upon dead bodies that are blocking the way so these first responders at certain points some of them were forced to dismember dead bodies to get to trapped survivors underneath that's not something you get passed in the weeks and months after this if you're the first responders i mean no you know absolutely not no and that's part of the risk and that's part

of the sacrifice that first responders make it's like what we're talking about before where you see you're the you're the person that gets called when the worst thing happens that takes a toll on anybody totally and that's why like i think i hear often ambulance drivers do it for like a certain amount of time and then they have to get out yeah because you can't just keep taking that on no that's you know that's really hard so so yes and this is just like yeah it's it's the worst case scenario yeah um also inside the hotel the visibility is terrible right because there's debris and dust in the air and then also um the power got shut off so that there wouldn't be electrical fires oh so uh then also the emergency sprinkler system is on because the uh because um yeah it's been

triggered yeah and they can't turn it off so the lobby starts to flood no during this fucking rescue no so it's fucking like the fucking Poseidon adventure dude i i don't need to say fucking that much but it's so upsetting um so you do and i do um okay so now the people who are alive under the rubble are are at risk of drowning on top of fucking everything else there's a survivor named mark williams who tells the story about being trapped um under a beam both his legs have been dislocated and he the water came up to the point where he almost drowned they saved him right in time oh he was like on the verge of drowning and then they finally got to him and got him out oh my god how horrible is that yeah this rest the entire rescue operation lasts 14 hours 29 people are

rescued from the debris but by the end of it all 114 people are pronounced dead with an additional 219 people injured oh my god that's so many people it's so many people but then if you think about the fact that there were almost 2 000 people in that lobby yeah because 1600 wrote the tea dance but like you know there's a bunch of other people so obviously it's so many people and it's horrifying but it could have been worse right um i guess you could always say that okay so in the wake of the collapse the local newspaper the cancer city star hires an architectural engineer named wane g lishka wane to investigate what went wrong yes um so three days later on july 20th 1981 he finds wane finds the original design of the walkways um and he sees that they

were changed during construction the architectural firm was called jack d gillum and associates um i almost didn't name them because it's such a terrible thing but but this is essential would happen because it's it's human error but also nothing isn't it's not it's not because people were um purposely right it wasn't yeah yeah okay so um that architectural firm drew up the original designs for the walkways um he they planned for there to be three pairs of steel tie rods running straight down from the ceiling through both the fourth and second floor walkways so these six rods in total would secure both of the walkways to the ceilings the rods would then be um secured by nuts and then i wrote and perhaps bolts because there's nothing funny about the story um so the

steel company who manufactured those rods was called haven steel company they argued this design wouldn't work they said that in order to fasten nuts onto the rods to hold the fourth floor walkway in place the entire length of the rod um from the fourth floor down would have to be threaded so you know how like when you put a bolt on a screw oh the whole thing would have to be that way they were saying um because any slight chink in the threading would make it impossible to screw the nut all the way up from the bottom of the rod to the fourth floor walkway it would be too delicate to execute okay so haven steel company's solution was instead to have two sets of six rods the first set would run from the ceiling to the fourth floor walkway and then would be fastened to the walkway

with nuts and then the second set of rods would run from the fourth floor walkway down to the second floor walkway fastened by nuts the problem with this alternate plan is instead of having the ceiling supporting both sets of walkways you know how you now have the ceiling supporting the fourth floor walkway and the fourth floor walkway supporting the second floor walkway so it's like not that you need this explained, but it helped me. It's like having two mountain climbers who are repelling down of the mountain face, and instead of having both of them

have their things planted on top of the cliff going down, it's one guy has it coming down, and then the second climber is attached to the first climber. Right, so if one thing goes wrong, they're both fucked. Right, and you can't, with that kind of like gravity pull, it's a single attachment, you know what I mean? They're two dependent, interdependent on each other.

Got it. I am both an architect and a steel expert. So to make matters worse, the original design that the architecture firm drew up was already bad because it would have only held 60% of the minimum load required by Kansas City Building Code. So there was a code issue in the design, but under the new design plan offered

by the Haven Steel Company, the weight bearing capacity dropped to 30% of the required minimum. So that change of going, oh, we'll just hang the one from the other, made it even worse. Because it didn't have its own support. Right, exactly. So it was even less secure. Got it.

Right, thank you. So also on top of that, all the bolts are placed directly through the welded joints in the box beams. This is detail, but the joints are the weakest part of the beam, so that's basically where the beams bend or like come together. Got it. So they put all those, that's where they attached everything,

which is the weakest part of the beam, not the middle, the strongest part. Right, right. It's like, yeah, so like if that had been in the middle, if those joints had failed, it wouldn't have been as disastrous if they were in the correct place to hold everything up. Right, because like the strength of the beam

is in the middle of the beam, not in the ends. Right, oh, I see, yeah, so the middle has no support. Right, got it. So I'm now an architect too. I mean, this is so much bullshitting from me, but I think I get it. I'm fascinated by this. I think I get it, and there's good pictures.

Obviously Wikipedia is the main research, we can say it at the end, but they have pictures on there showing it, so it's much easier to visualize, obviously looking at a picture. Yeah, visualizing a picture. When did I become like a weird liar? That's what this feels like.

Like I'm lying my way through this. Okay, so the issue ultimately becomes, because of a lack of communication between those two companies, the steel company and the architect. So the initial plans laid out by the architects were only meant to be preliminary sketches, but they were taken by the Haven Steel Corporation

to be the final design. And when Haven's proposed the new bolt fix to put it out on the joints, no one looked into whether or not that would work. The architects didn't, nobody did. They just went by what they already had, which wasn't the final design. They were like, we think it would work better out here.

The end. Oh my God. The head engineer at the architecture firm was extremely busy, and so assigned supervision of this build to an associate engineer. And the execs at the steel company pitched their design revision over the phone, and the associate engineer approved it verbally.

And now I go on to my rant about how much I hate conference calls and how it doesn't work. Have every meeting face to face that you can, because nobody pays attention on the phone. You don't wanna be on that call anyway. No. Of course you're playing solitaire

while everyone's having this conversation. I'm looking at Instagram cats who are like reading other emails. It's, we need to call an end to conference calls, Joe Schwartz right now. Okay. When investigators later ask the associate engineer why he approved the revised plan,

he says he believed a written request would then be filed after the phone call. Basically everyone thought there was checks and balances systems in place. Right. We're not there. Like a verbal okay does not mean start construction. Exactly.

It's kind of like me where you get upset with me when I do this. Like, yep, sure that sounds good. And I'm like, I'm gonna fucking say no to this later. And then you're like, people think you mean yes. So like, no, I can't say no to this later. I just, I'm being nice on the conference call because I wanna get off.

Right, exactly. It's conference call politics that we all get sucked in. Sure, sounds great, send it over. And I'm like, no, don't push that rock down the hill. Now it's gonna be a boulder. Okay, a lot of PATSD from producing television. Okay, so essentially with the cause of the collapse determined the engineers at Gilliam & Associates

who approved the project were all found responsible of gross negligence, misconduct, unprofessional conduct in the practice of engineering by the Missouri Board of Architects Professional Engineers and land surveyors. So everyone was mad at them. All the fucking guys that wear khakis and put their hands on their hips

and look into the distance with a flat hand above their eyes were pissed. Hard hats everywhere. Everywhere, smashed to the ground, stomped with large, wonderful timberland boots. So they're charged with, they're initially charged with criminal charges but they're eventually dropped.

Instead, they just all lost their engineering licenses. So of course, obviously people had to pay and I mean, like things needed to happen and change. The architecture companies also cleared of criminal negligence but they lose their engineering license can no longer operate as an engineering company in Missouri or Kansas. The victims and their families are awarded

a total of about $140 million in judgments and settlements which is almost $400 million today. Good, sometimes you hear these settlements and you're like, it's not even a million dollars for all the victims' families and it's fucking ridiculous. No, I think especially because this was just, it was truly gross negligence where it's just like,

there's no arguing, I bet you both of those companies didn't even argue, it's just like, this is terrible. The problem is several rescuers suffered considerable PTSD because of what they had to experience in those rescues and they actually formed, which I love this so much, they had to later rely upon each other to form an informal support group to get through it which is so beautiful because of course,

that's such a specific thing to need support for. You're not gonna get that from just a normal, oh, I've been through something hard or whatever, it's like that is a very specific thing that kind of rescue first responder PTSD. And I bet they're probably taught to like man up or whatever and like fucking deal with it and don't reach out in the fact that not just one person

but multiple people reached out to be like, I'm not okay and I need help from this, is just, it's a lesson to all of us. It is and the fact that it happened in 1981, back when if you were in therapy, you were out of your fucking mind. Like my mom started going to therapy when I was in junior high and I was like, oh, oh.

Like, oh, are we gonna like, is it all falling apart now? Of course I wanted it too, but. Kay, yuck, kay, yuck, kay, yuck, kay, yuck. Meanwhile, she was just in like Alanon essentially. She started going to Alanon to be like, it is bad when both your parents are alcoholics, right? Oh, that affected me. That makes sense.

And I'm a psychiatric nurse and this sucks. Yes, and it's why I'm a psychiatric nurse. Right. So yeah, the beautiful part is that the first responders who went through it came together. The terrible part is there is a Jack Hammer operator named Bill Almond who died by suicide because of the experiences that he had in this.

So it is a true and total tragedy all the way around. Since then, this hotel has been renovated, rebranded several times. The latest was a $13 million renovation. It's now a share. We didn't stay there when we were in St. Louis, did we? We could have. It was completed in 2012.

I mean, but here's the weirdest part. And Stephen cracked my, I was gonna say correct my Spanish, correct my math if I'm wrong, but it's been almost 40 years since this happened, 40 years. See. 45 probably. Yeah, how is it?

Wait, I was born in 80. No, I was born in 80 and I'm 38. Do the math. So minus one. So it's been 37 years. It's been 37 years since this happened. How is that? It's real.

God, that's crazy. So, oh, I just read the last line. And so that is the horrifying and terrifying story of the Kansas City Hyatt Walkway Collapse of 1981. Uh, amazing. Not so, right? Good job. Thank you.

I was, yeah, I, yeah, I have an anxiety disorder and I don't like leaving the house because so many bad things can happen when you do that. It's true. And that's one of them. That's one of them. But also, and I know we talk about stuff like this a lot, but also lots of great things can happen.

So I think when we dedicate, cause we often talk about like why is, why does this relieve our anxiety? Why does this make us feel better? And it's because we can all sit here and go, this happened, it doesn't happen every day. It doesn't happen every year. It fucking almost never happens, but it did.

So like, you can get that feeling of like, but now I'm aware, so I'm not walking out into this mystery world like ignorant. I know a little something. I, yeah, being aware that there's chaos in the world doesn't necessarily need to be a bad thing. It can just be that you, you know, walk around, walk around. You walk around.

It could just be that you walk around with an awareness and maybe a little anxiety, but also, you know. But then there's also the thing of, then you can, you can free up your mind to then focus on the good things that happen when you walk out your door. Cause I have to remind myself of this a lot, where it's like, if you stay in this house,

the same thing's going to happen over, you know what's going to happen in this house. You have to get out and be around people and allow good things to happen so that that is the thing that comes to mind. When you look at the Hyatt hotel and you're like, great things happen in there. It's not just the disasters and the horror things.

There's room service too. Oh my God, forensic files is never not on. That's a miracle. Yeah, that's a good point to remember is that good things happen too when you leave the house. Just as often, if not more. That's true. You just have to focus.

You have to teach yourself to notice it and pay it and give it as much credence as you do your fears. Okay. Hey, speaking of. I'm pointing at you, but I mean me. Okay. Three fingers back.

I'm pointing at me and I mean me too. Hey, let's talk. Is anyone going to point at me? Let's name one of those good things, shall we? Let's do it. It's fucking hooray time. Do you want to go first or do you want to go first? You do it.

Okay. So there's this thing called PRP. It's platelet-rich plasma where they take your blood and put it in a centrifuge and separate the good stuff and then platelets and then inject it into a painful spot in your body. Same by lower back that is very fucked up with degenerative disc bullshit.

And that platelet-rich plasma is supposed to heal that area. They use it for like a lot of that tennis elbow and bullshit like rusty stuff. Yeah. So I got that this week. Oh yeah? Yeah. And it's going to take a couple of weeks to know if it works

but I'm really fucking hopeful. There was a murderer who worked in the office. So that was nice and she was very sweet. She was at our Halloween show. Melissa, what's up? Yeah, so I'm putting it out there because I really want it to work and I'm hopeful that it will.

That's great. It'd be nice not to have back pain all the time anymore. That's right. Great. What's yours? Are you going to cry? No. But if I were to, I would be fine with it.

Well, I guess I will say this. This is like from today. And I know I talk about my therapist like she's my, she's my fucking hooray a lot. It's a very important relationship in our lives. It is and it also is just this, I feel like there's this pipeline of information that I get from her.

Like all the things I was just saying to you, it's fucking straight out of her mouth that I've just gone, oh yeah. Like this idea that you're this way, you're just a way and that's your fucking fault. Right. And like too bad for you or whatever. It's like you, one of the things I love about therapy

is there's a person there going, excuse me, I just have a quick argument for that. And so whatever thing I put on the table, you know, it's just a person going and she, you know, we've talked about like, it's that thing of when you're in a trauma response and you can't tell because you just think you're, you just think you're trying to deal

with the shit that's going on. You're responding. Right. And we were talking about the voice that comes up when you're experiencing like say a rejection or you know, whatever some negative thing. And I have this voice because she, okay, I've talked about this, but it's the rule of six

where you're the thing that you fear, you think is happening and that's your forearm. But then your open hand is the five other possibilities that could be happening. And the practice is to go through and just be like, what else could it be besides this thing I've decided? Yeah. And we were taught, I said, you know,

that's all well and good. We've, you've been telling me to do this for about 15 years. Yeah. But there's a voice in my head that I like to, like I believe is like the realist who's always like, well, not fine, but the truth is you're just gross. You know the truth. Stop being sad, stop being pathetic, you're gross.

It seems to be what that voice always says. Yeah. And the voice says it nicely, like warmly. It's okay. You're just a piece of shit. Yeah. And it's fine. Yeah.

So it's not like you can be like, you're mean. No, no, no. It's like, it's almost like, oh, this close friend that's just letting me know the reality of it. And so then to me, and she and I have talked about this too, is like, you running through the other scenarios seems pathetic and immature to me. It seems like what a sad person would do.

When I'm just like, look, I'm a realist. I get it. I'm just gross, whatever. And so she said this thing, she goes, no, no, no, I have that voice too. And then she threw her head back and smiled and goes, but I'm on to her. I'm on to her.

And I was just like, you are the best, like, because she's not saying from up here, here's your diagnosis and here's what you need to do. She's going, this is the human fucking condition. This is what we do to ourselves. And we're doing it because we think it's gonna keep us safe and secure. And also because it's worked at some point in your life.

And it's done what you needed it to do at some point in your life. And now you're an adult and you're in different circumstances and it's the thing you know how to do so you continue to do it. I do it too. You continue to do it because it's always worked and maybe there's a different way.

And I love that she was like, here's, let me show you an example. It's not that you stopped doing that period. Karen, won't you learn how to fucking do this? It's, no, I'm paying attention and I can tell that that's not the right response. Like that's not the response that feels good to me. That's a different fucking response.

It's like she, the other way, the metaphor she used is like, you know, in a brilliant mind when he finally caught on that he, have we talked about this? I've never seen it. Oh, it's really good. But he gets, he has schizophrenia, but he's also this brilliant mathematician.

And when he finally catches on that he's having these, not hallucinations, but he's in basically having his like psychotic episode, is all the people that aren't really there that he thinks are there, they never age and he ages. And he finally at the end of the movie is like, how come you're not as old as I am? And then the person disappears.

You just spoiled it. Guess what? You had fucking 10 years to watch that movie. It's fair I did. Oh, I spoiled it for you. I'm sorry. Oh, is that a surprise? Well, no, you see it happening where you know

that he's in, he's in that movie. Okay, Bruce Willis is dead. He's dead the whole time. But anyway, it's that thing where like when you're, when things feel dire, all of this is to say, when things feel dire and black and white and my life is on the line, everything's on the line. If one move happens, this is gonna be,

if Georgia says yes on the phone, that's what we're gonna have to do. The end, I can't take it back. There's another, and I panic. And it's that thing of like, you have to go, or nothing happens and everyone knows that this is all conversation and it's no big deal. And you can like walk it backwards.

Or if I do just fuck something up, maybe it can be corrected at some point. It's not like, I didn't sign anything. Your honor. Show me my signature. Prove it. Prove it. And then they're playing tapes back from conference call.

Here's you. Sorry, we already had it. So I mean, whatever. It's like perspective, but it's like the idea that we can even be having that conversation. At this point, when I've lived in basically trauma pocket, panic mode for like so long. That fucking hooray for perspective, I guess.

I love that. Is what I'm trying to say. I'm gonna use it too. I'm gonna steal your fucking hooray and I'm gonna try to do it. I mean, same. That's the name. I wish I could see Karen, she's grabbing her wrists.

For like forearm. That's what she does every time. Puts her five hands up. That's the new Murderino salute. Yeah. Five fingers. It's the rule of six. Grab your forearm and then spread your hand.

Like it's a high five that you're keeping yourself from giving another person. But grip really hard, because this is difficult. Just really hard. Really hard. I'm trying really hard. Strangle that first thing that you assume.

And really try to get those five other fingers going. And then count five other options. I love it. It's really hard. All right, thanks for listening, you guys. Yeah, thanks for being here with us. Yeah. We hope you can use some of our bullshit

to help your bullshit. And don't be afraid to send your bullshit into us and let us have yours at myfavoritmurder.blogspot.org, right? No? Please go look at our new website at myfavoritmurder.com. Yeah. It's pretty good.

Thanks for sticking with us. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Bye-bye. Elvis, you want a cookie? Okay, bye-bye.