My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 205 - Everyone Gets A Horse
Episode Date: January 16, 2020Karen and Georgia cover the Blackout Murders and Scott Scurlock, the Hollywood Bandit.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privac...y#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Hello. Hi. And welcome. I didn't know we were starting. Welcome to my favorite murder.
We didn't do the thing where we nodded each other for five seconds before we actually
launch into it. Do prayer hands. I busted out. You did. I busted out by starting without you
and I busted out by biting into an apple right before we started. Like that was anything you
can do in the entire time frame of doing a podcast. Eating an apple never comes into it.
That's Karen Kilgara. Oh, that's George Hart Stark. I'm not eating an apple. I'm drinking a
kombucha because I'm just pretending I'm drinking alcohol and it's not alcohol. I bet there's a
little bit of alcohol in there. I hope so because it's fermented because I put whiskey in it. Oh,
because both hands are shaking really hard. Have you ever seen those really like it's in the movies
and stuff where there's a really old drunk that whose hands shake so bad he has to tie a kerchief
around one hand and then pull it around his neck so he can pull his hand up to get a drink into
his mouth? No. Oh, the ravages of alcohol. Just saying. Today's 15 days off for me. Really? Yeah.
I didn't want to ask because I didn't want to put pressure on. I got it. Yeah. But so I'll just say
it. Dude, you're past two weeks. I know. That's incredible. Congratulations. Thank you. What's
going on? Do you want to report any feelings? Any are you having hallucinations? No. How shaky are
your hands? I'm good. I'm sleeping fucking amazingly. I'm not having those 3 a.m. shame hours
where I just wake up and I'm like, why did you fucking drink again last night? This time you're
going to do it and hating myself. Yes. Not having those. I'm not taking naps. I'm feeling fucking
good. That's great. Yeah. Well, the poison's leaving the body. Is it? The poison's leaving the system.
How long does it take to not feel like? God, from what I can remember from medical school,
it's right around. I don't know. I mean, I say you're basically, I'd say a month. Yeah. I think
they usually say 28 days of a habit broken is a broken habit. So I think if you, you know,
but I bet you just system wise, like running clean for over two weeks is primo you're in
you're in golden state. Thank you. And I've just been shoveling turmeric into my face.
What's that do? It helps with inflammation. Nice. Yeah. Do you have anything? Any other
tips or tricks for how you got two weeks is a long time. I am falling asleep listening to the
book that I recommended. Like I've listened to it three or four times at this point. Nice. It's
This Naked Life by Annie Grace. I'll fucking say it again. It has changed everything for me. Amazing.
And I have other suggestions too at some point. We'll have a full talk here about it. Yeah. I love
it because I, you talking about that last week, I was like, you don't have to, it doesn't have to
be alcohol. Yeah. To be pointing and looking at a thing that you want to let go of. Yeah. And
it's just more about the, because I actually kind of breezed through that book just to see how alcohol
centric it was. Yeah. And I was like, Oh, no, I could completely listen to this. Yeah. To be,
you could just have it about food. You can have it about weed, whatever you want. Yeah. About,
I mean, those aren't my problem. I didn't mean you. I want, I want to do it about just being
too nice to people and it being too helpful. I truly didn't mean you when I said that.
And somehow I hit you spot on. Well, it's all I talk about. It's all I talk about. But, you know,
there are these things we're like, you know, it's before podcast, just fighting into a honey
crisp, just one bite and throwing it away. That's a terrible habit that has to get rid of. I think
these days, though, the stress and daily horror that everyone is dealing with. And that, you know,
just the, the temperature and literally figure, figuratively, politically, people are relying
on things probably now more than ever 100% and coping with things that maybe might not be working.
So stuff like this and these conversations, I think can be really helpful, even if it's cash,
even if it's not like, Oh, I crashed my car for the fifth time or whatever. Yeah. But it's just
kind of like, I want to figure out what actually feels good, not what my habit is. You know what
I've been thinking about? I, you know, in AA, you hit rock, people hit rock bottom and that's when
you decided to quit. I haven't done that. But I think I've hit rock boredom or I'm so fucking
bored when I drink and I'm so bored. I drink because I'm bored and I'm bored of that and I want
something new. Right. You know what I mean? 100%. Okay. Because it's almost like you're like, I'm
just going to go walk down that same hallway again. Right. And so yes, there's great things
down that hallway. There's a pinball machine and there's drama. Right. And there's like,
Woo confetti and shit. Yeah. And it's like, you're more yourself or so you think and you're more
excited and happy or so you think in that hallway. Brave. There's all these things the hallway makes
you believe. Right. But then yeah, after a while, you're like, is there any other fucking part of
this house I could please go sit in for a while? That is a great analogy. It is an analogy. Well,
great job. Thank you. It might even be a metaphor. But who can say now I would like to talk about
something more important than your sobriety and that's a new TV show. Love it. Let's do it.
And I'm surprised because I was so excited about this show that I thought I could get you. Yeah.
But again, it's proven that we are polar opposites and do not have the same taste.
It's a HBO's new series starring and directed by the great Jason Bateman called The Outsider
that is about did he or did he not commit this crime? And I think it's so good.
I do too. But I accidentally like a year ago read the book and I didn't like it. Right.
So I stopped. So I think it's it's it's kind of clouding how I look at it. But I do really like
it. I'm going to watch it and also probably needs to be said. Also, Stephen King has recently said
some problematic shit that other people wouldn't like. So that might be clouding it for some people.
I didn't even realize he had anything to do with it. So I watched it and got these big
the night of feelings. Those old member was that 2016 or 2017. Nice. And we're like, yes,
what is this? What is it? Who is Riz Ahmed? Why is this taking over my life? I only want to look at
this TV show for the rest of my life. Absolutely. It's similar feelings in that way. And then also
just I've loved Jason Bateman since, you know, he came into my life via Silver Spoon's great
syndicated Ricky Schroeder vehicle as the villain. Then he got his own show called
What's Your Move? What the fuck was that was it was called? And it was like a kid with a
single mom and the guy across the hall wanted to date his mom. And it was so it was like him
versus the adult. I never saw that. It's so good. He is so fucking good as a child actor. Oh my
God. He's like 12 years old. And he it's like he's fucking he's unbelievable. What's the actor
who's also in the show who was in Bloodline? What's his name? He's amazing. Oh, is it Norman
Reedus? No, that's the guy from Walking Dead. Is it should be pause and also the detective from
The Night of is also on it as the lawyer. Oh, is that okay? So the detective that's like a
all anti Riza Med and then Ben Mendelsohn. Ben Mendelsohn is the guy from Bloodline. Yes. And
he's incredible. He's so good. I love him. He's the detective in this one. Yeah. Then the lawyer
is the guy that was the detective on The Night of that's why that's where I was getting my Night
of feelings. Got it. Let me change the subject casually and cleanly change the subject. Cool.
Okay. I just saw this news that I wanted to tell you because I thought you would love it as much
as I did. Please. So there's this soccer team. You know, you and I went and saw soccer when we
were in the UK. Yes, we call it football. Football is so much fun. So there's a soccer team. They're
called Roma. They're from Italy and they're like big deal. A big deal. They're called Roma. They're
from Italy. Yeah. Yeah. Can you believe it? It's so crazy. Who'da thunk? So I guess they're like
known for having a really witty funny Twitter account. Oh. And now they've done something where
so incoming transfer announcements. That's when like we have this new player. Was that what that
that's what that means? Sure. I don't know shit about sports. So I'm going to get this wrong.
I text Vince the other day when he was watching football. How many innings are left?
Not even to be cute. I was having cute. I just didn't. I'm not. So now when they post a photo
and like a news announcement of their incoming transfers, their new players side by side with
it, they pair a slideshow and pics of missing children from various countries. No. So every
time and it's a big news when someone gets transferred. So every time someone clicks on it
to read the news, there are missing children that you need to keep an eye out. And guess what?
Six fucking children have been found because of this. How amazing is that? Oh, are you crying?
Am I going to cry? I can't. I'm holding my cheeks. Take a bite of an apple. That's
push that down. Do what you like a bite of this apple. That's beautiful. That is absolutely
what it's what people should be doing for no reason. They have no fucking faking it. It's
just like such a good thing to do. It's somebody within that club or within that system over there.
It realizes this gets all this attention and for what? Aside from the joy of this sport,
which God bless that. Yeah. But what else could we be actually doing? Totally. That's
beautiful. That's incredible. Actually, and you know, the fall line on Instagram, their Instagram
account is a lot of those missing people too. And it's a lot of missing people that are not
that are marginalized in the community. So they're so they're missing person information isn't as
widespread as it would be for someone say who's white. So it's really so the fall line follow
them too. Because we and everyone knows us, especially people that follow true crime. But
God, we've been so the media has taught us that the most important missing person is a blonde
teenage girl over the years. We have been indoctrinated into believing that. And it's really
beautiful when we can start changing that narrative any way anyone can. The fall line has been working
on that so hard. I wanted to read this tweet because this girl sent this. So as we talked
about last week, murder squad got their first cold case solved. Very exciting. You can go
listen to that episode now. So there was a lot of online action about that. I'm trying to talk and
read. Did you see it's in Rolling Stone? It's in Rolling Stone that they did that. They did a little
article on Rolling Stone. I didn't know that. Paul Hulls and Billy Jensen talking. Oh hell,
yeah. And they got all their pictures ready of like them sitting really moodily on the side of a
desk. Yeah. So beautiful. So everyone's all excited for the murder squads solve. And then
listener named Shelby wrote in Shelby, Shelby, the exactly right network podcast, the fall line
led former prosecutor Laura Coates to bring the case of the Millbrook twins to Oxygen to help
investigate their disappearance. The true power of podcasting. That's fucking right. So I thought
that was super cool that she basically is like, saw the other heat and was like, can we actually
turn this back a little bit to the fall line? Because those guys 100% you know, they're they're
doing amazing work. They're they're very under the radar about it. They just do it and they're
getting it done and it's not like Paul and Billy, you have to be like, oh, where is Rolling Stone?
Look at over here. Can I admit something to you? Always. Here's my this is dirty secret
corner. Let me hear it. I never watched, listened to or participated in any way in Dirty John.
Never once. And so all these conversations that we've I this happens sometimes where I really
take a step back from just getting into true crime. Now as everybody has to you have to be
up to date on everything. Yes. And people want to talk about all of it. And we do too. But like
sometimes I'm just like, I can't I can't watch another story like this. I'm so behind on the
podcast, like all the new cool podcasts that are coming out of true crime. I'm so behind on it.
Yeah, I've been up on them lately. And God damn, there's some great ones. There's some ones that
are like, it's so I'm telling you, Murder in Oregon is a humongous accomplishment. That's the
one I did listen to and I loved it. Oh, man, it's so good. And it kind of is like, it's about the
power of the press and how we really do need to protect journalists and the people that are really
doing, you know, the journalists and the media that are doing the good jobs are the sometimes
the only people holding anyone, anyone's feet to the fire ethically. And it's so important
and crucial, especially in this day and age. So I basically just binged dirty John TV show
for two, like two days. Basically, I just kind of like my four a.m. thing where I can't stop
getting up at four a.m. and being fully awake. No. So I'm just like, I stayed up all night
and watch that show, which that show is now I understand what you mean. It's so infuriating.
You know, I only listened to like two episodes because I was I just couldn't get through it.
It's so frustrating. It's so frustrating and infuriating. And it reminds me of my mom and I
just I couldn't get and it reminds me of everyone I fucking grew up with in Orange County. I just
can't get through it. It's tough because this, you know, this woman is a victim and and that is a
great story to tell because people getting their lives overtaken by psychopaths totally and the
way those people will stop it, nothing to like and end thing and the and the total lack of logic
for these people and how they do things. But the way it was like it was like nothing's a big deal,
nothing registers and so these poor children that are being affected by that. Yeah, I could see it
all like it was very emotional and it was very difficult where just like these girls, it didn't
matter what they said and how difficult that is for like kids who grew up in family situations
where they didn't get hurt a lot and they didn't get their time in and people didn't pay attention.
Yeah, man, that was difficult. I'll tell you watching your parents date is something that I
don't fucking wish on anyone. It really sucks. It just is like it's so ugly. Yeah, I bet you know.
I can't I never had to deal with it. So I but I can only imagine that's the vulnerability of that
and like strangers and and you have to be vulnerable to get to get into that shit and you
have to trust people and that's like big thing for me lately. It's just like trust issues are
so deep and they're so fucking like when you get that that alarm set off with a trust issue it like
personally it's like it rocks your world. It's just like your bell gets rung and you just don't
know and you'll never again in the same way unless you are totally vulnerable. But it's like well
what if you're right and what if you're just ignoring fucking red flags? Yes, I know it's it
but you know at the same time you do you have to do it. You have to trust and you have to be open
and it's just like the whole this whole study of it was very it was difficult but god damn it
god bless Connie Britton. What a fucking she's unbelievably great actress. She's incredible oh
and so watchable. Can I say what I binged this weekend that I had no fucking clue about? I didn't
know anything about it before the Watchmen or just Watchmen. Watchmen, yes. Did you watch it on HBO?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Holy fucking shit. The best, right? It was like made for me. I love it so much.
Fucking Regina King. Regina King. She has been putting in her work day after day year after year
for so long and killing it and now she's like it's so exciting to watch a person who's always been
so great continue this rise just like fucking just continue to rise and rise and then she is
the heart and soul of that series and it was so good. I'm not done with it yet so don't tell me.
Okay. I don't think I could. It's so like I read Watchmen and I didn't know what was going on.
Yeah, we tried to watch the movie and it was terrible. I like the movie but it is that thing of
I get very defensive about comic books because I'm like I don't get symbolism you know what I mean
like I immediately I'm like I don't know about Greek mythology and I bail. Yeah, me too. Oh,
I just have to did you know Brene Brown is coming out with her own podcast? Yes, it's new. I think
it's out. It's not. There's a trailer. Oh, okay. And then it's like you know we can all go run and
subscribe. Yeah. It's called Unlocking Us. Yes girl. Unlock us. Help us. We need you. We're here
for you. Get out here but it's already like it's number one I think. It is number one. I saw it.
That's why I thought it was out. It's number one already. The trailer is number one. What
hell yeah. So it's so exciting to welcome Brene Brown to the podcasting community. Amen.
We're here with our tray of cold cuts saying welcome to the church hall. I've made a crew to
take a platter. We're so excited to see you. Yeah. And cannot wait to hear. I don't give a
shit if she's just reading off a list of things in her kitchen. Yeah. I want to hear it. Yeah.
It'll be beautiful and helpful. It'll help everyone. So excited. Those kitchen items.
Am I first? You're first. Okay. Right Stephen. I saw your notes. I read your notebook earlier.
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Goodbye. Hey, I'm Aresha and I'm Brooke and we're the hosts of Wanderer's podcast,
Even the Rich, where we bring you absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most
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around her happy and how the pressure to be all things to all people led her down a dark path.
Follow Even the Rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on the Amazon
music or Wondery app. Okay, well, speaking of alcoholism, but first, speaking of the fact
that we asked everyone to send us suggestions of murders that we should cover, that was the
best fucking idea we've ever had. I mean, it only took us four years. Yeah, what a great idea.
Solicit. It ended up being great for me because I found this murder that I had never heard of,
would have never probably found if Genie G had an email that to us. Genie G. Genie G. Thank you.
She also sent us a hilarious photo of a guy on the leg thigh push machine. What's the car?
I think leg press. Leg press who had chicken feet socks on. I saw that. Okay. Oh, Stephen,
I think you sent it to us. Oh, good. No. Maybe you just saw it. Someone texted it to me and it
was a delight. Go find it, everyone. It's fucking hilarious. Yeah. So this is the blackout murders.
Okay. Any idea yet? Because I feel like you might- Texas? No. You might know it because of the time
period. You were- The 70s? An adult. No. Oh, oh, oh. All right. What if I guessed the whole story?
Can I just keep guessing? Keep going. What did it take place in Dubuque? No. Okay. So I got info
from this from the New York Times article from 1994 by Joseph Berger, a New York magazine article
by Suzanne O'Malley. And actually, I looked her up and she's just like, you know, really fucking
incredible journalist and author. And she was a crime journalist and she's the one who discovered
the false testimony during the Andrea Yates trial. What? Which led to the reversal of her conviction.
Remember that? Remind me. Is she the one that drowned the kids?
Andrea Yates doesn't want to drown all five of her kids. Okay. One of the prosecution's
arguments was that she was premeditated because she had seen a law and order episode about it.
Okay. And then this fucking chick, Suzanne O'Malley, figured it out after she had been convicted
that the date that that came out was after the trial. Ew, chills. Right? So she got a retrial
and this time she was declared insane and sent to the mental hospital where she belongs. Yes.
So that's pretty incredible. That's congratulations, Suzanne O'Malley. You're American hero.
That's right. You're law and order American hero. And she also wrote the 1995, what's it called,
a law and order episode about this case called privileged. Hold on. Yeah. She's very... She
went on to work on law and order after discovering this thing on law and order. She just wrote some
episodes. Holy shit. Yeah. Incredible, right? I wonder if she was sitting... No, I'm just saying.
Okay. Two situations. One, she got herself into that situation and that earned her a job on law
and order. Yes. Two, she already worked on law and order, had a encyclopedic knowledge and then
went, hold on, that's not that timeline. Because there was no like sitting in the courtroom googling
like IMDB. There was no such thing as that. Not in 94? No. Okay. And then also I listened to an
episode of Once Upon a Crime about this. So, blackout murders. I'm starting here. I'm starting
in the spring of 1990. Great. Okay. 23-year-old Paul Cox realizes after yet another alcohol-induced
blackout that he has a fucking drinking problem and his girlfriend's like, you got to go to AA.
So, he goes up until that point, Paul had had a troubled life even though he had had all these
fucking advantages. He grew up in the town of Larchmont, which is an affluent suburb of New York
in Westchester County, which we all know is fucking bougie as shit. It's bougie here in LA,
Larchmont neighborhood. That's right. That's like where all the assholes go to pretend to eat pizza.
That's right. Village pizzeria. I just grew up Larchmont. They'll never have me back.
So, this is like a, this is a total waspy town and Paul Cox himself is like a waspy,
good-looking young man born in 1967. He's the fifth of seven kids. And you know when rich
people have kids, it's to show off how much money they have. Sure. Right. Everyone gets a horse.
So, it's a prominent family in the community. He's distinguished in the community. His father
is a vice president of Chase Manhattan Bank. So, come on. Yeah, privilege, privilege.
They actually have a bowl of cash that's just sitting on their coffee table. You can just
take a five or a 10. Right. So, nothing's wrong with privilege. It's just like take advantage
of it, you guys. What refreshing stance in 2020. There's nothing wrong with privilege.
What I meant was do good with it. I think the name of this episode is there's nothing wrong
with privilege. I meant do good things with it. Be a good person and add to your community.
Oh, it's the cancellation trumpets. They're coming for us.
This is the final one. This is our final cancellation call. Do good things with your
privilege. No, stop blowing that goddamn horn of shame. Do good things with your privilege.
Yes. Take advantage of it and do good things with your privilege. The taking advantage is
already happening. That's built into privilege. Okay. So, as a young kid, he got into trouble
like in first grade for stealing money from his parents. Then he started stealing money
from other kids in the class. He had failing grades, which was later determined because it was
due to a learning disability, which wasn't known at the time. They didn't check for that shit back
then. No, they were just like, please read faster. We don't care if the letters are all
backwards and jumbled up for you. That's right. After a failed suicide attempt after being sent
to a private high school, Paul sees a psychiatrist who says that he had matricidal and patricidal
tendencies, which means you want to kill your mom and your dad. He eventually graduates high
school, but had dropped out of the private college. His dad had pulled strings to get him
into. He quits the Air Force two weeks in. He's like, oh, this sucks by saying. Oh, this is hard.
Yeah, this is not fun or military. That's right. This is not taking advantage of my privilege. No.
He lies on a psychological evaluation to get out. He was more into drinking and partying
than worrying about his future, as I feel like the time and place, it's a pretty normal thing.
No judgments, especially what's that early 90s we're talking about. Yeah. That was kind of
what everyone did. Back then, there was no internet. Yeah. There was no forever war. Everyone was
chilling and listening to pretty good music and wearing their dad's card again. That's right.
So cut to 1990 when he enters AA and starts getting into the program and getting sober for
the first time since I think even like as a kid, he started drinking. Yeah. Yeah. So after I get
sober, he starts to have these vivid, crazy dreams and flashbacks in which he kills his parents.
They're super realistic and they freak him out, but obviously he didn't kill his parents. They're
still alive. So while working on steps four and five of AA, which are you have to make a moral
inventory of yourself and you have to admit to God yourself into another human being,
you're wrongdoings. So during those steps, he tells his girlfriend that he needs to tell her
something. Oh. He's crying. He's distraught. And he tells her that he thought he actually killed
someone during a blackout years before. He doesn't think it's just a dream. Oh. And he's just now
remembering the details. See, this is hard. I want to, I know, because I want to ask you about,
do you remember blackouts at some point? Do they come back to you? I would.
Really? Yes. There are lots of memories that I have where I drank till I didn't know what was
going on. But then the next day, it would be like my brain would go, hey, do you want to see a
Polaroid really quick? And there's a couple where like, there's one I have that's the most
humiliating where I'm in a blackout. And then the next thing I know is I'm trying to kiss someone
and they're moving away with a kind of like horrified look on their face. But the next day,
I remember waking up and just having a bad feeling like I did something. Something went wrong.
And then like around 4pm after like four bagels and watching TV for six hours,
a quick Polaroid comes up of this guy basically kind of like backing up. And I wouldn't, I like,
it didn't know until that point. And then I'm like, oh no. And it was that kind of thing where I was
like, if my brain wanted to serve it up, it would let me know what I did. But other than that, it
was so I also know like the reason this part of the story is giving me the super sweat. Sorry.
No, I mean, it's, it's that thing. If you check out, you still are doing things. And that's that's
scary. It's dangerous. It's like, it's scary. It's totally scary. Yeah. And I'm not making
decisions anymore. No, your subconscious is and you're leaving yourself up to the protection
of the universe. Like there's, it's so goddamn dangerous for personal, personal safety. That's
right. I don't know how I did. I like to thank my friend Dave Messmer because oftentimes he was
the person that was loading me into a car or loading me over here, loading me over there. Like
that thing where like someone's so drunk, they can't walk, but they're still fucking walking.
Yeah. So you have to kind of run around near them. Guys, keep an eye on your drunk friends.
Come on, everybody. Make sure that they get home safely. Okay. So let's get back to the shit. Yeah.
So he's distraught and he tells his girlfriend that he thought he had killed someone during a
blackout. He's just now remembering it. His girlfriend's like, no frickin way. I know you
better than anyone. You would have never done that. And she tells him to go talk to his sponsor.
So, which of course is someone in an AA who's been through the program longer than you who
could help guide you through it essentially. So Paul tells his sponsor the same thing. He wasn't
certain he had committed it, the murders. And his sponsor was like, basically was like talk to a
lawyer. And the lawyer who was also in the program advised Paul to fucking shut the fuck up, stop
talking about it. Yeah. Continue staying sober and go to a therapist. Yeah. Basically he's like,
stop talking about it because he kept giving more and more details. Really? Yeah. Like he
started to believe it. Okay. But Paul couldn't stop remembering details and he couldn't stop
talking about it. So for two years, he told at least seven people in Alcoholics Anonymous
about the vivid memories that were coming back to him. No one said a thing. So, okay, basically
in 1993, this woman wants to move into his apartment with the other roommates in the program.
And he's like, okay, you can move in, but I have to tell you something first. I have nightmares
and sometimes wake up screaming because I think I might have killed someone back when I had a black
out, but I don't remember fully what happened. See, now I'm on his lawyer's side. That's just like,
why would you be telling people that? Yeah. If you don't know for sure. Yeah. Anyway, all of it.
She moves in anyways. Okay. You know, to each his own, etc. So Mrs. H, she's known by Mrs. H,
she decides to move in anyways. But after a couple months, she has to move out for health reasons.
And finally in January 1993, after two years since he first started telling people about
his flashbacks, she finally tells her therapist about it. Mrs. H does. And she's like, yeah,
you got to go to the police about this. So after telling as many as seven people in AA about these
flashbacks that he started to think were real, who because of the anonymous nature of the program,
Alcoholics Anonymous kept the info to themselves. We had a, sorry, we had a friend who joined AA
and used to come home and tell us every person that was at the meeting, all famous people. Oh,
no. Constantly. And so my friend Laura called it. He's going to A because there was no anonymous.
And she just like, he's going to his A meeting. Oh my God. I always felt very guilty because I
knew deep down I was going to end up there soon. Yeah. And I'd just be like, yeah, I hope no one
tells me all of my fucking secrets. But that's very Hollywood because it was always just celebrity.
Of course. You know, whatever. So finally Paul's story comes out to police. This is the story.
In 1988, when Paul was just 21 years old, he was enrolled at Belmont Abbey College in Belmont,
North Carolina. And he had just learned that he was flunking out on all of his classes.
Been there. Yeah. Yeah. When he had to go home for, for the holidays. So it's December 30th.
He'd been drinking heavily all day with a night with his friends. They're at a local bar at that
night and they're drinking tons of beer and kamikaze, which is a fucking mistake. Let me tell you.
What are kamikaze vodka? I just got acid reflux hearing the word kamikaze. I haven't
heard that drink name in so long. Those are the ones that are like, it's the bunch of liquor
mixed together. And it's so it's a little shot that's kind of sweet. It's orangey. It is like,
what the fuck's in there? Vodka, Midori and like, or like vodka and some kind of orange liqueur.
The kamikaze is made of equal parts vodka, triple sec and lime juice. No.
You guys, stop consuming so much sugar in your drinks. Don't do that. It's going to make you even.
It makes you so much more hungover. It's like adds to the pain, but also it just like,
it makes a go down easier in the front. It's all part of the bad decision making. Yeah.
Where you're just like, I guess I'll have, you know, it just put four sugar cubes in a shot of
Bailey's Irish cream. Oh, no. So they're fucking absolutely shit-faced. Yeah. And eventually,
because he's drunk, he gets into his car. It's his mom's borrowed car to drive his friends home.
Yeah. Since he was drunk driving, he missed a sharp turn and crashes into a guardrail.
Okay. And the car won't start back up again. So they all get out of the car and friends are
like, we're walking back to the bar. Fuck this. And he's like, I'm just going to walk in the
opposite direction home. So he leaves the car there and what happens next, he says he has no
memory of it until he began to get sober. So instead of walking to his family home, Paul goes to
the home he had lived in until he was seven years old. So that was the first seven years of his life.
Obviously. Why did I say that? Just so everyone's sure. Does everyone know math?
If you're seven, that means you've lived seven years. Okay. Which his family had sold in 1974.
So the home had been bought and was still inhabited by Dr. Lakshman Rao Shervu, who's 58,
and his wife, Dr. Shanta Shervu, she's 51. The Shervu's are a well-liked and respected family.
They had left Bombay, India in 1968, which is the shirts on their back in order to start a new life
in LA. Nope. In order to start a new life in the US. Eventually, Dr. Shervu, Mr. Shervu,
was able to get his PhD in nuclear chemistry. He lands, sorry, might say that again. Eventually,
Dr. and Mr. Shervu was able to use his PhD in nuclear chemistry to get a job as a professor
of nuclear medicine at Einstein Montefora Hospital. Like big, big time. Yes. Big time smart people.
Yeah. And in 1974, the family is able to buy the Cox's house in the upscale town of Larchmont,
New York, where they had been living. So they had two children and while she raised them,
Mrs. Dr. Shervu, is that right, worked as a lab technician. Well, she's a doctor too, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So just Dr. Shervu. I just want to make it clear that I'm talking about her.
Dr. Rhett. Got it. Cancel. Cancel. Cancel. I'm, I have to say this right now. The pressure
building in me of what the story is about to be. Yeah. About the Chavuz is so upsetting to me.
Yeah. You're right. It's so upsetting to me and it's awful. Let's blame Jeannie G.
Oh, yeah. It's awful. It's terrible. It's so bad. It's insane. They had two kids and while
she raised them, Dr. Shanta worked as a lab technician. She later goes back to school for her
MBA and in her fucking 40s, she went to medical school in order to reach her lifelong goal of
becoming a doctor. So these are hardworking, intelligent people that are giving back to the
community and important members. They are using their privilege. They're using their privilege
for good. That's right. And at the time, she was a resident in geriatrics. So they put their
children through Princeton. They supported family members back home in India and they helped eight
of their siblings immigrate to the U.S. And they were hardworking, intelligent, reliable people,
which is why in January 2, 1989, after no one in their life had heard from the couple,
the family member goes to the house to check on them. And when they go around to the back of the
house, they see that one of the panes of glass in the back door has been broken out. And so the
family member, there's no cell phones, remember, and you just want to go in and contaminate the
crime scene, gets in his car, drives to the police station and makes them come back with him.
Wow.
Yeah. So when the police arrive, they go to the master bedroom and they find what they
described as a war zone. It's awful. There's blood spattered on the vaulted ceilings,
which is crazy. And on the walls and on the floors, it's horrible. And the bodies of the
two doctors are lying on their bed. Rao's still under the covers and Shanta across the bed with
her head on his arm. Shanta had been stabbed nine times. Rao had been stabbed 15 times,
to their faces, to their bodies, and both of their throats had them been slashed.
Oh, my God.
It's just horrible. Oh, my God.
There's no sexual assault. There's no robbery. There's no murder weapon found. There's a
handprint or a palm print found at the scene on the pillow, but they didn't match the more than
60 Prince investigators compared them to. Investigators were like, well, you know what
probably happened is two hired Indian assassins as part of a vendetta had killed the Chervus
and then fled the country. That's what their conclusion was when they couldn't figure out who
it was. Yeah. Not seeing it.
No. That, of course, upset the Chervus family because they felt like their immigrant status
made it so that their case wasn't being taken seriously.
Well, and also just how convenient you make up the most convenient story and then go,
well, that's probably what happened.
Right. With no evidence that that's the case.
And then, oh, okay. So then I guess you can close it because the people from India were
killed by people from India who left and went back to India.
Stuff like that doesn't happen here. So it must have been outsiders, that thinking.
So for over four years, there's no suspects in the murders of the doctors. Back to Ms. H,
telling the police the story that Paul had told her, including the fact that he said he did it
because he had a blackout and had a flashback of abuse and thought he was killing his parents.
So he went back to his childhood home, which they don't talk about, but you and I,
this is an opinion podcast, can fucking speculate as to what happened.
And, you know, the abuse that he must have been suffering to want to kill his parents.
Yes. Yeah.
She tells them that he had told other AA members as well.
And so they bring all those AA members in and they're like, why didn't you tell us what's
wrong with you? The Charavu family is.
But you wouldn't. If it's a person.
Yeah, because it's not proven. It's not, it's a person saying, I'm afraid I did this thing,
which is as real as it is not real. And it's not on those people who are listening to a person
kind of dump whatever many years of a drug abuse and like confusion, you wouldn't go,
oh, I'm going to take this fear you have and go report you for it.
But the more details he starts to over the two years, the more details he starts to come out.
And then he says, because he knows that this is in his town. So he knows about these murders.
Oh, he does. Yeah.
Because it's his old house. It's on the news the next morning.
Yeah, that's the more detail that comes out than the more it turns to not.
Yeah, that you have to do something. Yeah.
So he thought he was killing his parents when he sees the news the next morning.
He realizes what happened.
So the Chervoo family is super pissed that so many people know knew who murdered their parents
for two years, but hadn't come forward while they suffered.
So the now 25 year old Paul Cox, he's a carpenter at this point.
He's arrested on May 20th, 1993. And in addition to the statements of AA members,
the police had a matching palm print of Cox's from the scene.
Right.
So Paul claims that he had woken up the next morning after the murders.
He said he was covered in blood and he didn't know what it was, what was going on.
He had the kitchen knife that he had taken from the kitchen, the share of his kitchen
after he had broken in, but he didn't remember anything from the night before.
And so here's a little detail I saw either he or his mother incinerated his bloody clothes.
Oh.
Yeah. Initially, he was saying that his mom took the clothes and just incinerated them.
Yeah.
So she must have had a fucking clue, right?
Right. I mean, yeah, you don't burn clothes. No one burns clothes anymore.
It's not, you know.
Right.
The 10s.
No.
1910s, not the 2010s.
And then Paul took the knife and he throws it in a nearby lake.
Yeah, he does.
Yeah.
So he must have, I mean.
So he knew more than he knew.
Yeah.
I think he knew.
He later saw the news report about the murder of the Chervuse and he, and it's,
he tells people later that he went back to the house to try to clean any fingerprints.
So at that point.
He went back to his old childhood home where he broke in and oh, yeah.
Now this changes everything.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, that's what's interesting.
Telling the story from his perspective.
Yeah.
I have so much empathy.
Yeah.
For a person who is like, like that.
Yeah.
Now that we are hearing it from the Chervuse perspective, which is these are two innocent
people living a great life in a house they happen to buy.
Yeah.
And a monster breaks in the middle of the night and murders them in cold fucking blood.
But he, it's hard for me to be like, well, he might still have had been blacked out,
you know, but he's, I don't, I'm not fucking making, I don't think that that's an excuse at all.
No, no.
Um, it's just, but as soon as he knew, I mean, what is he going to, yeah.
It's just weird.
It's like, you know that he has a reason, but it's certainly no excuse.
No.
And it's not a vague concept.
Now that we know that he knew this, the news story, that's not a vague concept.
That's, he knew exactly what he did and he just didn't know it.
He wasn't positive because he didn't have the exact memory, right?
But he can put two and two together.
Yeah, exactly.
But I mean, like, what would you, like, would you turn yourself in?
Yes, fuck yes.
You did the bad things.
Sorry, that's part of what, what being an alcoholic and being a blackout drunk,
knowing that you can fuck up like that, the second you even begin to put that together,
at least come forward and say, this could be me, you might want to check some prints of mine.
I mean, that's what he should have done.
Totally.
So, he claimed he didn't remember the killings until after he sobered up in 1990
and that at the time he thought he was killing his parents.
So, the state charges Paul Cox with four counts of murder, two for intentional murder,
and two for depraved and difference murder.
Shit.
Cox's attorney decides to go with the defense of not guilty by reason of insanity,
saying Paul was in a psychotic state when he killed the couple.
The psychiatrist for the defense said Paul had snapped after a lifetime of being pushed to
succeed and having been emotionally neglected by his mother and father and from the humiliating
way they handled his chronic boyhood bedwetting.
So, and, and, and had during a blackout killed them, essentially, so he thought.
I just wonder, like, there had to be more than that, right?
Like the abuse that had, his wedding is bad.
That's always a sign of sexual abuse.
I mean, perhaps.
Yeah.
But even then, you can't kill your parents.
You can't.
There's so many abused people that don't kill their abusers.
Like there has to be a line drawn where no matter what your reasons are,
they're not justifiable reasons, I think.
Yeah.
And so, he says it, the psychiatrist says it's almost as if he were going back in time
and eliminating the people he sought to blame for all his problems back when he was seven years old.
So, when the seven AA members are subpoenaed to testify against Paul, they're like, well,
what the fuck?
They claim their statements should be considered as privileged.
Just like clergy attorneys and psychiatrists, they're bound by AA principles of confidentiality,
which I, I've been to AA and NA meetings for some time on and off.
I would never think that it's confidential.
No.
I mean, confidential between two people, but not legally binding confidentiality.
Right.
No, I would never assume that.
No.
But the judges.
And they're not clergy people.
They're not.
Well, it's not the same.
And because it's a spirit, they say because it's spiritual.
That's it called.
Element.
Yeah.
Or like it's spiritually grounded.
I mean, sure.
I don't.
Up until a point.
And I think that point is murder.
Right.
I think.
I agree.
So, the judge is like, no, I do.
And rules that this.
Oh, the judge agrees.
Yeah.
Thank God.
And rules that the state law does not extend privilege to self-help groups,
which is essentially what it is.
All seven A.A. members are ordered to testify, but they let them just use Miss H.
And might let them use not full names.
And their photos are forbidden to be taken.
Mm-hmm.
The first trial ends on June 28th in a mistrial after this one fucking juror,
who sounds like or like just sounds like everyone's worst nightmare,
would not accept the other 11 jurors conclusion that Paul Cox was not temporarily insane
when he killed the Chervuse.
And this, this, she had doubts that Paul had even committed the murders,
even though the defense admitted that he had.
Oh.
So, she just like was not.
She wasn't accepting the facts that were being presented to her.
She was going off on her own.
She would not get on the carousel and take a ride.
So, they have.
The carousel of facts.
Right.
It's real fun.
Yeah, get on there.
So, they declare a mistrial.
So, Paul Cox went to a second trial.
And by the way, he had already been bailed out by his parents for like 200 grand
and was home on house arrest, which is what privilege gets you.
Wow.
Yeah.
The parents knowing that they wanted.
Isn't that, doesn't that be the creepiest part?
I mean, yeah.
Come on home.
Oof, lot going on here.
Yeah.
So, he goes to a second trial in December of 1994.
And one difference is that Paul decides to testify in his trial.
He tries to get the jury's sympathy by telling of all the abuse he suffered,
such as having, I'm not kidding at this, they gave him gross sandwiches in his school lunch.
His parents sometimes missed his sports games.
His siblings didn't wish him a happy birthday.
And the gold stars he would get if he didn't wet his bed.
So, he says that's how he was.
What about those gold stars?
He didn't get them.
They weren't big enough.
What's the problem?
Just the gold stars showing that he would wet his bed in general, you know.
Okay.
Or not.
You look mad.
I'm livid.
I feel tricked that I empathized with him in the beginning.
After delivering for eight days, the jury rejected the insanity defense,
but they also rejected the prosecution's request of a verdict of murder.
And they found that he committed the murders under extreme emotional disturbance
and found him guilty of two counts of manslaughter in the first degree.
So, now 27 years old, Paul Cox is sentenced to two, like two eight and a half to 25 year
sentences to be served consecutively.
So, the convictions are appealed because the AA members, it's more of the clergy convent
privilege saying that it was a religion.
So, they're trying to overturn his whole appeal based on the AA being privilege information.
Westchester County DA, Jeanine Pirro is like hell no.
Oh, Jeanine Pirro, you know her from Fox News.
Oh, really?
Yeah, she's a judge and that appears a lot on Fox News.
She's been arrested for speeding at like 130 miles an hour, among other things.
Look up, look it up for yourself.
She might be your hero.
Well, she takes this to the court of appeals and they agree with her and said that when he
talked to AA members about the crime, he was just unburdening himself and seeking empathy
and guidance, not a spiritual revelation.
No.
But you can't find anything online.
All I could find was he was released in March of 2015.
He said at the trial or a sentencing, I'm profoundly sorry for this tragedy to the
Cheravu family as well as my own family.
I was very sick at the time of these actions and I will regret them for the rest of my life.
Yeah, I bet.
And that is the blackout murders.
Wow, that's a real emotional and moral quandary there.
Totally.
There's a lot going on, but you can't, I feel like once I, once you start hearing about
there were actual victims, this was a real murder.
This was not a blackout concept.
Yeah, and people in town like cited with him and his family being like, it could have been
any, it could have been any of our kids that did that.
But it's like, can we talk about this fucking innocent couple who were sleeping and happened
to buy the house?
You know, it's just...
Well, maybe, and maybe that's true that it could have been any other kids that did it,
but what they're saying is any of our kids could be a murderer.
So once your kid is a murderer, you have to go from there.
Yeah.
Once that is the thing that gets done, it's not a concept and the goal should not be to figure
out how it's okay that they did that.
Right, how to get them out of trouble.
The goal should be, you fucking did it, you took human lives, that matters.
Let's please have this matter in a real way.
Yeah, let's get justice for the share of the family.
Oh, god, damn it.
Yeah.
Also, I feel like this, I was thinking when you were talking about the part of it being
a psychotic episode, but there is a logic to him going to his childhood home that I feel
like if I was a lawyer, and let's hope I'm not, you might be, that would actually indicate
logical thinking.
See, to me, it's the opposite, because he went to a home that he hadn't lived in for,
what's math, 13 years and killed his parents, even though they hadn't lived there for 13 years.
Like that's how deeply ingrained his pain and his anger was.
Sure, but he didn't just walk and go into a random home.
That's my thing, is that I feel like if you were in a psychotic state, he would be walking
and then kill the first two man and woman adult couple that he finds.
But he didn't want to kill people, he wanted to kill his parents.
Right, so therefore, he does the thing of going to back where he thinks his parents are.
I don't know, I mean, I guess you could argue at both sides before the exact same fact,
but I'm looking at it as it seems like that's actually a planned thing.
And therefore, whether they literally are his parents, that is premeditated murder.
So even, it doesn't make it better that it's is his parents or is not his parents,
it's an act of premeditated murder within an alcoholic blackout.
Yeah.
Crazy.
Fuck, that's a nuts story.
Yeah.
I've never heard that.
I haven't either.
I was hoping the whole time you were going to tell me it wasn't real
and that he somehow finds the real killers.
Oh, I'm sorry.
No, it's certainly not your fault.
That's not it.
Shit.
Yeah, that's it.
That's a touchy one.
Yeah.
Man.
Yeah.
Great.
For real.
I mean.
Oh, thank you.
Great terribleness.
Shit.
Thank you.
Are you ready to get into it?
Let's do it.
To move right along.
Let's move in.
Let's move.
Let's settle into this one.
I also took a request from a.
Great.
From a listener.
This is fun.
And this one I liked because I feel like it goes along.
You do these sometimes and I find them so delightful.
I like to put it in the file of outrageous criminals.
So it's a little bit lighter and a little bit, a tiny bit less.
Okay.
Bad.
This is the story of Scott Skirlock, the Hollywood bandit.
Okay.
All right.
I don't know it yet.
Okay.
So I'm going to tell it to you.
Do it.
This was suggested by a listener.
And their Twitter handle is at doc underline under slash.
Under slash.
Lower bar.
What are you saying?
A small line.
What's it called?
Way at the bottom.
What's it called?
Underscore.
Steven.
Steven.
And the millennial.
It's at doc underscore honey bear.
Okay.
And they're the ones that suggested this one.
Thank you very much.
Great.
Thank you for thinking of us.
So the, I got this from Wikipedia, of course.
Please give $5 if you can.
An article from hubpages.com, which I don't think I've ever seen before.
It's a really good article called William Scott Terlock,
the Hollywood bank robber and the end of the dream.
And that's written by a writer named Westman Todd Shaw.
Then there's an article on historylink.org,
written by Darryl C. McCleary.
And also some information was taken from an article
found on the Washington secretary of states blog
called from our corner.
Oh wow.
Is there a muffin recipe?
Please take that up.
The state secretary of Washington is a woman named Kim Wyman.
Okay.
Apparently she fucking blogs.
Vlog.
Good for her.
So feelings, dreams.
Yeah.
Challenges.
Album she's listening to these days.
Five day challenge.
And then also just remember this crazy crime.
Yeah.
Okay.
Let's talk about Scott Terlock, who is the Hollywood bandit.
He was born on March 5th, 1955 in Fairfax County, Virginia.
His father was a Baptist minister.
His mother was an elementary school teacher.
He has three sisters.
But as opposed to like the usual typical Hollywood thing
of like the minister is all strict and you know, whatever.
In fact, it was the opposite.
His parents were very permissive.
And Scott basically did whatever he wanted.
He was also charming, charismatic and manipulative.
And as he got older, he started looking like Mel Gibson.
So he was actually becoming a human monster.
In that he clearly did what he wanted and used his kind of like
manipulative charm to get his way.
Part of it.
I mean, experienced it first hand.
So and actually looking at pictures, he, to me, looks less like Mel Gibson
and more like the sheriff from Jaws.
What's that actor's name?
Roy Scheider.
Roy Scheider.
Roy Scheider.
You burped that one out.
That was amazing to watch that.
I barfed it up from my internal guts.
Please watch Jaws.
Re-watch Jaws if you haven't watched it in a while.
It's supposed to this sack I'm carrying outside my body.
Filled with bile.
So in 1974, he's 19 years old and he decides to move to Hawaii
because his friend Kevin Myers is going to the University of Hawaii.
So he's like, I'm gonna go chill out there.
Great.
So Kevin then flunks out of the University of Hawaii.
And so the two of them go to Plan B working on a tomato farm on Oahu.
Great.
Right.
Everyone's Plan B in 1976.
So they do that for a little while, like a year and a half.
And then one day they're on a hike and this is in 1976.
And they walk across some of the neighbor's land
and they happen upon a bunch of pot plants.
Oh, right.
And they see that they take it as a sign that it's time to enact Plan C,
which is stealing all these pot plants, selling pot and making a profit off of it.
Don't steal drugs from drug dealers, guys.
No, they're like, no, we're all about this.
Oh, God.
This is the life that we want to live.
So Plan C seamlessly leads into Plan D,
which is secretly growing pot plants on the tomato farm where they work.
Wow.
Wow, that's complicated.
Right.
But this is just, this is God's plan in action for them.
They're just seeing it coming to them because they're like,
things are kind of falling apart and now we're basically helpers of a tomato farmer.
Yeah.
And then suddenly it's like, oh.
Yeah.
This song from the little mermaid place and the pot gets its legs and it marries the prince.
The pot grows feet and holds up a fork and calls it a whatchamadoo and a dingley dome.
So I laughed really hard when I was like, so they took these,
they started growing pot plants on the tomato farm because in my mind,
remembering my cousin growing pot in her mother's field,
pot plants grow very tall in the wild. She actually grew sunflowers plants around so
she could hide the pot plants.
Smart, you're nerking at your cousin right now.
Well, as you know, fucking 40 years ago.
But so I started laughing because I was picturing tomato plants being low to the ground.
So there's just like, it looks like Christmas trees.
And then I looked it up online and of course tomato plants can grow very tall and
tomato plant leaves kind of look like pot leaves.
So they blend real nice.
I was thinking, I actually realized I was thinking of pumpkins.
So anyhow.
My parents lived on a tomato farm.
For real?
Yeah, in Israel.
Did they really?
Yeah.
Did they work the farm?
Yeah, you had to.
It was a moshav.
So it's like a kaboots wherever it's like the community has to.
It's a moshav.
So it's like a kaboots.
Oh, no, I can't see it.
Sorry.
No, no, no, I love it.
It's basically like a community that all works together and the money's all, you know,
that's rat.
Did they do that in the 60s and 70s?
70s, yeah.
Oh, yes.
Was Janet's hair so long, far, long past her butt?
Not past her butt, but it was long and my parents were so beautiful.
Yes.
They're still beautiful.
Yeah.
They both are incredibly attractive people.
Thank you.
When I see pictures of your mom, I get low self-esteem.
Because Janet's blowout is major.
She is perfectly put together.
She has, you're a beautiful group.
You hard stars.
Thank you.
You are.
Cousins.
Yeah.
Listen, I'm trying to tell a fucking story.
So, so eventually the farmer from the tomato farm, Old MacDonald,
he finds the pot plants and he gets rid of the two of them.
Okay.
So Scott decides it's time to move back to the mainland.
So in 1978, he moves back to Olympia, Washington and enrolls in school to become a doctor at
Evergreen State College.
All right.
So suddenly out of the blue, he's decided and maybe this is something he wanted to do before
and he was just too hot and manipulative to do it or whatever.
Oh, he's a doctor.
A doctor.
So he goes to school to be a doctor and he's very good.
He's very good in chemistry class.
But his old easy money drug dealer life still calls to him.
Absolutely.
So he uses his chemistry skills in a visionary manner,
breaking bad style and starts cooking meth in the chem lab.
Wow.
You can't do that.
Yeah.
He can and did.
And I wonder if he later wanted to.
Oh, no, he wouldn't have, but he should have sued.
Okay.
So I mean, I wonder if like that's the breaking bad people.
Yeah.
This story.
But yeah.
So essentially he starts making fucking bank.
Oh my God.
It's cooking and selling meth and of course doing that.
Yeah.
Um, because he is in med school, so he's got to fucking get through.
So he makes so much money selling meth that he is able to buy himself a 20 acre plot of land
near Olympia that's really secluded that has a small house on it.
Wow.
And now just simultaneously and as like a footnote to this portion of the story,
I want to remind anyone who has never seen, I believe it's the Oregonian newspaper from Portland.
They have, uh, it was from the early 2000s, I believe from that's when I first saw it.
Is there series faces of meth when meth became such a huge problem?
They started that.
No, no, I'm just saying that on this side, it's a guy that's like, yeah, let's get meth going.
Oh, that one.
And meth began to ravage the Pacific Northwest in such a serious way that they started showing
the mug shots of people who were getting arrested for petty crimes and then went on meth.
And they're the series of mug shots.
That's one of the most upsetting and disturbing things where over a series of like five to seven
years, you watch a young person look like they're 75 years old because of this drug.
This drug is the worst.
I still can't believe I got out of it without like, dude, meth teeth or like looking
and mathed out.
You, you basically got like grazed by a semi instead of hit by a drug.
I dipped a 14 year old toe in it and then got burned and stepped back.
Bless it.
Fucking God.
Blessed be.
Yeah.
Jesus Christ.
I know, it's crazy.
It's thank God.
Yeah.
Because your skin would look so bad.
We're the worst people.
Okay.
So, but I just bring that up because in this story, it goes on and he's kind of like this
successful fucking meth maker and distributor and dealer and there is this other side to
that where he's fucking living like a king because everybody fucking quote unquote loves meth.
It's getting sick and addicted.
They're so addicted.
It's like meth is the one where it's like you do it once and you're done for.
It's terrible.
It's terrible.
It's a scourge.
Okay.
But not on, not on Scott's side of things.
He makes so much money, he's got his plot of land and he uses the real house on the property
to cook the meth in and then he decides to build himself and this is the methiest project of all
time.
A three story 1500 square foot tree house to live in.
Wow.
And this tree house spans seven cedar trees and it has running water.
It has electricity.
It has an outdoor bathtub.
It has a zipline running from the house through the woods for quote unquote
emergency escapes and it has my favorite tree house amenity of all time.
A large fireplace.
No, don't do that.
You're on drugs.
Hello and welcome.
You're on drugs.
You know what I need for my tree house?
A fireplace.
A fireplace.
I want a wood, I want a log stack too so I can get wood for the fire.
Yep.
Can you go down and get me some wood and bring it back up into the tree house so we
can have a nice roaring fucking fire and do huge rails of meth mixed with baby laxative
and fucking Clorox.
Okay guys, calm down Karen.
So he brags to his buddies that he built the tree house in two weeks.
Are you serious?
Someone told me that I'd be like, well, I'm never going up there.
You're ready to take longer.
Yeah, you should really go over it actually turned out that the truth of it was it took
him a couple months but to him it felt like a couple weeks because he was on meth.
Yeah, time flies when you're tweaked out as hell.
When you don't sleep and your eyes just stay open for 18 days in a row.
He ends up hiring his friend Kevin's brother Steve Myers who was a very successful sculptor
who's fallen on hard times and needs money.
So he says, well, I'll pay you to come and help me work on the tree house.
I according to Steve, and this is a quote from Wikipedia, quote, there was nothing in
the house that was conscientiously designed and that's very much what Scott was like.
Okay, photos on meth of this tree house.
I didn't see any.
It's the thing where you see the photos of like when spiders take they give spider certain drugs
and then they show you what the web looks like.
That's just makes me think of that.
They give meth heads tools and then they it's the big human spider
web of a tree house project on that long a ride gone.
It's like, can we get more fire elements into this tree house?
I don't know.
Should we?
Is this the candle room?
We'll just have lit candles in here all the time.
I mean, it's a fucking nightmare.
So he's living that tree house life, right?
He's he's just blazing off of all his drug money.
He has quote.
This is my favorite piece of research, a free and open demeanor.
I'm fucking no shit.
Oh, you're not going to be like conservative.
No, not on meth.
No, you might have started conservative but then slowly but surely your tie gets loose
and you have a quote free and open demeanor.
He walks around nude a lot and he travels a ton and he has lots of girlfriends,
which in my mind when I read that it was all happening at the airport at once.
The fucking naked guys here again.
And he's going to fucking Ibiza with three girls and he's nude.
Whoa.
He's nude in gate B.
So he also becomes known for really, you know, being a free spender, which is very nice of him.
He actually the people start he's known around town for leaving waitresses like thousand dollar
tips.
He makes so much money.
He drops out of med school.
Sure.
No, Dr. Moth, come back.
Please you're you're needed.
This world needs you.
We need someone that can't stop talking here in the emergency room.
Okay.
So in 1989, Scott's main meth distributor gets murdered on the job.
Jesus.
This is not about that murder.
And we don't know that person's name, but it scares Scott so badly that he stops cooking
and selling meth entirely because he knows that he's been fucking around and like basically
getting away with something.
Then he looks around and goes, oh, shit, my treehouse has a fireplace.
This is not a way any person should live.
Just kidding.
He never says that.
He spends the next few years living off his remaining drug earnings and then when that's
gone, he starts digging up all the drugs he's sealed in plastic buckets and buried around
his property and start selling that off.
He's like, I took a break and I'm back.
Yeah.
Baby.
But basically that was his that was his nest egg.
That was his 401k.
Oh my God.
Then he had buried in buckets around the property.
So once.
Does meth stay fresh?
You tell me.
I don't know.
That's never any left.
It can't.
You know.
Yeah, exactly.
That all happened in a three week period.
Right.
But basically the money starts to run out.
He realizes he needs to come up with more money somehow.
And that's when he comes up with plan E.
I think.
Yeah.
We've gone to plan E.
He's walking away from this highly unethical life as a drug kingpin to follow what he's
discovered now as his true passion, robbing banks.
So yes, he basically is like, I'm going to get away from this meth life and I'm going to do
what I really want.
You know what feels safer and saner at this point?
You know what I've always.
So he literally tells Steve Myers he's always dreamt of robbing banks and giving the money
away Robin Hood style.
That's dumb.
And then Oprah comes in sideways from the side, dips in and goes, follow that dream.
Scott, do it.
Oprah told me.
I elucidated Oprah in front of the fireplace.
So basically this is a very positive way of saying he hit fucking rock bottom on meth.
Yeah.
And had no other alternatives or a place to go.
So he calls up another old friend from college, a guy named Mark Biggins.
And he had also hired Mark to work on the tree house.
Basically.
Of course.
He was this psychotic rich guy on meth.
He was like, my old broke friends, are you going through hard times?
I'll pay you to come do drugs and like put put up tree house.
Construction.
New wings.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, good on you.
Like your friends need help, but then they become meth addicts.
It's very Winchester mystery house on math.
Yeah.
Is what in a tree.
I'm saying it.
So.
So basically he calls Mark.
Mark, Mark again is having financial trouble. Scott uses us to convince him basically to
rob a bank with him.
Okay.
Dude, fucking do it.
Brows before hoes.
Do it.
And so then Mark was like, sure.
So just before noon on June 25th, 1992, Scott and Mark walk into the sea first bank
at a 4112 East Madison Street in Olympia, Washington.
Scott's wearing a fake nose and heavy theatrical makeup.
Mark's wearing a Ronald Reagan mask.
I feel like rule one of robbing banks should be like go to a different town.
Yes.
Right.
Yes.
Don't don't do your hometown bank.
That's right.
Because get away drive.
Yeah.
You're like around the corner trying to hydrocrime.
I mean like there yeah.
100%.
I think we're and Olympia is like a small town kind of it's it's not.
It's not a huge metropolis.
No, that's for sure.
So they get inside, they steal $19,971 in cash.
They go outside, they successfully steal a car from one of the customers at the bank
so that it can't be traced to them.
But Mark's the getaway driver and he kind of can't handle it.
So he floods the engine on this car.
Come on.
Which means they stole a car old enough to be able to flood the engine.
But didn't they all do that in 92?
No, I don't think you can't I think I think they stole like an old fucking like a Ford
like a Nova or something.
Yeah, that's a Chevy.
They stole some shitty old car then Mark immediately floods the engine like Mark guns.
It puts his foot all the way down on the gas and then they're just like dude.
So they have to get out and run.
So they fucking so they're chased by dogs on this run home.
They have to cross a golf course that's busy
and a bunch of fucking people see them run across the golf course
and they still manage to get away.
Again, the magic of math.
So now he's not on it anymore.
Well, we don't know that.
Well, I mean, it seems like they might be dabbling.
The experience scares Mark so badly that he tells Scott I'm never doing this again.
But Scott actually has the opposite experience because he gets a huge
fucking hit of adrenaline and he's like now this is all I want to do for the rest of my life.
And he can't wait to do it again.
So Scott taps his old tomato farm friend from Hawaii, Kevin, to team up with him
and serve as a lookout.
Kevin says no fucking way, you idiot.
But Scott is able to convince him to launder the stolen money
at Las Vegas casinos for him.
Okay.
So basically now simultaneously he's successful in his first bank robbery
and it's the tech boom in Seattle and the like that area in that generalized area.
So most banks at that time were teaming with cash.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And on top of that, Scott decides that he's going to invest in a bunch of movie quality masks,
costumes and theatrical makeup.
If we're going to do this, let's do it right.
Let's really go for it.
Let's really go for it.
Because his whole idea is if I can go in, they won't be able to recognize me,
but for reasons that people don't normally do.
Right.
So this is about him using makeup.
Scott Scurlock's greatest contribution to the lexicon of bank robbery tactics
was the use of theatrical makeup.
And this completely disguised his face while at the same time,
not causing the immediate visible stir caused by an idiot wearing a ski mask.
You never see, you also never see theatrical makeup in movies about bank robbery
as that's just too good of a tip to give a potential robber.
So Scott Scurlock had an arrangement where theatrical makeup was bought,
ordered and shipped to a friend who would nary a clue as to what it was being used for.
And this is the path to wisdom.
Should there be any in organized crime?
Oh my God.
So apparently he would walk in and he would have like a weird Crohn's face.
Well, you've seen like the Kim Kardashian before and after contouring.
She looks like a different freaking person.
Is that like what were they good?
Yes, it's contouring, but essentially he would give himself an old person's face
but still move like a young person.
So people, that's how later on people knew it was the Hollywood Bandit,
is they'd be like, oh, this is a weird, this is not the person.
But in the beginning, it was very effective because it was like, oh, that's an old person
or that's like an old woman or something.
No one would panic.
Right.
That energy would not be there and he wouldn't be, he would have a gun on him,
but he wouldn't be like waving around going, everybody get down.
He would just be like a person and it was super, super low key and super effective.
Okay, so in 1992, Scott disguises himself.
He arms himself with a handgun and he successfully robs five more banks.
Holy shit.
By himself.
Oh my gosh.
So on August 14th, 1992, he robs the Sea First Bank again.
He goes back to the same one they already hit and he gets $8,124 more.
On September 3rd, he robs the US Bank at 4,200 Southwest Edmund Street and he gets almost $10,000.
On September 11th, 1992, he robs the University Savings and Loan at 4568 Sand Point,
way northeast and gets almost $6,000. On October 5th, he robs the Great Western Bank at
2610 California Avenue Southwest and he gets $27,500.
Wow.
And on November 9th, 1992, he robs the Sea First Bank at 4020 Northeast 55th Street
and he gets, he wins, I wrote, a whopping $252,000.
Oh my god, quit at this point, guys.
You're ahead on.
But you know why he can't?
Meth.
Because now he's high on the deadliest drug of all, hubris.
I laughed so hard when I wrote that down today.
Okay, he's getting away with it and it's working.
So there's no way he's fucking stopping now.
Police have no idea who this mystery bank robber is.
They're doing everything they can to catch him.
They nickname him Hollywood because of his high quality disguises.
The media picks up on it, gives it its own twist.
They start calling him the Hollywood Bandit.
Which is, in writer terms, they would say, don't do lateral pitches.
If you can't beat the original idea, then just don't pitch at all.
Anyway.
Anyone can resay the things someone else just said.
That's not being funny.
That's knowing synonyms.
Like with a different word?
Yeah, it's like, oh, we're going to call him Hollywood.
Well, we're going to call him the Hollywood Bandit.
Okay, well, that's the same basic idea.
Right, okay.
Quit fucking cheating.
Okay, so no matter what they call him, the disguises are working
because there's almost no evidence and the authorities have no idea.
And so Scott decides to lay low for a little while.
Smart.
Right?
So he takes his winnings and his earnings and his money
and after about a year, he wants to go back to the life.
So this time he asks Steve Myers help the guy that helped him with the treehouse.
Okay, okay.
In my mind, Steve Myers is Steve Zahn, you know, that a derp out of sight who's like,
yeah, man.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, kind of a burnout, but like reliable.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So Steve Zahn plays the part of Steve Myers.
He's now the lookout.
And so on November 24th, 1993, the day before Thanksgiving,
they once again stake out the Sea First Bank.
Steve plants himself outside.
He's listening to a police scanner as Scott goes in holding the gun
and wearing makeup on his face.
But then Steve hears that the 911 call coming in about the robbery.
So he goes, gets Scott, they flee and they basically, they get, they get away again.
Oh my God.
They wait about a month and then they proceed to rob five, five more.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
So basically it's US bank.
I won't give you the addresses this time because that took too long.
January 21st, US bank, 15,000, almost $16,000 on that one.
February 17th, Sea First Bank.
It's that same one on Northeast 55th Street.
This time they get $114,000.
June 24th, they go to First Interstate Bank in Portland, Oregon on Hawthorne.
And they get zero dollars and zero cents because Scott ends up aborting the mission
because he, he, it says unsafe, what does it say?
Unsafe conditions.
You know, it was a security guard who was retiring the next day.
He was like, fuck this shit.
Fulls his gun.
There's no fucking way you guys are getting away with this.
Not on my watch.
This is, and then Scott's like, this is unsafe.
I feel unsafe.
So that's a zip.
July 13th, the First Interstate Bank on Queen Anne Avenue, oops, over $100,000 on that one.
On December 20th, there's a US bank on Woodstock Boulevard in Portland and they get $22,000 from
that.
So it's another successful year of bank robberies.
And so Scott takes those victories and goes back to Mark Biggins, who did the very first
robbery with him and then quit the, the engine flutter.
And he's like, join this team.
We're moving forward.
What do I have to do to prove it to you?
What do you want?
Ten.
Pile money?
Pile money.
What do you want me to do?
Do you want, I will do a cat eyeliner on you.
I'm really good at it at this point.
Okay.
So now they're, they're, now they're a trio.
Okay.
These guys.
This is actually really starting to line up pretty severely with the movie Out of Sight
starring George Clooney and JLo with Steve Zahn.
Oh.
Actually, also in it.
Oh.
A lot of, at the beginning, when it was the pot plants, I was thinking it was like the
beach with Leo Caprio.
Then we're moving into this part and it's getting very out of sight with bank robbers
in or out of their comfort zone.
Great in that.
Oh, the best she's ever been.
Second only to Hustler.
Truly.
So Mark's on board.
He's the lookout.
He's the lookout from inside the bank.
So Steve's watching outside the bank and Scott's doing everything and planning it and orchestrating it.
So these, this trio robs more, two more banks in 1995, but on one of them a die pack explodes
and they basically have to bail on the money, but they still get away without getting caught.
So they do, on January 18th, they get 11,000, almost $12,000 from the first interstate bank,
but then they have to bail on $12,000 because it's all got die on it.
Dude.
And then on January 27th, they go to the sea first bank and they get $252,000.
Quit.
Quit now.
Seriously.
You've got enough.
So they think the key to their success is Scott's calm demeanor.
Steve, this is Steve later being interviewed and he says, Scott's whole point was if you go in
crazy with violence and waving a gun and something does happen, what do you do then?
Yeah, most people working in banks realize this guy is not afraid and that's more frightening
and commanding without having to be crazy.
Wow, tactics.
So he kind of went in with some weird makeup on his face and was just like,
give me your money.
It's me and they all kind of went, okay.
So of course now the cops in the area have called in the FBI.
The FBI thinks still it's only this one robber.
They don't know that there's other people on the team and of course they don't have any evidence
because none of the, if there is security footage, it's an unrecognizable person.
The Washington State Bankers Association and the Crime Stoppers of Puget Sound
band together and they get 50 grand together for a reward for this bank robber's capture.
No one comes forward.
No one has any useful information.
By the end of 1995, the FBI has enough incidences that they start tracking patterns
in the bank robbers behavior. They notice the timing is based around how much money
is pulled in from previous heists. So they basically are like, okay, this guy,
if he steals X amount, he's going to come back because he needs to live on 20 grand a month.
Okay.
So they're like, they start being able to predict when they're going to hit banks.
That's so interesting.
Which also is how often they're doing it and not getting caught.
Oh, you guys, stop.
So using this logic, they take an educated guess and as to where the next robbery will be.
So on where and when the next robbery will be.
So they think it's going to happen January 25th, 1996 at the Sea First Bank.
Wow.
They fucking love the Sea First Bank.
Yeah, they do.
So they stake out the Sea First and it turns out that the date is correct,
but the bank is wrong.
They got the date right.
They got the date exactly right.
That's crazy.
But the bank that the guys actually rob is the first interstate bank that's two miles away
from that Sea First Bank.
So before the FBI can get over there, the guys get away from the first interstate bank
with $141,000, almost $142,000.
So this lasts the guy until May of that year.
So this is in January.
So they go till May and then they decide to hit
the Madison Park branch of the first interstate bank.
And from that one, they get almost $115,000.
What the crap.
So it's just working.
This is like, it's a plan that's going well.
Yeah.
So then, this is around this time, Scott finds out there's this $50,000 reward for information
about him and he decides.
No.
He takes this information and does in classic Scott fashion, he decides, well,
then we should rob five banks in one day.
Why?
Because that's where his logic takes him because he's an adventurer.
Oh, God, he's just showing off at this point.
He's high on adrenaline.
Yeah.
He can't get a big enough fix.
Yeah.
So they hear the police have told every bank in the Seattle area to put electronic
tracers on stolen money or like on the money.
Yeah, yeah.
So they decide that with that piece of information, they're just going to hit one bank.
So at 541 Wednesday, November 27th, 1996, Scott and Mark, with wearing their disguises,
walk into a brand new bank they've never hit before.
It's the Sea First Bank in nearby Lake City.
Steve's outside keeping watch.
What the boys don't know as they walk in is that the bank teller working there that day
knew all about the Hollywood Bandit.
It was all read up.
He knew exactly.
He was a full-on fucking murderer, Reno.
And the second those two walked in, he hits the silent alarm.
Just like ankle in the doorway.
So police are in other neighborhoods.
They're not anticipating that the Lake City bank is the one they're going to hit.
So they race over toward the bank they're actually this bank they're at.
But the robbers get it done in less than four minutes and get out.
I wouldn't want to press the button, panic button, because then you're in a hostage situation.
Like I'd rather them get away and then you press the button.
Do you know what I mean?
Yes, that's smart, except for that.
I think this guy was just like, let's catch them.
Yeah, maybe because there wasn't maybe he'd never hurt anyone.
So he didn't think that they were going to do anything.
Yeah, like that it wasn't a everybody on the floor thing at all that they did.
Right.
They were just kind of like, they were gentle robbers.
They were they were more into the theatrics and the makeup is what it felt like to me.
But I just love the idea that the guy sees what what if it was just a weird looking person?
They get up to the window.
Never mind, never mind, never mind.
Oh man, this nose, you got to see it.
Sorry, it's just a strangely shaped nose and a lot of eyeliner.
But once they leave, a customer defies their order.
So apparently they did say like everybody, they must have made people get on the ground
or whatever, but it's like, don't nobody follow us out.
Yeah.
So I'm like, I'm coming with you.
But apparently it's just like, yeah, you wave a gun around and go,
everybody stay where you are and they'll do it.
Sure.
But this one bank customer did not do it and immediately got up, walked outside and saw
the car they drove away at.
You crazy kid.
You, you super rebel.
Stay on the ground.
But that person sees them get into a blue dodge care van, immediately calls the cops,
tells them, gives them the vehicle description and the direction that they are going.
Wow.
So.
No cell phones.
This is all without cell phones, everyone.
That's right.
That's 96.
You have cell phones.
Yeah, no.
So the treehouse trio, I like to call them, they ditched that, that caravan, the blue caravan,
and they immediately steal a white Chevy Astro van.
Sure.
That's inconspicuous.
Right.
All those cars that you literally don't see when they're driving down the freeway.
Right.
They're just background cars.
Yeah.
So, but the problem is now it's nighttime, it's dark, it's raining,
and they're caught in holiday rush hour traffic.
What?
So they're just sitting.
You don't think of bank robbers as having to deal with shit, like, like with the fucking holiday
traffic.
Trying to merge, no one let us merge.
And then they were just trying to get away.
Can we be in the carpooling?
And on top of that, they're, Scott's driving and Mark and Steve are using their flashlights
to, to look through the money to see if there's electronic tracers in the money.
And a cop behind them sees guys using flashlights inside a van and immediately
are, are, start to tail them and watch them.
The phrase used here is, it's unclear who fired first.
What?
I would bet a lot of my personal fortune that the cops fired first.
You gotta think.
But they're, the guys quickly find themselves being shot at by police, Stephen and Mark are
each shot in the arm and they're like basically rendered immobile.
Scott pulls off on the side street to try to fire a shotgun back at the cops.
Don't do that.
He's driving.
Yeah, please don't do that.
Yeah.
The gun jams.
So he then has to drive off again, which is a very like unslic.
No, yeah.
Like action sequence in this movie.
Yeah.
Or just like, you try to pull over, you try to, yeah.
Yeah, I'm getting, I'm starting that last one again.
And then he guns it in this, um, an Astro van.
So he goes from five to seven miles an hour down this alley.
The cops pursue the van, they fire at it and Mark who still injured shot in the arm fires back.
Eventually Scott veers off the road and crashes into the side of a house.
So the police swarm the van, they get inside, they find Mark and Steve
bleeding over just about a million dollars.
Oh my God, that's how much they got or they had in the car?
That's how much was in the car.
Whoa.
I don't know if they brought all their, all their winnings to every robbery.
It doesn't make a lot of sense.
No.
So it must have been what they got.
But Scott, the driver and the makeup artist has run.
Okay.
Okay.
So he's on foot and nowhere to be found.
So the police section off a six block radius in search of the Hollywood bandit.
And they continue this search into Thanksgiving day because remember it was Thanksgiving Eve.
So a woman who lived within that six block radius named Wilma Walker, Wilma,
Wilma sees the report of the fugitive that's in her neighborhood on the news.
So she asked her son Ronald to go check the family camper in the backyard just for peace of mind.
Oh no.
And when Ronald checks the camper out, he sees there's a man inside.
So he calls the cops, police arrive on the scene, they knock on the camper door,
they announce themselves, no one responds, they throw a canister of pepper spray inside,
nothing happens.
At this point, they think no one's in there.
But so they're like, there's nothing going on.
The Walker family is like, we need you to make sure by putting your eyes on the inside.
Open the door.
Do it.
So Sergeant Howard Monta uses his flashlight to look inside the camper.
And as he does, a gunshot goes on.
So at first, Sergeant Monta thinks he's been shot.
And then when he realizes that he's OK, two other officers on the scene open fire on the camper.
And then backup arrives, they wait for four hours to see if anyone's going to come out.
Oh my God.
And when there's no movement, they fill the camper with tear gas to be safe.
And they finally enter the camper with gas masks on.
And inside, they find the body of the Hollywood Bandit soon to be identified as 41-year-old
Scott Scurlock with one self-inflicted bullet wound in his head.
No way.
So he killed himself because he was surrounded.
So that one shot that they first heard was him shooting himself.
Wow.
So in total, Scott committed 18 robberies and he stole approximately, with different team members,
$2.3 million, making him one of the most prolific bank robbers in US history.
Wow.
After receiving medical treatment for their gunshot wounds,
both Mark Biggins and Steve Myers are sentenced to 21 years in prison each.
Wow.
Steve's released early in 2013.
Mark's released in 2015 after serving his full term.
And that is the cinematic tale of the Hollywood Bandit, Scott Scurlock.
Wow.
That was awesome.
Isn't that the most nuts?
Twist, churns, all of these things.
Masks, fireplaces.
They're everywhere.
Tree houses.
Tree houses even.
When I got to that part in this story, because I was like,
this is a little bit off.
This is not a classic whatever.
And then I was just like, oh, we've hit, we've hit pay dirt here.
Oh my goodness.
With that tree, the tree house made it for me.
That man's 41 years.
He lived a million lives.
He did it.
And he did it.
And he did it.
Yeah.
He was, he was addicted to the meth of life.
Wow.
That was incredible.
Oh, thank you.
Good job.
Thank you so much.
What do you have?
A fucking hooray?
Is it time?
Yeah, let's do it.
Well, yeah.
Let's do it.
Okay.
You want to go first?
You want me to?
Okay. Did I tell you all, did I tell everyone publicly already
that I upped my, I'm upped my therapy days?
Yeah.
Like, I don't think you talked about it on here.
Okay.
So I decided since I have the time and the money,
Yeah.
I get to go to therapy three times a week.
That's incredible, Karen.
And I have to say this.
Now, this is, I'm a narcissist.
I could fucking sit in front of anyone and talk about myself
clearly, obviously, just look at my podcasting history.
But it is so helpful because in, especially when things come up
lately, like we were talking about trust issues and stuff,
when things come up and they really affect me,
my life coping strategy is usually you're not supposed to be feeling these feelings.
So shut it down and shut it down.
Shame over them.
Yep. And truly feeling, yeah, like you're not, like I,
because I have this strong emotion, say jealousy or just straight up anger or whatever,
that that makes me weak and lame and irresponsible or whatever.
Like you're a dog and you're whacking it on the head with a newspaper
where it's like, that doesn't do anything.
No. And it, and that dog gets to be here.
Yes.
She got us here.
Look how cute it is.
Look at that fucking dog.
That dog never did anything.
Wait a second. It's a person. It's not a dog.
Look at me.
Um, so that basically, you know, this morning,
it was just like that thing where I get to continue this conversation.
So it's not the week later where,
because I also do this thing in therapy where I go,
this isn't worth talking about.
I shouldn't be discussing this, this is self indulgent.
There's so much judging.
15 minutes a week.
Yes.
It's like not enough time to like get into the deep shit.
No.
And it, and it takes this kind of like for me anyway,
because there's already this gauntlet to run of shame and weird,
don't, don't do this and all these weird rules I make up.
It's like, she's just now catching on of like,
hold on, why are you doing that?
Hold on just yesterday.
You said this.
Yeah.
Whereas when I go once a week,
no one can track those conversations.
So she'll be like, I don't know.
I remember like she's good at doing that,
but now it's this very concentrated thing.
And it's, I can't tell you how much it's helping me in this
realization of I, that actually I'm fine.
Yeah.
That actually when we work through all this stuff,
and if I just allow myself to be a human being and like,
I get to, I get to be mad.
I get to be angry.
I get to be jealous, whatever.
And that all those things are just indicators
that something needs to be tended to.
Yeah.
There's, you don't, like you're saying,
you don't beat the dog for just being there.
You go, oh, the dog's here to tell me something.
Yeah.
And that is actually, then you can,
then like you can actually start to move stuff around
and deal with stuff and figure out how you actually feel.
Because it's almost like I have the,
the incident that incites a feeling.
And I don't actually know how I feel
because I panic and just get mad or panic
and just have this one reaction where it's like,
no, no, it's like calm down and actually own the real feeling
and stop judging it.
I'm so bad at that too.
It's fucking hard because it's all,
it's the vulnerability thing.
Yeah.
Totally.
I'm feeling weak and everything.
It just feels gross.
Yes.
You feel like I just, just punish this out of me
or just like berate this out of me.
So that I don't do it anymore because it's not right.
And it's like, yeah, it fucking is.
It's human feeling.
It's you being a human being.
Amazing.
Congratulations.
I mean, she's doing all the work.
But I'm certainly, I'm certainly,
I'm showing up 10 minutes late every time.
I certainly am doing that.
Well, mine was going to be,
it was between afternoon baths.
Yes.
Which I highly recommend.
A hit.
I have this thing, 10 years ago I quit my day desk job
to like try this whole world of not having a desk job.
And I still, to this day, like revel in the 3pm nap
and like what I would have been doing 10 years ago
at my desk job, I'm not over it yet.
Yes.
So yesterday I was freezing my fucking ass up
and I couldn't get warm.
And so I took a bath at like 3pm and it was heaven.
Heaven.
It was like, if you can, I just can't get over it.
Like if you can do stuff like that, do it.
Treat yourself.
Like take a nap, take a bath, like do those things.
Watch TV in the middle of the day.
Like if you can do that, great.
Yeah.
That's it.
That's my, that's my, that's my,
what's it called that everyone's obsessed with now?
Self-care?
Yes.
Yes.
The big trend that's going around.
What's that hashtag everyone loves?
But, but, I mean, I think we talked about this before.
Baths are good for you.
Right.
I mean, they're, it's actually.
Eps, those eps and salt baths, man.
Man, it actually does something very positive for your body.
Yeah.
And it kind of points out where you're like,
like holding on to some stuff.
I love it.
That'll be, that's mine then.
That's good.
Yeah.
That's great.
Hashtag self-care, hashtag privilege.
Hashtag, hashtag bath tab time.
Yeah.
There's so many.
Hashtag, uh, honored, you know, seven days of therapy,
therapy 24 seven.
Hashtag blessed.
Hashtag math.
Thank you guys for listening.
We, we don't tell you this enough that we are so grateful
to the fucking incredible listeners that we have of this show.
And I don't think there's any podcast out there
who has such awesome people who listen.
And we're just so lucky.
We've been going through some letters
that you guys have been sending us.
I was just going to say, yeah.
And they're just so beautiful.
I started crying on the couch today reading one.
We, same.
Yeah.
That's so funny.
I was going to say the exact same thing that I, we had,
we've been reading these letters that we, uh,
we take stuff that you give us like that we get at live shows
or that we get whatever and just pull letters
and shove them into bags going.
We know we're going to read this at some point,
but we don't always do it like on the road.
We don't always have time to go through everything.
And I've been reading some that like the,
the amount of time I spend focusing on the problems
that we have that need to get solved.
That's all I do.
Yeah.
And that's all.
And I'm, I have training of doing it of you have to
anticipate the thing that's going to happen.
So we're ready.
Totally.
And it is, it's a difficult way to live.
And we, if we're going to do that,
we also should make sure we spend equal amount of time
reading things where people say very nice things to us.
So it's not always the problems and the bad.
And the ticking time bombs that are waiting for us everywhere.
I mean, they're still there, but,
but we have friends on the other side who are waiting for us.
It's, it's very, it like, it's, it put my feet on the ground
in a very meaningful way to read a couple letters
where people would just say, like,
here's specifically what you did when I needed it.
Right.
Because.
Right.
Here's what I was going through.
Yeah.
It's really beautiful.
It's quite nice.
Yeah.
Thank you guys.
We, we love you guys.
You're our best friend.
I don't know.
This is the most vulnerable episode of MFM yet.
That's right.
We love you.
Stay sexy.
And don't get murdered.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
Elvis, do you want a cookie?