My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 174 - Rough Winds & High Waters

Episode Date: May 23, 2019

Karen and Georgia cover the bodies on Mount Everest and the Weepy-Voiced Killer.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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And welcome. Welcome to my favorite murder. It's the podcast you listen to, the true crime podcast, remember? You remember. You were there that one time. All those times? That's Karen Calguera. Hi, Karen.

Hi. That's Georgia Hardstork. Hi. Hi. We got back yesterday from the last weekend of a five and a half month two season tour. Yeah. Hi. We need the summer off.

Hi. We're taking the summer off. That's right. We'll tell you all about that later. It'll be fun. You'll still get episodes. Don't worry. Yeah.

We are also simultaneously going to take vacations. We're going to go to a three month long silent yoga retreat. Yes. On Nova Scotia. Right. Where we eat vegan. Seal. Vegan seals the whole time.

Yeah. We eat with vegan seals. Right. So it's seaweed, seaweed, seaweed. Swim with dolphins. It's going to be amazing. And that's all we're doing. But also, yeah, it's silent.

So all the podcasts will be silent throughout the summer. That's right. Just around a minute, I mean an hour and 28 minutes. Yeah. Of just silent vocal drag. What's it called? Oh. Vocal fry.

Vocal fry. But silent spirituals. But seals. Yeah. Seal vocal fry. And seal the vocalist. That's right. Yeah.

What a great vocalist. Remember him. A couple of quick things. Let's get them out of the way. Our fucking book comes out in a week. That's right. Holy shit. In six days, you're going to be able to buy, stay sexy, and don't get murdered.

The dual memoir by Karen Kulgariff and Georgia Hardstar. That's right. May 28th, if you've preordered, thanks. Thank you. If you haven't, thank you. Thanks. Thank you. It's okay.

We love that kind of push-pull where you're making us earn it. God we want to now. And the audio book comes out the same day so you can keep listening to our fucking voices. Yes, we read it ourselves. We did, yes. Paul Giamatti makes a fucking cameo. Paul Giamatti is one of the guest narrators. It's magical.

Yeah. The whole thing is nuts. It is. And then there will be a very brief book tour. Very brief. Very angry book tour. Yeah. Or is it going to be a lot angry?

Let's just do angry. Okay. I mean easy. New York, Portland, LA, prepare for our rage as we talk about this book. Go to myfavoritmurder.com for details. And also there you can find details about our Santa Barbara weekend in November that we're doing. Yeah.

Did you hear about my favorite weekend? So it's basically like instead of going on a weekend tour at a couple different places, we're fucking taking over Santa Barbara. We're kicking out all the residents. Yes. They're really angry about it. That's going to be tough. We're busing them out.

That's right. But we're keeping the pets so we can hang out with them. Right. We're going to do a live show, fucking, the murder squad's going to do a live show, her cast is going to do a live show. It's just going to be, and then you guys are going to have a chance to like meet up and hang out and special events and it's going to be fucking cool. Yeah.

We're very, it's like a little, a mini, mini con. Yeah. Vention. We're conning you. It's a con for sure. It's a long con. It's the long con all the way through November. Yeah.

So again, go to myfavoritmurder.com to find out all the details. Don't give it as a cruise, but you don't have to throw up over the side of the boat unless you really want to. We will have a throw up section. Sure. We always do. It's the whole theater. Oh man.

We, you know, somebody always comes through for us in that way. That's true. So yeah, but yeah, exactly. We won't get caught on in high winds or rough waters. None of that is anything we're going to be bringing to the table. No. You won't have to look over and see dolphins or anything obnoxious like that. No.

Not at all. It's just BS. But you will be paying top dollar for my favorite murder weekend. So there's a bunch of different packages and hotel and all this stuff. Look it up. See what, see what fits you and then come and hang out with us for the weekend. We're really excited. It's going to be super fun.

Yes. Illuminal mugs. Oh yeah. This might be luminal. Yes. We have a travel mug and a regular mug on my favorite murder on the store. I fucking love those. Now am I right about this that they light up in the dark?

They glow and the luminal glows in the dark. The word luminal glows in the dark. You know those people who have those mugs that say, this might be vodka and it's like Cheryl in accounting and you're like, Cheryl, you're so crazy. You're not Cheryl. That might be wine. Alcoholic Cheryl. Yeah.

Well, now you can have one that says this might be luminal. Yeah. Which don't drink that. Don't drink luminal. It's poisonous probably. And it's a waste. People need it. Yeah.

To spot other liquids. Someone gave us a vials of luminal at a live show recently. Yes. They were like, let's go to the hotel room and fucking throw this about. You said that and then the woman who gave it to us went, no. She knows. Meaning she's done it. She's like, do not.

You don't want to see what's going to come up under that black light. I don't. What do you have? A lot of people got very fired up about what the best cracker treat combination is. Is this something we should talk about a little bit? Always. Because people really, Stephen goes. Snack corner.

Stephen goes. Oh, I've got some responses for that snack when you said this is the best snack cracker. Yeah. And then he just handed me like eight printed pages of responses from people. Can I get a copy of this? Yes. Take it very seriously. But credit goes to Jay for putting those.

Oh, did you find them? Yes, you did. There was one guy and I wonder if it's in here because there's so many where a guy just, he DMed us and he just wrote on the Twitter, which I actually never look at the DMs of because it's like, oh my God, that's, it's open DMs. That's a nightmare. Uh-huh. But.

DM all over the floor. All over the place. It's really gross. But for some reason I opened it and then it just said, Graham crackers with peanut butter boom. It's like someone that just like, this discussion is over about what the best cracker snack is. Also like, we're not in the middle of this discussion.

Like we talked about that two weeks ago. Yeah. Maybe two weeks. Yeah. That's how every response on social media is for the person responding and going, I'm going to log on Twitter and let them know how I feel. It's always, it just happened for them. Oftentimes they're like, I need to talk about what happened in episode 64.

And it's like, no, we're not doing that anymore. I wasn't, I don't even remember being alive then. There are people walk up to us wearing shirts of things we said on this podcast at the meet and greet and every time I go, oh my God, that's so funny. And then they'll go like, you said it or like, she said it to you and we're like, really? This is great. Or it'll be like, you said it last episode and it's like, holy shit. That's a bad sign.

Somewhat speaking of snacks, can I just say that someone sent us a snack pack backstage when we were just in Minneapolis without an explanation? And I just, I hope they're okay because it was onion and chive or like onion and garlic crackers. Yeah. Cottage cheese. Oh, that's right. And then mint fudge.

And I was like, this can't be right. I hope they're okay. Okay. Well, you would say that, right? Having not read a couple of these pages that Steven handed me that Jay found. Give me some highlights. So get up on this. Like this was the first one I saw from someone named Jordan and a lot of these are coming

through just as like listed out recipes. So it just says the number one, one, saltine, two, smear some creamy peanut butter on it. Three, sliced dill pickle. And then here's the underneath that. Do not say gross until you ingest it. It is creamy, sour, salty, crunchy and sweet. My fave hungover snack, which may also be a new subgroup name, peace and blessings, Jordan. People got into this.

That sounds gross, but yeah, I guess not. It's kind of good. Then there's really fancy ones like this is from Kayla and she wrote, here's my new favorite snack ever. I don't know if there are all these in California, but they sell an artichoke jalapeno drip. Drip or dip, drip, drip, drip, drip. It says dip. I said drip.

It's a fucking injection you put into your arm and it's a slow jalapeno drip. They fucking have an artichoke jalapeno dip at Trader Joe's. That is so good. I wonder if that's the same. I'm proud of this. Okay, what does it say? So she says she spreads it on thick sliced salami wrapped up and it's the easiest and most delicious snack.

All right. So she's using the salami as the cracker. Gluten free. Loving it. She says, if I'm feeling really crafty, I'll add a ritz to everything cracker. Oh, oh, ritz everything cracker to the mix. Wait, there was a couple of them that, oh, how about this? This is from Steve.

My favorite cracker is something that my mother got me addicted to while I was just a little kid. It's her favorite snack as well. Step one, take a delicious buttery ritz cracker. Many of these are ritz cracker based recipes. These are all, this is fucking ritz, employees being forced to email us. I know what you're, we know you're doing a ritz, you don't get a free fucking commercial out of it.

Ritz and Trisker are going head to head in this corner. Promo code, fuck you. Step two, put a dollop or a smear, if you're Georgia, of cream cheese onto it. Step three, top with a smoked oyster. So I guess this is from the 1%. They sent an email from the elite strata. Smoked oysters are for hobos, what are you talking about? Hold on.

They, Steve said, sorry, Steve, who calls himself a crackerino. I understand full well that this sounds like some people's version of hell and I had I not been raised on this delicacy myself, I wouldn't likely try it either, but something about it is so savory and salty and buttery and at the same time, that is pure bliss. You really should try it. Stay sexy and don't avoid seafood that comes in a can and is readily available at the dollar store. Oh.

Steve crackerino. It's so savory, poisoning, aisle one. That's the savory taste, is that mercury, the underpinnings of mercury. Is your death being closer? Then there's stuff like, there's some people that are genuinely being fancy, so it's like. Caviar with caviar? It's not really, oh, this one I like. This is from just the letter A. As for cracker snacks, the best ones I ever ate was when

I was a little kid at vacation Bible school. You take a Ritz cracker, top it with a little bit of jarred spaghetti or pizza sauce and mozzarella cheese and toast it in an oven until melty and voila. Toasted Ritz. Vacation Bible school pizza crackers. My son once had a party and I made those. They were all five years old and one kid raved about them so much that the mom had to call me and ask for the rest of it.

Damn. A little pizza Ritz. That's adorable. It's actually pretty, pretty precious. That's a step above. I mean, yeah, it just goes on and on this way. Maybe we'll post some on the fan cult. There's a thing, do you remember why apricot jam got mixed into that other recipe?

Yeah, because I'm crazy and said that you should put a little apricot jam on top of your pickle and whatever, Akmak and what was it? Yeah, and pepper jack. Pepper jack. Yeah. And I fucking stand by it. Did, did, have you eaten that? Not with a pickle.

Okay. But I'm definitely a jam and cheese person for sure. I've been hip to that with you and your charcuterie boards and the cheese boards that I'm now, I used to on like hotel menus be like, that's not for me. Yeah. That's not my area. And now I'm like, I believe it to be my area entirely. I opened your eyes to the, asked for a little bit of honey on the side.

And maybe some of that good young fig jam that I love so much. Right. That's always good. Anyway, snacks abound, you know what we should do is take all these and put them on the website. For sure. Cracker corner. For sure. I'm not, I'm going to file those away too.

Cracker corner. It's shareables. It is crappening. And look, it just keeps, it just keeps going. Oh, I want, I need a copy of those for my, for my recipe book for, to go right in there. For my recipe folder. Um, who goes first, Steven? Georgia goes first this week.

Yes. I don't know why it's such a relief to go first, you know, just like that, that much closer to being done. Yeah. You guys, we love doing this podcast. No, we love it. But there is something about going first to me that's just like, then afterwards I can relax and just listen to yours, crack a can of wine, chill out.

It's a bit of a hang. But also I think like we, I've gotten very comfortable complaining on this podcast about being tired and being, doing other stuff, um, which I shouldn't, I shouldn't be like that. Well, it's hard not to. It's true. It's true and true. So.

I tied tight. I mean, we're so fucking happy and this is amazing. But yeah, I think, and a lot of people have been saying to us like, you guys can take a break. It's okay. Yeah. And I think we're finally catching up to that. And I was like, oh yeah, that's right, we should do.

My therapist today, when I was just weeping in therapy, which is not like me, who's like, yeah, you seem exhausted. Like you've never said that to me before. And I was just like, can you leave me alone so I can just cry for a minute? Yeah. Please witness my emotions. Can I get a witness? Can you, I need credit that I cried right now to show that I can.

And then it's important to me. Then fucking Vince, cause it was couples therapy that we got back in the car and I was like crying and I was like, I feel like I shouldn't stop because this never happens to me. And he's like, totally. I'm here for this. And then he makes a joke. And I start fucking laughing. I'm like, damn it, Vince.

I made some silly, cute jokes that just made me laugh. I was like, fuck. My sister sent me something cause I was doing, while we were gone, I was having some emotional upheaval. Term oil? It just felt like a, almost like stomach flu. It felt like that kind of thing where it was like, it was not connected to anything specific, but there would just be like these weird weepy, like bouts, a bout of weeping.

And then it would just kind of come over me and then I'd just be like, just let it do it. Just let it be here and then let it go and like barf it out or whatever. But of course, kind of similar, but probably exactly opposite of Vince is when I call my sister, cause I almost never, I'll call her to talk about stuff, but I won't ever call her like losing my mind cause I know that actually she doesn't like it. Who does? Who does really?

What's wrong with her? But she's, but the funny thing is when you do, she's really good at like, she's really good at just like in the moment or just being like, okay, hold on a second, you don't realize. And then she'll kind of bring everything else into perspective. And she's really, it's very funny cause you wouldn't think it, but she's really into horoscopes and astrology type of things. So she immediately sends me this astrology meme thing all about how they're these solar storms.

It's not your fault. It's not your fault. And cause you're so sensitive and you're such a, you know, you're such a air sign or whatever the fuck it is that like, that's the reason this is all happening to you. I've always thought that about you Karen, like, oh, she's such an air sign. I'm an earth sign actually. A what sign? An earth.

I'm earth. I thought you said an earth sign. I'm just an earth. I'm just posing as a nurse. Oh, I'm a firefighter sign. But then it actually feels good when even though we can all argue that it's bullshit or it's just too far away to actually affect us. And yet how does the moon make our periods happen?

But it fucking curses us. It does. But it's interesting when things like that happen and then you can just kind of go like, then it's like, this thing is passing through and now it's a time of renewal. Yeah. You're like, oh, that's good. I'm going to like emote, barf it out and let it feel like I blame it on something else and blame it on something else and then be like, I'm renewed.

I'm going to do something else now. I'm a flower. I'm opening up. Well, I'm getting a period every two weeks. So that's how stressed out I am. Oh, no. Yeah, it's not good. Are you going to get that looked up?

Uh-huh. Looked up in the dictionary. I am. Right up that dictionary. Put that speculum right up my dictionary please and tell me what the fuck is wrong with me. And just tell me. Give me some definitions. Oh, yeah.

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local side dishes and amazing desserts. Karen, January is going to be my month for HelloFresh. 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 HelloFresh 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 HelloFresh.

That's up to 20 free meals plus free shipping on your first box when you go to HelloFresh.ca slash murder 20 and use code murder 20. Goodbye. Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast against the odds. In our next season, three masked men hijack a school bus full of children in the sleepy farm town of Chowchilla, 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 podcast. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. Okay. Well, guess what? So, you know, sometimes I like to do stories that aren't exactly murders or just morbid like death set in an amusement park, death set a different amusement park, those kinds

of stories. And a third amusement park. And another amusement park even. You've done three, I think. I think you're right. Yeah. I love any off the beaten path version. So this one is morbid, but it's not murder because I kind of was like, I can't keep murder

eating. This is too much. So this is one of the things that when I found is another one like, like death set an amusement park that when I found out about, I just buried my face in the articles for hours and hours and hours. And I go back to it all the time because I just find it so fascinating. Let's hear it. These are the, just some of the bodies on Mount Everest.

Oh, shit. How about that? Yes. You hear for this? Yes, I am. Do you ever do any like, have you ever, I'm sure you click open the articles. Have I climbed it? Yeah.

Yes. I went to base camp A. No, but you know what I did, I've seen a couple of those documentaries and going into them, I am not interested in a, in a climbing life. I'm not interested in, to me, it seems like you're signing up to probably die. Right. There's so many things that can go wrong, but I am fascinated by people who are so driven by a thing like that. It's so interesting to me without having anything in common with it.

See, it kind of pisses me off and like, I'm just like, just chill out. No, I, it's, it is so foreign to me that it's, yeah, it's crazy. Okay. So I got a lot of information from an article on Ranker by Sabrina Eiffel and a website called mpora.com by Tristan Kennedy and all that's interesting.com by Katie Serena. And I mean, there's just so many articles all over the internet you can find. Yeah. Yeah.

Karen, 200 bodies still remain on Everest with nearly one out of every 10 climbers perishing atop the mountain on average. One out of 10. One out of 10. Those are bad odds. Those are terrible odds. Hey, rich people. Yeah.

Those are bad odds. I mean, let's be honest. It's fucking, it's rich people with a lot of time or it's, it's, yeah, the, it is. I think that's what it is. Yeah. Crossfitters who take it too far. Yeah. I mean, there's probably like the camp of like, no, I've been in this since I was a

kid and I've been sponsored or something, but, but yeah, I feel like. That's true. But when the odds are one in 10, like what if you were, it was like, that's what the odds of camping were. I wouldn't go. You wouldn't be like, oh, here we go. I'm just going to roll the dice. It's a weird thing.

I'm like, well, thinking you're special. You know what I mean? Where it's like, you think you're special, but really it, there's a lot of it that has nothing to do with you. Right, because it's the, it's nature at its most vicious air that barely exists. Like the basics that humans need. Let me tell you. Please tell me.

Okay. I'm telling you what I don't know. How about you tell me what you do now. Okay. Frozen corpses have become almost run of the mill on Mount Everest. Everest has claimed the lives of almost 300 climbers since it, the first attempt to conquer the mountain in 1921. Two thirds of whom are buried in the mountain's ice and snow.

So two thirds of the bodies of people who've died there since 1921 are still fucking there. Right. Despite the risks, thousands swarm to Nepal every year in an effort to conquer the tallest point on earth, and many of them never leave. No, they don't. So Mount Everest is 29,000 feet. It's the world's highest mountain above sea level, sits directly on the border of Tibet and Nepal, and mountaineers are crazy about it.

More than 296 people have died trying to climb it. I think like I'm throwing out a lot of numbers that aren't adding up, but let's just keep going. Well, 296 clearly got rounded up to 300, which is what happens in so many articles. I said almost 300. Yeah. And I was right. You're fine.

Most deaths have been attributed to avalanches, injury from fall, cirrhach collapse, which I think is a climbing thing, exposure, frostbite, or health problems related to conditions on the mountain, and not all bodies have been located. So there's not a lot of details on how those ones died, so they can't be like most people died from this or that because they just don't know where they are. Yeah, exactly. So it could be a fucking meter for all we know. Could be the Yeti, which I absolutely in 100% believe is real.

That's it. That's true. It's happening. Okay. So Everest, because of all the bodies that are still on it, it is the, it has the title of the world's largest open air graveyard, which like, God, that was like, yeah, right? Well, also, yeah, I think that's not what people would think of first. The world's largest open air graveyard.

The upper reaches of the mountain are known to climbers as the death zone. And the death zone is a mountaineering term for altitudes above a certain point around 26,000 feet, where oxygen level is not sufficient to sustain human life. You do. Yeah. So when the human body enters this altitude, it just starts dying immediately. Yeah. Like, it's not insane.

It just starts stopping to work. And people are prepared to start dying and push on through it? Yeah. So in the death zone, the human body cannot acclimatize, is that right? I think so. Because it uses oxygen faster than can be replenished, so it becomes a race against the clock. You have to, so at that point, they have to race to get to the summit.

Okay. So as they die. As they're dying, so they don't fully die. And then back again before their body fails them, since oxygen at this level is only a third of what it is at sea level, climbers find themselves sluggish and disoriented and fatigued. And the pressure. I can relate.

Welcome to my life, sweetheart. What's up? The pressure, because of that, makes the weight feel 10 times heavier than it actually is. Same. All over it. And causes extreme distress on organs. Is this you?

My liver is crying right now. Because of this, climbers usually only have a window about 48 hours inside the death zone, so they can get up and fucking back before. And they're strongly urged to use supplemental oxygen at all times. But there are these crazy fucking people who are like, I want to do it without oxygen. As if somehow they're, you know. Well, you know what that makes me think of is when they go to the party, when they get back and you know they talk about climbing Mount Everest for the rest of their lives.

But those details at the cocktail party when they are bragging will be lost on everyone. So kind of the thing that is the biggest victory, people are just gonna be like, right, the death zone, yeah. Yeah. Oh, you didn't carry oxygen with you? Why? Because I thought everyone could take a tooth if they wanted to. Yeah, why wouldn't you do that?

It's just, it's like. Do you remember? Sorry, I just had this recovered memory in 9-11. That you climbed Everest? That I climbed Everest and I forgot to brag about it. No, that on 9-11, there was a doctor running into the rubble and he kept saying, can I take a tooth of, like there was like a, you know, either a fireman or an ambulance worker standing there and he was taking, as he called it, taking a tooth and then running into places

to see if there was anyone alive. Did he make it? Yeah, I believe so. But I mean, I. How did that come about taking a tooth? That was like literally live, CNN was just going live to fucking ground zero and being like, what's happening? And then suddenly someone, you're like, this tooth is not the right word for this fucking

moment. But he was like, it was like this fuck, he was a guy in scrubs and he was just like, we got to get in there, give me a tooth and then fucking running in. That's what they call it. Let us know everyone. Doctors, nurses, ambulance. Doctors that do cocaine. Let us know.

You got a tooth? You got a tooth? Okay. Where was I? Okay. So many deaths at high altitude, mountaineering have been caused by the effects of the death zone either directly because of loss of fucking vital functions in your goddamn body or indirectly, which I think this is interesting because you make unwise decisions when you're under

stress or physical weakening, leading to accidents. So you become, it's like when you have, what's it called when you're super hot and the sun is beating down on you? Just sexiness? No, you know. Oh, sunstroke? Sunstroke and you start taking your clothes off or when you have frostbite, you take your clothes off to cool down, but that's not what happens.

It's like your body is sending you the wrong signals. So you do stupid shit. The extreme cold, so when they die on the mountain, the extreme cold preserves the bodies and keeps them intact just as they fell and due to the difficulties and dangers in bringing bodies down because it's so hard to even just go up on your own and bring someone down. Most of those who die in the mountain remain where they fall and they turn, the bodies turn into something like a morbid landmark for the climbers who are going up and down. It's like, well, once you pass this person, then you know you're halfway there and you,

like they know them and they're like talisman, I'm sure they have a moment of silence or something for them. I hope. You know what I mean? I think it's like a respectful thing. Good. So the first recorded deaths on the mountain were the seven porters or sherpas who died in an avalanche in 1922 on a British Mount Everest expedition and the fucking sherpas,

man, these are people who do this all the time and have dozens of climbs under their belt, they're really incredible but they also then are more susceptible to accidents because they're going up so often. They're doing it so often. Right. So sherpa is one of the ethnic groups native to the mountainous regions of Nepal and the Himalayas and many are highly regarded as elite mountaineers and sherpas and their teams are hired by mountain climbers to help manage and advise on their climbs as well as carry

the oxygen, carry the gear, set up camp and as a safety expert. Because they've lived at that altitude for generations, their bodies are used to it and they have a genetic natural allowance for it. So many, when you hear of people who are like, the guy at the party is like, yeah, I had a solo climb, the guy is bragging that everyone's like, great, Jim, many solo climbers actually use sherpas. Sure. They just fucking call it solo.

Yeah. So in total 118 sherpas have died on Everest between 1921 and 2018 and April 2018 report by NPR stated that sherpas account for one-third of Everest deaths, which is so tragic. And while dangerous for the novice climber, the mountain also has claimed the lives of some of the most experienced climbers. One of the most infamous tragedies on the mountain was the 1996 Mount Everest disaster on May 11th, 1996, during which eight people died while making summit attempts. So in one day, eight people died and there's a really small window of when you're allowed

to climb, it's like sometime in May, it's like a few weeks, I think, because it's just like these, this is when the weather allows it go. Yeah. So that's like, you know, 18 people, nope, that's eight people in a really short period of time. And it was turned into the movie Everest, which I will definitely see at some point. It starts as a bunch of famous people. I've seen it.

Jake Gyllenhaal. Yeah. I've seen the beginning of it. And it's, it's good. You want to watch it because I'm pretty sure Josh Brolin is also in it. He's one of the leaders. There's just a bunch of really good people and it's kind of, it feels very real the way they shot it.

It kind of feels like you're just there eavesdropping as all these real people are going to go do this thing. Crazy. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't, yeah, I wouldn't have bummered even shoot that, let alone hike Everest, climb Everest, excuse me, that's, hike is probably insulting. And that entire 1996 season, 15 people died trying to reach the summit, making it the deadliest single year in the mountain's history to that point.

On April 18th, 2014, 16 Sherpas were killed in an avalanche that struck base camp. Just over a year later on April 25th, 2015, 19 people were killed in an avalanche at base camp following a 7.8 earthquake, which killed at least 9,000 people and injured at least 23,000 into Paul. Shit. Yeah. So this is the worst single day death toll ever in the history of Mount Everest in modern incidents with accurate counts.

All right, so on to specific people. Let's talk about the one you've probably heard of and everyone's heard of, green boots. No, I haven't. No? Okay. I mean, not me. This is like the most famous, I guess you could call it landmark while climbing. So climbers taking the North call route to Everest summit inevitably end up passing the

mountain's most infamous landmark, green boots. He's called this because of the brightly colored hiking boots that he was wearing when he died. And I mean, it's, there's photos. Like it's, they're not gruesome because there's no skin, there's no face, but you can say it's fucked up. Yeah. Well, they look like kind of like mummies. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Well, green boots identity, but they're covered in their clothes most of the time. While green boots identity has always been hotly contested, he's widely believed to be an Indian climber named Swing Paljore who died along with two of his colleagues in 1996. So because they can't see his face, they're not sure if it's him or the other two, but they're pretty sure it's him.

Paljore was part of a high class Indian expedition of six people to summit Everest that yielded only one survivor, Harbhajan Singh. Singh later recalled that the expedition was marred by mistakes and he had urged the other men to abandon their quest because of inclement weather that was heading in, but the Singh and his men refused and they succumbed to summit fever, a term used when climbers abandoned thoughts of safety and often their own morals because they are close to reaching the summit and become blinded by the drive to cross the finish line above all else. So it's this like, I fucking came here to get to the top.

You can't say to someone at a party, I hiked Everest, so they just like, don't think about all the safety, like even their own rules, which is just not good. So the body of Green Boots looks as though he toppled over from exhaustion mid-stride. It looks like he was just doing like a, what do they call it? What's the ski walk thing? Like cross country skiing? Yeah. And he just like, it looks like he just toppled over.

And it's been, he did so in what's been now since known as Green Boots Cave, luckily his face and skinner obscured, but his blue snow pants, red snow jacket, a couple of tanks of oxygen are right where they fell along with him, along with his neon green hiking boots. Paljore's body has become a landmark seen by every climber attempting the Northeast Ridge route to the summit. So it's like the most famous one. Wow.

Then there's Francis Arsenteve. Francis, her story is fucked up because she was alive when climbers first found her in need of help. Oh no. Yeah, this one's fucked up. So Francis, let's see, Arsenteve and her husband Sergei were avid climbers who sought to climb Everest in 1998. Francis had a goal to become the first American woman to summit Everest without the use of

supplemental oxygen, which is like. It's kind of like, that's like wanting to be like the first woman to swim across the ocean without having anybody look out for sharks for her. I mean, isn't it? Yeah. But it's like you want to be a first something and that's the only option. So you're going to go for it even if it's not safe. Right.

She couldn't just be a woman who'd gotten to the top of Everest. How about the first woman with it, like with a buzz cut on top of Everest, you shaved that hair. Yeah. And you just like toot all the oxygen you want the entire time. Toot, motherfucker. That's the thing you need. Yeah.

Anyway. That's right. Don't be a hero. Let's not put up walls and boundaries in front of ourselves that actually take oxygen away from us. Right. Whatever you do, keep the oxygen. Keep that O2 flowing.

That's right. Toot, toot. So after two aborted attempts of trying to get up on there without supplemental oxygen, we finally succeeded very late in the day on May 22nd, 1998, so she fucking did it and made it. But she became separated from her husband Sergei as they descended, which is like so scary. Can you imagine like looking down and being like, where'd you go?

Right. Oh, shit. And she's all high off of not having oxygen and adrenaline and whatever other chemicals can start going through your body and she's like, oh, look, unicorns, a whole bunch of unicorns and she just runs off to the side. So arriving back to camp around on May 23rd in the evening, Sergei found that his wife hadn't returned, so even though he was exhausted, he turned around and headed back up the mountain to attempt to rescue her.

On his way up, he passed a team of Uzbek climbers who'd abandoned their own summit attempt to help, to try to help Francis down as far as they could, but they weren't able to get her all the way down. And the following morning, climbers Ian Woodall and Kathy O'Dowd and their team were amazed to find what they thought was a body still alive. So she murmured to them, don't leave me. So she stuck, she's frozen in place and she's still alive overnight. But she was immobile and slipping in and out of consciousness and she was beyond rescuing.

So after spending nearly an hour with her in the temperatures of minus 30, Ian and Kathy were forced to leave Francis when their own oxygen was running out. So they wanted to stay with her, they didn't want to leave her. It was like they wouldn't have died too if they had. In her book, Just for the Love of It, Kathy O'Dowd writes, quote, I had never encountered anything like this. I had passed bodies, I had had friends not come back, but I had never watched anyone die, nor had I had to decide to leave them.

Neither Sergey or Francis returned. So he went back up to look for her and he didn't come back either. And it was later learned that Sergey had fallen to his death trying to reach his wife. So what he went, he took a weird step and then went down. It looks like she might have been like, had slid down a mountain. And so maybe he saw her and started to try to reach her and fell. So like green boots, Francis Arsentee's body lay right next to the root for years, dressed in her black snow pants and purple snow jacket.

And she was passed by hundreds of climbers going to and from the summit and became known as the Mount Everest Sleeping Beauty. In 2007, Ian Woodall, the guy who had to leave her behind, returned with the intention of moving her body out of sight because I think it's like a respect thing, like, you know, let's get her out of the way so people don't take photos and shit like that. And he covered her with an American flag and placed a note from her family on her body. I know. So David Sharp, like Francis and Sergey, David Sharp was climbing Mount Everest without

a support team and without the aid of bottled oxygen. It's believed. It's a weird pride thing. I know. It makes sense. It's the thing of like, yeah, you need to one up on yourself, but you can't get high on your own supply anymore. So you're like, I'm going to fucking do this then.

Check this out. It's like being like, I can drink the most shots where it's like, yes, you can. And then where will you be? Yeah, that's, yeah, you don't, but you don't need to. Right. Where is the true victory? That's right. Um, it's believed he made it to the summit on May 14th, 2006.

Is that today? No, today's like the 20 something. Um, close. I know. But on his way down, fatigued and confused, he stopped and sat down in Green Boots Cave. Oh no. Around 40 climbers from several expeditions are thought to have passed David Sharp on their way up the mountain the next day.

A climbing party stopped and when they realized Sharp was still alive, um, they, they didn't make any attempt to rescue him until they passed him again on the way down about nine hours later. So they were like, we're on our way up. Oh, he's still alive. We'll get him on the way back nine hours later. And this, um, by this point, Sharp, by the time they breached him afterwards, he was alive, but beyond help.

And he died frozen in the position he'd sat down to rest in with his knees like tucked up and his arms kind of huddled around his knees. So, um, I mean, you can see that the person was just like, I need a restroom in it. And then they just stay that way. Right. Because you can't like, it's almost like he wasn't making good decisions. Then the, the pack of people who clearly have the eyes on the prize disease we were talking about earlier, they're not going to make the best decision for that guy.

Yeah. They're not going to be like, forget it. We're going to do, we're going to help you. Um, but, but many, but so, um, the, the, that team maintained that they believed Sharp was beyond help on their way up, which may have been true, but it was like a controversial decision still. And um, as let's see, like, uh, recovering a body requires a ton of effort so, and risk. So most of the time they're just left there, even if they're dying, but a lot of people

think that if you see someone in need of help on your way up, it's your duty to halt your mission and help, even if it means abandoning your summit, but people pay between 30 grand and as high as 130 grand, um, to get, to get that fucking experience and opportunity. And so they're not willing to abandon their quest, we call it that, to help someone, which is fucked up. Yeah. So like, I think it's a, I think it's a mountaineering people, like you take a side, you're like, it's their torn between what do you do or not?

Well, cause it's easy to say you should abandon your quest. Then there's the person who actually sunk a hundred grand into doing this thing that he, he could die doing too. Yeah. I mean, you could kind of argue from any angle. It's crazy. Yeah. But morally, you're going to get back down there and be a normal person again, and you're

going to have left someone to die for money because you spent them, like, and for, you know, glory. For money and for like cocktail party glory. Yeah. Or maybe you get to be in a magazine. Well, what if you're like, wouldn't you rather hear, I saved someone on Mount Everest? Yes. At a cocktail party?

Personally, yes. Me too. I was going up and this guy was dying and. Although, I'm not saying that I would walk away if someone said I actually killed someone on Mount Everest. You know that. I wonder if there's ever been a murder her. I mean, that's the perfect place to do it.

Yeah. But also it's, yeah, they're creating their own culture of, if I paid this much money, how could I be expected to? Yeah. I mean, that's the world we live in now. Every man for himself kind of a thing. Yeah. For herself.

For real. Yeah. That's it. Okay. Then George Mallory. George Mallory is one of the oldest bodies on the mountain. When he died on Everest in the 1920s, Mallory was the most famous mountaineer of his time and arguably arguably up our time as well, like of any time.

When asked why he wanted to climb the as then unconquered Mount Everest, Mallory famously replied because it's there. Oh, right. Oh, that kind. Yeah. But his body wasn't discovered until nearly 75 years later in 1999. So he died, did people know he was dead or was he just missing? I think they must have known he was dead, but yeah, they had not known where his body was.

It was kind of this like almost like treasure, you know, like, which are we going to find his body? Wow. But so to this day though, and one of the reasons they wanted to find his body is because to this day, no one is sure whether he and his climbing partner, Sandy Irvine, who also perished on the mountain, reached the summit on the mountain on June 8th, 1924, my birthday. So they don't know if they made it or not because they died and you weren't able to find them.

So you couldn't tell by the evidence if they had. So they were climbing dressed in the time of what was mountaineering clothes in tweed. Oh, tweed suits? Like a fucking professor, like Indiana Jones style, like these dudes were fucking Indiana Jones. Yes, they were, weren't they? They were using incredibly primitive equipment by today's standards and including very clunky oxygen bottles and then yet when they were last sighted, they were just a few hundred

vertical feet short of the summit and according to a fellow expedition member, they were going strongly for the top, but then they disappeared, no sign of them. So they were never seen alive again and the question whether or not they made it, it remains to this day one of mountaineering's greatest mysteries. An expedition was launched in 1999 to try and find Mallory's body in hopes of solving the mystery, but Mallory's mum-fied corpse is finally located and you can see photos of it. Okay.

It's looking creepy. It's like this, it's like straight up one eyed Willy style, like Goonies shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it didn't really reveal much. He appears to have fallen to his death and from the injury around his waist caused by his rope, it has been figured that he and Irvine were still rope together when they fell. So Irvine's probably farther down the mountain.

But two pieces of circumstantial evidence suggest that he did make it to the top. Mallory was found with a pair of snow goggles in his pocket and was thought that if he didn't have his snow goggles on anymore, then maybe it was because the sun had gone down, which would imply that they had died late in the night, which means they would have, they were making their way back down, which means they would have made it. And also he said that when he got to the top, he was going to place a photo of his wife Ruth at the top of Everest. And when they found his well-preserved wallet on him, there was no photo of his wife in

it. Okay. So he probably made it. Good. Yeah. That's hopeful. Right. I pictured them falling into an ice cave.

I wonder if I'm getting that from one of those many documentaries. Like that idea that like you step down, you think you're like, you're, you're coming back down or you're going up or whatever it is. And you, you start thinking like through the ice. Yeah. That basically it's like one false step. I bet that happens. But then also in the ice cave is treasure and Yeti's, the Yeti family treasure.

So there's also money in the recovery of bodies on Mount Everest. In 2017, a team of local Sherpa climbers recovered the body of three climbers that had been on Everest for a year. The high risk expedition was financed with about $92,000 from the Indian state of West Bengal. So the expedition sparked this crazy debate about in the mountaineering community about the morality of risking more lives to retrieve bodies from Everest. And in a way, I feel like if you're this like crazy mountaineer, you've been doing it for

years and years to get to this one spot of fucking getting to the top of Everest and you die. I feel like a lot of them maybe would want to stay there. I would think so. Right. It's part of the glory of what you were, you died like it's literally that he died doing what he loved. Yeah.

You know, I've got my ashes over somewhere I like, you know, my pool, I don't know. Scatter my ashes into my pool and then please clean them back out. It's an apartment building pool, but don't just do it. People need to swim, so if you could clean them back out immediately, that'd be great. Aang Shering, who's a Sherpa, former president of the Nepal Mountaineering Association said, because of global warming, the ice sheet and glaciers are fast melting and the dead bodies that remained buried all those years are now becoming exposed to get one body off the mountain.

There are risks. They are risking the lives of 10 more people. Some 563 climbers scaled the peak from Nepal's southern side in 2018. And I think that must mean right now is when the season's going on. Yeah, it is. We'll get those numbers soon. Five climbers died on Everest in 2018, and as I said, 293 people have lost their lives since the first attempt to scale Everest in 1921, 118 of whom were Sherpa guides.

And that is a couple of the many stories of the bodies on Mount Everest. Amazing. And you can see photos of them, you know, some are gruesome. They're, yeah, they're like a mummified. It's creepy. Crazy. I love it. I hate it.

But when they started, like in National Geographic or whatever, they started putting out articles about how all of the ice is melting on the tops of lots of peaks around the, you know, infamous peaks around the world and that they are starting to find, they're starting to find like crow magnum bodies and like old, this guy was out hunting and he was just about to kill a sandwich with a tiger and like that kind of shit. And then one guy got like stabbed in the back too. Is that like a really, he was like a really old, basically fossil man that they found? Yeah.

I haven't murdered. I love it. I haven't. I love when the ice melts and they find old viruses. Oh, God. In the ice. Oh, God. That's going to be the end fucking days.

It's coming soon. Enjoy yourself tonight. That's right. Do you want to know what I was going to do? Yeah. I mean, I'm going to do. I kind of have to, but I also want to. You can't, don't look away from this.

I'm going to go in the other room, but please don't. Just stay. Okay. Okay. Okay. I, because we were just in Minneapolis, St. Paul area, Minnesota. Thank you all, Minneapolis and Milwaukee for enabling us to have such a wonderful end to our tour.

Yeah. With some fucking great hometowns. Oh my God. Stacey. I feel like the best Stacey. What a crumb. Tell the story real quick. Uh, when we were in Milwaukee, Georgia picked a woman named Stacey who came up and she's

a forensic, she's a teacher. Psychology professor. I think. Yeah. Front or psychology professor. She's just great. Had a great accent, told a really, told the story really well, very earnestly. But then in the middle, she was describing how this man killed his wife, I believe.

And it was very gruesome and terrible. And the audience at one point made a noise about what a bummer it was. And then she's just stops and goes, I know, he's a real crumb. And I was trying not to, I always want to say shit while people are telling their story, but I know it's going to throw them off. So I try to be quiet. And let them tell it. Your face just made me start cracking up.

It was the best thing I've ever heard. You were so happy about it. It made me laugh so hard to see you trying not to fuck it and lose your shit. I feel like a lady named Stacy, who it takes the time to describe us like this murderer as a crumb is the exact opposite of us, where we'll describe the fucking a fluffy kitten as a fucking bitch or anything like that. It's the idea of that where it's like, that's as far as she was willing to go, it just was the most charming.

Bless her heart. Bless her little heart. So this is one of the stories that I prepped and then was like, there's no way I can do this. It's just too much. Right. But also because I've been given the confirmation multiple times that you haven't done this one yet.

And I still think you have. Oh my God. The Weepy Voice Killer. I have not done it. Okay. I have thought about it so many times. Oh, I'm ready. And is it because I hate 911 calls?

Uh, no. Oh. Maybe. I just, I wonder maybe, yeah, maybe it's because it needs that and you don't, no. I don't know why. I just never did it. Yeah. Oh, I didn't either.

And then I was going to, um, but as I was going through it, it's just so, it's so hard to do. Um, well, if they're famous, that's one thing and everyone kind of knows them or whatever. But sometimes when, and we've talked about this a bunch of times when it's just a killing, killing, killing, killing, no one's pick, no one's solving the crime. Tragic childhood from the serial killer and it's just like, oh, okay. There's just no, I can't get in there and then be like, he looks like, yeah, look what actor, look, it's Dustin Hoffman and you can't do that in certain stories.

It's not funny. Nor should you. No. Okay. So I got, um, information from here's the fucking twist.com, uh-huh. The criminal minds wiki page, which is hilarious and a website called criminallyintrigued.com, which has a really good, their logo for criminallyintrigued is the bottom part of a jaw and then a tooth.

It's kind of like over here, like a loose tooth set to the side. All right. It's very. Set that thing aside. Right. Come back to it. It's well designed. It's beautifully designed and interesting.

Okay. So we're going to start on New Year's Eve, 1980. And, uh, 20 year old University of Stevens Point, Wisconsin student named, uh, actually Stevens Point is a very small town in Northern Wisconsin that my friend Bradford Burlesque is from. You're, it was in your story last time. Yes. Last two weeks ago.

Yes. Weird. It is not weird. Yeah. And it's not big at all. Huh. Um, and there's a woman we met in the meet and greet who said she was from there and that's when I was like, my friend Bradford's from there.

Right. Anyway. Okay. Okay. Start over. Okay. So this 20 year old who goes to University of Stevens Point, Wisconsin, her name is Karen Potak and she's just gotten to St. Paul because she's coming to celebrate New Year's Eve with

her sisters. Um, and so they are going to a party somewhere. There's an article that said they were throwing the party, but whatever it is, is they end up at this New Year's party and, um, Karen along with everybody else in America gets drunk. Yeah. And she ends up wandering away from the party after midnight and just starts kind of walking around the city drunk.

I do that shit too. I know. Like, I'll be like, this party's too loud. I'll grab the dog and a leash and just fucking walk away from a party and then you're kind of drunk and you're just like, I have everything so beautiful out. Yeah. It's so stupid. It's, well, yeah.

I mean. I mean, that's stupid. It's just. It's risky. It's risky. Thank you. It's a risky thing. It's good to do with a dog.

It sucks that we can't as women fucking do that. Just do it and kind of wander around drunk and have a good time. It also makes me think of too, it's that thing, how I would do every party where you kind of go into it with all this hope and this idea of what cool could happen and it makes me feel like she, who maybe she liked somebody and then at midnight he kissed somebody else. Or he wasn't even there. He didn't even show up. Yeah.

Or just nobody good showed up. Yeah. It was just that kind of thing. Like, I gotta get away from this party. I need to be alone. Yeah. Yeah. I need to get away from a man asking for a squad car to be sent to the Maulburg Manufacturing

Company machine shop on Pierce Butler Road because there's quote, a girl hurt there. And the color's voice is very shaky and filled with emotion. And when the police ask for his name, he hangs up. And when the officers get there, they find Karen's naked body in a snow bank near the railroad tracks and she's been beaten with a tire iron so severely that her skull's been cracked. They can see her brain. Holy shit.

But she's alive. What? She fucking survived. No. Yes. She survives. Now, she doesn't have any memory of the attack. It really, of course, very severely affected her memory.

Oh my God. And she had to, you know, work back from that place, but she lived through it. Oh, honey. Yes. But they have no, it just seems like this random attack. Okay. Are we gonna listen to any of them or no? Well, yes.

Okay. So Stephen has them standing by. And so we'll go in, let me do this one first, because that one was, you know, she lived and it was basically the first one. So the next one is Kimberly Compton, the second attack but the first murder. So on June 3rd, 1981, a group of boys are walking through a wooded area by Interstate 35, St. Paul, and they come across a body of 18-year-old Wisconsin student, Kimberly Compton.

She has been stabbed with an ice pick 61 times and she then was strangled with a shoelace. So at the same time, another call is made to the police and the caller, tearful, full of emotion, reports the crime that he committed and he tells the police, God damn, will you find me? I can't stab somebody with an ice pick, I can't stop myself, I keep killing, I keep killing somebody is the phrase that he uses. And then they trace the call, they get to a pay phone at a bar across the street from a local bus depot, but when they get, by the time they get there, of course the guy's gone,

the killer is gone. Two days later, he calls again and here's the phone call. Oh my God. This is the first time in the history of my favorite murder where we played a 911 call. We're going to play a 911 call and it's purely so we can hear. Yeah. Don't talk just listen. I saw what I did to Compton.

I couldn't help it. Don't know why I exist ever. I am so upset about it. I keep getting drunk every time. I can't believe it. I think I have a big dream. I can't think of it a lot. I can't believe it.

I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't believe it. I can't think of it a lot. If I get locked up, I'll kill myself.

I'd rather kill myself to get locked up or I'll try not to kill anybody else. So I don't like 911 calls because most of the time, if it is the killer, it's oftentimes a husband pretending to be upset when he's actually not. Or just hearing that people actually upset is upsetting. But this is, for some reason, this is different to me because he's just talking about himself. He has just murdered someone so viciously and insanely and he's calling and acting like he's upset that he did that. But really, he just immediately starts talking about, I can't go to jail and that this is

all very sad for him. And also just that, if I ever had to listen to really anybody, but especially a man talking in that tone of voice, I'd be like, sir, sir. It sounds like the cowardly lion. It totally does. I'll be never done. I'll be never listened. I don't know.

Yeah. I would have, as a 911 dispatcher, probably been very disrespectful to that man. He does not turn himself in, as he just said in that phone call. And he does kill someone else. So on July 21st, 1982, a woman named Carol Kellogg goes to her friend's house, Kathleen Greening. They're going to go on vacation to Mackinac Island and Carol knocks on the door. Nobody answers.

Then she tries the door and it's unlocked. So she goes into the house and she calls for Kathleen and no one answers. So she starts looking around the house, checking every room, and Kathleen's not there. And finally, Carol notices that the bathroom lights on. So she goes upstairs to the bathroom door and she opens it and she finds Kathleen's naked body lying face up in a filled bathtub and her head is under the tap or her legs are down to the other side. So she calls the police, police arrive, and they ultimately rule Kathleen's death and

accident. No. No proof that anything nefarious happened. But Kathleen's friends and family don't think it's an accident and they actually think that her estranged husband could be responsible. But the police look into him and there's no charges or filed against him. About a month later on August 5th, the same year, 40-year-old Barbara Simons goes out for a night at the Hexagon Bar in Minneapolis and she meets a man there.

He's about to smoke a cigarette. She offers him one. Then later on, he offers her a ride home and she says, yes. And as she's leaving, she actually says to the bartender, he's cute. I hope he's nice since he's giving me a ride home and then they leave. So the next morning, August 6th, there's basically a paper boy, but it might be an adult, is walking along the Mississippi River and they find Barbara's body, her dead body. She's been stabbed over a hundred times.

Oh my God. Yeah. It's like, that's rage-stabbing, you know? Beyond. I mean, yeah. But he doesn't even know these women. Right. It's insane overkill and must be so disturbing for the people that find these bodies.

Again, the police get another phone call and it's the same voice. And this time, he's full on crying and he once again starts the call, please don't talk, just listen, which is how he's starting these calls. Do you want to try the next one? Okay. Play your emergency. Please don't talk to the listen. I'm sorry.

I killed, I killed. I stabbed 40 times. Kimberly Compton was the first one. All my people. Holy. I don't know what to do. I'm going to kill myself. I'm saying it.

Where are you? I'm going to kill myself. I'm saying it. I'm going to kill myself, I'm saying it. I'm going to kill myself, I'm going to kill myself, I'm going to kill myself, I'm going to kill myself. Calm down. Calm down.

The dispatcher. Yeah. Calm down. It's not real. What, his, the emotion? Yeah. You know, I always thought it was when I've heard it in the past, but now I'm like, no, he just wants credit for these murders.

And attention. Attention and credit and. And he's crying for himself. The last thing he said, you could barely understand it. He says, I've killed more people. I'll never make it to heaven. He's crying about himself. And I think there's, you know, obviously there's that interesting, like, is this a

Jekyll and Hyde situation where he's doing these crazy overkill murders, waking up and then feeling bad. Wait. So he just took credit for the woman who drowned, right? No. No. He just jumped in who is the, the first one who was stabbed and strangled with the shoelace. Okay.

He's, he did not take credit for, for that. And. But how do they know, but how do they change it? You're going to tell me probably. Yes. It's a reveal. Okay. Yes.

Then I won't. She doesn't actually fit into the MO. Yeah. So actually that one does, it goes, it stands alone cold for a while. Okay. Tell me, tell me. And again, normally I really can't even, I can't take 911 calls at all, but there's something about this one that is just like, it's so, it's just like the dispatcher that

finally breaks in. That's like, calm down. Yeah. What are you even doing? Yeah. What is this for? It's like, he's leading this thing that no one else has anything to do with it. He wants control over, oh, it's creepy.

It's so creepy. And also, but then he's just kind of complaining. Yeah. He's complaining. Yeah. Okay. So investigators start their search for the killer, trying to identify the man that Barbara left the bar with the night before.

So the witnesses, they all tell authorities that they remember seeing Barbara leave with a man that was around 40 years old, six feet tall, 185 pounds. He's a white man with a receding hairline. Okay. So then on August 21st, 1982, so this is basically a month after that, police are still searching for Barbara Simon's killer from the hexagon bar when 19 year old Minneapolis sex worker named Denise Williams is out on the streets working. A client approaches her, they talk about pricing, and then she gets into his car.

They drive to a secluded location. They have sex. And then afterwards, he says he's going to drive her back home. And then as they're driving, Denise notices that they're actually going further away into like, into an area that she doesn't recognize, they're not going back to the city. It's a very dark suburban area. She's starting to get uneasy and she knows she's in danger. She has a bottle near her leg that she has.

She just knows where it is. So she's kind of prepped. He pulls off into a dead end street, turns and starts stabbing her with a screwdriver. But she's ready. So she grabs the bottle from the floor of the car and smashes him in the head. And then she starts screaming and she actually wakes up a neighbor nearby who comes out of his house. He tackles the attacker to the ground and saves Denise.

But the attacker ends up escaping. And by the end of the whole thing, Denise has been stabbed with a screwdriver 15 times. Holy shit. Yeah. So the neighbor calls an ambulance for Denise and then he tells the police all about what the attacker looks like. And meanwhile, the attacker was made his way back to his apartment. And he- But they have his car.

No, he got away. But when he gets to his apartment, he calls an ambulance for himself. No. So it's another 911 call and he's calling in saying, I need help. Oh my god. And doing the same weird voice. And the dispatcher who takes that call from him goes, this is that person that keeps calling in saying they've killed somebody and then someone ends up stabbed to death.

And so the dispatcher basically tells the police, I think this is the same guy that's been calling in these murders. And so police show up at the attacker's apartment and he is finally identified as 37-year-old Paul Michael Stefani. He's arrested and he's charged with second degree assault for Denise Williams' attack. Okay. Okay. So as they dig deeper into Stefani's background, they're able to connect Barbara Simon's murder

to him because of the eyewitness account. So there's a waitress who saw Barbara Simon's leave the hexagon bar with a man that she knew was Paul Stefani. She knew his name. So when the police came back around to look into Stefani, she was like, oh yes, she left with Paul. What? I know that that's who it was.

So they look into Paul Stefani's background and they see that he used to work at the Malberg Manufacturing Company, which was the place, he was fired there in March of 1977, which was three years before Karen Pollock's attack and that's the place where her body was found. So basically they're able to add a murder charge for Barbara Simon's on top of the assault charge for Denise Williams. So a little tiny bit of background about Paul Stefani. There's not much and it's not that interesting. But he was born September 8th, 1944 in Austin, Minnesota.

He was one of 10 kids, super religious family and super repressed. He married a woman as an adult named Beverly Lider and they had a daughter together but they later divorced. Basically Stefani goes to trial for that murder and for the attack and his ex-wife Beverly, his sister and his former roommate all come to testify that the voice that you hear on these 911 calls is his voice. Oh my God. They're all there saying that's him.

They're just trying to get the charges that they have for these attacks and then connect these other ones that have gone cold. They want to link to him. But because he becomes so incoherent at the end of those calls and it turns into that, they can't directly connect it because basically it could be anybody making that noise. It's not distinctly his voice. And even still, Stefani is found guilty in both the second degree assault charge and the murder charge for Barbara Simon's death and they give him 40 years in prison.

That's it? Yeah. 40 years. 40 years. Yeah. Yeah. So in 1997, he's 53 years old, he's still in prison and he gets diagnosed with skin cancer. And when the doctors tell him he has about a year to live, he tells the authorities that

he has other confessions about other attacks that he wants to make. He says he wants to apologize to the victim's family before he dies. So on a taped confession, he confesses to the murders of Kathleen Greening, Kimberly Compton and the tire iron attack on Karen Pollock. And he hadn't even been a suspect in the Greening case. That's the one where she was in the bathtub and because there was no phone calls made that was like a really early one and he just basically gave it to them. Wow.

Yeah. So about in 1998, a year later after that, Stefani dies at Oak Park Heights Maxim Security Prison just shy of his 54th birthday. Jesus. And that is the short and upsetting story of the Wheatby voiced killer. Oh my God. Yeah. I hate him.

Isn't he the worst? Yeah. I'm glad one of us finally did that. I know. Kind of why we haven't. I know. Well. I mean, I think I've been so anti.

Oh yeah, because of the, I mean, maybe, yeah, maybe I just didn't want to play it for you. So it's good that you did it. Yeah. Because now I'm not forcing anything on you. Well, and also I realize it's like, I want to, I want to paint that with a broad brush of like, I don't ever want to hear any 911 call, which is true, except for there's something about this one. Yeah.

It's like, it feels different. No, it is. It totally is. And it's just so like, I don't know, it just fascinates me. It's just that thing of these people and these, these, these fucking crazy murderers who then also think, I just don't, it's so fascinating what they think and the way they do things. They're just like, he's crying for himself. He feels worse for himself than anybody in that situation.

Just that void of humanity. But still able to pity himself is amazing to me. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. Fucking A, man. Fucking A.

Good job. Fucking Hurray. Yeah. Fucking Hurray time. I guess I will say this one and I'm not sure if you're going to remember this, but it was a couple of years ago, my niece Lauren was down, down here, down south, going to college. She's just out of high school and she really hated it immediately and was really miserable and having a terrible time.

And she would come and hang out with me every once in a while just because she was like, it was a really small school, it was a really weird area, she wasn't her room. Nothing was working out the way she wanted it to. She wanted some familiarity. Yeah. So, she would come and hang out with me and just kind of like tell me about how much she hated it and just, she just felt like she made the wrong decision, which is heartbreaking. So, today, she graduated from Berkeley with an anthropology degree because she is such

a badass that in that time, she basically went to her parents and was like, I can't go to this college anymore, I'm so miserable. And her parents were like, didn't want to let her just quit and we're going to say, you should actually just go here for two more years, it's better for you. They had kind of had this plan in place. And then I basically was like, if I could just on her behalf say, I get why you want to like hold the line on this, but it really does suck and it's a tiny school and- Two years is a very long time, especially when you're young and miserable.

Right. And she does have a plan, she just doesn't want to do it down there. It's not like she's like partied her way out of school like me. Right. And it's not like it'll ding your record that much, they'll never get a job once you get out of college or whatever. Right. And I think it's a thing of like, I think she was nervous about it too.

All of this is to say that this was a low time in her life and what she did was basically just kind of like pack it up, go home, get into the JC and she just started working and she knew where she wanted to be and she worked her way into Berkeley, which is one of the best schools there is and got to the point where she graduated like very quickly and she just, I don't know, she just turned it all around like her life is so different than it was when all that happened and I'm just so proud of her. So anyway, I'm just thrilled and I, but it also is that thing of if you make a decision and you're like, here's the big thing I'm going to do and you go down that road for

a while and you don't like it, you get to change your mind. Totally. It's hard, like I'm sure there's parents that'll weigh in, there's lots of people, especially if you're spending their money, there's lots of people that have lots of opinions and there's lots of times where people won't make that decision because they go like, oh, everybody at home will find out and I'll be ashamed because everybody else is doing this and that and how do I compare and blah, blah, blah and you cannot make decisions for yourself and for your future based on what other people are going to think.

You have to do what's good and right for you and best for you and you have to like figure out your path and you get to figure and re-figure it a couple times. And I think she's just this shining example of how you can do that and you can start over and go like basically recalibrate and do whatever you want. That's amazing. Yeah. I love that. Yeah, yeah.

Her congratulations. I know. I'm so proud of her. Yeah, I bet. I love the paper that I got in therapy today. That is a list of the 10 classic unhelpful thinking styles. 10. Yeah.

Yeah. Let's hear them. My brain feels broken a lot because I go to the wrong spot when, you know, like Vince is going to hate me if I ask if he'll do the laundry, you know, like it just doesn't compute correctly sometimes. And so our therapist gave this to me that was like, everyone does that. It's totally normal. Maybe yours does a little more than everyone else's, but it's normal.

And so- But probably not. Right? Yeah. Well, yeah. So there, I'll learn, I'll just name it, but you can look up 10, the 10 classic unhelpful thinking styles, I think is what it's called. Do you want to hear them?

Yeah. All or nothing thinking. Yep. A mental filter, paying attention to only certain types of advice, jumping to conclusions, emotional reasoning, assuming that because we feel a certain way and what we think must be true, labeling, labeling ourselves, overgeneralizing, disqualifying the positive, magnification, catastrophizing, and minimization. So like everything's the worst, whatever I've done that good, it doesn't count.

Using critical words like should, must, and ought, and personalization like this is my fault. And I do all of those a lot. But then I was like, Vince and I afterwards, I was like, do you do those? Because Vince always seems so like fucking together to me. He's like, yeah. All the time. Like he, even him, looks like, you know, affected by it.

So that's kind of nice. Right. No. Everybody is. Yeah. Yeah. It just doesn't seem like it because they're on the outside. Right.

Not having to deal with the shit that you hear on the inside. Just seems so much easier for other people to like get it, especially when you can't. Yeah. So that's it. Mental health. Yeah. That's good. Yeah.

Check out our podcasts on Exactly Right Network. They're doing some really cool shit. We have Murder Squad, fucking Percast. Do you need a ride? This podcast will kill you. And the Fall Line. And the Fall Line is doing until June 20th. We're having a contest if you donate $10 towards the billboard for, hold on, the Milbrook

Fund. Yeah. $10 towards the Milbrook Fund and you can go on the Fall Line or Instagram and read all about it. You get put into a contest to get a signed copy of our book. So check that out. Yeah. Yeah.

And it's, and then the proceeds of that all go toward keeping that billboard up. That's right. Yeah. So it's super cool. I love that those guys, they're all actually doing stuff. Yeah. They're taking some action. Yeah.

It's really exciting. Totally. Cool. Thanks for listening, guys. And what else? That's it, right? I think so. Yeah.

Thanks for sticking around and stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.