My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 178 - Live at the Folketeatret in Oslo

Episode Date: June 20, 2019

Karen and Georgia cover the Isdal Woman and the Black Metal murders. 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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That's true. Our luggage almost did it. That's okay. We've been up since 3.30 this morning, traveling. So it's going to be an experimental show, it's going to be fun, stuff's going to come out, my pants are up real high, Norway, I'm wearing pajamas, I'm wearing pajamas, I've never been here before, I've never been here before, you've never been here before, you've never been in this headspace before.

I've been in pajama headspace so many times, but to visit Norway for the first time and show up in this shit is not the coolest, not the ideal, but thank you. Yeah, but it's going to be a show like no other. Right. I hope so. Don't quote me on that. Stephen, cut that. Cut that from their brains so they don't remember that.

They're like, we were promised a show like no other. And it kind of sounded just like every other fucking lunch I've ever heard. It was like every other podcast I've ever heard. Seriously. But they were wearing pajamas. We did, so we had a show in Dublin last night and then we get back to the hotel like midnight and then it's like, okay, you're going to have to meet in the lobby at what was it?

3.30 in the morning. And so we slept for an hour or two, right? Here and there. And then got on a plane, I drank coffee. That was fucking stupid because then I was just like wired for sound the whole time. Our layover in Amsterdam, so it wasn't like a direct, it wasn't like, oh, you're super tired, but you'll get there and you'll get to the hotel and then you'll relax. We're not complaining.

We just want you to know what our journey, you need to know our journey so you understand why my hair is wet right now. It's wet. We don't. Don't encourage her. Do not. Do not encourage that because I'll start rolling out here in a bed, I absolutely just wrapped in a fucking comforter, nothing else.

So anyway, when we finally got here, it was like, okay, so we now have three hours to basically take a nap, get back up, finish our murders, do our homework, get dressed. I wish there was a video on us of us all standing at the conveyor belts of the luggage. Vince, Karen and I, just standing there watching as it's slow, the bags were coming out. The bags were coming out and we were all just like bleary-eyed and tired and then Vince goes, I feel a lot better if at least one of our bags would come out right now. Not one. I was like, oh shit, not a single one when there's four of them.

Do we have video? Oh. You look back. Here's what's fun. I took a surprise video of you, Georgia. Throw it up there. And then there was that dawning thing of, of course it didn't make it. And then I was like, I get to wear this shit.

I was so happy for this moment. I can wear the clothes I've been wearing for 40 hours. Oh, that's true. Dude, I need to burn my fucking travel clothes, like legit. Now I feel so guilty because my mother used to give me so much shit when I would go to, when I would travel and she would see me dressed like this and she'd go, you're not gonna wear that on the plane, are you? She would always say that like, and I'm like, mom, nobody wears pillbox hats anymore.

Like that era is over, like dress up for the plane, dress up for the dentist. It's over. We're not doing that anymore. Did she know how fucking awful air flight was at that point? I don't know. I don't know what she was saying. I think she just wanted to make sure I represented the Kilgarriffs correctly, internationally. The passports would be like, oh, you're Pat's daughter.

Oh, I better call all of her friends behind her back and tell her the things you've been wearing on. I mean, these wouldn't be the shoes, even if I was going to do pajamas, I wouldn't have worn these shoes. Sure. Sure. Sure. Also, sorry, the blow dryer I brought here works in America and I don't know what the

fuck your two prong weird shit is. I'm sick of it. She's not blaming you. It's just a weird coincidence. It's just this hair that needs to be trained before we walk out into a large theater. It's important. Do you want to know my priorities? This is what I'm like.

Get here. Fucking exhausted. Need to finish my murder, blah, blah, blah. Still found time to go to a fucking pharmacy to buy some shit I can't buy in the US. What'd you get? Do they sell cocaine here? Yes. Yeah.

I have this list, I put an Instagram photo up and I was like, this is what I got to get because you guys have the harsh shit here and I'm like, I put it on my fucking face, even though it's illegal where I live. Burn it off. Burn it off. Nothing is working. So I made a list and I was like, what do you buy when you're out of the States or whatever? And there was a list of 300 comments.

I fucking went through every single one and screen grabbed the ones that tell me and then I fucking went back in and I fucking, like, it's, there's something going on in my head. It's my mom saying, you're going to look like that. Oh no. So I went in and I bought some shit. Well, what I love is that in the airport in Amsterdam, you came, I of course made a break for Starbucks immediately.

I was like, bye, don't know, you don't care. Went to get. She did the like nicest thing of, are you cool if I get, I'm like, get the fuck out of here. I'm fucking shopping. And for himself and I, cause I had been drinking so much tea over the couple days, but I hadn't had a nice really burnt cup of Starbucks coffee and so long. So I went to get that and then we met up back up at the gate and Georgia just walks up and

throws me a tub of like salve and I look at it and it's like for nappy rash or whatever I'm like, what are we putting on our face? You guys know pseudo cream? Fuck yeah. You look over and it's the oldest woman in the world. I love it. It works great. She's just dumping a chop of it on her head.

Hurry. Fix me. Hell yeah. That's what everyone's getting when I come back from this fucking big tub of nappy cream. And now what's that nappy cream going to do for me? I mean, what kind of nappy cream do I do? What does it do? I don't know.

It's the best. It's just the best and be quiet about it. I don't even know yet. Okay. Acne, Acne, it'll give you Acne. Okay. Great. Then you're down to earth and people can approach you because you have Acne.

Because you know, like people are scared to talk to us because we're so fucking hot. Oh my God. Because our skin is so clear. Don't do that. Do not pander back to our pandering to you. Keep doing it. Keep doing it. We need this right now.

Please. We need it. You're encouraging it. More and more. Acne. I don't know. It's other shit. Adult.

What do you have? Yeah. Any kind of rash? Lips? Dry lip. You know. Because they don't make anything else for that. Yes.

I want to put nappy cream where chapstick goes. That's exactly what I want. It's the thing of like, you know, all the ladies were like a year ago, we were like, coconut oil everywhere. Yeah. Now it's nappy cream everywhere. It's the new thing. It could be a prank.

Oh shit. I didn't think about that. This could be some kind of a YouTube prank that some 20-year-old boys are pulling on us. They're like, look at them wipe that shit all over their face. No, but beauty bloggers told me. It was beauty bloggers. If you can't trust a beauty blogger, I don't know how that ends.

They're like, we don't have those here. Everything I say, just imagine everyone in the audience is like, we don't have that idea. McDonald's? No. We don't have that here. I want to apologize to you that my breath smells like blue cheese that I ate backstage, even though I had just fresh my teeth and there's cheese.

So of course I'm like, jeez, fuck, it was really good cheese, you guys. Good job. You do that well. Congratulations. And my breath smells like a layover in Amsterdam. Oh, by the way, speaking of, this is my favorite murder of the podcast. Oh yes. Thank you.

That's Karen Kilgaran. That's Georgia Hardstart. Thank you. We're in fucking Oslo. We're in Oslo, Norway. I wanted to come here, I mean, obviously forever, but then my, one of my favorite bands in like 2007 put a song out called Oslo in the summertime and I was like, I want to go to Montreal. I want to go there.

Okay. And there you go. That's how you should plan all your travels. Yeah. Holiday in Cambodia. Summertime in Oslo. That's right. Do it.

Holiday in Cambodia. We've got to go to Cambodia. Should we... Wait. Okay. Because I need to tell Oslo a quick story. Okay. Because see, we got here, so we got here at three, went straight into our hotel rooms.

We've been there the whole time. Yeah. So it's not like we can tell you fun, cool stuff we did or like, can you believe this Osloian said this to us? I can talk about the pharmacy. Oh, you can? That's it. Okay.

No, no, no, go ahead. I was going to say, I don't want to lie, I did leave the hotel room once. Oh, okay. Yeah. Did you get more Nappy Cream? I got... I don't even know what this fucking point. I was just like, that's a name I saw.

That's a name I saw. I put it all in my basket. Left. Where... I can't... We were only on this tour for three days. I cannot shut my suitcase. I know.

How are you going to fit any of this? I took my Karrion suitcase, put it inside a huge suitcase, zipped that motherfucker, now I have two suitcases. Because I know myself. If there's one thing about me, it's that I know myself. Does that mean I also have two suitcases? No. Uh-uh, you said it in front of everybody.

You have to be a teammate with me. Well, I was going to put all our things that we get, the treats and stuff, because when we went to Australia, we got 400 boxes of Tim Tams. Because I fucking stupidly said it on the podcast, bring me all the cookies, which is true. Bring me all the fucking cookies. But then they actually did. But then they did a night where you had to bring them home.

It happened. And we bought the suitcase. I'm tired. Go on. No, no. So you can't lean over. Go on. This is the stage.

The stage. Oh, you were telling a story and I interrupted. No, no, no. Because it's just... This is basically the only story I have to tell the people of Oslo. But I'm excited about it. Because my... One of the most irritating people I've ever known was my college roommate, and Kristen,

she was...Naming names. They might know her. She's here with a single tear rolling down her cheek. And nappy cream all over her face. My God, she looks like she's 12. She was so obsessed with Norway. She talked about it all the time. We lived in Sacramento, California, which is essentially a floodplain with a sun lamp

directly over the top of it. It's the worst city in the world. And I guess Kristen came here on a summer break one time, and when she came back. Okay, so she talked like this for real. We've gotten accused of vocal fry. Yeah. This is what they... Girls from California talk like this.

For sure. But my room and Kristen really did talk like that. So it took her forever to say anything. She'd be like, you guys. Norway's amazing. How come she sounds like a little old lady? She was lazy? I don't know.

But it would... So she would just... She would talk about Norway all the time, and she learned to make a kind of sandwich here that she'd be like, you have to try this sandwich. And so anytime my other roommate, there was like six of us that lived in one apartment or whatever, but we all ended up... She drove us insane. And so anytime we want to talk shit about her, we didn't say anything specific.

We'd just say, Norway is amazing. That was the... I love it. That was the cue line of like, meet me in the other room so I can tell you what fucked up shit she just did. I am going out of my fucking head. Do you know how amazing Norway is? Come with me.

I'm gonna tell you about it. I'll make you a sandwich. Oh no, Norway got thrown under the bus. So I've been hearing about you guys for so long, and I hear that you're amazing. But for a Kristen in your face, Karen, when we were on the fucking plane over here, we're just sitting there like normal people in this like lovely stewardess hands us the cutest package. She was like, do you want a sandwich?

And like, that's the only question I ever want to be asked in my fucking life. Like if Vince had proposed to me by saying, do you want a sandwich forever, I'd be like, yes. You bite into the sandwich, the rings inside. That's a good idea, actually. That is a great idea. That's a great idea. You said good, and I was like, no, no.

They hand us the kids. It was just cheese on bread, but it made my fucking day. So it's she wasn't wrong. No, you know what? I apologize. Come out here, Kristen. She's everybody's cousin. They were really good sandwiches.

What were they? Oh, it was the one she made. It was brown bread. I think she put like red peppers and some weird shit on it. I was always walking away from her. She drove me insane. You knew the first two ingredients, and then you were like, goodbye. You got to go.

You're taking too long to express yourself. I need it to be snappy. And also, she ever said was that it was amazing. Amazing. I think she went to a festival in the summer, and it was amazing. Cool. Okay. Now we sit down.

Okay. Let's sit down. Okay. Look at those. Thank you. These are weird chairs, man. It's perfect for our vibe right now. It fits right in.

It fits in the vibe. I have to say, it's much easier to get up on this chair, not in my insane dress and high heels and spanks. It's easier to do everything. Right? I just realized this is very special. It's really not. This is the first time I've worn pants on stage for a show, a live show, ever, and not

worn a dress, and I feel like myself for the first time in my fucking life. I think you need to take a walk. I think you need to take a walk across the stage. And I can. Walk it across. Yeah. I mean, the freedom, the freedom I have to move around, hope I don't have camel toe, but otherwise, shit's great.

That only adds sex cells, baby. Oh, don't you guys know, in the U.S., that's the new accessories, extreme camel toe. Medically dangerous camel toe. I'll show you this. Show us. Yes, I am wearing pajamas. Thank you. No, it's okay.

My pajamas have pockets. Oh. That's right. Amen. That's right. Thank you so much. Amen. I bought them at the Gap.

I mean, look. I mean, listen. Look and listen about my 2001 Georgia hair. What are these called? When you play your hair? Wisps. Was this on the side? Is this still in?

Was it ever? Listen. Look and listen. We've told you. We've told you many times. Oh, Steven's not here, even though I've been screaming at him. Oh, that's where you go, oh, and then he feels good about when he listens later. Steven!

They're like, we actually don't care. Norway's the one place, Steven. I hate you. What does she do? We just don't feel here, nor we don't feel an affinity towards Steven at all. There's nothing that draws us to him. We've seen mustaches. What'd she say?

I don't know what she's pissed. Some girl over there is like, yes, I know. How dare you? He's amazing. My cats think so too. Yeah, that's right. Oh, he's sending me so many photos of the cats, man. That's like, how is he so good at feline photography?

He might need to go into cat portraiture after this podcast. I'm not kidding. And I feel like he could make a fucking killing on pet sitting now, because everyone in the comments whenever you post a photo of the cats is, come to wherever and watch my cats. You're the best cat uncle, you know. So like... Steven, if you can hear me right now, please don't aim to be a cat uncle. That's the most upsetting phrase I've ever heard for a young man.

Cat people understand that. But a cat, it's like being a cat person is one thing. A cat uncle? Well, he's the uncle. He's kind of touching the cat weird over in the corner. Oh no! Stop it! Karen has not had good experiences with uncles.

I'm so tired. I'm just doing cheap comedy. What else is there? My coffee's gone. Oh no. Keep drinking it. Forever! Okay.

Fuck, man. Uh-oh. It's going to be fun as we're going to fucking get wired on caffeine and then not be able to sleep tonight. Yes. That's really fun. And it's the thing that we do and we text each other at three in the morning, like, I can't sleep.

Can you sleep? No. And then we just like right back and forth. They're like, I can't believe this is our lives. This is so crazy. Life is so crazy. And then GIF, GIF, GIF. Did you see this thing?

There's a thing about turtles on Channel 9. Yeah. Forensic Files is on. That's it. That's our life. Okay. It's, you know what's gross? To be sweating with wet hair.

It's not a, it's like not a good combination. That is a worse feeling. To forget the thing where like you look fine and then you lift your bangs and it's like wet bangs. Yeah. And I also have the thing where like as a, as a, a, the palest type of person, my scalp just wants to burst through my hair at any given moment. So it always is like, is her hair wet?

Is it greasy? Is she balding? What's, why is it not good up there? So like as we were standing backstage and they're like, you have about three minutes and I was just like, okay, I'll just keep brushing my hair over and over and pretend that's drying my hair. Oh God. No, I get it.

That's why my hair isn't a fucking ponytail right now. Look. Listen. Why can't we stop saying that? This is the most time we've said that live. What? What? I don't know.

Look, I think we're going to do a great show. I think so too. I think we have. I think we have. Thank you. If we can just, if you don't mind us taking a private moment after you've paid and waited to come and see this and we'll just have a conversation with ourselves. What I think is great is really anything's possible now because we're not bound by the

strictures of society, I don't know what I'm saying. You know, space time continuum doesn't exist in Norway, right? You don't have it here. You guys don't, you guys are granted immunity from time hopped over here. And now we are in a, we're all in a space together and we're about to discover what it's like to talk about true crime in a comedic way. By the way, if you came here with a person who loves this podcast and you've never heard it before and you're kind of a grump in general, like people would describe you as a grump.

If you cross your arms a lot, your first reaction is always, I don't think so. We're going to need you to get the fuck out because this is a very, the back half of the room leaves. Wait. We didn't mean it. No, no, no. We'll win you over. My pajamas.

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cold blooded killers you hear about in the news. I have decades of experience as a psychiatric nurse, FBI agent and criminal profiler. On killer psyche daily, I'll give you insight into cases like Ryan Grantham and the newly arrested Stockton serial killer. I'll also bring on expert guests to dive deeper into the details, share what it's like to work with a behavioral assessment unit at Quantico, answer some killer trivia and even host virtual Q&As where I'll answer your burning questions. Hey Prime members, listen to the Amazon music exclusive podcast killer psyche daily in the

Amazon music app. Download the app today. You win. I went first last night. So I go first. Tonight. Is that cool? You good?

Yes. All right. I think it'll be good. Okay, great. So we always talk about how when we go to other countries, even states in the US to tour, it's so fucking weird because you're like, what murder should I do and then just insane murder that everyone there knows and it's like their murder and you've never fucking heard of it.

It's really kind of awesome. Yeah. And so you guys have one that I hadn't heard of and then I looked into it and I was like, how are we all not talking about this everywhere? Love it. What a great start. This is the Isdall woman. They know it.

You guys. That's rad. You've been holding back on us. Can I just say, and God bless Dublin, we had two awesome shows, amazing kickoff in Dublin, but both nights, both times I was like, and now I'm going to do Billy in the bowl. And that's what it sounded like. Nothing. Not even laughing.

Just. And then one girl. Yeah. Just happy for her. She felt bad. She felt bad. That was, that was a cousin of mine. She's like, we are all proud of you, Karen.

So I love it. Um, yeah. So once I started looking into this, I was like, well, fuck that. What's the one guy's name that I did before? Uh, you know that guy. Nope. You know. Uh, okay.

It has, I'll remember it. Was he on this tour? Nope. Oh, he was a, you're saying in the hundreds of episodes we've done. One of the guys I did. Oh, it was the something man. What was that man? No one yelled at me.

I'm pointing out the audience. Oh, the Australian guy? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's got, it's got whisperings of this. Okay.

And when I went to look to study this, there is currently a podcast going on. That's like, we're going to fucking solve this motherfucking case. Yes. It's good. It's a Norwegian journalist. Oh, here's what we need to do. Oh yeah. This is important.

Actually. I forgot this. This is key. You two from Norway? No, great. You are. Okay. And so everyone's going to want to scream at us when we get every word wrong.

And it's going to be a lot. Like you guys got to give us a little room for this one. Nope. Let's not anticipate something negative. Okay. We'll anticipate the positive, but then if something bad happens, what's your name? Cecilia. Cecilia.

Wait. Are you Norwegian? No. That sounded like an Irish accent to me. Uh-oh. Karen Suspect. Uh-oh. Uh-oh.

Oh, this whole thing just turned. Cecilia, you're the one that's going to say the name properly after we say it wrong. Were you lying? Can you do it? Can you do it? Okay. Hold on. Are you on some kind of a hallucinogenic drug right now that might impede your ability?

We'll make it better. Just a tiny bit. A tiny bit's fine. Yeah, that's fine. We can interpret. We all are. We've been pumping it into the theater. Oh, and also, if we say something that is factually incorrect and everyone in the room

knows it and feels uncomfortable for us, please just put your hand up. We'll call on you, Cecilia, and then we'll go to you for facts. But we have nothing but positive. We have nothing, but we think we're going to... Love for you, baby. Yeah. Okay. Norwegian journalist, Merritt Higraff.

That's... Yeah? Uh... It's your name, Cecilia. Anyone named Cecilia here can do it. You're opening it up to the Cecilias of the room. The Cecilias, what if everyone in here is named Cecilia? You don't know?

I don't know. Okay. And documentary maker Neil McCarthy, they're doing a podcast about this called Death in Ice Valley, and they want to do the DNA testing and all the crazy stuff. Wow. So it's cool. But it's a great story. I mean, it's a fucking tragic, sad, great story.

They know. They get it. Which is what the podcast is called. Yes. It's a tragic, sad, great, fucking story. A fucking tragic story. Yeah. Yeah.

So the story of the Isdal Woman, it's been one of Norway's biggest mysteries for almost 50 years. In the morning of November 29th, 1970, let's all go there, a professor and his two daughters, age 10 and 12, were going for a morning hike in a remote spot in the Isdalen Valley, Bergen, Norway. I got it. I think I fucking got it. Nope.

We can't see her face. We can't see her face. We can't see the subtleties of her expression. No. Then I'm going to assume I got it. Yeah, the valley is known to locals as a death valley because that's so many suicides happen there and because people die there. Okay.

Just trust. So, trust. Death valley. Okay. We have one of those too. Yeah. Yeah. But it's just really hot.

Just hot. Yeah. And in the 1960s, some hikers had also fallen to their deaths while trekking in the fog, which is like, oh, God, stay at home, you know? This is what happens when you leave the fucking house. Right. You just walk off cliffs. Don't you realize fog is waiting around every corner?

That's right. Okay. So that morning, the two fucking daughters, 10 and 12, find hidden between some rocks, kind of like tucked in between some rocks. The girls stumble upon the remains of a badly burnt body. The family runs back to town to call authorities. I guess it's like an hour though, I think, an hour trek to back to town. Did they run on foot?

I don't know if they ran. I just put that word in. I don't know if they ran. It's a good visual of a family running together to solve a crime. That's right. They go back to town, they call authorities. The body is that of a woman, and she's lying on her back, and the front of her body is badly burnt, making her face unrecognizable.

And the police lawyer, who's one of the first officers to be on the scene, Carl Havelor, A-A-S? What's the... Oh, ooze. Ooze. Not even... was that like a telephone, but it went just completely... say it again? Oh, it's us. It's us.

Okay. This show is going to last four and a half hours. FYI. FYI? How do you say that? Pwee. Pwee. He said it looked like she had... it was like she had thrown... it was like she had thrown

herself back from a fire, looked like that, but there wasn't a fire going on. And she was also found out of the way, it was an unusual place to be, it wasn't like she had just been hiking. And also, side note, the little girls back in the 1970s, who were that young, they still won't talk about it at all to anyone. They said that they... 40 years plus years later, it psychologically affected them so much that they're just keeping it within the family.

I'm sure. Not talking about it. Well, I bet there's something to it where it's like, I can't think of the correct word, but like that experience, it's us. They don't just want to go on TV and be like, yeah, so anyway, it's not... that's not how it is for them. So like, all of the media that comes to interview people of like, what happened? What did it feel like?

Where it's like, they don't fucking know how it felt like there were 10 and 12. But it also like, that does something to make the curiosity even bigger for the media. So they probably hound them more than they would if they were like, we're giving one fucking interview and that's it, to like, get Oprah over here immediately. Well, and also because they're little, so it's like even more salacious. Totally. So the case becomes more mysterious by what was found at the scene. So weird.

There's a dozen or more pills are found along with a pack lunch, an empty bottle of, and I found out what it was, St. Halvard's liquor, liqueur, giggling, don't fucking giggle. Two plastic bottles that smelled of petrol, a burnt passport, a broken umbrella, and a silver spoon with the monogram filed off. What? That sounds like a board game. If I've ever heard it, sorry. That's crazy.

The body is surrounded also by jewelry, a watch, nylon stockings and a burnt rubber boots. The labels of the bottles had been scraped off. The tags of the clothes have been cut off and like looking like obviously to conceal her identity, and then when the press gets wind of her, the Jane Doe, they dub her the Isdal woman, because that's where she's found. The autopsy only added more mystery. Her cause of death was a combination of phenobarbital sleeping pills and carbon monoxide poisoning with smoke particles in her lungs.

So you gotta hope she died of inhaling the smoke before the fire, you know? There were around 50 to 70 sleeping pills found in her stomach, which hadn't yet integrated into her bloodstream. That's a lot. So she probably wasn't passed out when she was lit on fire. Sorry. Yes. Let me ask the worst question that you can't answer.

Yes. Okay. The medical examiner also found a large bruise on her neck. It may be caused by a blunt force, and the woman's fingerprints have been deliberately sanded away. This is an expert, this person, that's doing all this. Yes. Well, they were able to tell about her, though, was that she had numerous gold fillings and

caps and the dental work at the time they thought was associated with the Far East, Central and South Europe, or South America, indicating she wasn't a local, which I think is so interesting, like back then, that that's what they could do. Because people locally did not use that much gold in their fillings. Something. Yeah. That's the material they was. Did someone just drop a tuning fork?

Or is that our cue to get the fuck out of here? Yeah. You know what I mean? They couldn't tell by whatever dental procedures and whatever materials they use. Pretty cool. Anyways, after discovery of the body, police are like, let's trace this woman so we can find her fucking killers. The death was originally, and then the death, some people were like, it was a suicide, which

was like, you know, but, you know, I'm going to commit suicide. But first let me cut all the tags out of my clothes and sand my fingerprints off. Right. And then kill myself in possibly the most painful fucking way possibly. And especially when there's like cliffs, go just jump, okay, never mind. We won't suggest. No. Georgia told me, okay, after discovery of the body, I already said that, okay, the police

get the first clue to learning the identity when three days after the body is found, two suitcases are found at the Bergen train station nearby. The thought plickens inside. Did you do that on purpose? I did, and I love it. I don't ever say it correctly anymore. Inside of the suitcases, and they were hers, were clothes, a variety of wigs, a comb, hair brush makeup, money from Germany and Norway, coins from Belgium, Switzerland and the UK.

One of the suitcases had 500 Deutsch marks hidden within the lining. Ooh. Ooh. We've got a wig spy on our hands. Yeah. And don't forget, it's 1970s, so it's the fucking Cold War. Oh, right? I think so.

Yes. No one laughed, so. They're very polite people. They don't. Yeah. They put up with a lot of stupidity. This specific podcast. Yes.

The clothing suggested that she had a more provocative style, and I think it was like Italian garments and everything looked fancy and shit, is what they're saying. All the clothing had been scrubbed to fingerprints, and labels had been rubed. A tube of eczema cream was also found. Its prescription label had been removed. Inside one of the suitcases was a pair of non-prescription glasses, and it had a partial fingerprint on the lens, but it wasn't of any help. Or it belonged to her.

I can't remember. It was hard to tell based on writing. They wouldn't know, right, if it belonged to her. How would they know? Oh, yeah. Tell them. There you go. It's so much easier when someone's telling you a story to hear that stuff than when you're

the one doing it. Right. Where it's just like, what do you mean? Oh, that's obvious. I didn't, and I had just said that. There was another item found in one of the suitcases that stood out. It was a legal pad, and it was written in code, various letters and numbers. They cracked the code, and it corresponded with the woman's stays in different cities.

So she's tracking where she's going. But writing in code. And with wigs. Well, I do that, too. You love your wigs. And I'm an international spy. Oh, shit. What if this was my cover?

That's our TV show. Stephen, podcast spies. Podcasting spies. And we just spy on other people who do good research on their podcasts. And we kill them so that we're the only ones who... No, that's mine. The spy who podcasts. Yeah.

There you go. Yes, we've done it. That's the title. For now. Wait. You got it. Okay. Legal pad.

Code. The codes couldn't be cracked. They were cracked. And it was where she was staying. She also had multiple passwords and registered at different hotels under different identities. So clearly she's a fucking spy, right? You don't put money in the lining of your suitcase if you're not... If you're just messing around for fun.

No. No. Also, you'd forget it was there. Yeah. I would absolutely be like, I could have sworn I took $300 out of the bank. Now, which suitcase did I put that in? Did I sew it into the lining of? Okay.

Then they find a plastic bag advertising a shoe store in Stavanger. I can tell I'm not right because you're laughing at me. Help us. Stavanger. What? Stavanger. Stavanger. Thank you.

Stavanger. Stavanger. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

Yep. Stavanger. We're not making fun. I swear to God. We... We have no idea what's going on. I know. I got it.

All I need to do is get it once. That's right. You know? I need to get it seven times. And it's not my story. And you need me to repeat it, even though I'm not going to get it right again. Um, so in Stavanger, thank you Cecilia. Stavanger is so amazing.

I knew that would pay off one day. I knew suffering through living with her would pay off one day. The Sends owner, Rolf, remembers selling a pair of rubber boots to a very well-dressed nice-looking woman with dark hair. And she came into the store trying to decide which rubber boots an umbrella to buy. You think she'd be a little more like, you know, I'm getting that and that. So she'd like, he wouldn't remember her, but also she was hot. What's up?

Well, because there is this television show, I'm not sure if you guys have gotten it over here yet because it's American and it's new. It's called Good Behavior and it's with, right? It's with the woman from Downton Abbey, Lady Mary. And she is like a con artist in America and it's the A, it's the best show, but B, her whole thing is, first of all, she's all about those wigs. She's got like 25 wigs, but also she does exactly the opposite where she goes in and kind of dazzles people.

And so she's like, makes friends with everybody and does a character. And then they remember her, but as a different person. So she's like... The details are all... Everyone has a different detail. Exactly. She has like a Southern accent and a little blonde bob. And then when she's walking back through with long black hair, nobody notices her.

Except everyone in real life is like, that's a fucking wig. Like ever you can tell. No, you can't. I'm kidding. It's true because wigs, the top of it is just a tiny bit higher than a normal scalp is. Just a tiny bit higher. Quite dense, not like my hair. No one would ever guess that we're wearing wigs, that's what I'm saying.

I wore a wet wig out here for you guys. Oh, she picked her wet wig tonight. That's nice. That's so 80s. Okay. And then he helped her, he recalled she was calm, seemed to be from another country, and that she smelled, and I feel like this just describes me, a strong scent, possibly garlic. So she just had Italian lunch?

Which I had today too, and I picked the garlic out and ate it. Seriously. Or what if she had some kind of garlic perfume. Oh, and she wanted him to get paid attention to that and not that she had her name tattooed on her forehead or whatever. Don't look at this. According to multiple witnesses who saw her or met her, she seemed well-traveled, confident, fashionable, elegant, and spoke several languages, including English, Dutch, French, German, etc.

Oh, this website's fired. And then just, it's the rest of all the languages that everyone speaks in the world. Pick one. Although, and she did speak poor English and German, but her fluency in European languages made her, they seemed that she was European, I mean, just follow the trail. Okay. With the release, they released a composite sketch throughout the world, hoping someone to recognize her, describe her as 25 to 40, five, four, long black or brown hair, small

round face, brown eyes, small ears, and that she wore her hair tied back with a blue and white ribbon. So, God, I just keep hitting myself in the face with this microphone. So, I just want to acknowledge that we're sure seeing this, I know. Consummit professionals. I also keep hitting the table. Please help me. It's just like, it was in a loop.

Yeah, I could do that. Isn't that funny? Stop it. Just do like, no, no. Perfect. Perfect. Okay, sorry. Okay, they track her movements to Norway that show that she was staying in three different

hotels in March of 1970 under two different false names, which is like, I can't keep track of my own fucking name. Seven months later, after being out of the country, apparently, she returns and in the span of a month stays at another six hotels with six more false identities, and that she was known to request rooms with balconies and would change rooms often, which I think is like, not conspicuous. I don't like this room, give me another one. It's kind of a diva move, too.

Just be like, I'm sorry, this room isn't good enough. Can you give me the exact same room three doors down? Yeah. Because they're all exactly the same. Yeah, or someone is hunting me and I need to keep changing rooms over and over again. That's what, I think that's what the point was. Maybe you should say the point at the top of the paragraph for me. Well, I think we're all going, okay, let's all go and let's imagine she's an international

spy and every weird thing she does is because she's an international spy. I didn't mean to be condescending. Yes. However, I, this, then I get you. However. However, from last night, you throwing me out of the best. So hard, you guys. I turned the Dublin audience on Georgia in a way that was kind of a podcast ender.

It was. I screamed. What the fuck, Karen? I didn't mean it. It just kind of weird. She told them I didn't fucking know that, that Ireland wasn't part of the UK, which I absolutely do and never didn't before that day. That's not true.

Steven, make me go back to high school. Uh, I mean elementary school. We all are. Okay. Fuck. Okay, where was I being condescending and changing hotel rooms, changing hotel rooms. And at several places, she left a standing order that like every morning she wanted porridge with milk.

Hmm. I don't know why I like that so much. She's, she's a bear. She's spitball. We're spitballing ideas in a way we normally don't. Keep up Cecilia. Come on. She signed hotel bills with the occupation of antique dealer, the last hotel, hotel she

stayed in, she checked out and then departed in a taxi, which she paid for in cash six days before her body was discovered. And then they look through her luggage, they find a postcard belonging to an Italian photographer and they're like, this is a clue, right? That had to be exciting. He had dined with her at a hotel in Lohan, Lohan, Lohan, she, she goes, I think I was pretty close. She just said it.

She goes, what? Are we bothering you or like you want to do this, right? No, she's like, I just wanted to come and watch this. I don't think she's even know those podcasts, right? She's like, the mushrooms are just hitting right now. Turn them over. Okay. Lohan, Norway, but he could only remember a few dates, details of their interaction,

even though he had gone to like dinner with her and shit. Liar. He, he claimed to be from, he claimed that she, he said that she claimed to be from South Africa and had quote, six months to see Norway's most beautiful places. In every wig in her suitcase. Her, is all women's remains are buried in February of 1971 and the authorities believe she might have a Catholic background. So they, they also, so the, it was, the investigator officers all attended and they took photographs

of the funeral. She was buried with lilacs and tulips and the priest called her quote, the unknown woman who was put, put to the grave in a foreign country without any family present. So that was 1971, decades fucking later in 2005, case goes cold, obviously, a Bergen native guy comes forward and he was like, oh, hey, I just saw the composite and I had this memory of 1970, which is like really, he's like, I was 26. And five days before the discovery of the body, he was hiking with friends and he noticed a clearly form, foreign woman hiking up the path.

They were coming back down. He said her clothing seemed to be unsuitable for hiking and looked like a, suited for a night in the city, which is like, judgy, you know. What would he think about these outfits in this scenario suitable for an on stage audience, suitable for laying all the way down. And she appeared to be terrified of two quote, Southern looking men walking not far behind her wearing black coats, like following her. As they passed her, she made eye contact and seemed distressed and tried to speak to him.

And then continued walking of the men, like wouldn't let her and kept her words herself. And then upon recognizing her from the composite sketch, he calls the police and they tell her, forget her, she was dispatched, the case will never be solved. So he's like, all right, I'll go back, I didn't tell you so long anyway. Wait, did they say that to him in 2005 or back in the day? You know what? Sorry. Wait.

Sorry. I bet it was. You know what though? I bet you're fucking right. I bet it was then. Do you think, because how could you pass a person on a, on a trail that's giving you the old, as they pass with two fucking dudes and black coats behind and just be like, well, that's hiking for you.

God, nature out here is nuts, the things that happen. Like you would have to do something, right? I bet, I bet she's right. So she's right. She shrugged. So she, yes. You have to make the call. You are a key piece of this show.

Cecilia, you're breaking my heart. I'm screaming at her so she picked me. Okay, great. Okay. So the theory, leading theory is that the Isdal woman was a spy who had been murdered, possibly connected to Russia in the Cold War. Okay. What was happening?

And so the case was recently opened in 2016, 46 years after the body was found and they're hoping modern technology will identify her and her jaw was found preserved because it had all of those weird feelings and they're like, this is, we're going to need this. And they, in 2016, a DNA profile was obtained and handwriting analysis was done on the code, which I think is so fucking cool, suggesting a European, possibly French origin. And in 2017, isotopic analysis of her teeth revealed that she was, she probably spent her early childhood in Central or Eastern Europe, but spent her adolescence farther West. So that's fucking interesting.

From teeth? I know. What are they going to say about my teeth? I mean, it would make you feel good to see if these teeth were, these were some teeth. But they were, as David Sedera's French dentist says, they're good time teeth. I've broken a, I've broken each front tooth on a bottle because I've lived my life. What? Did you hear that noise?

They just made at me. Oh no. You should try partying hard that, so hard that chance sometime, it's fun. And you're wearing pajamas. Oh no. Oh no. Is she okay? The researchers, okay, they think that she moved between childhood and adolescence.

And they still don't know the age at the time of death, but some indicates, indications would suggest that she may have moved just before or during World War II, which is fucking cool. And they still hope to find, so they, they buried her in a zinc coffin back in 1971, specifically so that she wouldn't decompose. No. Because they're like, someday someone will be able to fucking identify this woman. Who was the mayor at that, that's so genius.

Yeah. But that's, we finally get to tell a story of like the most brilliant police and authority is worth. That's so awesome. Yeah. Congratulations. Yeah. Good job, Norway.

Your number one. Yeah. It's amazing. Police still want to find the woman's family so they can have a proper burial for her. And the reason they took those photos at, at the burial, they made a photo album so that her family can have it one day. Oh. Why is this country so considerate?

I don't know. We're staying, can we say? And that is the fucking is-all woman, you guys. Wow. That's amazing. Thank you. Legit amazing. Thank you.

It's so fascinating. I think it was an Italian photographer. We met real Italians last night in the VIP line. The guy kissed me on this cheek and then he kissed me on this cheek like a movie. It was the best. I literally said that he's, he said hello and I could tell he had an accent. So I asked him where I was from and he said Italy. And I went, you're real Italians right in his face.

Like a goddamn idiot. He said to me, he, he like whispered, he was like, I got it. You were talking to his wife and he was like, I got to tell you guys how to do this murder from Italy. Tell it to me, don't tell Karen because I want to do it. And I wrote it down and he was like explaining it to me like really broken in like a thick Italian accent. And the way he told me, he's, he, I have never heard about mutilated genitals in the most

like sweet, lovely way. And they like the most like respectable way of telling me what he, the guy did. And I was like, wow, you, you should be a newscaster. You should be like, I didn't need to go that far into the case. Yeah. Well, I'm going to do the black metal murders. Oh. Oh shit.

Pandering. Pandering. God, I'm sorry, but there was like a half-second pause that scared the shit out of me on that. You guys. Well, take me a minute too. We're doing the fucking, the best stuff on the show, aren't we? Yeah.

So there was a guy in the VIP line last night into an Irish guy that was like, have you heard of the black metal murders? I was like, shut your mouth. Oh yeah. I, I heard you yelling at him, but I didn't hear it. Screamed. I screamed in his face. It was fun.

That's how I bond with listeners. Some guy in the VIP, sorry, this is the last story I said to me, you couldn't, you were, you couldn't be more Georgia if you tried in person. And I was like, thanks. It's true. You are so Georgia. I am. So the information I got from the story, I got from a very good podcast called Disgrace

Land. Oh yeah. And Disgrace Land, he does stories about musicians and bands and fucked up shit that happens in the music world, but they're really short. His podcasts are like 20 minutes long. I was like, how do you do this? It's like a snack. It's, yeah, it's really well produced, really good.

The host is named Jake Brennan. And so he covered black metal murders. So some of the more like deep divey stuff is from his, his 20 minute podcast, his 20 minute podcast where he does 10 times more research than I ever can. And some hours or two hours long. Yeah. Okay. So he had this interesting theory.

So just in, in starting that, that the, the rise of black metal in Norway. So like Norwegian black metal was the, like the sub genre of heavy metal music. And also if you are into metal music, I thoroughly apologize because I feel like you're going to be fucking livid at the end of the story. I, I've only been stuck in the backseat of cars from guys I went to high school with driving me around and blasting slayer. That's how I know metal. So I'm absolutely like so removed from this.

I'm going to pretend I know what I'm talking about as I always do, but I super do not on this one. But it, uh, Jake Brennan from disgrace land is talking about how, so Norway is one of the richest countries in the world and it's true. And you take the best care, uh, like for pensions and older people, like they, they put it all back into the community. It's, it's incredible. You guys would hate the U S it is every fucking man for himself.

Over there. Um, so one of his theories about the rise of Norwegian black metal was that, uh, the, the frustrated up, you know, that teenage angst that you have, um, but that in the eighties and nineties in Norway, teenagers didn't really have that much to rebel against. So like punk rock came out of like, you know, poverty in England and, you know, Brooklyn or whatever and people picking up, there's a garbage strike. So you pick up an old garbage bag on the street and suddenly that's your shirt. And then you put it, you know, you put a safety pin in your nose and you're like, fuck the

queen or whatever. And I'll make sense. I'll make sense. But in this scenario, because there's nothing to rebel against people, the people who want to be rebellious. And I absolutely empathize and understand to a degree, um, up to like listening to the gogos. That's, that's my level of rebellion.

It's really loud nasal singing all girl bands pop. I'm going to go to the dance mom anyway, that basically that they kind of had to dig deeper because the, the normal, um, heavy metal that they were served up, which is mega death and Slayer and Metallica and all those, they had all done what, um, you know, heavy metal music had done before, which is, you know, Satanism got introduced in early. That was like a Led Zeppelin thing that was there. It wasn't new. So basically they kind of looked at, it was like, how do we get more fucked up around

this music genre? And it's also very fascinating because I remember seeing, there was one of those, um, true crime shows that did this story and they opened up talking about, um, because one of the big bad things that happens at the beginning of the story is that all these 12th century incredible historic churches start getting burned all around Norway. Yeah. And they say that it's the, the idea is that instead of being like, oh, we're Satanists and the devil and like that isn't enough.

And what, what the, um, the, the goal became to attack Christianity directly. So it's not like, Hey mom, can you believe I'm a Satanist? It's like, no, we need to end that fucking oppressive religion that came into our country because we used to be pagans and we used to be, you know, Norse gods and all that shit. You know, you know what you're like, you know what you're like, you know how you are with your roots and your paganism and your Satanism and your environmentalism, which is a big part of it. You love the forest and you love a human sacrifice.

So God bless you all. Um, which I just think is a fascinating, uh, because yeah. So anyway, so it's just a fascinating like structure to set things up because oftentimes in these two crime things, it's like, can you believe these crazy assholes that we're just criminals? And it's like, no, everybody has a reason and everybody's kind of like, you know, so, okay, so we're going to start black. I'm already so tired and my hair is still wet.

It hasn't dried in any way. Um, so the black metal subgenre of heavy metal music was invented. I sound like your mom talking about heavy metal music. She does. It is so embarrassing. I like it. Um, it was black metal music was invented here in Norway. Some say on August 16th, 1987 with the release, yes, on the day of the release of the band

mayhem's first demo, death crush. Do you know I had a, I, I dated a metal dude in high school, like my first boyfriend. What was his name? His name was Chris Pratt, which is like, complicated. Uh, we met in rehab seriously. I saw him walking down the rehab hallway the day he got there and he had a slayer shirt on and the gnarliest goatee and long hair tied back in earrings and shit. And I was like, and he was fucking hot.

And I was like, damn. And then, uh, our song was a Slayer song. Did you slow dance to a Slayer song? No. Okay. No. Just F-U-C-K-E-D too. No, Vince.

No. No, Vince. No. No, I never did that. No. No premarital sex for you. Good girl. Go on.

I like, I have, I, there's a lot of comics that I started comedy with. They're super into metal music. And the funny thing to me is that they're deep down, they're super sensitive to the point where like, if you don't save them a chair at dinner, they'll leave the like storm out of dinner. Like, you knew I was coming where it's like, sorry, weren't you just worshiping Satan? No. No.

Now you're mad about dinner. What's, I can't track you. I'm tougher than you are. Okay. So. Okay. Mayhem's guitarist and the founder is a guy named Austin Arsuth. Great.

Go on. She's totally out. She's just not even playing anymore. She's sleeping. But he goes by the name Euronymous, uh, right? That's cool. They all have stage names. I'm going to call them stage names because I'm from the theater.

I mean, it is. They all rename themselves these names that I'm sure at the time we're very daunting and upsetting, but now I think are fucking hilarious. So. Well, you start calling me Euronymous. Yes. I will. Euronymous.

Um, okay. You know someone's, I'm sorry. You know someone's cat's name. Euronymous. In this theater. Yes. Yeah. Someone with a black cat named Euronymous and, uh, well, there's a year you're about

to hear. Okay. Yeah. At the end when you hear all these great things. Okay. Okay. I think Hill Hammer's coming up here somewhere. Oh, that would be a kitten named Hell Hammer.

Dude, no, there's like a little long haired kitten. Hell Hammer. Can I say one more fucking annoying thing? Please. No, always. There's also a Twitter account called black metal cats. What? That is like photos of cats looking tough and then a quote, a black metal lyric as the

tweet, like with the black metal cat. Yes. It's so hilarious. It's just like a cat walking through the forest and then it's like, seasons of death. Like it's the best. Okay. Okay. I'm done.

We got to look at that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Everybody feel free to pull out your phones and look at that right now. I don't care. Okay.

So, um, so Euronymous starts Mayhem in 1984 with his bass player whose name was John Stubberid. I don't care what his real name was. Okay. Because his fake name was Necro Butcher. Oh. Yes. Duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh,

duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. Thank you that hurt. Thank you. Necro Butcher. My instrument. I damaged my instrument. How do they, how do they do it? That's really, I am impressed by all metal bands.

They're the ones that do that because you're singing like the Cookie Monster for hours, hours at a time. Yeah. And you're not trained to do it that way. What do they are? They're like opera singers that have taken it in a different direction. Yeah. Okay.

So Necro Butcher and Euronymous start this fucking band. Everybody loves it. They're just like, this is the shit. And it's like the mid-80s. So it's very, very new. It's during the Cold War. We know. Right?

So the lead singer, I honestly just damaged my larynx. The lead singer is a 19-year-old named Per Olin. He moved to Norway from Sweden to join the band. And he and Euronymous were roommates and best friends. Oh, I don't think black metal dudes can have besties. Wikipedia says they can. R roommates and best friends. Phil Hammer, you can't come, it's just our night.

Stay home and take care of the kitten. Stay out of it, Necro Butcher. You're the kitten uncle. You need to stay home. Just loving cats. Okay. So Per, when he joins the band, changes his name to dead. Kind of love it.

I mean, it's simple. It's quick. It's clean. You know exactly what he's going for. It's kind of like performance already. Yeah. Dead. Well, he really does throw himself into it because before shows, he buries his clothes

under the ground. What? And then digs him up and puts him on so he's like a real corpse. I don't think he's like a real corpse. I think he just has dirty clothes. Well, he also was the first, they credit him in this scene with being the first to wear what they call corpse makeup, which is like not KISS, not Alice Cooper, but like the white and black where they're trying to actually look dead.

So dead did it first. Dead did dead. Before dead was dead. Dead the deadest. Got it. He also used to carry a dead bird around in a bag before shows and then inhale it so that he would have the smell of death in his nostrils where it's like, you will get Lyme disease. What are you doing?

But I feel like... That's what I do too backstage. What if I did that? Oh, Georgia. Vince, did you get Georgia, her bird? There's some places where you can only get a chicken. Just like a chicken breast in a bag. But it smells like death and that's what I need.

I love that idea. So much. Put it right into the script, Steven, of a podcasters... Oh, the podcasters show. The spy podcasters. The spy podcasters. We're going to do a chicken breast scene. Make sure they have two chicken breasts in case we both want one.

And of course, two brown bags that look like they're from the candy shop. Okay. When they would do their concerts, their live performance concerts, playing their instruments for each other, Dead would cut himself on stage. They would have pig heads on the stage. It was super fucked up. It was just a big fucked up contest who can be the more fucked up. And they were all winning.

Now what's interesting is, oh, and all of the members of Mayhem lived in an old house in the forest near Oslo, which is rad. Yeah, yeah. I bet it smelled so bad. The dead birds were piled around. There's like dirty, like soil encrusted clothing and then just dead birds. Okay. Oh, the host of Disgrace Land actually suggests that there is a chance that dead may have

actually been suffering from something called Cotter syndrome, which is a mental illness where people actually believe that they are dead, that their corpse is walking around and that they're putrefying. Wow. And it's a real syndrome that some people get. And he definitely had severe clinical depression. And I think that also is a lot of people were in this scene kind of like obviously rebelling that whole thing.

But then there's also, there's a coping aspect of it too, where it's like, you know, we all do it when you all get together and you're like, no, I'm the most fucked up. Oh yeah. Okay. So they move into the house in the forest, which I wish I could see a picture of. And Necro Butcher later says that they, after living together for a while, dead and Uranimus kind of started fighting. They weren't best friends anymore.

They got on each other's nerves a lot, apparently Uranimus would play synthesizer music and dead would get really mad and go outside. This was a fight they had once. He went outside, got mad, was like, pouting outside, but with corpse makeup on. And then Uranimus came outside and shot a gun up into the air. What the fuck? Well, you're mad. No, I'm shooting a gun.

It's the perfect solution. Sure. Oh, sorry, Hell Hammer is the one that told that story, Hell Hammer. You and I need to fucking up our fights. Yes. We have to get rifles. We'll talk about it later. Okay.

So, oh, and that at one point they claim, the band claims that once dead stabbed Uranimus with a knife because they were fighting. Okay. So then it, of course, turns even darker than Norwegian black death metal, black metal. On April 8th, 1991, dead commit suicide in his and Uranimus' forest home in the band house. And this is so fucked up, he slid his own wrists, then he cut his throat, then he shot himself in the head.

Jesus. And then he left a note that said, excuse all the blood. Cheers. Wow, dude. Yeah. Death metal to the end, man. He's, I think he was, yeah, I think, yeah. I think he just had very bad clinical depression and just didn't know what to do with himself.

So now let's go one step more fucked up, because this is just going to be as fucked up as it can be. When Uranimus finds dead's body, he doesn't call the authorities, he doesn't call anybody's family, he goes and buys a camera, and then he comes back and he takes pictures of the horrifying scene, and then he walks around and he collects pieces of dead's skull, and he later made necklaces out of those pieces of skull, and he would give them to different members of their clique, of like the local musicians who were in bands. And then he also took some brain matter so that he could eat it later, because he wanted,

everyone to know that he was a cannibal. Oh God. Fuckin' 19 year olds, man, they're so obnoxious. Not cool. Here's one step worse, later on in 1995, Mayhem used one of those pictures of the suicide scene as cover art for their live album, Dawn of the Black Hearts. Oh no. And I think that's supposed to be an ironic joke, that it was the live album, and the

cover is a fucking photo of a suicide. Of a guy named dead. Of a guy named dead. That's clever. The politest smattering of applause for that horrifying, God forbid there are staff members in this room right now. We're so sorry. We're so sorry.

We're so sorry. Okay, so this is, now we're getting the sense of how intense this scene is, and how devoted, and it's not just like, oh, I'm gonna get a tattoo, and smoke, and say fuck you. It's everybody is like, they're constantly accusing people of being posers. You have to like, you have to be really dedicated and show how fucked up you are, essentially. So, Euronymous opens a month after Dead commits suicide, Euronymous opens a record shop called Helvete. Okay, what?

I know it means hell. I didn't get to that part yet. I was trying to pretend I didn't speak Norwegian. What'd you say? Helvete. Yeah. Which means hell. Norway.

Oh, you stole her crowning line. That was my, you jumped the bit. So, that record shop, Helvete, becomes a meeting ground for all these black metal musicians, and they, the guys that begin to frequent the shop start to be known as the black circle. And one of the guys is a man named Varg Verkes. Varg. Varg Vittges. Wow.

We're gonna call him Varg from now on. Is that good? He's also, his stage name is Count Grishnak. Which sounds like Steve Martin is playing Dracula or something, doesn't it? This is a comedy. It sounds like you're, like your shop teacher, Mr. Grishnak, I don't want it. Mr. Grishnak, can I go to the restroom? I don't.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. So, Varg, he is actually this amazing musician. He was a one man. He had a band called Bursum, probably. And it was just him. He played every instrument or whatever.

So he, he was very well known and that band was very well respected in this scene. And so they get him to join the band after dead commit suicide. So, so then, then basically as they meet and they're hanging out, and it's this thing of like, they know what Euronymous did with the suicide scene and all the horrible fucked up shit. So everyone is trying to like, you know, beat everybody else. So people start desecrating graves and then the churches begin to burn. Now this was a year after dead suicide on June 6, 1992.

The Fantoft Stav Church. Oh, wow. Nice. Wow. It's so, it's, it was built in 1150. No, we don't, that's too old. It's so old and you, it looks like something from Middle Earth. It's amazing.

It's like, they rebuilt it, right? Yeah. It's really amazing looking, but it's like, it's got all these roofs. It almost looks like a pagoda in a way. Like it's, it's so fucking old. That's so insulting to them. No, I didn't. A pagoda looks like that.

They ripped it off from the Japanese easily. No, I didn't mean like that. But like when you, when you see it, you just go, nothing like that exists anymore. And these, this was the only, the one of the only ones left. Dicks. So, these guys who burned it, not you guys who built it, who has mad at them for building it. They're attacking people.

What dicks? Okay. Um, so of course the story, this church burning down is, it's like, you know, a national treasure. It makes, of course the news, um, and they find satanic symbols around the site. Nobody knows what's going on or why anybody would do that. Um, but of course the, the metals of the Norwegian, uh, black metal, metal scene too. And, uh, so, um, so then they see that that church got burned and they start burning all the churches and, uh, over 30 architecturally and historically significant churches around

Norway were destroyed in these arson fires. And one firefighter lost his life and tried to fight the blaze. So in January of 1993, um, two friends decide they're going to interview Varg and they're, they're, he wants to talk about the black metal scene. He wants to talk about the church fires and they're going to bring it all to the Norway's biggest, one of Norway's biggest newspapers, Bergen's Tidende. You committed. That wasn't it.

Was it? Bergen's Tidende, Bergen's Tidende, sorry, sorry, I stole your thunder. Do you have like an ear for Norwegian? I think I can hear better than you. Okay. I got to put my hearing aids on. I got to bring my hearing horn out. So they're like, okay, we're going to interview him and then we're going to bring this story

to Norway's, one of Norway's biggest newspapers, hoping they'll print it. And then of course, when they get this story, a journalist named, um, Finn Bjorn Tonder, he arranges an interview with them because they're like, we think we found out who has been burning these churches. So they have him come to, uh, an apartment and when he, when the journalist gets there, they tell him, if he ever, if he goes to the police about anything he's about to hear, they'll shoot him. Um, so then, but the paper's fine, but the newspaper's okay.

Yeah. It's like, they just can't tell details. He can't like report them or say who it is. So then Varg goes on to explain that he knows who burnt the churches. He's not saying he did it, but he might have done it, but other people did it. I don't know. I don't know. Give me credit, but also don't put me in jail.

Um, so he basically says the attacks are going to continue and he says, tells, um, the reporter, they're devil worshipers and quote, our intention is to spread fear and devilry. And that's why, uh, we're telling this to Bertelgenstedl didn't close. So, uh, later on in, in, uh, years later and other interviews, he actually said, he explains the Christians desecrated our graves are burial mounds. So it's revenge. If for each desecrated graveyard, one heathen grave is avenged and for every 10 churches burnt to ashes, one heathen half, which is a Norse pagan temple is avenged.

And for each 10 priests or Freemasons assassinated, one heathen is avenged. So he's fun. He's a good guy. Um, okay. So of course the journalist gets this story and it immediately becomes a front page story and the article, the article is titled, we lit the fires and there's a picture of Varg no holding two knives. His face is like slightly obscured, but it's like you promised.

You snitched on me to a newspaper as a journalist when I talk to you snitches get candy. Um, so, so basically Vargen, uh, your anonymous, they planned this interview. They wanted to scare people, they wanted to promote black metal and they wanted to get more customers to the record shop. You guys need to, you got to pick which direction we're going in. Like commerce and like fucking, or are you going to go that way? Well, and the sad thing is they did not see the, the huge return vinyl was going to make like they were so early in on that game and like now they'd be so rich.

Anyway, by the time the story hits the sands, Varg's already been arrested. Um, good. Yeah. So he claims, uh, oh, he claims, he claims that the journalist snitched on him, but the police are like, no, we actually found your home address on an old Bersam flyer. So he didn't exactly cover his tracks. Okay. So he's held in jail for six weeks.

The charges don't stick because of course there's no, um, evidence that it directly ties him to any of these church fires. And so he's released. Um, but during those six weeks that he was in jail, um, in January of 1993, Euronymous closes the record shop because they've, they've gotten such intense media, negative media attention and pressure. So Varg gets out of jail, like I did it. I took the hit for the team because we're, and that's like clothes, shades pulled.

Um, and of course he's lived. And so are all the members of the black circle cause they don't have a cool clubhouse to go to and fucking talk about their feelings. What if they just went there and talked about their feelings? So many less churches would have burned down. It was like just group therapy. Yeah. I'm just sitting in a circle like, I guess I just liked to rock because my dad was mean.

Yeah. Okay. So, oh, and somewhere in there, Euronymous also started his own record label because all these bands started. Yeah. Yeah. Of course, popping up everywhere. All right.

Right. So, so him closing that it was basically like he was kind of the king of the scene, but then nobody really, they didn't want that. They wouldn't want any one guy to be in charge and they, there was a lot of, you know, I guess struggling for power or whatever. So tensions are building, evil feelings, satanic, bad vibes. Um, it all leads up to the night of August 10th, 1993, when Varg goes over to Euronymous's place with a guy named Snore.

Now, that's the best, that's his actual, that's not his stage name. That's his working name. That's his given name, Snore. Okay. And I like it so much. I forgot to write down his stage name. It's just, I was like, Snore, this is the best. So it's like, I imagine like, you know, Snow White in the seven doors is like, he looks

like sleepy cause it's Snore. Okay. They get into a disagreement with Euronymous. Um, at first they say it's about royalties for old Bersam recordings that Euronymous isn't giving them through the label. Like it's basically a money fight, but Varg ends up stabbing Euronymous 23 times, 16 of those wounds were in his back. And still Varg claims it was self-defense.

So he's arrested nine days later, and when he's arrested, police find 150 kilograms of explosives and 3,000 rounds of ammunition in his home. Holy shit. Yes. So come to find out that Varg had other plans going on. And what he was going to do, and he was actually on the verge of doing, was blowing up the radical leftist anarchist space in Oslo called Blitz House. He was going to blow that up and he was basically on the verge and, but he knew Euronymous didn't

want him to because Euronymous deep down, they said was a communist. So he was like, he would have been, I don't know, I don't understand Wikipedia sometimes. I just cut it and I pasted it, but, but essentially it didn't line up Euronymous with Euronymous's true politics. And so, so he wouldn't have approved. And so, but then when they ask Varg himself, he says that he had the explosives and the ammunition in order to defend Norway in case they were attacked by the United States or the Soviet Union.

Sorry. Because it was still the Cold War. What? You have questions? Questions and comments. Questions and comments. When they asked Varg, he told them, but he, because he was alive still. Yes.

Varg stabbed Euronymous to death. I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I was somewhere else. Record store owner? Yeah. You know, yeah. I heard it the other way around. Okay. Okay.

So there's a lot of names in the story and many of them don't attach to a real person like Hellhammer. Who is that? The picture at Hellhammer, like what would a Hellhammer look like? Okay. Well, you know what's actually fun is you can click on the names to like when I was trying to find out who the original bass player for fucking Mayhem was. That's how I spent my time today.

And it came up on that guy's page and he's like a 52-year-old dude playing the bass with nothing, he just looks like, na na na na na, blah blah blah blah, like he's having a great time. Like this is just a thing, he got out very quickly and it was just like, you guys are way too intense. I just want to jam.

I just wanted to drink some Loan Brows and kick back. Yeah. So yeah, it's, yeah. So essentially, Varg thought that either the United States or the Soviet Union was going to attack Norway and he wanted to get ready for it, because in his words, we have no reason to trust either the government, the royal family,

or the military because of what happened the last time we were attacked. So, you know, he's got a point. At his trial, it was claimed that Varg, Snor, and another friend, Plebe, just to make sounds, had planned the murder together and that the third person, the third friend, stayed at the apartment in Bergen as an alibi

and to make it look like they never left. So he was using Varg, he was renting movies, using Varg's credit card and basically creating a paper trail so it looked like Varg was somewhere else. So it was clearly premeditated. It was not, I went over there to ask for money and then we ended up getting in a fight and it was self-defense where I stabbed somebody

in the back 16 times. On May 16th, 1994, Varg was sentenced to 21 years in prison, which is the maximum penalty in Norway, and he was charged with the murder of a Euronymous and the arson of three churches of which I cannot say the names. The attempted arson of a fourth and for the theft of 150 kilograms of explosives, from where?

I know, they need to fucking lock that shit up a little better. Like a padlock, at the very least. One of those ones from junior high. Yeah. Just don't give away the code. Don't tell anyone that it's your birthday. What?

One, two, three, four. When they read that sentence, Varg was smiling because he rocked till the very end. And in February of 1993, the Norwegian magazine Rock Fjord. Sure. Is it out of print? Everyone's like, we never got that magazine. It was not good.

Though they published an interview where Varg said of the prison system, it's much too nice here. It's not hell at all. In this country, prisoners get a bed, a toilet, and a shower. It's completely ridiculous. I asked the police to throw me in a real dungeon and also encourage them to use violence.

What? There is a chance that if things had gone a little bit differently for Varg, he would have just been really into S&M. And like Dungeons and Dragons and shit. Like it could have gone real light and easy for him. What's interesting then is, cause I thought I had saw something about this.

I looked it up, Norwegian prisons. I bet they're fucking nice. The most luxurious in the world, but they've won design, stop it. Hold my hand. They've won design awards. What? What?

But, Norwegian criminals demonstrate the lowest rate of re-offending in Europe, if not the world. So, yes. You guys, quit showing off. You do it all right. I just love that idea where it's just like, it doesn't work that way. You can't just punish people into the ground

and be like, yeah, I get it now. Now I'm happy that you've kicked my face into the dirt. Yeah. You guys keep setting examples and we keep going. Yeah, but we don't think so. Yeah. Where America is like, oh, we'd like to privatize our prisons.

And so everyone can make money. Oh, let's not get into it. Hey, let's. The real horror show. So, it turns out deep down in what's happening. So Varg got out of prison in 2009. Oh, is he here? He might be in listen, sir, the count.

But it turns out he basically, at the end of the day, he was a white supremacist. Oh, okay. And that's what all of his, he called it, I believe he said it's odalism, which was, he didn't like the label of white supremacist or Nazi. Oh, you don't get to pick it, dude.

Well, he's very independent spirit. Oh, okay. And he likes to call the shots. Okay. He says, odalism lies in paganism, traditional nationalism, racism, and environmentalism. This is the first time those have been named together. I mean, that's the festival I don't want to go to ever.

What have you had that, just picture the shirt from the festival and it's like a globe and it says those four things that are around it and there's a heart in them. People walking towards you are like, hey, uh, oh, uh, what? Yes. Also, this is just, I'll end it with this fun fact.

Varg had never in his life used alcohol or recreational drugs. That's the problem. That was all sobriety talking. Oh man. That whole time. So that's the black metal murders of Norway. That was so fascinating.

Awesome. Thank you. That was real fun. That was fun. It was really sweating during that. Oh yeah. I was sweating too during mine. Between the pronunciations and being judged by metalheads,

I was just like, I don't want, why did I do this to myself? We really put ourselves at risk on this podcast. Every goddamn day for you people. I think we have time for a quick hometown. Yeah, let's do it. Can we have the lights up if possible, just so we can see everybody?

If there's a... Karen's going to tell you the rules while the lights get... Well... Oh God. Oh, look at this. It's gorgeous in here. Oh my God.

Look at those white fixtures. Jesus. I'm wearing pajamas. I'm wearing pajamas. I'm wearing pajamas. I'm wearing pajamas. You guys. You guys.

You guys. You guys. You shouldn't have. Okay, hometown rules. Okay. We want it to be local, so please don't tell a story and then be like, I'm from Arizona,

because no one gives a shit about that stuff. You can be drunk, but you can't be so drunk that you can't follow your own story. That's key. It'd be great if it had an ending, or some kind of a button to wrap it up, give us some satisfaction of some kind.

It's just good for storytelling in general. And just remember that everybody who didn't get picked hates your gut, so you need to move it along. Okay. Okay, oh, I'm picking... Are you picking an egg? No, no, you do it. Okay.

Don't panic. I'm panicking. Oh, here's Vince. Here's Vince with the mic. Thank you. There he is. There he is. Okay.

Okay. Hi. Hi. What's her name? I'm Sandra. Sandra? Look at her cute dress. Hi.

What's your name? I'm Sandra. I'm Sandra. Sandra. I'm just Sandra. She said, I'm Sandra, but... I'm really nervous. Me too, me too.

Okay. Sandra. Sandra. Your dress is amazing. I love it. Any pockets on there? Yes, good. Please take a look.

No pocket, no pocket. I'm very disappointing, but it is my favorite dress. Yeah, it's really good. Sandra, where are you from? I'm from Burrigan. Okay, great. We talked about it all night. You talked about us a lot today.

Yeah, yeah. There's a lot going on up there, down there. I love it. Over there. Up there? Down. Down. Started strong.

What? It's your hometown. So I was on a train with two murder brothers, and I got them thrown off the train. Yay! Me and my sister, we were going on a weekend trip here for a convention. And...

How long ago was it? It's a couple years, five, six years ago. And then one of the stops, two people got on, and at first we were like, okay, they're obviously drunk, but you know, you do you. Thank you. It's really nice. From Alcoholics, I want to say thank you.

It's really nice. And it's a six, six and a half hour long train ride. So as the train ride was going along, they got restlessly more drunk and more annoying. And at one point I went to the bathroom, and when I came back, one of them was yelling in my sister's face, and my sister has autism, so she was panicking.

And I just pointed at him and go, hey, you stopped that. Yes. Yes. Wait, Sandra. Can I ask what you do for a living? At the time, I was working in an office. Right now, I work at a Toys R Us in Birmingham. Perfect.

And I'm a take no shit, but do no harm kind of person. Never. God bless. And he was looking at me like he wanted to murder me, but I was like, that's my sister, so fuck off. And then I went to one of the people working at the train, and I was like, they're drinking, and they're in people's faces, you need to get them off.

And she was like, okay, we're going to call the police, but the thing about the stops on the train from Bergen to Oslo, not all of them have police stations that can handle drunk people. So we had to wait for about an hour before they were thrown off the train. And then when finally the train stopped, they just panicked.

They started running, and the police was running, and my sister was crying, and I was like, okay, it's going to be fine, it's going to be fine. We're going to Oslo, and it's going to be fine. And then we went to the convention, it was fine, and then we came back, and then a week later, my mom called me while I was at work at the office, and she was like, remember those two guys

who got thrown off the train to Oslo? I was like, yeah, they murdered someone. What? Oh, they stabbed someone multiple times, and it was right across from the street when my mom worked. That's why she knew about it. So did it happen before or after they were injured? It happened like literally a few hours

before they got on the train. Holy shit. So I pointed at a murderer, and I was like, hey, you stopped that! Yeah! Sandra! Oh my god! That's right, you did.

So naturally, I was like, okay, but they're going to come murder me now, so... Yeah, yeah. Yeah, start locking my doors. No, they got arrested, and they got the 21-year-old sentence, which I think is too low, because they did murder someone, and he was a person, most people are.

But yeah, thankfully, they got the jail time, so not worrying too much now anymore, but back then, I was like, yeah, okay, maybe... Maybe start wearing like an alarm and pepper spray. Pepper spray, the motherfuckers. That is amazing! That's all I got. So good. Great job!

Great job! That's how you do it! Thank you so much. Sandra, everybody! CHEERING Yay! Hell yeah! Such a good dress.

Such a good dress. Knocked it out of the park. That's what we like, is like, yes. Our hometown person was dressed better than both of us. I know! Can we trade outfits real quick? LAUGHS Oh, that was amazing.

Oh my god. Fucking Oslo! You guys, that was so fast! That felt so fast. Yeah. I want to say, like, we were walking off of the plane today when we got to Oslo, and we were just both, like, in this thing, and I turned to you and go,

what's this fucking life? And it's so true, because it never in my life did I think I would ever get, like, come to Norway and come to Oslo, and this is so crazy that this podcast that I'm absolutely obsessed with and love, because it's this topic that means so much to me, because that's all I want to do is talk about it, has brought us here.

I'm so happy, we're so fucking thankful for you guys, and everything you've done for us, it's amazing. And, Fidget, just thank you for buying tickets, for supporting, for listening. I mean, when are the agent that set up this tour, when he started talking about, like, Oslo and Stockholm and Amsterdam, I was like, they don't want this there. LAUGHS

Let's not bother those people. They have their brown bread and their herring. They don't need our bullshit. And I think I just, we were so nervous that, I don't know what we were fucking nervous about, but this has been such a beautiful night, and such an incredible, like, it's so nice to be, feel so connected with you guys.

Like, what an exciting thing. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE What an exciting thing. But even in Oslo, we have... LAUGHS People in a country all the way around the world listen to George and I record personal conversations we have about serial killers on her couch at home.

It's incredible, so thank you. Not even the couch that has old cat barf. Oh, you don't know about that. We're laying it all on the table in Oslo. Yes, thank you for being so accepting of our clothes and appearance and our non-professional demeanor. And please stay sexy. And don't get murdered!

Bye-bye, you guys!