My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 184 - Weighted Blanket

Episode Date: August 22, 2019

Karen and Georgia cover The Doodler and the deaths of Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon.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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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is exactly right. We at Wondery live, breathe, and downright obsess over true crime. And now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C, on Facebook and listen to true crime on Wondery and Amazon Music. Exhibit C, it's truly criminal. Hello. Hello.
Starting point is 00:00:43 You tricked me. I surprised you. Welcome to my favorite murder, the podcast, where we go over true crime cases that have happened in the history of man, starting from the pro-magnant period, all the way up through the Bible and beyond. You know the important parts. You know the ones you, those ones you like. That's what we're here to talk to you about and teach you.
Starting point is 00:01:09 Yeah. Yeah, we teach you. There's so much teaching. Get your notepad out. Oh. There'll be a quiz on this. Oh my God. Write down this info.
Starting point is 00:01:17 We call it quote unquote information, because who knows if it's true or real. We don't for sure. You know what's funny? We're not going to check. Why would that be a part of it? I actually had kind of like a weird recovered memory the other night of the live show where I talked about the murderer who was keeping all the bags of leaves in his house. When you were like, how come I didn't read this one?
Starting point is 00:01:41 I'm like, I don't know, because it's brand new, like full confidence. It was like a 12-year-old story. There's those ones that I think about sometimes. The mistakes we've made and the paths we've traveled, but we just keep tripping. Because guess what? You're my favorite mistake. Thank you. You're welcome.
Starting point is 00:02:00 Me? No. Oh. What else do you need to know? Me? Nothing. No, not you. I look at you, but I'm asking America.
Starting point is 00:02:10 I get how this works. And beyond. Nothing. Oh. Damn it. Not one thing. I can't figure this out. Our improv is off this week.
Starting point is 00:02:19 We haven't been rehearsing. No, but still and. We're no butting instead of it. I'm still anding. Isn't it still and? I'm still anding. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:02:29 Can I just say? This is the episode where we get sued for too many music. Did you watch the... Touching your hand. Did you watch the Elton John biopic? I have not seen that movie yet. Okay. You know how I hate movies and I'm a bad person to watch TV with because I yell? Right.
Starting point is 00:02:48 I was talking. I loved it. And I loved the biopic of Freddie Mercury with What's His Face. Yeah. Rami Malek. Rami Malek. And I hate movies and I hate biopics. They're so easy to make fun of.
Starting point is 00:03:01 Yeah. But I wasn't gross. You know, it's funny. My sister who never gets to see anything because she's a single parent and a full time teacher. She actually, the first time she got a chance to go see a movie, she went to see the Elton John biopic. Loved it. So good.
Starting point is 00:03:18 She's been with me every day since that I haven't yet seen it. I'm shocked you haven't seen it. Did you see the Queen, the Freddie Mercury one? Yes. I did see that one. I was ready to fucking tear it apart. And I loved it. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:03:31 It's great. I feel like any of those stories, what's more fascinating than watching someone become a mega rock star? Yeah. That's a great story. Yeah. But it's an actor with fake teeth doing it. So it's not that great.
Starting point is 00:03:42 It's not a biography. It's not like a, you know, it's not real. I thought you liked it. I did. It's a documentary. I usually hate that shit. Oh, got it. Got it.
Starting point is 00:03:51 And in the beginning I was like, those teeth. I bet that wasn't even how it really was. And I was like, what's he going to do next? Yep. Yeah. Very compelling. Well, I think that guy from Mr. Robot is a great actor. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:04:01 He was great. Yeah. But I'm very excited to see Rocket Man because I hear, everyone I know that's gone to see it was surprised at how much they loved it and how much they, how true and honest it was on Elton John's part. Like how honest he was about being a diva and a dick sometimes and all the different things that he was honest about. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:04:23 I loved it. I think a lot of those times when you're on that level of superstar, like kind of Mount Rushmore style, you don't, you're like, yeah, it was the best to everybody all the time. Well, that's why we wrote Stay Sexy and Don't Get Murder. And we got real, real about it. So we could remember later in the future when we're fucking country divas. Which is two months from now. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:04:45 It's now. Now. It's now. Stephen will tell you. Yeah, sorry. We're already working on our next book. Country divas. So many asterisks on the cover of that book.
Starting point is 00:04:57 Also just speaking of which, in the spirit of our strong improv skills, if you've ever listened to, there is a, I always call it a podcast, but it's not. It's just this weird radio channel on my Apple Music. And it's Elton John's Rocket Hour. And he basically is the DJ for an hour and plays you all the new music he loves and old hits he loves. It's Henry Rollins, the sidekick, because I feel like Henry Rollins is by law required to be part of something like that.
Starting point is 00:05:28 Nope. It's all by himself going and he basically is just like, loves new music and loves breaking like new bands. And it is awesome. And then he'll remind you of like, here's an old great hit. Yeah. Remember this one? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:05:44 And then he'll say, you don't remember this one because it just came out. Yeah. Stop being a poser. Yeah. Here's this band. Remember it now because you're listening to it for the first time right now. Yeah. Do you have anything?
Starting point is 00:05:53 Oh, I do. Okay. Kind of an important thing. Do you have anything related? Yes. Do you have anything from the podcast? Yeah. Listen.
Starting point is 00:06:01 Look. Last week in my spirited and totally, totally enthusiastic excitement to talk about season two of Dairy Girls. You can't, you can't, you can't discount your excitement over it and enthusiasm. Like that needs to be part of it. No, it is. And it really, it's that I wanted to get the information right knowing I had messed it up once before when I said the Dairy, Dairy Girls took place in Belfast as if there's only
Starting point is 00:06:35 one major city in Northern Ireland. Last time last week when I talked about Dairy Girls, I said what I'll call now, I'll call it the map name of Dairy because that's what I saw. So you're not wrong, wrong. Not technically, but culturally very wrong. In America, you're not wrong. Well, on maps, but I mean like if you pay attention to Dairy Girls, which is essentially look at the title.
Starting point is 00:07:03 What you, yeah. The basics of paying attention. The town London Dairy is referred to as Dairy. And so last week I called, again called it London Dairy, having been corrected, having apologized, but I'd only forgotten my one mistake about talking about that show and not the second, arguably could be more important. They're equal mistakes maybe. So anyway, I got one tweet that was very, very Irish and very guilt written or guilt
Starting point is 00:07:36 inducing where it was just like basically like, ah, you did it again and you don't seem to care. You don't care about anything. But then I got another tweet that made me laugh really hard from Nini P and E-E-N-Y-P. She wrote in and said, or sorry, they wrote in and said, as my dad always says, London Dairy is the only town in Ireland with six silent letters. So that's how in the future we'll remember to call it only Dairy. It's just Dairy.
Starting point is 00:08:04 Just like we're locals. And really, I'm going to take this contrition and this new information, this learned information right into our UK and Ireland tour. You're good, dude. You're on it. I'm on it. We're coming to you, Ireland, to apologize to your face. That's right.
Starting point is 00:08:26 I think Dublin on November 25th, that show isn't sold out. And London on November 28th, that show just got posted and it's not sold out yet. So sell it out and yell Dairy at us. Don't do that. Now it'll be super irritating. And you don't care. We'll discuss it. You don't care.
Starting point is 00:08:43 Right. Can I do a, what's it called, corner when I suggest something? Suggestions going against. Is that what you're calling it? Did you watch, like I asked you to, Jailbirds on Netflix? Nope. Can we all need to talk about it now? Because can we all need to?
Starting point is 00:09:01 It's the Sacramento Jail and it's just the stories. It's like Orange is the New Black. It's on like the sixth floor, which is the women's ward. It's like Orange is the New Black, but real and terrifying and fascinating and wonderful and awful and amazing. They talk through the toilets. What? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:09:20 Like there's a way to not to, because the plumbing is such that it just goes all the way down so you can talk to the dudes and like form relationships. It's like Twitter through the toilet. Oh my God. When people fall in love, they send messages through the toilet. They've like tricked the system and it's fascinating. What else are you going to do if you're just sitting in jail? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:09:39 Jailbirds on Netflix. I highly recommend it. Well, if we're going to do this and we might as well, then I will say the reason I haven't watched Jailbirds and I do have it on my little list. When people recommend something to me, I definitely write it down because I can't find anything ever. You know, I always get baffled, but season two of Mindhunter came on Netflix and that's what I've been binging.
Starting point is 00:10:01 And it is, I loved it so much. I watched it all in like basically two days under my weighted blanket and I will tell you this and it's not a spoiler because they talk about it in a lot of the articles, but among the cases that they address, a big chunk of the back half of the series is spent in the case of the Atlanta child killer. That's right. They handle it so perfectly. They handle it because I got super nervous.
Starting point is 00:10:30 I was just like, uh, this is going to be the version that we've always gotten and whatever. And it's as if they've listened. It's like they listened to Payne Lindsay's Atlanta child killer. It's so well done because it's, of course, from the point of view of these, the FBI men that went in, but then it gets turned and the women playing these mothers of the murdered children get their time in a way they never have in reality. And as I was watching it, I was just like, this is beautiful and important because these are the things that they were saying to anyone who would listen and no one was listening.
Starting point is 00:11:08 And no, it gave me that feeling of like the kind of justice where at least they got to say these beautiful and important things about that kind of, um, that kind of murder and the kind of, um, failure in the justice system for at risk kids, like the kids that were below the poverty line in Atlanta, um, in the early 80s. Yeah. It was unbelievable. Yes. And when the white majority of people who were white in law enforcement would come in
Starting point is 00:11:44 and be so fucking condescending and everything was about you need to take care of your children. So like on the insult on top of the injury, it was unbelievable and as if they don't love their kids and are worried about their kids as much as those, you know, as anybody else in that city. Right. It's there's a couple of really moving, beautiful moments and I just think it's, I think they did a great job. I love it.
Starting point is 00:12:07 I can't wait to watch the rest of it. Yeah. The second, keeping with the suggestions corner, confronting OJ, the podcast. Okay. So I was like, I'm done. I know everything there is to know about the OJ case. We've all watched the Simpsons, like we all know all the things, but then this one is hosted by Kim Goldman, who's Ron Goldman's sister and it's really moving and really
Starting point is 00:12:28 beautiful and it's about, uh, loss and tragedy and going through this thing that she went through as a young woman and it's, it's really well done and beautiful. That's great. I've been listening to, um, I've already talked about listening to the Ram Das podcast here and now a couple of times and, but I've listened to almost all of them and I've transitioned over to a podcast by a woman named Tara Brock, who is an unbelievably amazing teacher and she's, um, I don't even know what, what the correct terminology is, but it's all, it's basically kind of like a, she's a meditation teacher, but it's very, it's kind of like
Starting point is 00:13:07 what we do, how we use our own minds against ourselves and how to get out of the ruts and habits of, of being in the mind, um, and it's really good. It's that kind of thing where like the way she talks you through the stuff, it's not too woo woo, it's not too out there and you don't have to know or have studied a bunch of stuff. Like it's just, it's very basic. She reminds, a lot of the stuff she says reminds me of the stuff my therapist says. It's really good and it, it's just how it's, you know, I don't know, I've just been, I've
Starting point is 00:13:42 been listening to it a lot, like, you know, sitting out in the sun and it's just that kind of thing. Like you go, Oh yeah, that's true. Just this when you, when you, when you give your mind too much credit and then you get stuck in these patterns and how to get out of them. Anyway, if you're interested in hearing about any of that Tara Brock, um, I think that's her podcast. Yeah, I looked it up and it's like literally just her name, Tara Brock, B R A C H.
Starting point is 00:14:09 Oh, like the candies. I wouldn't have known that. Yeah. Hold on. There's one other one I want to suggest. Carrier. Um, and it's a really cool, like it kind of reminds me of Night Vale. It's like a, it's like an audio book, but it's not and it's really well acted and it's,
Starting point is 00:14:22 uh, Cynthia Arrivo is the main character and star and she's incredible and it's just a really fun. But it's a podcast? Yeah. And it's like to get out of your head. It's, it's creepy. Oh, that's cool. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:14:35 Well, that's our recommendations. There you go. Oh, that took 45 minutes. Um, go to my favorite murder.com, join the fan cult, have fun with it, you guys. That's all we have. Uh, oh, were you going to do your, your TV guide for the exactly right network? That's right. Uh, this podcast will kill you this week.
Starting point is 00:14:55 Their episode is about cystic fibrosis, which I find really interesting and I'm sure a lot of people out there want to hear about it. Perkast has Lucy from Wine and Crime, uh, Murder Squad, Billy Jensen and my, uh, alcohol supplier, Paul Holes, Murder Squad is Owls, Headman, and there's a bonus episode of you and Billy Jensen at the Skylight bookstore. That's right. And then Fall Line. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:15:18 With Sprite's Gas, Paul Holes. Oh, right. Yeah. That's another photo. Drinking my alcohol. What if he drank my alcohol? But he said he has. He's, he's had a couple cans of wine while he's here.
Starting point is 00:15:26 Oh, then I feel good. Okay. Um, the Fall Line season five is out and it's incredible. Yeah. Um, what about, uh, this week on your podcast, your other podcast? Do you need a ride? Yeah. Um, the other podcast.
Starting point is 00:15:37 The other. Is, Steven, is this week, do you need a ride just me and Chris? Yes. Last week was too. No, no. It's, cause it's every other week. So yeah. This, this Monday was the ghost, the ghost, uh, the Swan Lake lights and everything.
Starting point is 00:15:50 So that's just Chris and I, basically driving around and yeah. I'd listen to that. The two of you just talking. It was fun. It was one of the first ones we've ever done at actual night. That's right. We do it during the day. Cool.
Starting point is 00:16:01 And at one point we drove by Echo Park Lake and all the swan boats had Christmas lights in like on, in the shapes of swans. So it looked so beautiful. Pretty. It was really cool. Love it. Um, and that just, that's just one of the things that happens. One of the many things and you too can listen along.
Starting point is 00:16:19 We look at things. Can you fucking believe that? They comment on them. Yeah. In, in real time. And Riff. That's right. And they don't let Steven wear a seatbelt in the back.
Starting point is 00:16:29 So it's real. Excited. Forbidden. You hear him whimpering the entire time. One of these, he make him sit in the baby seat all day. No. He'd, he'd like it. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:16:39 It's like a baby seat, but with all kinds of podcasting equipment around it and attached to it. Yeah. And a Starbucks just right next to him in case he gets antsy. Actually a Starbucks opened in my back seat. Did you hear? A Starbucks store opened a new location in your back seat. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:16:54 That's crazy. It's a joke. I can't. You're just trying to piece through it. So what you're saying to me is, let me explain this joke to you, but I don't understand. Look and listen. Don't want you to be upset. This joke I don't get.
Starting point is 00:17:08 There's no Starbucks in the back seat of my car. I thought you meant when, let me tell you what I thought. I thought you went when opened and spilled. Shit. I didn't even think about that. That's ladies and gentlemen, we, what we call, what is it, a homonym. Oh, confusion. That's called, huh?
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Starting point is 00:18:44 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 podcasts. You can listen ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app.
Starting point is 00:19:21 You're first this week. Is it me? It's you. Okay. So this, I got the idea to do this case because when we went to San Francisco to do the Custer Fest Festival, which was an amazing show, we had the best time. And at the end, our good friend, the front of the show, Pat Noswalt. I was going to call him podcast Oswald.
Starting point is 00:19:43 Why doesn't he have a podcast called that? I think, I think we're going to pitch it to him. Podcast Oswald came on and he came and did his hometown from when he lived in San Francisco, which was the serial killer, the doodler. And I was just flipping out because I'd never heard of this serial killer before. I mean, I think it was like maybe in the list and I kind of looked at it, but it was not anything that growing up in the Bay Area that I was familiar with and which freaked me out. And Patten went over it.
Starting point is 00:20:18 It kind of, it was very quick. You know, we couldn't get super detailed into it. So I figured that's what I would do this week. So this week I am doing San Francisco's the doodler. Yes, fair enough. There's an incredibly great article from the website, The All, a WL, which was written by someone named Elon Green that had very good detailed stuff about the victims of these crimes.
Starting point is 00:20:40 Also, USA Today, The Washington Post, and of course, All American, Wicca, Wikipedia. And this starts in 1974. And what is mind blowing is that 1974 is also the year that John Wayne Gacy began killing back teenage young boys that Ted Bundy began killing young women, that Coral Watts began killing fucking everybody, and that BTK began killing. 74. 74. Get your shit together.
Starting point is 00:21:16 It was not so. It was a time and a place. There was all kinds of murdering happening all across the United States. And San Francisco was no exception. And the city had already been plagued for five years by the now very infamous and yet still yet unidentified killer, the Zodiac. Do you think it's going to be solved anytime soon? Did he leave DNA behind?
Starting point is 00:21:40 I don't know. I bet it is. I mean, I hope so, but it's like he started in 68. So it's like that DNA is like 60 years old. Yeah, but I bet there's more than you think because it didn't cross his mind that we'd be a touch DNA at this point or whatever. I mean, I hope so. And I hope it was saved.
Starting point is 00:21:59 You know those when these crimes come up or you listen to a thing and they're like, and then all the records were destroyed, Maria Kondo on the fucking on the evidence room. Yeah. And now there's nothing left. Space. Yeah. Get rid of all this evidence. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:22:14 So who knows? I mean, that would be an incredibly, it would be so exciting. And yet it would be also so anticlimactic at this point. Dick. It's always just some dick. Well, and based on the legendary David Fincher movie, the Zodiac. Yeah. Oh, no, I'm sorry.
Starting point is 00:22:29 Zodiac. Plain Zodiac. Um, the Zodiac is the porn that was made based on the Zodiac and it's all the astrology science fucking sexy, um, that is sexy. But in the movie, the guy that they interview at the end, I feel like that's the guy for sure. It just really felt like it. But then again, the movie wanted you to think that.
Starting point is 00:22:52 Yeah. But in real life, that guy totally seems like the guy. Yes. And he lived right near Petaluma. Yeah. Zodiac watch. Zodiac watch and also squirrels in your mobile home. The end.
Starting point is 00:23:03 Yeah. The end. Butterflies in your van, as you learned from last many so. Last many so did then. Squirrels in your. Squirrels in your mobile home. Stop it. Get out of here.
Starting point is 00:23:11 If you're double wide. So, uh, so he had the Zodiac had been taunting SFPD and the SF media with a constant stream of cryptic threatening letters, uh, for five years at this point, um, the last verified letter ever written by the Zodiac, this was verified, not, they'd received other ones after that, but they were all kind of, they weren't sure who wrote them. The last verified one was written by the Zodiac on January 29th, 1974. But what the city didn't realize was that just as a Zodiac's reign of terror was beginning to wane, a new killers was just beginning because, uh, five days before the last Zodiac
Starting point is 00:23:54 letter on January 24th, 1974, at just around two o'clock in the morning, the fully clothed body of a man is found lying face up at the water's edge on San Francisco's ocean beach. He'd been stabbed multiple times on the front and back of his body and investigators determine he died only hours before he was found. And based on the defensive wounds on this left hand, he, um, he was believed to be conscious and put up a fight during his attack. Um, no identification was found on the body, but the man was eventually identified as 49 year old Gerald Kavanaugh, um, who was Canadian born, born in 1923, um, he had emigrated to
Starting point is 00:24:36 America and now worked at a mattress factory in a Bay Area. He was single, um, and no one else that they interviewed really knew that much about this man's personal life. So, um, six months later on June 25th, 1974, a woman walking along Stow Lake, uh, which is now called Spuckles Lake in Golden Gate Park, discovers the body of a man who'd been stabbed five times, um, again on the front and back of his body. Um, and he'd also died shortly before his body was found, um, and investigators notice there are also defensive wounds on this body and he also had no idea on him when he was
Starting point is 00:25:14 found. Um, this victim is identified as 27 year old Joseph J Stevens and J Stevens was a popular female impersonator and gay comedian who'd worked at, um, San Francisco's world famous club, Finocchios. Um, yeah. So, um, 27, such a baby and he, when he made his debut, the all article talks about it. He was like, he really, he was this really gorgeous drag queen who, um, really made a splash, got to work at Finocchios, which was a very big deal, but then eventually stopped
Starting point is 00:25:49 doing drag and started just doing gay standup comedy. And yeah, and, and so young. I mean, like really just kind of starting a future there. Yeah. Um, witnesses say that the night, um, of his murder or, you know, the, the evening before, um, they saw Jay leaving the cabaret club in North Beach and, um, the police theorize that Jay himself had driven with his murderer to the park, um, and actually given him a ride.
Starting point is 00:26:20 So, um, less than two weeks after Jay's, um, body is found on July 7th, a woman's walking her, uh, walking her dog discovers the body of 31 year old German American immigrant, Klaus Christman. He had been stabbed 15 times on the front and back of his body, more than the first two victims. Yeah. And his throat had been slashed three times. Holy shit.
Starting point is 00:26:43 Um, Inspector Dave Tashi of the SFPD described it as one of the most vicious stabbings he'd ever seen. That name might sound familiar to you because Inspector Dave Tashi was the lead detective on the Zodiac. That's who Mark Ruffalo played in Zodiac. Uh-uh. Yeah. He had serious therapy probably at the end when he retired.
Starting point is 00:27:03 I mean, he was, he was in it deep and so he was one of the detectives on this case as well. Wow. Um, Klaus Christman was wearing a wedding, a wedding ring, but when investigators, um, searched his body, they find a tube of makeup in his, um, possession, leading them to believe that Christman was a closeted gay man. Um, and later witnesses report seeing him at a gay bar in the Tenderloin called Bojangles and this was the last place Christman was seen alive.
Starting point is 00:27:31 Wow. So the police see that there, uh, could be a connection from this stabbing to the other stabbings that have been happening. Okay. So then 10 months later on May 12th, 1975, so this is almost a year later, a fourth body is found stabbed to death beside the highway running parallel to Ocean Beach. Um, so he's identified through fingerprints as 32 year old registered nurse Frederick Capen and Capen had also served in the Navy.
Starting point is 00:27:57 Um, he was a decorated soldier, um, for his service in the Vietnam war. He'd actually won a commendation medal for saving the lives of four men under fire. Wow. Um, he had also been stabbed in the heart and there were markings in the sand indicating that his body, having dragged about 20 feet from the place he was killed. Um, and then less than a month later, uh, on June 4th, 1975, a 67 year old Swedish sailor named Harold Goldberg is found by a hiker in the bushes near the 16th tee of the Lincoln Park golf course, which is just northeast of Ocean Beach.
Starting point is 00:28:36 So it's around basically the same area. Um, and Harold's pants had been unzipped. His underwear were missing and the body had been there for over two weeks. Holy shit. Yeah. And it was basically a hiker went like 10 feet off the trail and then found this body that had basically been hidden there. So all five of these victims were found within four miles of each other and all within the
Starting point is 00:29:01 span of 18 months. And because all of the victims were seemingly connected somehow to the gay, uh, lifestyle or scene, um, of course the gay community is gripped by fear because clearly there is someone who is attacking, um, predator. Yeah. Yeah. There's a predator in, in their midst. Um, of course, many people in the gay community felt like the police were not only not empathetic
Starting point is 00:29:27 to the situation, but they, they actually blamed the victims and blamed gay men for putting themselves into vulnerable positions when they went somewhere with a stranger. So there's a lot of mistrust and animosity coming from both sides. And then in July of 1975, there are two separate attacks on gay men at the Fox Plaza Apartments on Market Street, uh, within two weeks of each other. So both victims are able to escape with their lives. So this is the first time people are coming into contact with who they think this person who's killed these other people might be.
Starting point is 00:30:03 Um, and they, both of these men give the same description of their attacker. He is a tall, young black man with very smooth skin. Um, so when a third man is assaulted around the same time and provides a similar description of the attacker, the police, uh, are starting to feel very confident that they're going to be able to catch this guy. The problem is this man, this third man who was assaulted quickly leaves the city after the attack and will not answer phone calls from the police. And so essentially this is what they come up against is it's the seventies, early seventies
Starting point is 00:30:37 in San Francisco, mid seventies in San Francisco, where a lot of the people, uh, some of the people will say that frequented gay bars were not out to their families. And there was a ton of risk of being outed as a gay person in the, in the early to mid seventies. Totally. Um, cause this is 1974, 75 in 1978, and this still blows my mind. I learned about this by watching the mayor of Castro Street, which is that amazing documentary about Harvey milk.
Starting point is 00:31:06 He's amazing. He's, it's such a good documentary. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. In 1978, conservatives tried to pass this thing called the Briggs initiative, uh, where they were trying to ban, um, gay people from teaching in California public schools. Holy shit. That was 1978, which you would think, Oh no, it's, we're almost to the eighties. Like everything's fine.
Starting point is 00:31:28 That's just an indicator for, uh, you know, if you, if you don't know or remember of the, of the serious, uh, like oppression that was actually really happening. And that's, it's an amazing part of the mayor of Castro Street when, when they go on and they basically debate the two people that brought this initiative forward and Harvey milk and the amazing female lawyer. I don't know her name off the top of my head, basically decimate these people on the live news, like on the seven o'clock news. And it is, it is a beautiful thing to behold.
Starting point is 00:32:02 Yeah. Cause it's basically two people going, yeah, you, you guys like to stand up and talk about like that we're pervert perverted or we're, you know, automatically bad people or whatever. And it's like, once you see two people who are just like out and queer and proud going, you can't do this to us. The other two look like dipshits and assholes. Like it's just such a telling moment and that initiative of course does not get passed. And it basically kind of they, you know, Harvey milk got out into the street and started talking
Starting point is 00:32:35 to people and having people really doing like pounding the pavement and saying to people like if this initiative passed, you understand that like you could be next whatever group you're in, right? If you are not like the white majority, you're also in danger. Like we can't start picking people off in these like in these minority groups and saying that that's fine. Yeah. And you watch people have this conversation with, with people on the street and you watch
Starting point is 00:33:03 their faces realize like, oh yeah, this can't happen. It's really amazing and beautiful, but we're still, so this is, we're now three years before that. So people who are being attacked because they were at a gay bar are like, there's no way they're, they can't come forward and have their face on the news. San Francisco, whichever one thinks of as a progressive city, it's like, there's only parts of it that are. That's right.
Starting point is 00:33:28 Yeah. And not, and, and it doesn't mean that the people at your job will understand or your boss will understand. Or, you know, your parents, everything, yeah, there's, there's a ton of risk. So anyway, that, that became a big problem with this. And of course the narrative became they, like they won't do anything about it. Like it was really. We can't help you because you're not doing anything.
Starting point is 00:33:48 Yeah. Well, if you're not going to come forward too bad for you and like throw it all over your shoulder. So by the assault victims and other witnesses accounts, the police put the killer's MO together and basically what, what would happen is this guy would go to gay bars, night clubs, 24 hour diners and he would sketch the faces of basically his victims and then he'd come up to them, tell them that he was a cartoonist. He'd show them the sketch that he'd drawn of them, start up the conversation and all
Starting point is 00:34:19 the witnesses and the victims said he was a very talented person, very talented illustrator, really intelligent. He literally had like an upper middle class education. He was very charming, a smooth talker and he had a big smile, which I always say, you know, I say the smiley or someone is get away from that person. Yeah. What are you trying to prove? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:34:45 Now I'm like, am I smiling too much? I guess I do. I kill everybody. I guess I have a lot of teeth and not a lot of lip and it's just, it gets me and people think I'm psychotic because of it. I just want you to get huge collagen injections into your lips. Into my teeth? Straight into the teeth.
Starting point is 00:35:03 Okay. But lip shaped. For you. Your lip. Inception. Don't worry about it. Okay. So essentially he was intelligent, charming and smooth enough that he could lure people
Starting point is 00:35:18 to a private secluded second location to hook up and people felt very safe doing that with him. Because all of these attacks happened on or around the weekends at night, police suspected that he could live in the barrier, but not in the city and then drive into the city on the weekends to do that and then leave. Smart. I mean, they're smart to figure that out. Right.
Starting point is 00:35:40 That he's smart. Correct. You know what I mean? Yeah, I do. Five months after these, the July Fox Plaza apartment attacks, police released a composite sketch of the suspect based on the assault witness's descriptions. It shows a man who is between 19 and 25 years old. He's African American, medium-complexed.
Starting point is 00:36:00 He stands between 5'11 and 6' tall and he is lanky. The suspect is reported to have, quote, sexual identification problems. This is from the police reports. Wow. Yeah. And Isor was seeing a psychiatrist on an ongoing outpatient basis. I don't know if that's from the conversations that the witnesses and victims had with him or what, or if it was the investigation that basically brought the cops to those people.
Starting point is 00:36:31 I do know that there was a, they did discover or there is, one police report that says that there is a psychiatrist that came forward that said they had a patient who admitted to being the doodler. But they can't say who it is because, no, no, no, that's not true because if it's, you're hurting someone else or yourself, you can break doctor-patient confidentiality. Is that true? Yeah. Immediate, immediate danger to yourself or others?
Starting point is 00:36:57 That's what they tell you when you first go in is if it's your, yeah, to yourself or others or they think you're being hurt. They can break it. Does your therapist say that to you? I think every therapist I've ever had has said they're the first, like, eating. Do they? Really? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:37:12 Oh. I'm gonna confront Michelle next week. I guess she's telling everyone about your shit. Everything we talk about is on her blog. Okay. So, the composite goes out and it's a very detailed and specific picture and all the identifying details are very specific, but nothing comes of the release of it. And then in January of 1976, the San Francisco Chronicle runs an article about the doodler
Starting point is 00:37:40 murders. It includes one story from an unnamed witness, a European diplomat, who met the suspect in a restaurant in the upper market, which also could be considered the lower Castro. That's right where my gap was when I used to work at the gap. Oh, I know that one. Yeah. Yeah, I worked over there too. So, the suspect asked the diplomat if he had any cocaine.
Starting point is 00:38:03 They went off to the diplomat's apartment and they took party and chit chat or whatever. And while they were in the diplomat's apartment, the suspect proceeded to stab him six times. But the diplomat managed to get away and he survived to basically make this police report. He claims to the police that he and the suspect did not have sexual relations. And that person remains unnamed. There's also stories about a famous and still living a Hollywood celebrity that also was attacked by the doodler, could be one of these three men that were in this apartment building. And that name, people have been trying to figure out who that person is for years.
Starting point is 00:38:56 For a long time, they suspected it was Rock Hudson because he was shooting McMillan and his wife in San Francisco at the time. But they say this celebrity is still alive, so it can't be Rock Hudson. That's what, that's, you know, Rumer Mill stuff. Reading the story in the Chronicle, people start calling in tips to the SFPD, leading police to finally arrest a suspect based on the description and people seeing this person in different places, he had been seen in a tenderloin bar, perhaps Bojangles, and that is Bojangles with a hyphen.
Starting point is 00:39:35 There was no Bojangles fast food restaurant in San Francisco at the time, so it's not a Bojangles fast food. It's a bar. So there had been a guy in a tenderloin bar offering to draw some of the customers. They go, they arrest a man, and when they do, they find a sketchbook on him and a butcher knife. No. Yes.
Starting point is 00:40:00 Guilty. They, when they bring him in for questioning, he is very cooperative. He never admits to murdering or attacking any of these victims, but the police feel very strongly that this is their man. And at one point, he snaps and tries to attack the interrogating detectives. Holy shit. He is arrested for attempted assault or whatever. But when it comes time to press charges about the murders with this guy, the three surviving
Starting point is 00:40:28 victims refused to testify against him in court, fearing that it would out them and destroy their lives. And as a result, the police are forced to release this suspect. And that suspect's identity has never been released to the public. Despite this setback in the case, when that, like basically, when that piece of the story comes out to the public, Harvey Milk immediately steps forward to defend the surviving victim's decision not to testify saying, quote, I understand their position. I respect the pressure society has put on them.
Starting point is 00:41:04 And Harvey Milk also cited that 20 to 25% of the 85,000 gay men in San Francisco are closeted about their sexuality at this point in time, showing a wide reluctance of gay men to share their personal lives publicly. Understandable. Understandable because the fallout was so much greater than we can understand today that anyone really understands. It was a big part of that culture. I just can't, I just can't get over when I, because remembering the, the Briggs initiative
Starting point is 00:41:33 from the documentary I watched, I was like, oh, that must have happened a couple years before. Yeah. And the fact that it happens after the fact in 1978 is so shocking to me and so justifying in that, in that risk that he's talking about, you know, totally just like, it's like still coming at you. Yeah. And actually when the killings began, it had only been a year since the American Psychiatric
Starting point is 00:41:56 Association Board of Trustees had stopped classifying homosexuality as a disorder. Holy shit. It had only been a year. So it was very, you know, the stigma was not gone in any way. So that was 40 years ago. The case still remains unsolved, but this past February, 2019, police released new information about this case. And I think Patton talked about this a little bit.
Starting point is 00:42:21 But since the capture of the Golden State Killer through use of DNA, detectives' interest in the doodler was reinvigorated because all those big cold cases that seemed so mystifying back then are all, I think, being looked at. I think so, yeah. So the advances in DNA forensics lead detectives to believe their chances of catching the killer are now much higher. In the past year, investigators have submitted DNA evidence to the police's crime lab and are still awaiting results.
Starting point is 00:42:49 In early February, 2019, San Francisco police released an updated sketch of the original suspect to reflect how he may appear now 40 years later. And it essentially is a bald black man. Yeah. Basically. It looks just like the original picture, but he's bald and like heavier. Yeah, essentially. So authorities have released the recording of the 911 call that reported the discovery
Starting point is 00:43:12 of the first victim, Gerald Cavanaugh's body. The caller was anonymous at the time, but they're asking whoever that caller is to come forward so they can re-interview them and see if there's any additional information that they can get from that person if they're still alive. Which is the weirdest part of it is, it's long ago enough that that's a big issue in this case. It's possible that the doodler may have been responsible for as many as 14 murders that took place in San Francisco's gay community during that stretch of time between 1974 and
Starting point is 00:43:47 1975. And if the doodler is still alive today, he would be in his mid-60s. So I said I was always so curious as to how I didn't know about this kind of famous San Francisco serial killer. And then I read this paragraph from the Elon Green's article in the All which kind of like took my breath away because he says, and then four and a half years after the killings ended, San Francisco's own Ken Horn, a ballet school dropout, was reported to the Center for Disease Control with Kaposi's sarcoma.
Starting point is 00:44:22 And five murdered men would become relative to what followed a statistical blip. So essentially these murders happened a little bit of time past and then the AIDS crisis began. And basically everything changed permanently in San Francisco and obviously in the world. And so that is the hopefully soon to be solved case of San Francisco's the doodler. Dude, that is emotionally charged. Isn't it nuts? I'm crazy.
Starting point is 00:44:51 It's so like when we start pulling apart these old cold cases where it's just like all the reasons and the reasons are more injustice, it's like victims being victimized basically just because of who they are. It's always just like it's the case, but then you also have to factor in and all of these the time and place which really affect it more than you would think it when you hear the story and you're like, well, let's just solve it. And it's like, no, you don't understand what was going on at the time, how horrible things were or how racist and how sexist and how homophobic things were back then in all these
Starting point is 00:45:32 cases. And it wasn't back then that was just regular life. Right. Everyone was supposed to shut their mouth and try to be in your place. Keep your place and keep your mouth shut and not speak. And if there was a message to be said, some white man was going to say it for you. Some straight white man, I should say. So yeah.
Starting point is 00:45:54 All right. This is one of these disappearances and these mysterious circumstances, cases that I've been following for a while. So I thought I'd finally do the mysterious disappearance and death of Chris Kramers and Lee San Frun. Get ready. Get. Okay.
Starting point is 00:46:14 Okay. Got a ton of information. There's like three-part article and follow-up from The Daily Beast from 2017. They do an investigative pieces on this called Lost Girls. It's a whole series by Jeremy Critt. Also all that's interesting.com, there's an article by Katie Serena. There's a blog called Scarlet Letters that has a really great article about this. And the crime blog, mostly mystery.com, has some good info too.
Starting point is 00:46:42 So I've never heard of this. Okay. I think you will once you hear about it. The details. Right now. As I say it. Okay. I'll vomit this out of my mouth.
Starting point is 00:46:51 Okay. Got it. Here we are. In the spring of 2014, Chris Kramers, and that's a female, K-R-I-S, and Lee San Frun. They're students. They're from the Netherlands and they're planning a trip together to Panama. Lee San is 22. She graduated with a degree in Applied Sciences from DeVinter, which I don't know if I said
Starting point is 00:47:15 that right. Yeah. It seemed like you had a good... DeVinter. There's a bit of an accent there. I liked it. Another lenses, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:47:23 You know. I've been to Amsterdam. Yeah. You go all over it. She had just graduated. And Chris, who was 21, had just completed her studies in cultural, social education, specializing in art education at the University of Utrecht. They had met while working in a cafe together and had become close friends.
Starting point is 00:47:40 And they had recently moved into the same student housing in its Amherst Fort, is where it's called, in the Netherlands. So they were planning to go to Panama as like they're in between year. They were fucking stoked. They had spent six months saving up money and planning, like meticulously planning this trip. It was going to be part vacation, but then the other part of it was going to be a service trip.
Starting point is 00:48:03 They plan on spending some time hiking and tourisming, which is my new word. And then they were also going to be learning Spanish and then following that they would be volunteering at a school teaching arts and crafts to local kids while staying with a host family. Nice. So it's going to be like their, what's it called, bump year? Is it bump year? It's absolutely not bump year, but it's gap year.
Starting point is 00:48:25 Gap year. Thank you. There it is. You had a gap year working at the gap. Right in my front teeth. I had gap year from age zero to 17. So Lysanne, she's six feet tall and athletic. She'd been a volleyball star in college and was into extreme things like skydiving and
Starting point is 00:48:42 mountaineering. She had done alpine hiking, you know, in the Netherlands, so she was experienced, an experienced hiker and mountaineerer. She was, she's described as thoughtful, intelligent, empathetic, and she kept a diary and brought it along with her to Panama. So Chris Kremers was described as creative and intelligent. She's outspoken, responsible. She had this beautiful long strawberry blonde hair.
Starting point is 00:49:08 She had less outdoor experience, but she was young and healthy and like ready to fucking take on the world. She planned to go to graduate school for art history after their trip to Panama, after their bump year. They both grew up in Amherst Fort, the town in the Netherlands, about 45 minutes from Amsterdam, where we had so much fun. Yes. What a time.
Starting point is 00:49:30 What a time. I will never forget that hotel room. Oh my God, yeah. It was like my dream apartment hotel room. It was so beautiful. It was. Okay. I was going to talk about Vince's snafu at the airport, but maybe I shouldn't.
Starting point is 00:49:43 I don't think you should. I won't. Okay. Tour stories. That's the new podcast. That's right. Okay. On March 15th, 2014, the Whitman flew from Amsterdam to Panama City and took another
Starting point is 00:49:57 flight to Boca del Toro, then a boat to the Panamanian island of Isla Cullen, and then the archipelago. That's probably not right. Look. The way you pronounced it. Archipelago. Archipelago. Archipelago.
Starting point is 00:50:13 Archipelago. Is there an eye in there somewhere? Arch... No. Not anymore. Archipelago. Archipelago. So they adventure in town and around there until March 29th, and they arrive to Bukete.
Starting point is 00:50:27 It's the small town on the Caldera River in western Panama where they're going to stay in the host family's house and teach children. And this town, Bukete, is something like, it's like a fairy tale. It's in the bottom of this valley and it's surrounded by like rain forests and there's a volcano. It's gorgeous and there's a lot of expats and tourists that go to this place specifically. And of course, you and I remember Panama in the 80s, it wasn't a fucking safe place to be.
Starting point is 00:50:54 Crazy. Yeah. So not. Not in Latin America. And Bukete is thought to be even safer. It's popular with retirees and expats and has just one paved street and fewer than 10,000 residents. It's known as Little Switzerland for its resemblance to the Alps.
Starting point is 00:51:13 Wow. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. But when they arrive there and they go to where they're supposed to start work at the school, they're disappointed to find out that they are turned away, that the people say that they're too early and there's like a whole mix up with their schedule. But they were able to find their host family, these two young women, and they checked in
Starting point is 00:51:33 there and they plan to do some sightseeing while they figured out what the problem was. So on April. I'm sorry, but that gives me this uncomfortable feeling. Yeah. Like it's starting already. Yeah. Because when you travel that much and you're saying they took a plane and then they took a boat and they had to do it, they're like clearly going to a slightly remote location.
Starting point is 00:51:53 Yeah. Like language completely. Right. And then there, people are like, oh no, no, you're not supposed to be here. You're not. Like even if it was a hotel in the United States, I'd be like, uh-oh. Yeah. So imagine you're so far from home.
Starting point is 00:52:06 Totally. But you have your best friend with you and like, so that's comforting, but you're also two women in a foreign country, which is just scary to begin with. So they find their host family, they check in there and they're going to do some sightseeing. On April 1st, 2014, Chris and Luzan, they take a taxi from their host family's home and dropped off at the famous Piennista Trail. It's a trail that leads them to the Continental Divide, which is like that saying the Continental Divide gives me like goosebumps, doesn't it?
Starting point is 00:52:34 Yeah. It feels so huge and like a cool indie band name. Yeah. Doesn't it? Oh, that would be a good name. Right. By the way, all these pronunciations are really a plus. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:52:43 I'm trying. Yeah, you're doing great. Thank you. So just in case we're all wondering like I was earlier, the Continental Divide is the crust that marks the spot where the countries' water breaks for the Pacific Ocean in one direction and the Caribbean in the other. So it's like dividing the two oceans. They both go in either direction.
Starting point is 00:53:03 Look at this way. Look at that way. Got it. Here you are. East-West? Okay. Didn't get that far. Sorry.
Starting point is 00:53:11 I'm pretty sure we had a book. Oh, yeah? Like in the National Geographic series style where it was called the Continental Divide. And I would look at it but not read it. That was my big thing. So like pictures only and then I'm out. You and I know. Words are overrated.
Starting point is 00:53:27 God, the information is dumb. I can't read. Okay. So this hike that they were going to take, which goes up and back, the Piennista Trail. It's like a famous trail. It should just take four or five hours to get there and back. And if they had gone further, it turns into kind of like wild terrain and they don't suggest you go that way.
Starting point is 00:53:49 So even though this is a trail that's famous, it wouldn't have been suggested that two foreigners take that trail themselves. And they'd actually met with a potential guide earlier in the day and this guide had suggested that he'll take them on the trail. They can spend the night at his ranch and then come back. They had turned him down for some reason but had agreed to come see him the next day. So it's kind of weird that they were then just like, but let's go on this. I think they were expecting it to be just a small casual hike.
Starting point is 00:54:20 So I think they're smart to not spend the night at just a stranger's ranch. Right. That's probably what they were thinking. They'll take a regular hike the next day. But so they just, it seems like they just wanted to take a nice hike and kill some time. So they plan to hike through the scenic forest around the Baru volcano, which is an active volcano and that would bring them through the cloud forest, which is because the height is so fucking heighted that it's through the clouds and there's also waterfalls and shit.
Starting point is 00:54:49 Amazing. Yeah. Judging by the clothes and what they brought with them, they obviously didn't plan on being there long. They dressed in just shorts and tank tops and only brought a light backpack, one of their passports, a little bit of money, their cell phones and a digital camera. Like they weren't planning to need more than a snack and some water, nothing more than that.
Starting point is 00:55:09 This was not a long-term hike. Not at all. Yeah. They were never seen alive again. Okay. So, there's so much, one of the mysteries about this case is that there's so many different versions of it, of who this belonged to, what happened here. One of those things is that there was a dog that had started the hike with them, a dog
Starting point is 00:55:29 named Blue that might have belonged to the host family, it might have belonged to the restaurant that they had had lunch at, family, but the dog had gone with them. And when the dog returned that evening, without the girls, the family who the dog belonged to and the host family began to worry about where the girls were because the temperatures at night in the cloud forest would have been in the 50s and 60s at that elevation, which means hypothermia would have been a risk, especially since they were dressed so lightly. The host family searched around the area, around their home and just some light searching but decided to wait until morning to alert authorities not really knowing.
Starting point is 00:56:04 I don't think they, you know, the girls hadn't left behind a note saying where they were going, I don't think they knew that they were going just for a hike, so they could have been anywhere. Right. And they probably didn't, they didn't want to raise an alarm immediately. Right. But by the next morning, on April 2nd, the women hadn't shown up to their appointment with that local tour guide we had talked about, who was supposed to show them around.
Starting point is 00:56:25 And so the teachers from the language school reported that women missing to police. So the locals began to search for the women on foot, but the authorities thinking the girls were just probably out partying or something and not actually missing, didn't begin the search until April 6th. Oh no. So they had left on the 1st and it wasn't until the 6th that they began to actually search, but the locals had been searching. And at that point, the authorities asked the locals to stop searching so they could take
Starting point is 00:56:52 over. And a local named John Tornblum, he was a guide with more than 10 years of experience who had been looking for the girls, he said that quote, the rescue operation was a total clusterfuck. Oh no. Yeah. So when the families of the women found out that they were missing, and these were two really reliable girls, when they found out that their reliable daughters were missing,
Starting point is 00:57:15 they flew straight to Panama and they brought with them detectives from the Netherlands. So along with the local police, they searched the forest for 10 days using dogs, helicopters, and ground teams. The parents offered a $30,000 reward, but there was no sign and no trace of the women at all. Wow. Like they had disappeared. After a 10 day search without any leads, local authorities called the search off.
Starting point is 00:57:39 I know. Then about 10 weeks later, after the search was called off, in mid-June 2014, an indigenous woman from the Nobi tribe brought Lisanne's blue backpack to the police. She was like, yo, I fucking found this in a rice paddy and the banks of the river. The river was so powerful that the locals called it the serpent. It was like a crazy river. She's like, I fucking found it near a rice paddy, near her village of Alto Romero. It was at least an eight hour walk from where the girls had last been seen, but the indigenous
Starting point is 00:58:14 woman was like, it was not there the day before, I'm sure of it. So she brought it in. And I think everyone must have known at the time that they were looking for these two missing tourists. Inside the backpack were two pairs of sunglasses, $83 in cash, Lisanne's passport, a water bottle, Lisanne's camera, because she had brought a separate camera, two bras, and the women's phones. So I'm assuming that women were like, when I got home today after our lunch, I took my
Starting point is 00:58:39 bra off. That's the first thing I fucking did. Yeah. It's just FYI. Sure. So I'm assuming that's why they were in there. Yeah. The police assumed they were like, oh, it must have traveled up the river and gotten caught
Starting point is 00:58:50 in branches and shit. But here's the thing, the backpack was totally dry and everything in it, including the camera, was in working order. Okay. Right? So it was probably not in water. No. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:59:01 So both the info from the phones that were in there and the camera were able to tell like somewhat of a story of where the girls had traveled in their days following the disappearance. So with the phone, the first emergency call had been attempted from Chris's home the night the girls were last seen on the first. So that night, they had left around 11 o'clock in the afternoon to go hiking on what was supposed to be a four or five hour hike and at 9.39 p.m. on April 1st, someone tried to call emergency services from one of their phones, but there's no signal. Right.
Starting point is 00:59:35 They're in the fucking rainforest. They're in the cloud forest. That's right. Yeah. Then over the next four days, 77 attempts are made to call the authorities, the police, both using 1-2-2, which is the emergency number in the Netherlands, and 9-1-1, which is the emergency number in Panama. So it's like, who do you, if you end up, I call 9-1-1, right?
Starting point is 00:59:58 Yeah. But I think in any state now or any country now, you press 9-1-1 and it will go to emergency services. Right. That might not be true. I mean, if only. Yeah. I think there's, yeah, there is, I remember this, but there was a story of like people
Starting point is 01:00:13 trying to do it and it not going through because they didn't have coverage or whatever, where it's like, if this is what you're trying to do, it'll go through no matter what. Yeah. And there's another thing, like it's 2014, which seems like not that long ago, but it is. Five years ago. Yeah. Digitally and technically, it's right.
Starting point is 01:00:28 10 years ago. Yeah. So using the call logs, police are able to come up with an outline of the time the girl spent missing in the forests. Can you fucking imagine being so scary? This is why I stay home at all times. Because they were in the jungle out of the 77 calls that they made, only one managed to make contact with a signal, but it broke up between like one or two seconds later,
Starting point is 01:00:52 which is like even worse that they're like, oh my God, there's a signal and then it fucking goes away. Yeah. What a nightmare. After April 5th, Lisanne's battery dies and the phone's not used again. But Chris's phone would not make any more calls either, but was intermittently used to search for reception. So there was no more like emergency calls put out, but you could tell it was open and
Starting point is 01:01:14 turned on. Then on April 6th, a bunch of unsuccessful attempts were made to unlock Chris's phone because she had a pin number to unlock the phone. So someone got the phone and was trying to put the pin number in, but they put the number in wrong. So it probably wasn't Chris or she was dehydrated and like couldn't think of the correct one. Exactly. It never received the correct number again.
Starting point is 01:01:37 So it was never able to open again and try to reach emergency services. By April 11th, both phones were dead. All right. Now let's talk about Lisanne's camera, a Canon PowerShot SX-270 promo code murder. On the digital memory card had over 100 images found and strangely the battery is still half full when the investigators get to it 10 weeks later. Whoa. So shout out to the Canon PowerShot.
Starting point is 01:02:06 Yeah. That's a good battery, ladies and gentlemen. Yeah. But it also means that they hadn't been really using the camera that much, and there was no signal on it so they couldn't track it with GPS on the camera itself, which I think you can now. Can you? Yeah.
Starting point is 01:02:22 Well, also, you have to think if they were panicking and walking around the forest, they're not going to be like, hold on a second. Yeah. What's a camera going to do for you? Right. Nothing. And you would like to think that they would then start taking pictures to tell the story, but that's a very dark concept.
Starting point is 01:02:37 It is. And then also they say that a lot of people will use it to leave messages for their family or they'll leave a message as to where they're going and how to find them, but those aren't found. Okay. However, there are some photos found. Oh, 100. The first of the photos on the camera are taken the morning that they left April 1st that
Starting point is 01:02:55 women are shown on the beginning of the trail towards the continental divide. There's nothing strange about them. They're fucking selfies, they're shit that 21 and 22 year girls would take, scenery, you know, I'll take a photo of you, you, of me, selfies together, they look happy and normal, all is going well. But in the last few shots from that day, it looks as though the women are following an indigenous trail down the opposite side of the crest and it places them about an hour from the top of the divide.
Starting point is 01:03:28 So that's part of where, you know, the indigenous people won't even go during the rainy season themselves. It's just these, you know, weird trails and you're supposed to, I feel like a lot of people when they take a hike, they think the trail wraps around back to where they were going. But this is one that you have to turn around and go back the other way. But there was no sign saying, don't go further than this at the time. Right.
Starting point is 01:03:50 So they're still heading downhill away from Bukete. The last image that we have of Chris Kramer's face is her turning to look back to the camera. And at this point, she seems pissed off. She seems upset and distressed and like, where the fuck are we going and why the fuck you're taking a photo of me right now? Like we need to concentrate. She seems upset. Then things get strange.
Starting point is 01:04:15 On April 8th, so they went missing on the first April 8th, 90 flash photos were taken between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. I don't like that. Apparently they, and I've seen the photos. It reminds me of that one crazy story of the snowstorm and the avalanche and what happened to those people. Oh, the Dilatop Pass. Thank you.
Starting point is 01:04:34 My God. It's just like that, where there's weird photos that don't mean anything to us but have to mean something. So you can tell they're deep in the jungle, some of them there's nothing in focus. You can just see the rain coming down and some rocks and trees and stuff. It's in near complete darkness. So the timing between photos is also interesting because they vary from just a few seconds as fast as the camera could take them or 15 minutes apart and more.
Starting point is 01:05:02 So it shows that it was already raining pretty hard and a few photos show that they were possibly near a river or ravine and some photos show a twig. So it looks like they're taking photos of markers that they're setting up to remind themselves either of where they have already gone through, so maybe they're making circles and are freaking out about it and like, we've already been here, let's take a photo. So they put a marker up with a twig with plastic bags and candy wrappers on top of a rock and they also used a roll of toilet paper to spell something out on a boulder and put a rusty mirror in the center of the letters.
Starting point is 01:05:38 Maybe it was to reflect the sunlight the next day and flag a passing helicopter. But it's speculated that maybe these photos were taken as a reference point in an attempt to mark where they were, like I said. So to make sure they weren't going in circles. Or they were using the camera's flash to get light to see the path in front of them. Because the thing I keep thinking of, because that's what I thought of first, because of rear window where you're like, you feel, because you're also in the jungle, just the spiders alone.
Starting point is 01:06:12 You don't even have to get into snakes, spiders alone. So you and I are walking in the blackness of the jungle. They said something about jumping venomous snakes. No. No. So if you feel anything. Nothing. Then you're like, what's on me?
Starting point is 01:06:25 Yeah. And then that's the only way you would be able to see things. Yeah. Oh, I don't know. Like what did I just walk into? What did I just hit? Yes. Like you can't see in front of you.
Starting point is 01:06:33 Yeah. You're lost in the jungle. Yeah. It's horrifying. Or is it to help searchers locate them with the flash? They think someone's trying to find them, so maybe they'll see the flash. Oh, yeah. Can't get them.
Starting point is 01:06:44 The timestamp on these photos means that one of the women, so it's the eighth at this point, which means that the women, one of them or both of them had already managed to survive more than a week without food or shelter in the wilderness. Wow. It's speculated that perhaps by now one of the women was badly hurt or perhaps even dead at this point. Most likely that was Chris based on the photos and also she couldn't get into Leanne's phone. So.
Starting point is 01:07:11 Oh, right. Yeah. She couldn't get into her phone because she couldn't ask her about it. And there's also a single close-up photo that shows, it looks like it shows a wound to the right side of Chris's head in the temple area and blood matting her distinctive strawberry blonde hair. So, I know. It's fucking awful.
Starting point is 01:07:33 It's horrible. So sad. When the backpack is turned in, there's a new search put together along the Serpent River where the backpack was found there, Chris's jeans shorts are found zipped up and folded neatly on top of a rock near where the backpack had been found. So some say that maybe that was a marker where they were, you know, had been like, let's put a marker here. We had, we've run out of stuff to put down.
Starting point is 01:07:58 Others say that the shorts were actually found in the river and someone else took them out and folded them up like thinking they were being helpful in some way. Maybe I was thinking maybe, you know, in hypothermia, when you start taking your clothes off, I could have been that, but they were zipped up and like folded and put down. Yeah. It wasn't like you'd be, you'd toss it off and walk away. Right. Exactly.
Starting point is 01:08:17 So it was probably, yeah, who knows. So two months later, after this is found, this time even closer to where the backpack was discovered, a skeletal part of a pelvis as well as a boot with a foot instill inside were found. I know. Soon, at least 33 scattered bones were discovered along the same riverbank DNA tests confirmed that they belong to the girls. So Lesanne's bones looked as if they had decomposed naturally because there was still
Starting point is 01:08:47 bits of flesh attached to them. But Chris's bones were stark white and looked as if they had been bleached. So like maybe she had died and the sun had bleached her bones, but it was like two months later. So a Panamanian forensic anthropologist said that under magnification, there was no marks on the bones at all. So this means, so I was like, okay, then they hadn't been stabbed. That was my first thought.
Starting point is 01:09:10 But then I realized it also means that there was no claw marks or bite marks that would suggest scavengers, you know, tossing these 33 bones all over the fucking place. So that's actually suspicious, right? And so, and no marks would also indicate that they hadn't been broken up on the river rocks either. Like they hadn't been, you know, died and down the river. So the other thing is the scattered bones being found is weird because most surrounding victims, as the locals will say, are usually found in one piece further downstream or they
Starting point is 01:09:45 get stuck in like the rocks and are found later. And sometimes they drag the river, even a year later, the bodies are found intact. So it's weird that they are found, and like in little pieces like that as well. A former cadaver lab supervisor said it's almost unheard of for dronny victims to break up into tiny fragments and quote, almost impossible for it to happen in less than two months. Which is the time between the one the girls went missing in April when their bone shards were recovered in June. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:10:21 At the stage of the search, proper police procedures. And so of course these are totally, you know, everyone is saying that they weren't followed and the police fucked up on this. And police procedures were largely ignored. No search grid was made at the time. And no soil samples were taken like from the backpack and from where they said it was found or from the boots to where they had left to kind of just see what was their route and where they had gone.
Starting point is 01:10:48 You can find more info, none of that was done. And when the backpack was finally fingerprinted, over 30 different unidentified fingerprints were lifted from it. There were 13 on the backpack. This is according to Scarlett, the Scarlett letter blog that she wrote that 13 were on the backpack, 12 on the phones and camera as well as six different ones on the bras. But see, there's no chain of command. So it could have just been like people freaked out at the police.
Starting point is 01:11:14 They pulled stuff out and there was no fingerprints, you know, no one's fingerprint. So no one went back over and said, no, no, no, this is the, this is the woman who actually brought this in. Exactly. This is her family member. Right. Yeah. Exactly.
Starting point is 01:11:27 Okay. When forensic examiners couldn't decide if there was foul play or if it was an accident, the Panamanian government simply decided that the case was closed, thinking it was just a drowning. By November, the attorney general publicly announced that the women had died of a hiking accident after having been, quote, dragged to death in the river system. People theorized that they rushed to wrap these cases up to protect tourism, which is a huge part of the Panaman economy.
Starting point is 01:11:54 So further investigation by the Daily Beast. And so they got all these fucking unclassified documents somehow, like all the photos and the autopsy reports and all this shit they got a hold of, which is crazy and gets on it. Yeah, dude. I couldn't have written this whole piece without the investigation they had done. So further investigation by the Daily Beast writer into the case in 2017 uncovered enough new evidence to suggest foul play, as well as possible link to other murders in the area,
Starting point is 01:12:24 including the Dutch girls. There have been at least 25 unsolved murders and disappearances in this remote rural area. Wow. Since 2009, victims include many locals. The majority of them are women and children, as well as tourists, including an American woman named Catherine Johannet, who was 23, who was murdered in February 2017. Some sources say the real number of disappeared could be higher. And there's, I mean, there's so many.
Starting point is 01:12:51 I've stayed up all night fucking reading about this shit before. There's so many theories out there that maybe the government ignored or there was a cover up or the remains were thrown in the river to get rid of them or deliberately planted. And there's all this cartel, hitmen, and cannibals and some slightly fucking racist shit happening. Supernatural forces, organ traffickers, this kind of thing. And the local guide who was the last person to see them, remember who they turned down? Of course, he's become a suspect in a lot of the minds of people who are trying to figure out what happened, and he's fucking going crazy about it.
Starting point is 01:13:29 So to this day, the disappearance and deaths, as well as the mysterious weird fucking clues left behind, make the death of Chris Kremers and Lee Sanfroon still a mystery. And that is the disappearance and death of Chris Kremers and Lee Sanfroon. Wow. We'll put the photos up because they're creepy. I mean. And it's just so sad, these two girls in the prime of their life going to try to make a difference and to start the beginning of the rest of their lives and imagine, no matter
Starting point is 01:14:01 what happened, what they went through is a nightmare. That's right. Yeah, it's not always like they were... It's not always just because it's a murder, it's like it could just be you take a wrong turn. Personally, I think that that's what happened. Yeah. I personally think that they got lost, and everything that happened from the first on
Starting point is 01:14:23 is to panicked women trying to get home. Just trying to get home. It makes me think of that happens in the Angeles National Forest a lot, and that you couldn't be closer to a major U.S. city, and people constantly are like, take a wrong turn and have to get helicoptered out of the... And also thinking of that as a forest when it's like, there's not that much. Totally. I mean, we're not talking about the Black Forest in Germany or something.
Starting point is 01:14:54 It's pretty sparse, but it's nature. It's unpredictable. And you don't know what to do in an emergency half the time. This is why I stay home. And it sounds like if they were like, oh, we're going to go for a four-hour hike, they're not going to have flashlights, they're not going to have batteries of any kind. And they don't think they're going that far. They think they're following a well-known trail.
Starting point is 01:15:13 But I was looking at the photos, and some of it just looks like riverbeds when it looks like a trail, but it's actually not. Some of it's crazy that the walls of this trail go up around you. It's beautiful. It's gorgeous. It's a lucky adventure and have fun, but... But take a battery, a flashlight, a bunch of stuff. Know your friend's password for their phone.
Starting point is 01:15:36 Luna bar. That's crazy. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. Wow, good one. Thank you. Do you have a fucking hooray? Absolutely.
Starting point is 01:15:44 Good. All right. Mine is simple. Vince showed it to me last night. It's my new favorite Instagram. It brings me so much joy. It's just UPS dogs, and it's fucking UPS workers on their route, and the dogs, they mean along the way.
Starting point is 01:16:01 Oh, my God. And a lot of them are like, they show at the foot of their truck, the dog that they always see waiting for a treat. Look at that. Oh, my God. My friend. And then sometimes it's a deer, and sometimes it's more dogs, and there's one with a squirrel. And it's just dogs being happy to see the UPS drivers.
Starting point is 01:16:21 There's a couple of dogs dressed as UPS drivers. That's the cutest. It's the most brilliant marketing fucking thing I've ever seen in my life. It's so good. Also, because those people really have to, there's, I can't remember, oh no, I can't remember if it's FedEx. If the guy that comes and brings stuff to me is FedEx, I think he's FedEx actually. Because George, my dog sounds like a monster when she's in like an echoey hallway barking
Starting point is 01:16:49 to make sure that the person doesn't come in the door. She's scary sounding. And then I open the door and there's people who are like flinch or whatever. And she got past me and got out, and the guy was so sweet, because I was like, here's the lawsuit. Here it comes, or this lunatic dog. But all she wants to do is scare the people, and then the second they pet her, she doesn't care what they do.
Starting point is 01:17:12 It's so smart. It must be so terrifying to be a male person, or a fucking delivery driver, and you just don't know how the dog's going to react to you. Also just, yeah, this is a great, yeah, I just think it's brilliant, and it's incredible photos. It's so good. And I just was stressed out last night and just scrolled through it going, look at this one.
Starting point is 01:17:33 He was going to show it to me. Look at this one. It's really cute. There's one with a raccoon who's just like stoked. It's like, they know they're drivers, you know? Is the driver giving the raccoon a tiny packet? Here's your pine cone, sir. And he takes it up to his house.
Starting point is 01:17:48 And then he writes a review on Amazon of his pine cone. This pine cone is a little sappy. Three and a half stars out of five. Sappy. I was definitely disappointed and heartbroken. That's awesome. Mine is equally as simple, but it's just that I have begun a swimming regimen that is saving my life.
Starting point is 01:18:10 Because, you know, I overthink everything. So when I try to do get active and do make adjustments, I'm always like, yeah, but it's going to be this. Hi. Nice to meet you. Yeah. Hello. Hello, Twin.
Starting point is 01:18:25 But I've just been getting in that pool every single day because also it's been boiling hot in Los Angeles, luckily. But the way it feels afterwards, it's just like, ah, I get it. I get exercise now. I love it. It makes sense. So it's just very like calming and it makes me chill out and it makes me feel like I've done something good, so I don't have that like creepy self-loathing thing that I think
Starting point is 01:18:49 I'm just a touch addicted to because we're a tune to it because it's what we're used to. Yeah. Yeah. So it's been really nice. And also then I can see the difference in the tone in my legs like I can just, I can feel my clothes being slightly less tight and it feels great. So should we do what we did a while back of like do yoga once a week?
Starting point is 01:19:11 Yeah. Like everyone pick your one thing and do it once a week. Yeah. You don't have to do it every day. All of the listeners are like, yeah, we've been doing it. Oh, shit. But no, let's do it. I mean.
Starting point is 01:19:22 I haven't. I mean, I don't. Yeah, let's do it. It's hard. Let's re-approach it. Okay. It's the, like for me, exercise is hard because it makes me feel humongous and sweaty and like my, you know, my, all my bones are going to break.
Starting point is 01:19:34 Yeah. But of course swimming is zero impact and feels great and feels like you're really getting something done. Yeah. So, yeah, we just build on, we take our small pieces and build. Yeah. That's the idea. Let's do it.
Starting point is 01:19:49 Let's do it. Yay. Thanks for listening, guys. Guys, thanks for being here with us again one more week. That's right. We love you. We do. We appreciate you.
Starting point is 01:19:59 We definitely do. And stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Goodbye. Elvis, you want a cookie? Good boy.

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