My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 19 - Nineteen Kills And Counting

Episode Date: June 3, 2016

This week Karen and Georgia focus on the depravity of the human race by discussing Norwegian sh*t head Anders Behring Breivik and the unsolved horror that is the "Freeway Phantom." Grab your anti-depressants and come along on a roller coaster ride of murder!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We at Wondery live, breathe and downright obsess over true crime and now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C on Facebook and listen to true crime on Wondery and Amazon Music, Exhibit C. It's truly criminal. This is recording now. Am I going to really annoy you if I keep telling you not to hold that part of this? No, I need it. Is it going to annoy you though? I feel like at some point you're going to be like, yeah, I'm going to murder you.

Let's plan out our first fight now. I'll start crying immediately. I feel like anytime we've even come within 30 miles of the slightest fight, we have a total talk down. Yeah, you'd be like, I want to talk to you about something. Yeah, I like that. Did I say that? No, we both, yeah, I like that.

I think it's because we started our friendship at a place of vulnerability by talking about literally being vulnerable. That's right. And also, when I think about being in a fight with you, it makes me immediately want to start crying. I'm just like, I can't have it. I just can't. I'll do anything to make sure it doesn't happen.

Yay, that's makes, I'm going to do so much shit now. Now that I know I have fucking carte blanche. Free reign. Fuck with you. Well, I will. I'm not saying I won't very firmly confront you. Right. It's not a fight if you're just screaming at me.

If I scream, you're down into a corner. Yeah, that's not technically a fight. If it's one punch and I'm out, that's not a fight. Some of my favorite fights, because I do the Irish thing, where I won't say anything. And then all of a sudden, I'm out. I'll just be Irish goodbye you. I think I know that and that's why I'm like, that's what I'm scared of.

Right, but that's why I'm saying I'll be very, I'll be, I'll total conversations at the jump at the slightest thing. That's why I'll always be like, here's how I feel. Here's my thing. And here's my, I need you to know my thing. We're adults and we know our thing this way now. Yeah, you got to say your thing. It's, I, you know what?

It's only fair that you give the other person a chance. You say, here's the thing and they give the other person a chance to at least go. Yeah, and you'll know by their response whether or not there's someone that you can have a lifelong relationship with, or at least for the next few weeks. Or at least until our podcast gets out of the top 10. Are we out already? We must be. We're not.

I checked today. Excuse me. That was loud. That was the best reaction. No, it's so good. We're still, you guys were in the top 10 iTunes comedy podcasts. We were number one a week ago. I'm disappointed in you guys. No, I'm not.

I love you. Don't say that. Maybe the reason we're not number one anymore is because we haven't, nobody knows what podcast this is. Hey, this is my favorite murder. Oh yeah. This is my favorite murder starring Georgia Hartstark. And Karen Kilgara.

We say each other's names. If that, if you're trying to figure out who's talking, I always say Georgia Hartstark. It's like a cute, I think it's things people do it on the radio a lot. It's cute. It's cute. So on our, on our fucking storied, famed Facebook group that everyone loves, that has 11, the 11,000. Holy 11.

The last, the last time I looked it was nine. 11,000 people in it. And they're all cool. Somehow they're all fucking cool. Because everybody gets that everybody else wants everybody to be cool. Yeah. And when they're not cool and they like get a talking to, they're like, I'm sorry, cool. Someone, our last names are, are kill hard together. Oh fuck yeah.

Hard kill. Hard kill. Hartstark and Kilgara. I like that a lot. That's, it, they are kind of bad assy murder names. It's almost like fucking fate. It's fucking fate. Hard kill.

That's the name of our TV show. That's a good idea. The hard kill. The hard kill. The book we write together about. I feel like if we do the hard kill, we should both dress up as like, we should dress up like, kind of 70s news anchors. I was going to think you were going to say spy versus spy.

And try to kill each other. But we have to be vulnerable about it and really discuss it. Yeah. It looks sad. I feel like I want to come at you with a knife, but. Hard kill is definitely 70s anchor women. Yeah. We're like, we have bows at the neck and.

Feathered hair. You have feathered hair. You, because you already have this great. You would be feathered hair. I'll do like a, um, Mary Lou Retton. Yes. Full cut. Oh my God.

How great would that get? Hard kill. Let's do this thing. Hard kill. There are any, is anyone listening who wants to make a TV show? Um, we were specifically talking about FXX. If anyone from FXX, we just call out. Well, you know what?

That's how they do it on the secret. You just ask for what you want to the universe or, you know, podcast. Podcast listeners. I just sit in a, at work today, everybody had a conversation about how they don't understand what podcasts are and they don't understand why they're popular. And I just sit there like, like with my dirty secret that I have two podcasts. And just looking around, you fucking, they bring you joy. Like you don't even just have them.

I almost at one point said, it's kind of like if you could control the radio. It's a radio show. It's a radio. If you liked what you were listening to on the radio, that's kind of what it's like. It's a radio show. And there are various topics all that span everything. And you're always going to find one you're interested in. Yeah.

It's basically, if, do you like two dudes just interrupting each other? They've got that. They've got a lot of that. They've got that. Do you like to grown women who talk like they're in junior high about murder? We're here. We've got, hello. And welcome.

That's us. That's this. Nobody knew that you had two podcasts? Well, Kryzel knows my boss knows, but he wasn't saying anything. Yeah. He was like keeping your secret. And Fred knows because he's been on one of them. Right.

But he was just, it was just everybody kind of, I had that exact same feeling before I started listening to podcasts. I was like, why would anyone want to listen to stand up comics talking? That's all I've listened to for the past 20 years of my life. It's so boring unless you're really shit-faced. Or at this NPR, nobody likes fucking. Fuckin, never mind. I'm not going to talk shit on them.

Yeah. Let's not be shit talkers. What I do like is cool music jams. That's how I usually spend my time if I'm going to just listen to something. Not me. Fuckin audio book. You're all about that. Freak.

But then, you know, when the first couple of times I listen to podcasts driving home to San Francisco on the five. You fall asleep. God bless. No, it got, it makes the ride feel like it's an hour long. I'm a friend who was on a fucking road trip with her boyfriend this weekend texting me. We're listening. We're on episode 12.

Like totally into it. Don't you love there was a couple people who are sending, who are posting on the Facebook page. Why don't you guys have an episode 12? And well, it turns out we do. That's our bodies, our 12s. Oh, yeah. Another, a great title.

I'll say it myself. But I was immediately like, oh, shoot, we, because of when we misnumbered the other ones. Oh, yeah. When we thought 15 was 16. I assumed they were right immediately. But it was some weird thing. With a glitch. Yeah.

It was an iTunes glitch or something glitch. We should have said this from the beginning because I bet people are fast forwarding through this chitchat to the murders. That's how I feel about myself. That's how myself is. We cannot blame you. We have t-shirts. And this is the last.

If you're listening to this, this like now. Real time. Real time. This is the last call to this t-shirt. Today's June 1st. June 1st. Happy June. Happy June.

My favorite murder shirts.com. Go buy one. That they end. Wait, how much, how much longer do they have? I don't know. I think we'll just leave it up for a couple more days. So this podcast can come out. This episode can come out and then people can get it to like Monday or Tuesday.

If it's there, it's still there. And then, but then. If not, there'll be a second phase design. Yeah, but it won't be this design. No, we're going to do a new one. And it will be, you will be able to get a t-shirt that says stay sexy. Don't get murdered. Yeah.

Right. Yep. We've already announced that. Have we? No, I don't know. Have we? I don't know. I don't listen to this podcast.

I like NPR. Should we do that? That's that you're bridging. So if you hear that noise, you know, you can stop fast forwarding through the talking. That is the dial. Somebody actually did tweet and ask us if we could please put in markers so that they can get straight to the murders. I didn't take it that way.

I just started laughing as I was like, as if I would ever know how to do anything technical ever. Oh no. I feel like you get five. You get five minutes in. That's almost five, 10. Yeah. Let's do five.

No, let's do as much as we fucking want. You know what? You know what? I listened to a podcast called sleep with me that I'm obsessed with. You love that podcast. It helps you fall asleep at night. It's just a guy telling boring stories. And I fast forward the first five minutes and yet I'm yelling at people not to do it.

You know, you got to do what you got to do. All right. Let's just not be like everyone else. Everybody be yourself. Be yourself. And especially with podcasts. Yeah. And thanks for listening.

Goodbye. I think that's how you know it's done. I think we've done that last time too. That'll be the new thing. That's a good idea. That's our transition is fake. Goodbye. Fake hangout.

We pretend like we're going to leave the room and the murders are now going to tell themselves. Let's introduce Karen and Georgia. That's a good idea. This is us. Yeah. We're the intro hosts. Oh wait. We're exactly at 10 minutes now.

Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast against the odds. In our next season, three masked men hijacked a school bus full of children in the sleepy farm town of Chautchilla, California. They bury the children and their bus driver deep underground, planning to hold them for ransom. Local police and the FBI marshal a search effort, but the trail quickly runs dry. As the air supply for the trapped children dwindles, a pair of unlikely heroes emerges. Follow against the odds wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen ad free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. Okay. Okay. You're first this week. I'm first this week? Okay. Let's get down to business. I don't want to mess around.

What is this? What is this? Ooh, something circus in town. We're going to get deep into this shit. Are you guys ready for our favorite murders? Wait, where the fuck is my favorite? We love murder. Oh my God.

I thought mine was deleted from my. Oh my God. All right. I'd never heard of this one. The freeway phantom killer. Oh shit, y'all. You heard of this one? I don't know.

Oh man. I don't think so. This is some fucked up shit. And here's what I was thinking. I don't want to, I want to not only do white women like Martha Moxley getting killed. Right. I don't want to do that.

I found this one and I'm like, I've never heard of this and it's a fucking serial killer or six young girls gotten murdered in this, in the same area. Are they women of color? They are all black women. Yeah. That's fucking. Yeah.

And it's tragic. It's the, I'll get into it. All right. Here we go. So the freeway phantom was a name given to an unidentified serial killer known to have abducted, rape, and strangled six female youths in the Washington DC area from April 1971 through

September 1972. So it's not even a fucking year. No. Which immediately makes you think he got arrested right afterwards or moved on. Oh, because they don't know who it is. Oh, yeah. Unidentified still.

Oh, sorry. Okay. No, it's fine. I, it's fine. I have some suspects. The victim's role, African American girls between the ages of 10 and 18. No, no.

Sweet baby angels. Okay. So the first one was in April 1971, 13 year old Carol Spinks was sent by her sister to go to a 7-Eleven located half a mile away from her home, which is like what you do back then. You, you go walk and 13 that's like old enough. So old.

We used to walk to the store, the corner store, which is like easily a half a mile away every single day from when I was like six years old. Yeah. We used to, we used to jaywalk on one of the busiest streets like encouraged to jaywalk to the store across the street. Just cut across the street.

Just run fast. Yeah. You fucking idiot. On her way home from the store Carol was abducted and her body was found six days later on a grassy embankment next to the northbound lanes of the I 295. Over a month later in July, Darlenia Johnson was

16 was abducted while on her way to a summer job at a recreation center. 11 days later her body was discovered 15 feet from where Spinks had been found. So again on the freeway, near the freeway. In July 1971, little 10 year old Brenda Crockett failed to return home after having been seen, sent to the store by her mother again.

Three hours after, okay here's this interesting, three hours after Brenda was last seen, because they were immediately like this, she should have come home. Yeah. The phone rang and it was answered by her seven year old sister who was waiting at home to see if she'd come home while her family was searching

the neighborhood. Brenda was on the line crying and she said, a white man picked me up and I'm heading home in a cab. And then she added that she believed she was in Virginia before abruptly saying bye and hanging up. Where? What?

A short time later. Wait, sorry, if it's 1971, how is she calling from being, how is she calling from a cab? Yeah, there's a lot of inconsistencies. Well, let's, I want to hear your opinion on this too. Okay, this, this sucks. I know, I'm sorry. No, no, no.

I mean, I guess. I feel like I can see them in my head. I do too. A short time later, the phone rang again and this time, it was answered by the boyfriend of Brenda's mother. It was Brenda again and she repeated what she said to her sister and then said, did my mother see me? And he asked, how could she see you when you're in Virginia?

And the boyfriends also said, tell the man to come to the phone and tell me where you're at and I'll come get you. The boyfriend then heard heavy footsteps in the background and Brenda said, I'll see you and the line went dead. A few hours later, Brenda was found by a hitchhiker on route 50 near the I 295 in a place where she couldn't be missed. She had been raped and strangled and a scarf

is knotted around her neck. What, what is the thing did my mom see me makes me think she like drove by the house in this person's car. Like somehow it was someone they knew, you know what I mean? And the whole, it was a white man was maybe, and I'm coming home was maybe a, the killer told her that, told her to say that to throw them off because I bet they didn't expect them to start searching for her so quickly.

Right. Also, maybe she was in the neighborhood. I wonder, like, why would he let her use the phone? Was she on drugs or drugged in some way? That she was saying weird shit? Like, you know, like she got chloroformed, woke up, grabbed the phone. Totally.

Something, I mean. But why would that happen a couple times? Yeah. After the first time. Where was the guy? Yeah. It makes me think that it's someone she knew. Did my mom see me?

Yeah. Or maybe he, or maybe he lied to her and said, your mom sent me to come get you or something. Oh, oh yeah. Your mom knows that you're getting in the car with me. Yeah, your mom saw what you were doing. I don't know. Okay.

So authorities quickly concluded that Brenda's call home was at the behest of the killer. That's just their guess, you know. Furthermore, one witness reported having seen one of the victims, Miss Johnson, in an old black car driven by an African American male shortly after her abduction. And so then in October 1971, 12-year-old Nemo Shia Yates was walking home from a Safeway store in northeast Washington, DC,

when she was kidnapped, raped and strangled. Her body was found within a few hours of her abduction again, which is interesting that he just doesn't keep the bodies. Right. Just off the shoulder of the Pennsylvania Avenue the shoulder of Pennsylvania Avenue in Maryland. It's after this murder that the quote freeway phantom moniker was first used in the city tabloid article describing the murders.

So in the last murder, it was November 1971. After having dinner with a high school classmate, Brenda Woodward 18 boarded a city bus to return to her home. And six hours later, police officers discovered her body stabbed and strangled in a grassy area near an access ramp to Route 202 in the Baltimore, Washington Parkway. Okay, so here's a weird... Oh, no, that's not the final victim.

That's a second to final victim. I'm sorry. So a code had been placed over her as if it was like tucking her in. And in the pockets, there was a note from the killer. It said, this is tantamount to my... Sorry. This is tantamount to my intensity to people, especially women. I will admit the others when you can catch me, exclamation mark,

sign the freeway phantom. But he wrote free dashway, the freeway phantom. And they're saying that it looks like the note was written by the victim in her own handwriting, but I looked at the note and it looks like a fucking psychopath's handwriting. It doesn't look like her handwriting. So were they interpreting it as like a young person's handwriting? Or... Yeah, like that it wasn't hers.

But I didn't... No, no, no, not a young person, just like... I don't know why they came to that conclusion. And nobody... I'll tell you why nobody knows that. Also, is he using the word tantamount correctly? Let's... That will come back around.

Okay. Yeah, I know what you mean. Yeah, this is tantamount to my insensitivity to people, especially. So he's saying this is how much I don't like people or don't care about people, especially women. Right. That's what his point is. I always thought that meant tantamount meant equivalent, though.

That's what it means. So I think this murder of this girl is equivalent to how much I don't give a shit about people. Got it. Okay. I mean, it's not used correctly. Got it. So, September, 1972...

I don't know why I'm so worried about grammar all of a sudden. No, because it actually comes back or it's an interesting word to use that one would think can be. Like, in The Jinx, how he spelled Beverly, which helped get him caught, is a fucking great clue. Every single thing can be a clue. Every dot of the I can indicate something. Indicate or exonerate something.

That's right. So, September, 1972, the Phantom's final victim. So, the high school senior Diane Williams, she had cooked dinner for her family and then visited her boyfriend's house. She was last seen boarding a bus again, and a short time later, her strangled body was discovered alongside the I-295, just south of the district line. So, those are the murders. Yeah.

So, the slings supposedly triggered one of the largest investigations in the region. A scene, two dozen detectives were assigned to the hunt initially, and the FBI was called in until Watergate diverted the agency's manpower. Oh, man. Fucking rich politicians ruin it again. With their stupid bullshit. Yep. It's my cat kicking you.

A little bit. Okay, I'm sorry. So, among the individuals considered were a gang known as the Green Vega Rapists. That's a fucking cheery name. Jesus Christ. I just think they danced. What were they up to? Yeah, I don't know.

Just simple little, they played craps. Members of this gang were collectively responsible for numerous Washington, D.C., and surrounding Maryland vicinity rapes and abductions that occurred near the Washington Beltway. So, everyone thought it was them. One dude was like, one of the gang members, and they were all incarcerated, was like, I know it wasn't me. I had nothing to do with it. I know who did it.

If you don't say who I am, if you keep me anonymous, I'll give you information. And they were like, okay. And he was going to identify, he identified the guy, the date and location of the crime, and a signature detail, which was not provided to the public, but which was known only to the perpetrator and to detectives. That signature information was correct. The inmate who provided the information, which he wasn't involved, blah, blah, blah, he didn't alibi, a verified alibi.

But during this period, an election was being held in Maryland, and one of the candidates publicly announced to the press that a break had occurred in the freeway phantom investigation and provided that an inmate at the prison where this guy was at had given information. After that announcement, the inmate who provided the information was like... Was killed? No, not killed, but maybe eventually. But he was like later days and denied that he had anything. He was just like, I'm out.

You're rude. Total rude. You idiot politician. I'm being idiot. And looking through the... I don't think he... I don't think they had any that they were involved. I don't think...

The green vega rapist. Looking at the evidence and their MO, and this sounds like the work of one person. I don't think this was them. And it's like raping... Rape is a different crime than kidnapping, raping, murdering with bare hands, disposing of a body. Yeah, I would think that in gangs, like it reminds me of like Hell's Angels or something, where they take women, they don't... Usually raping a 10-year-old child crosses a line even when you are a gang member,

even when you are... Like pedophilia and all that kind of shit is not... That's not just standard. No. And... Activity. Gaining access in the trust of these girls, and to get... He had to have gotten them in his car somehow.

That's right. They had to have gone with him somehow. It's a wolf and sheep's clothing. If you see a gang member, if you see three gang members coming at you fucking run, you don't get in their car. Even then children don't talk to strangers. Yeah. So if you see...

But yeah, if you see gang members, you're not gonna fucking get in the car. Yeah. All right. So I don't think it's them. But the case is still open, as we said. So fucked up. Let's see here. All right.

So... And there's not... The last article I could find from any of this was from 2013. So... And at that time... All right. Let's... Here we go.

So the DC police detective James Traynum, he's kind of the dude now who's like... I'm gonna try to... Or was like 2006. He's like, I'm gonna get this sucker. Yeah. And a lucky hit on DNA sample could change all that. So here...

But here's the fucking thing. Everything got lost. Everything got lost or destroyed. All of the fucking evidence. And that's why that note... There's a photo of it, but there's no way to test it. Everything got thrown away and destroyed. No.

Yep. But the good news is that because it was in different districts, they were able to find a DNA sample from a district that... The not the main district that... Oh. So Maryland has... Maryland State Police have a sample found on Williams, one of the girls who was killed.

And they had never tested it because they... Because she was leaving her boyfriends. So they figured that she had had sex with her boyfriend that night. So they never fucking tested the DNA. What? Why wouldn't they ask her? She was dead. Oh my God.

I'm so sorry. Oh my... Ask him. Ask him. I forgot what podcast I was on. Oh my God. They did ask him and he said they didn't have sex. It's so irritating.

Like anytime you talk about like police making assumptions, I just... My mind goes to like... What? And this is why people... I don't want to like... I don't want to just fucking bury all the cops and everything because this is how stuff was done back then.

This was how stuff was done. That's right. And it seems like they did put a lot of work into it. But if you ask the families, which there's a lot of interviews from the families, they fucking didn't. And the families are like, it's because if these were all blonde white women,

this would have been solved. That's exactly right. And you know, you can't help but believe that. Of course. Of course that's true. Of course it is. That's just been tested out time and again. Yeah.

But the other thing is, that the attitude of these cops is like immediately. You're the victim of a crime. You're dead. You've been murdered. And suddenly it's like, oh she fucked her boy. There is...

You can hear the slut shaming through the ears. And you just know that that's... It makes me crazy. It's just like not treating people with respect even in death. I agree. And this is why I wanted to do this. This is why when I was looking for the next one, I was like, I've never fucking heard about this.

And this is like six children got fucking murdered and there's nobody who got ever, you know, fingered for it. It's insane. So this guy trained him. He took it up as a cold case in 2004. He was like, I'm going to solve this. He thought he had a key piece of evidence

that on the clothing of the Phantom's last known victim, they found a potential DNA sample. Let's see here. Okay. So because her body was discovered over the district line in Prince George, Maryland police initially handled the case and so they had this information.

And so it's like this... I found all these articles that they're like, so the DNA testing will be done. If the sample yields a good profile, it'll be submitted to the database, blah, blah, blah, blah, but the last fucking thing I can find about that was from 2013. So I don't know if it's been tested or...

I feel like there should be money. I think there's 150... Oh, to test it? Well, I'm just saying, I feel like people in this country need jobs and like there's like the whole thing of like old rape kits that haven't gone tested and they're actually doing what I love is Mariska Harkatay is doing all that work to change it,

which God bless her. And all the other people, there's a bunch of people that are like... There's the woman that's the mayor of... Is she the city council woman in Detroit or she's the mayor of somewhere? It's on the Facebook page. That's where I read it.

But these people that are just stepping up and being like, no, no. But I feel like some company could make money. Why aren't they just prioritizing this the way they do everything else in terms of financial gain, pay people, like get it going. Okay, let's change that and let's change statute of limitations on rape, which is insane.

There's a stat... I just want everyone to think about that. There's a statute of limitations on fucking rape, even if it's pedophilia. Yeah, and if it's a 10-year-old girl that was just trying to go to the corner store. Yeah, and here's one thing I'll change is I'll remember that the people that we're talking about are dead.

I don't know what... I don't know what to talk about. Were you really thinking that in your brain? Well, you know what it was, this... What's that? The second that you started saying that of like, they just assumed she had sex with a boyfriend, I just went down that whole thing of like,

how many stories to this day in 2016, you hear of judges being... The sexism and the misogyny that you hear to this day of like in the legal system. And the reason why you'll never know the exact number of rape victims is because why would you come forward with this rape if you know you're going to be like,

well, you fucked your boyfriend earlier, so it's probably not... It's just sickening. I mean, it's happening less and less, but the fact that it still happens at all is just a disgrace. It's just like, we need to do better. We need to do better as the human race. We do.

So Traynam called on an expert who specializes in... This is a fucking fascinating fact. Specializes in narrowing the field of suspects. Kim Rosmo, she's a former Canadian police officer and professor at Texas State University, developed a computer system that plots crime events on a map and helps determine whether suspects, quote, anchor point or home or workplace

or significant location might be. How fucking cool is that? Yeah. So they spent weeks looking through reports together. They visited the crime scene and they developed a geographic profile of the killer's movements. I mean, they think the anchor point was in Congress Heights just south of the hospital.

I don't really understand. Nothing came out of that. So they have a suspect that I think sounds pretty good. So there's this dude, Robert Askins, ASKINS, who's also some like web developer. So when you Google him, put murder in. He had been charged with raping a 24-year-old woman in his house. He had killed prostitutes.

He had been charged three times with homicide. He was in St. Elizabeth's Hospital, which is down the street from where they thought that he lived, that the killer lived and had later been convicted in a 1938 killing of a prostitute by cyanide poisoning. Jesus Christ. But it's sort of been overturned on legal technicalities and saying that he was too impaired

to stand like too drunk at the time to be liable for it. Did you say 1938? Yeah. So when he was really young, he was probably doing, if it was him, doing these ones when he was way older. Yeah. So they arrested him in 1977 for something else.

They found some... Okay, so here's the interesting part. So they went through his stuff and they found in his desk drawer a footnote from the judge's sentence. And the word tantamount had been used over and over in that. And later, he would learn that this guy Askins, you often use the word at the National Science Foundation, where he was worked as a crime, as a computer technician.

So everyone he worked with was like, he used the word tantamount a lot. I've never fucking used that word in my life. I've never used that word. I've never heard anybody else use that word. That's like a fucking Elmer Fudd word. Yeah. There's a tantamount to...

That's crazy. And also, wait, is this guy white? No. That's fascinating. He was like a black computer scientist in the 60s and 70s. Can I say something? Yeah. I don't know if he was white.

You don't know if he was white or black? Yeah. That's very interesting. I'm going to edit that out because I should have seen that. But I couldn't find any photos of him. Oh, I guess I assumed he was black because they saw the one girl in car with a black guy. Right.

But that doesn't mean anything. Okay, we'll take it out. The technicians found on all six victims green synthetic carpet fiber, excuse me, on all but one of the victims' clothing. And they couldn't find anything like that in this dude's house. And they dug up his backyard and they didn't find anything. And he was never charged.

He's 87, serving a life sentence in a federal prison. I think he died in like 2009 or so. But on his record, he had already been arrested for killing people three other times. Yeah, but there were always prostitutes. But when he was asked by a reporter later, he said, I didn't do those crimes, but I hated women so much.

Like he almost was like, I wish I had. Wow. Yeah. Wow, that's crazy. So it's still an open case. Maybe I called the crime hotline in the county. Oh, yeah. And asked if they had searched the DNA.

To get an update? And they didn't know what the fuck I was talking about. And I felt like an idiot. Hey, at least you tried. I wonder how you do find out about stuff like that. I think you have to be some kind of authority. I don't think they'll just give that out. Let's find out about that.

Can someone who's in forensics find out if that? Yeah, or just people that are listening, if you want to be a sleuth, try to find out updates on the freeway phantom murders. Where the last thing I saw was like, they're trying to test the DNA. And then just nothing. Not even like there was no match,

or it was inconclusive. I mean, I'm just curious. It's, well, also, it's just that it's such a quagmire of DNA and testing and all that stuff. It's like, there are some places where it takes years. Yeah, I mean, yeah, especially places where they have had crime. That's not their priority.

And this guy's probably dead, whoever it is. Right. But these people, but the families deserve answers. And that's the point is that families deserve answers just as much as any other family. Sorry. Wow. I don't know why I get, I'm surprised every time

that I'm like, oh, that was heavy. Your story from last week? Yeah. Ruin people. Yeah, it ruined me from like age eight. Yeah, I can see that. It's so heavy. It's horrifying.

It's so intense. What was your name? I'm Mary. Mary Vincent. Mary Vincent. But that's the thing I love is that all the people on the Facebook page just keep talking about what a badass Mary Vincent is.

Totally. She really is. I mean, of course, she's had hard times in her life and struggles. How could you not? But the thing is that she's like, I really encourage everybody, if you liked that story, to watch her episode of I Survived

because she tells her own story. It's amazing. He turns out how to daughter her age. Is Larry Singleton? Yeah. And she's written a few things being like... I read, somebody posted an article on the page, but I had read that article and it just wasn't,

there didn't seem to be pertinent information. It was just kind of like this sucked for me too, which totally made sense, but it just seemed like it was long enough and I didn't want to go into... I agree. Into that. It wasn't necessary.

Also, just I feel like with all these people, you could, if you did go into all that kind of research, you'd be talking about... We'd be talking about them for weeks because it's like, what was Larry Singleton's past that he got to that point? I would love to know that. Totally.

And is it possible that he just did two crimes? Two... No way. Fuck no. No way. Just like this, with this case, freeway phantom, he either got incarcerated or died or moved and did the same shit somewhere else.

Yes. Like there's no way he just had a less than a year killing spree of six women, girls, and then just stopped. That doesn't happen. Or that was the beginning. I just had a fantasy of some day them in the same way that that woman developed that computer thing

of here's the area that the person might be in. I actually saw that on Numbers one time, which is a show I'll watch every once in a while. Have you ever watched Numbers with the Backwatch 3? Yeah, I know that one. Or the Frontwatch 3 being used as an A? Yeah. But one day they could connect.

You know how like we were talking about that one killer and then we're like he could also be the alphabet killer from Rochester? Yeah, the Hillside Strangler. No, that was from last podcast on the left. One of the Hillside Stranglers, they thought Kenneth Bianchi might be the alphabet. But remember my guy that was in Marin,

who also, because he had a victim of the same name. Like if there was a computer program that somehow could start linking commonalities in these cases and being like, sure this person lived in Utah, Texas and Maryland, but look at all of these, you know. And Slings Strangler. And he had a cousin in Utah.

He was from Maryland and he briefly visited Nevada where all these other murders happened at that time. I love when they do piece those together. I'm so happy. It's so satisfying. Is it like get a big homeland map of Red String and let's start seeing where all these things actually connect. It's so great when a detective can be like,

this guy's clearly a drifter. Where was he during these times? Calls the local precinct and was like, do you have any murders that look like this? And they're like, we've been waiting for this call for years. And then you hear the forensic files. Like, block of commercial. Oh.

All right. Do you want to hear this week's my favorite murder? Yes, please. This is what I want to do for a while. And I have to say, when I was looking up the different ones that I wanted to do today, I am very tired from my work, having to work and do things, do homework as well.

I know. I'm not used to it. I'm kind of more of a lady of leisure. But I realized that all the ones I want to do are episodes of I Survived that I've seen that I loved. And I was like, I can't just keep retelling I Survived stories. Can't you? I guess I can, though, because I did again.

And if you add little details in that they did not. Right. Well, because that's all firsthand account. So it's basically the person saying, this is what it was like for me to go through it. But I just love that show so much because they are amazing. The stories themselves are crazy and amazing.

I'm not going to watch it because I just want to hear from you. Okay. Stories. Oh, that's that's perfect. Yeah. Then I'll never have to bust myself again. Cool. But they did a special on I Survived of the Norway attacks.

I don't know if you remember those, but they were the attacks on July 22nd in 2011 where Anders Bering Brevik, who was a crazy fucking right wing fascist lunatic racist asshole first blew up a government building in Oslo and then went on to an island that had a summer camp. I remember this horror horrifying. Go on.

All right. So there is, I can't remember. I couldn't find the actual season and episode number, but if you look up the Norway attacks, I survived. They have a special episode where it's four different kids who are on the island who survived these attacks. And it also, they speak perfect English.

Oh my God. What? Oslo is like, isn't that where the, it's the most peaceful place in the fucking world. Not since World War II had they had violence like this in their country. It's also has the most beautiful people. My college roommate Kristen was obsessed with Norway

and she went there one summer. She talked about it constantly and she showed me these pictures. She's like, we went there and we went to this music festival and everyone was just like a gorgeous blonde model. They are truly amazing. So yeah, it's pretty great. I mean, they've, they've got it down.

But of course there's always got to be an asshole to ruin things. Totally. So this guy, Anders Bering Brevik, he drove a van with a bomb made of fertilizer and fuel oil, which was similar to the Oklahoma bombing, Oklahoma city bombing. He went and drove that and parked it next to the building where the office of the prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg was.

And that van blew up. It killed eight people and it injured 209, 12 of them very seriously. Luckily fewer, fewer people than normal were in the area because it was during in July. So most people, that's the vacation month for Norwegians. And it was a Friday afternoon. So government people were gone for the day. How did he do that?

Because he was, he had posted a video on YouTube the day before where he was wearing a scuba suit and holding a AK-47 and talking about he wanted to rid his nation of Muslims. Yeah. The Muslims are the problem. You fucking psychopath. You fucking terrorist. You are a terrorist.

Yeah. Trying to point the finger at. Another case of if you don't like them, kill yourself. Exactly. He, this guy should have. It's too much for you. Take yourself out. Yeah.

Yeah. Or maybe try therapy pills. I don't know. But look at the irony of the fact that you are calling every, you want your nation cleansed of people. And the answer to that is you. We're actually asking people who are psychotic to look at the irony of their statements. Anyway, we're the naive ones, Georgia.

I know, but I'd rather be, I'm okay with that. I know, it's true. So, okay, so he does this hideous bombing. All of Oslo is just going nuts because it doesn't happen there. It does not happen there. And then less than two hours later, this guy, Brevik, he's dressed up like a cop.

Yeah. That's not fair. Like I call bullshit on that. It's the creepiest worst that thing where you immediately have the trust of people and you're manipulating that trust. So he gets on a ferry and he takes the ferry over to the island of Yutoya.

I'm going to pronounce it like a dirty American. And as I will every other word in this article that is basically sounds like me reading an Ikea catalog, it's going to be that bad. I wonder if any murderer has ever taken a ferry to his murder place. You know what I mean? Yeah.

But it seems almost like. Maybe that should be next week's theme. Yeah, I feel like he should have taken a like a moat. Like what are the ones where you stand up and roam across the. Oh, like a gondola. A jet ski. Like a jet ski.

A ski do. Something but a fucking ferry. He had to jump on the ferry with all the other commuters. So he goes over to this a summer camp. The average age of the campers are 18. No, why? They're the Norwegian youth labor party. So it's basically would be like if a bunch of young Democrats.

And there was a lot of children that were related to. Higher ups in the government. Yes, government workers and and people that were. So he was sending a message strictly to these people, which like. When has that ever worked? When are people ever going to be like, OK, yeah, I mean, here's the thing.

If your plan is to kill people's children, you're the bad guy. Sorry. Anyway, yeah, what I'm doing again. So he goes over onto the island of Utoya. He is dressed like a cop and he tells them. They hear about the bombing in Oslo, which is, of course, like it's a national emergency.

Totally. So he, as dressed as a police officer, goes to say that he's come for a routine check because there's all these diplomat and politicians, children on this island. So he's there to check if everybody's OK. So he meets with Monica, a woman named Monica Boise, who is the camp leader and the island hostess.

And she there is also a man who is the security officer on the island named Trond Bernstein. And he was also an off duty cop. Oh, please do something. He killed Brevet, killed both of them immediately. Son of a, I was going to be like, maybe this guy. Yeah, no. So he basically, he gets on, gets access to the island,

immediately meets with the people in charge, takes out the adults in charge. I'm surprised you have to be to have that happen to you. Like the mom before you die. Oh my God, it's the last thing you expect. Yeah. And so he goes down. So in this episode of I Survived, the kids tell the story.

But there was a lot of kids, they had gathered everybody up to tell them that this bombing had happened in Oslo. So then there were still people sitting on this big kind of outside area, kind of standing around and talking about it. And this guy shows up dressed as a cop. And he calls everyone around,

asked them to gather up and then just start shooting. And so, so the kids have, it's like, they've just gotten this terrible news. Then this starts happening. They have no idea what's going on. Like you don't even know to run because it's so surreal. It's so surreal. That's what they all say.

And he's dressed like a policeman. So on top of it, they don't understand what's happening. Because they probably still think he's a policeman. It's not like you're like, oh, this guy lied. Right, exactly. And also you're far away enough. So if you're seeing it happen, like they think, is this some sort of huge prank or is it an emergency?

Some of the kids said that on the other parts of the island, because they did have, it wasn't strange that there would be gunshots on the island because they were out in nature. And they said that wasn't a weird thing. Yeah, like that didn't surprise them. But then it was when they heard screaming that they realized something bad was happening.

This island is also very small. Is that? Yeah. So for the next hour and a half. No. Yep. This guy. Rampage.

Walking and running around the island picking kids off. No, no, no. So it's such a nightmare. So some kids hid in a freezer. And there's kids that told a story of hiding in a freezer, like five kids. He walked into the kitchen area all the way around. And to the freezer, but didn't look inside and walked away.

And that's the reason they survived. And there's kids, there's article after article where kids tell stories like that, where they were in their bunk, they all went under mattresses or whatever, and they just held their breath and hid. And then there's other stories that these kids tell from I Survived where like they're hiding

and their phone goes off because the parents are calling to see if they're okay. And that's what gives them away. It's bone-chilling. This guy just walks around picking off kids. I'm gonna throw up. I always want to know, I always immediately think when I hear stories like that or like Columbine

or school shooting, it's like, where would I be in that room? Like, where would I hide? Where would I be? Yes. You're never gonna know if it's the right place to go or not. Well, and also when you're in a panic situation like that, you're just gonna make do with the best thing that's near you.

It's just luck. It's dumb luck and random fate. Totally. It's terrible. The other thing too is he had enough time that he was going around, he shot kids. And then there was some kids who were just laying there pretending to be dead.

Right. He had enough time to go back around and double check and shoot them if they weren't dead. So it's fucked. So some kids had places to hide. Some kids would come out of the places where they were hiding and then realize that the guy wasn't gone yet. So they would hide for half an hour

and then think it must be all clear. And it's just because they weren't hearing screaming anymore. You guys, don't leave your hiding place until a real cop comes. I don't know. But how would you know? I mean. As I was saying that, I was like, that's... I know.

This is why, I mean, this is such a terrible worst case scenario because it's also in a place where nothing, they don't have school shootings. They don't have stuff like that happen. It's not common at all. And then there also, it's just a kid's camp. It's like such so much innocence that it's just the most surreal. A bunch of kids jump into the lake and start swimming away across.

And now it's really cold water. Yeah. Really cold water. And thank God, there were people that were on the islands across and in the houses that heard stuff, heard gunshots, heard screaming, and first thought that the gunshots must have been firecrackers, whatever. But there was one guy who had a big boat who heard it and...

Oh, got a call to say something bad is happening. You have to go over to that island. He thought it was a prank, but went anyway. Oh my goodness. God bless. He saved 30 kids. Holy shit. Because he just went.

He was like, this sounds like nothing, but I will go anyway. Totally. There were kids in the water. He was throwing out life jackets to kids who he couldn't fit on the boat. They did like four trips. Oh my God. He did that. He was a local named Marcel Gieffi is how I'm going to think it's pronounced.

He was a German residence that was staying at the a camping area on the mainland. And he got his boat out there. Then there was another 40 kids were saved by Heggy, H-E-G-E, Dolan, and Toril Hansen, who was a married couple who were holidaying nearby. This Wikipedia was clearly written by a foreign person using words like holidaying. Dolan was helping from land, so kids were swimming up on the land. She was getting them to safety while Hansen and another neighbor were making boat trip rescues. Then there was a man named Casper Oleg, who made three trips to the island in his boat.

Oh sorry, Casper is the one who thought initially it was a prank, but won anyway. Altogether, 150 kids swam away from the island and were pulled out of the fjord by campers on the opposite shore. It always makes me feel better when you hear that other citizens taking action and helping out. But the thing was, this motherfucker, once he saw that kids were getting into the water, went down and just started strafing the water. He was in berserker mode, as they like to say on last podcast on the left. He was in the mode where no one was going to live. How did they stop him?

Basically, the cops finally showed up after an hour and a half. Why did it take so long? They were at the bombing. They were at the other bombing and they didn't get word. It was a bunch of different stuff, but yeah, it basically just took them. That was how far away it was and how long it took. They finally got on. It was a bunch of cops in full riot gear and SWAT type gear.

Went on and just made an announcement saying, put your gun down. I think at that point, he was done because they said he had made a couple of calls too. I think it was that kind of thing where it was like he made his first round and then it was just like he was coming down off of it. To put his message out too, probably. This wasn't just to kill people, this was like a message. It was absolutely a message. It was this kind of thing of we need to take our country back and this is how we're going to do it. We're going to deliver the message to these politicians and to these people who are quote unquote allowing things to happen.

So at the end of the day, Brevik had killed 68 children out, right? Children. That's more that was in my high school graduating class. That makes me so sick. It's terrible. And then he injured 110, 55 of them seriously. The 69th victim died in the hospital two days later. So he was arrested.

He was examined by a court appointed forensic psychiatrist and he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. And they concluded that he was psychotic at the time of the attacks and criminally insane. But they, when it came time to have him go to court, they did a second psychiatric evaluation and found that he was not criminally insane. That he was fully aware of what he was doing. It was planned and it had been planned for years because not only did he post that YouTube video the night before, but he had been for years had been talking and ranting about this xenophobic shit of we need to get these people out. And of course he had a manifesto. So they find the manifesto and there are sections that he ripped off directly from the unabomber without, without attributing.

And he just replaced, he replaced leftists, which is unabomber with cultural Marxists. When he got on to, when he first started shooting the kids, he kept yelling, today is the day you die, Marxists. So he was accusing everybody of being, you know, the communists or whatever. My children, I mean, not that adults are any better, but it's just like. Because that's going to send like the fastest worst message. And it's also, it's that's a person who wants to do evil. This isn't just, you know, you send it, you, you park a van that has a bomb in it next to a government building and you're trying.

That's chaos and mayhem. You're trying to create. Yeah. And you're walking away from it. It's not like your point blank shooting. Like, but when, but that is like. He took it to the next level because he wanted, he's evil and he wanted evil to be done, which is like, what do you, who do you think you are to protect anybody from anything or pretend?

That's what your intentions are. Yeah. When what you're doing is killing children of your own country. That's all, that's where your argument falls apart. Yeah. Um, so he also in this manifesto, um, said he was an admirer of the Tea Party movement of America. Oh, well, there you go. So, you know, just know that, know that, know who you're appealing to.

On August 24th, um, he was found to be saying by that panel of judges and sentenced to preventative detention. Um, which is a sentence of 21 years in prison that can be repeatedly extended by five years as long as, um, the person is considered a threat to society. That's not long enough. He should have been fucking. It's the maximum sentence allowed by Norwegian law and the only way to get, to allow for life imprisonment is to get the 21 year sentence and then re-up it every five years, to re-examine it every five years. So it's a version of parole, of a parole board. They just don't do the whole, we sentenced you to 200 years in prison. He's just never gonna, like how unsatisfying there's something about sentencing someone to life in prison or a fucking to the death penalty.

That's like satisfying in a way. You know what I mean? Not that I believe in the death penalty or don't, but there's something so satisfying. Something about like 20 years to life is like kind of a bum, is a bummer. It's a bummer, but, but the good thing is that it seems like these guys do it in almost the opposite way. What they're saying is you can only, um, sentence to someone, sentence someone to prison for 21 years and then you have to keep looking at it. So it's not like you go into prison and rot because there, it's that thing of worrying about sending someone who shouldn't be there. So it's, it checks and balance that yeah, isn't satisfying in the outright, but this is a man who will never, you kill politicians, children.

You're never getting out of prison. Yeah. Although I did, there was, there was an article about that he, their prisons are so nice. They look like college dorm rooms. Oh my God, I bet. I mean, cause it's just everything that's just a higher quality of life here. They do everything better. Yeah.

Um, so yeah, there was some, he was petitioning to get an even nicer room cause his really nice room wasn't nice enough. Fuck you. And this article, it's just insanity. When you read it, you're just like, oh, you don't even understand how good you have it. And like in American prisons, they have like four people to a cell and you know, it's. It makes me sick and it makes me, it makes me not be able to say that I don't support the death penalty. You know what I mean? Like I don't, I'm not saying I do, but it makes it harder.

Okay. What about fucking vigilante justice? Can we, can we do that instead? But this is in his mind, he was a vigilante. No, you're right. It's, it just keeps turning back on itself. I know. There's no, we, the instinct is we feel like we know who's doing wrong and we want to take that person out,

which is I do it all the time. I feel it all the time, but there is that thing of like, especially when we're getting into like paid prisons, when we're getting into like a prison for pay, that whole world is so ugly and scary because then you're, then you have people who are making money off of people being incarcerated and that's terrible. But you know, then we talk about a guy like, we talk about people like Larry Singleton. We talk about a guy like if they caught the freeway phantom, then I'd go to the back of the head. Yeah. I mean, you want it to be that simple.

I know. Turns out life is complicated. It's difficult to manage. It's very scary. We're always trying. But as, I think her name was Pauline who made the poster on the Facebook page. One of my favorite lines on that awesome fucking poster that she made was go on a journey with the fear. That that's kind of what we're doing on this podcast, which made me love her for like,

even extracting that level of meaning that's so philosophical. Thank you. You and I just think we're just like spouting shit off. But I mean, I hope that I feel I'm happier in my life because we're doing this. Yeah. Because we're actually talking about stuff that we're afraid of and it's important. We're finding out so many people feel the same way and are feeling like finding their people. Yes.

That you don't have to just feel like you're stuck in a victim stance. You can actually like explore it in a safe way and hopefully be educated. And I don't know. You're not a sick fuck if you're fascinated by this stuff because fucking human condition is fascinating. And we care about it because it's stuff that like it's women and it's people who don't have a voice. And it's, you know, these untested rape kits where like the first thing I think of is if I make money again where I actually pay off my debts and fix my shit, I will donate money to whatever Mariska Hargitay is doing. Definitely.

Because that means a lot to me. And we've found a community of people who it means a lot to. I know. That's cool. Let's make it. I still stand behind the Facebook group. We can solve a cold case together. I mean, that's how Reddit's doing it.

I know. It's really quick. Yeah. Did you see the thing that they posted of the three women who were in a restaurant? I think it was in Malibu or in Santa Monica and they saw the guy putting the stuff in the girls drink. Yes. I know one of the girls who is friends with one of the girls. Yes.

Amazing. I loved that story. There were three women in a Santa Monica restaurant. Fig. Fig. I think it was called. Yeah. And friends having happy hour, which we love to do.

Yeah. And one of the girls sees from across the room a guy whose date had gotten up and gone to the bathroom. He fucking slightly slipped something in her drink, but the girl at the bar was like fucking saw that goes into the bathroom, confronts the girl and is like, I saw your guy do this. And then they also tell the manager, I saw the guy do this. We need to do something. And she sits with him for this whole dinner.

They're watching him. He keeps trying to cheers her to get her to drink. She's not drinking. And they keep the manager is like, there's nothing I can do. But then they review the tape and the security camera, they see him do it. They keep telling him that the register is broken. And they, you know, they're trying to get him his check. And the fucking Santa Monica PD comes in.

Yep. And they get him. There's a photo of him now online. Oh, really? Mm-hmm. That is, that story is so intense because that girl was so freaked out because she was like, he's a friend of mine. A good friend of mine from like a while, like it wasn't a first date.

No, she'd known him for a year and a half, it said. And then here's another red flag. The girls were like, can we give you a ride to your car? Like, where's your car? And she's like, the car is at his place because he had me meet him at his house. So he had been plant, like, you know what I mean? It's like, let's go back to your car. It's at my house.

It's such a predatory thing. And so they put up a photo of him and they're like, if anyone else has a similar story. Come forward. Yeah. That's amazing. That's one of those nice stories of the victim getting hurt. Yeah, it's not victim blaming, it's taking everything, I don't know. Well, it's protection.

It's that we can actually help each other. We should help each other and reach out to each other and not be like, if those women were different types of women who either A, didn't pay attention or B were like, I don't want to get involved, then something terrible could have happened. But instead they were being kind of nosy Nellie's and being like, sorry, I'm going to say something. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I think you and I would, and hopefully I think other people listening would be paying

attention to those things and seeing that this guy is doing this weird fucking thing. And you know, when we're on our own dates and at a bar, like noticing weird fucking people's behavior, I think that's the point for me is that like, I want to be aware of every level. We can take this, this anxiety and obsession and actually use it for good. Yeah, let's use our powers of anxiety for good, not evil. And also, let's stay sexy. And let's not get murdered. We love you.

Bye.