My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 235 - Mr. Zip

Episode Date: August 13, 2020

Karen and Georgia cover serial killer Robert Spangler and the unsolved Delphi murders. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is exactly right. We at Wondery live, breathe, and downright obsess over true crime. And now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C, on Facebook and listen to true crime on Wondery and Amazon Music. See, it's truly criminal. Hello and welcome to my favorite murder, the podcast, full episode, the full, it has nothing to do with the mini so why would I say that recording during the day and that's when we

usually record mini so it's right. That's right. It's not the weekend, right? It's not the weekend right now. That's right. It's the daytime outside. It's not a fucking Wednesday evening and we're going to make Steven's day up till 4am editing this podcast.

Nope. So all of reality is broken and bizarre and on top of that, we decided to make a couple changes so that things were just slightly weirder that even just the baseline touchstones that we have in our lives, we just kind of upended those as well. I like it. Yeah. I think it's a good idea. Creatively.

Things are going to be the same and different. Oh my God. Can you imagine? All over the place. All over the place. But at the same time. Now, do you have a ponytail in or did you cut your hair off? I have a ponytail.

Ponytail. Whoa. That's a formidable ponytail for you. Thank you. Are you growing your hair long? Let's start with some visual conversation. For this episode of this podcast, everything is going to be explained visually. Yep.

Deal with it. Deal with it. Follow along. I would say she has got a finger, an index finger's long ponytail back there. I love a good messy pony. That's always kind of been my favorite thing is like it looks like a paintbrush that exploded. Yeah. It's my favorite.

You're a 90s girl to run through. I am. Yeah. I'm so 90s. I posted a photo on Instagram recently and I had like a kerchief in my hair from the 90s. Yes. It was so nice. It was like, you know, you do it like a little.

Hell yes, I do. I showed you that picture that I had that my friend sent with it. I used to rock my friend called it the babushka. My grandma. Yeah. It's just a bandana. My grandma called it a schmata. Schmata.

Yeah. Schmata and Yiddish is just like a rag that you. Yeah. So babushka and schmata is. Schmata is in my vocabulary because the producer used to call that on a TV show. I worked on anything that you use to cover something at any size. Yeah. It was always a schmata.

Yeah. Because we'd have like a bag full of like, you don't throw your socks away. Your old socks away. You put them in the schmata bag and you use them. So you can dust. Dust with them. With your lemon pledge. Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. Don't waste a nice towel. Yeah. I'm literally going out of the house once a day just to see if something happens so that I can bring it back and talk about it on our podcast. Oh. That's how little is going on because we live in a quarantine where I actually believe that

this virus is bad for you and giving it to other people is a bad idea. Yeah. I'm one of those rare few. Don't get bad vibes on top of being sick by not wearing a mask when you go out of the house. I went to the beach for the first time yesterday. Vincent and I went to the beach. It's his birthday week.

So we went to the beach. Yeah. Happy birthday, Vince. April. Vince. The America's husband. What a great job you're doing. Thank you for showing us how great men can be.

Yay. Yay. Yay, Vince. I went to the beach and we stopped for sandwiches first to go and just no one was wearing a fucking mask in Venice where it's like, I would think everyone is the most like liberal, you know, fucking crunchy going after it, taking care of people and others. Nope. No fucking masks.

This is Los Angeles. This is Los Angeles. Oh, yeah. Amen to the fucking girl working or the gal working at the counter at GTO in Venice where we got our sandwiches because we were like, you know, she was fucking strict and she was like, go in that way. Stand there. It was really strict with us and we were like following directions.

And then this like, you know, hipster dude tries to come in and just pull his t-shirt up over his face instead of having a mask on so he's just doing one of the like pulling a shirt up and she just goes yelled at him to get out and he fucking followed the directions and it like embarrassingly walked out and she's like, no mask, you can't come in without a mask. Can't. Even a fake t-shirt mask, which I respect that he at least tried to do something. It wasn't like he tried, but I think what they're saying in the science is finding that

you have to have a real mask. That's kind of the point. It's like an $88 t-shirt, distressed t-shirt that you bought from fucking from a concert you didn't actually go to. Right. Isn't going to work. Yeah. Anyway.

See, this is the problem though. Because we're all in this place of upset always because of the reality of the world around us in myriad ways, no matter where you stand on a spectrum, political spectrum or whatever. Yeah. So when you go out, you are anticipating conflict and that is such a problem. It's scary. It makes people defensive. It makes people extra sensitive.

There's things that you would have never paid attention to or never worried about that now you're like, we're in, now we're in a place and a fight could break out over masks. This reality is so intense. It's just so intense. You give yourself a break. Make sure you give yourself a break. Yeah. Go to the beach.

It's amazing. It's amazing. Was it great? Was it busy? No. Not busy at all. You know, smattering of people. The water was like the clearest I've ever seen in Southern California.

Nice. Because everyone's not there right now and like, it just was lovely. And you get those negative ions, which are very good for you according to positive ions, negative ions. Get the negative ones. You've already got all your positive ones. What's going on? What do you have?

I don't really have much. Good. So, conversationally, well, I was excited to see that you started watching Love on the Spectrum. Yes. We started Love on the Spectrum. It's so cute. I love it so much.

It's so charming. Everyone's so charming. It's a hall of heroes. The people that agreed to be so vulnerable as to be on that show and have a camera follow them around to watch how they interact and date. Hard enough for any person. And then with a person that might be on the Spectrum, have Asperger's or just have kind of social cue issues.

So much harder. Who is your favorite? So far, I only watched one episode, but Chloe is coming out as a top for me, a top contender because she's so thoughtful. She does this thing on her date where it's awkward in the beginning and she's like, so what books do you like because she loves to read? And the guys kind of sheepishly like, oh, I didn't learn to read till I was 13. And like it could have gotten awkward and instead she responds, oh, I didn't talk till

I was seven. And there's like really generous way of like, well, there's no judgment here about you not being able to read. Like he seemed embarrassed about it. And immediately she was like, well, I didn't talk till I was seven. So yeah, this isn't a competition. This is a judgment with you. It was just really sweet moment that I appreciated.

That's kind of what I'm talking about when you and I, when I was talking about it feels to me, I watch it and go, oh, I feel like I could do this. Yeah. Yeah. It's so nice because it's because most of that kind of stuff I just go, I can't, I can't, I can't do it. Yeah. I can't watch somebody else be vulnerable and I can't be vulnerable.

And it's like, no, I absolutely can't. I mean, like going on a date or just being vulnerable in general or both. Well both, but dating specifically, because I always, anytime it's like a form of formal kind of date thing, I do have that thing of if a moment like that happened, instead of like I would feel like, oh, that person, I did that to them, or like, or I would do a thing and it's because I was, I drank for so long. So dates were all like escape behavior and then I was like, I was a superstar and I didn't know how I did it essentially.

Yeah. You weren't even like totally there for them. So you didn't have to experience any awkwardness at all. No, their drunk Karen never felt awkwardness and she always had great stuff to scream across a restaurant. And it didn't matter because he was drunk too. You're fine. You're fine.

We're not there anymore. It's all fine. It's in the past. Look, no one's still thinking about it but you, you don't have, you're fine. You're not there right now. You're not there. No one's ever going to make you go back there. But it, but you know what brought me back there was when Michael was on his date with

and I feel bad because this girl was kind of a B-plot girl. So she was the girl with the bow in her hair that was kind of gothy and like to cosplay. And I'm sorry. I didn't remember your name. When he says no gothics, remember when he specifically, what kind of girl do you want? Well, no gothics. I was just like, yeah, gothics. No Visigoths invading.

There was a moment where the two of them were at this, at dinner together in this fancy restaurant in that grad table that was like right there by the windows looking over the, I couldn't think they're in Sydney. So I was like looking over the Sydney Harbor, gorgeous. And they're talking and he's asking her questions and she's answering. And then it gets to like question number seven and she just starts to stare off and then kind of puts her head down and then goes, excuse me, and then just leaves. And I swear to God, I was like, oh, it's like, I have done this.

I've done this where I can get through like the most awkward or like for me, the vulnerable part that makes me go, I can't, I don't want to do this. I don't want to feel these feelings. And then so I can like kind of fake my way through it for 20 minutes. And then there is a, there's a moment where it stops and I can't fake it anymore. And it used to be that I could, by that point, I would have had seven beers in me already and it wouldn't matter. But in that, I watched her do the thing that I'm doing inside, where you just retreat,

you suddenly start telling yourself, this is going badly, no matter what the reality is or how interested you are, it's, this is not good. And here's all the reasons why. And then it's just a complete, like it's like you watched her coil up and retreat sucked away into the ether. Yeah. And just basically have a full, I think later she said it was like anxiety, which for years instead of ever interpreting that as anxiety, I was just like, oh, there's something terribly

wrong with me. And it's like, nope, you have the thing every other person on the planet has. We're all broken on some fucking level. Yes. And the key is to not continue to break yourself by being broken by your breaks. Yeah. Is that it? Did I just do it?

It is true. It is true. Well, and also it's about, it's the word I love to use. I'm not going to be able to think of it, of course, in this moment, but it's about, well, it's about basically being able to bounce back. So you know who did that a lot? The girl that was in it the most with the little Bob, who had the hilarious mom. Yes.

And she was so good at when she was on a date and something weird would happen, she would just basically ask a different question or go in a different thing or kind of sit there and not be so freaked out that she felt like, I was so impressed by her ability to just hang in the moment no matter what the moment was bringing. And it's resilience. That's the word I was looking for. Resilience. Or you don't just get destroyed by like the one weird word someone says, which is like,

that's the point. It's like, you're just hanging out and not, you're just seeing what you think. We're all just like, we're all runs and tights. And the key is to take some clear nail polish and put it at the bottom of the tight because then it will keep running and like, yeah, it looks weird because there's clear nail polish on you everywhere, but, but you don't just like see the, you don't see the run and then rip the tights off your legs because it's, it's imperfect and too bad and light them on fire while they're still on you.

You don't fucking throw a match on there and then say, I'll never date again. Pour alcohol all over them. Can't do it. That's the other thing too is they dated and dated and dated. They kept trying every single person on that show just kept trying. You got to do that. When this is over, you're going to go on a date. I know.

What if I did? Could you imagine? Yes. Full masks. Yeah. Do you think they'll ever make like a tandem mask so you can make out while you're both still masked? You know what I mean?

What about a tandem mask? There's like, it's like, it'll be cute. I'm going to, I'm making that. I'm calling it everyone. No one steal that from me. Basically you're pulling, it would kind of just be like you pull a big pair of underwear over both of your heads, like a granny panty over your both of your heads. Or it's kind of like when you like, you know, my cousin Stevie used to do it all the time

where he'd put his hand over your mouth and then pretend to be making out with you. Yes. Yes. That's crazy. I know. It's problematic, but it's how we were in the 70s, 80s. Stuff like that happened a lot. Remember in the naked gun when they both put on like full body condoms?

That's what we need. It'll be like that. But you could go in and run together. Leslie Nielsen. Leslie Nielsen. Yep. We all need to get inside there. Like naked gun.

Yeah. You know what I watch? Those movies hold up, by the way, the naked gun series holds up. Airplane. Oh, shit. Airplane. The young, young, youngins that listen to this. Go watch Airplane.

Go watch the Princess Bride. We watched that the other night. Beautiful. Oh, that's classic. Everyone's seeing that. Yeah. So good. What else?

Total Recall. I watched Total Recall last night. Nice. It's all like we're trying to figure out what is actually going to help in a moment that no one's experienced before. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

So it's like the Great British Bake Off, or baking show or whatever, did it for me from let's say March to May. And that whole quiet British people getting along really did it for me. Now we've moved into Dwayne the Rock Johnson area that I'm not, I don't want to move out of anytime soon. He's doing it for me. I'll meet you there. Come over.

I'm still a top chef. We're still a top chef. Not bad. And a little bit of Parks and Rec, and of course, Perry Mason, which finished last night. That's so sad. Amazing. That I was like, I'm just going to, oh, look, hey, what are you doing? Oh, and George said, I'll come too.

Oh, hi, hi. It's so funny that they come in together and they're like, we were just in the other room hanging out. No, no, they just got dropped off from the dog park. Cute. Good job, everybody. No, George. Sorry.

Can I get rid of these guys really quick? Maybe they won't park. Okay. Well, it's a test. They're on notice. Night night. You're on notice, George. What were we talking about?

Top chef. Oh, yeah. Perry. Oh, the sadness of losing Perry Mason, spoiler alerts probably. So be careful if you're watching it right now. But goddamn, that show was so satisfying and beautifully done in every department. And the man who played Pete Strickland, Shay, Shay, is he the guy who's the assistant, like the, who becomes part of the DA after?

He's the, um, he's the private investigator that's with Perry Mason first. He is so good in that. What's his name? Oh, hold on. Let me see. I don't know what you're saying, but this is the thing I liked him in the most. Shay Wiggum. He's everything and he's incredible.

He's so goddamn good in that character because he was, he was a huge character in Boardwalk Empire. Yeah. They're so good. So when he showed up in this, I was like, oh yeah, he's back. And that whole thing, like there's something about his face that looks like. Popeye. He looks, he has Popeye and also like my first camp crush that kind of like, he's always

smirking on one side of his mouth. Yeah. And he's always going to like, basically tell you to fuck off in a very casual way. Yeah. And he's handling shit. It's the thirties and he's handling shit, but his tie is really short. And he can fucking roll a mean cigarette. Oh shit.

Pete Strickland. Yeah. Yeah. And when they got into that fight, Perry Mason is just like basically going at the world is on my shoulders and you're fucking up. And he was like, well, you can get that other guy to come eat shit because I've had plenty. It was like, it was just written so, so well. And so realistically to the time, but not anachronistically so that you were just like

really. Yeah. That was incredible. It was beautifully done all around. Should we do exactly right corner real quick? Let's go over some great things you can listen to on the, listen, if you're sitting around and you, you're not sure what you should be listening to this week. We've got some shows on the Exactly Right Network and we'd like to just go over a couple

of great things that are happening. That's right. Like for example, Karen's podcast, Do You Need a Ride with the hilarious Chris Fairbanks has a new episode this week, right? And Chris is in Montana at home. So his dad's on it. Yes. And his dad was a DJ in Carmel and when Clint Eastwood made the movie Play Misty For Me,

which is another great film if you haven't seen it, it's like a thriller from the 70s. It's so good. We talked about it. Okay. Did we talk about it? Yeah. Sorry. Maybe Chris and I talked about it.

Jessica Walter, who is the mom from Arrested Development, is one of the stars with Clint Eastwood. And so Clint Eastwood came and watched Chris's dad be a DJ because he was playing a DJ in the movie. Oh my God. A radio host. Isn't that cool? He's like the archetype for fucking DJs for the likes of Clint Eastwood.

For Clint Eastwood, for God's sake, incredible. He really does have one of those radio voices and then he's just funny and it was very like heartwarming because I've never met him in real life. So we got to have a little bit of a Montana dad hang and it was very sweet. This week on the fall line, they're still doing their series, Florida's Missing and Murdered and they're covering the unsolved murders of Tarion Summers and Deosha Andrews, who are trans women from Jacksonville, who are beloved in their community and they're trying to shine a spotlight on those crimes so that they can get them solved.

So make sure to check that out, please. And there's a bunch of other stuff on exactly right that we're making for you guys. Yes. That's what I think you'll like. So can we talk about the Friends of the Podcast? Speaking of podcasts, we were like, Friends of the Podcast, we've been like started, you know, we started saying that recently, loved it, looked it up and we just completely stole it.

We didn't realize on accident. It's totally Pod Save America. It's totally Pod Save America's line. Yeah, we kept saying Friends of the Pod, which literally Pod Save America has like, has a merchant shit because we went to go, oh, should we make a shirt that says Friends of the Pod? And then I just looked, I'm like, this seems familiar to me. It seems familiar. And then I look it up and that's like, but it's what they call their listeners, basically.

Friends of the Pod is the shirt. So if you do want that shirt and you are a listener of podcasts in general, go get Pod Save America because they're the ones that are doing it. And in the meantime, make sure you're registered to vote and make sure you vote. It's really important. Please, God. And also, if we're going to talk about that, we might as well talk about that you should probably try to support in some way the U.S. Postal Service, which is crucial in operating

correctly to get all of the at home ballots processed. So if you can buy stamps or any of the, actually, a friend of the family and popular banana boy, Scotty Landis, pointed out to me that the U.S. Postal Service, if you go on their website, they have an awesome merch, like awesome merch. And there's the character from, I think it's the 60s or 70s when they like started trying to make zip codes really popular. There's like a cartoon character, and I think his name was Mr. Zip. Love it.

And you can get a T-shirt of that guy. I think that's the one Scotty was telling me he got the T-shirt on. And Scotty's a big merch head. Scotty is good at merch. He's good at merch, and he also is a huge purveyor of the mail. He loves to send postcards. He sends people mail and postcards and letters all the time for real. It's like a thing he does on Twitter.

So cool. So, yeah, so he's doing his part. You do your part. You do your part, and then also keep an eye out that our entire system is being dismantled in front of our fucking eyes, and it's really important that it doesn't happen. Looking for a better cooking routine? With meal planning, shopping, and prepping handled, HelloFresh has you covered. HelloFresh makes home cooking easy and affordable, so you can stay on track and on budget in

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What makes a person a murderer? Are they born to kill, or are they made to kill? I'm Candace DeLong, and on my new podcast Killer Psyche Daily, I share a quick 10-minute rundown every weekday on the motivations and behaviors of the criminal masterminds, psychopaths, and cold-blooded killers you hear about in the news. I have decades of experience as a psychiatric nurse, FBI agent, and criminal profiler. From Killer Psyche Daily, I'll give you insight into cases like Ryan Grantham and the newly arrested Stockton Serial Killer.

I'll also bring on expert guests to dive deeper into the details, share what it's like to work with a behavioral assessment unit at Quantico, answer some killer trivia, and even host virtual Q&As where I'll answer your burning questions. Hey Prime members, listen to the Amazon Music Exclusive Podcast Killer Psyche Daily in the Amazon Music app. Download the app today. Look, listen, this is a true crime comedy podcast. That's Karen Kilgarov.

That's Georgia Hartsterc. And this is my favorite murder. And Steven Ray Morris, I almost said Jay Morris on the ones and twos. That's not his name. Steven Ray Morris, who's first this week, Steven? We did a Q&A, so we can do whatever we want. Oh, shit. Well, who did it first, the last time we did stories?

Last time was, was that Amsterdam? No, we did Amsterdam in between that. Chachilla? Yeah, that means I went first last time. So I go first this time. Okay. Believe so. Go for it.

Guys, okay, so on Twitter, someone named Dylan, who's at Brown Deer on Twitter, she wrote to me and said, can you treat us to this wild ride? And then she included an article from the New York Daily News about a murder, well, about this story I'm about to tell you. So thank you very much, Dylan, for hipping me to that. Because then it reminded me that I watched this on, I think it was Dateline, but now I can't remember. I feel like I remember everything as Dateline.

But because I remember when they kind of came, you know, that thing that used to happen and like when, if somebody, if the case was still ongoing, but they would cover it and then it'd be like, this seems suspicious and there's things in the past or whatever. This is one of those stories that is so crazy and it went on for so long. And it's a little bit reminiscent of the John List tale of the family and I later. But it's, it's worse and more fucked up. This is the story of family and, oh, now later and a wife killer of this, I'm giving it all the way.

This is the story of Bob Spangler. Okay. This is just a standard straight up true crime serial killer classic horrific dude, always, always horrific. Yeah. baseline promise. I'm not, I'm not, it's not ringing a bell, but let's, I'm excited. Yes.

Let's see. Yeah. What you think about this. So this is from this kind of like it starts in 1993 or so you think. Okay. So April 11th, you're being led to believe. On April 11th, 1993, Easter Sunday morning, 59 year old Donna Sunderling Spangler is hiking in the Grand Canyon with her husband, Bob.

Donna's an aerobics instructor. She's a mother to five grown children from a previous marriage. And, you know, she has five grandchildren as well. She's not that interested in hiking. It's not her favorite, but her husband, Bob is passionate about it. He's been doing it for years, especially in the Grand Canyon. That's what he loves the most. So because he really wanted her, wanted her to go with him that weekend, she said, yes.

Another reason she didn't want to go and especially because it's in the Grand Canyon is she's afraid of heights. Oh dear. So when the couple reaches the cliffs of the Horseshoe Mesa hiking loop, they stop at the top to take a picture. So if you look that up on Google or whatever you'll see, these are those, they're kind of like the sheer cliffs and the like the trails that go up and they're very precarious, very, you know, really high up.

And basically you get to the top of this hiking loop and then there's, you can take a picture right at the edge of the cliff that shows you all of this one part of the Grand Canyon. It's very, very picturesque. And so they get to that spot. They stop to take the picture. Bob positions Donna on the cliff's edge. There's a 160 foot drop behind her.

He goes back to mount his camera on his tripod. But as he's turned away setting the timer, he hears what he later describes as, quote, a small sound from Donna. And when he turns back around, she's gone. So just before noon, Bob comes running into the ranger station and he eventually tells the ranger, there's been a terrible accident. His wife has fallen off a cliff. So the rangers go out and they search for Donna at the horseshoe mesa and they find

her broken body on the rocks below that lookout point. So bad. So Donna Spengler's death is ultimately ruled an accident. No one questions it. Hiking in the Grand Canyon cliffs is obviously, you know, those cliffs are obviously risky. And that same year in 1993, there were already six other deaths that occurred in the Grand Canyon. So it does happen.

So many. What is unusual, though, is that this is not the first time Bob Spengler has tragically lost a family member. Okay. So let's go back, Bob Spengler was born in 1933 in Des Moines, Iowa. He was adopted as a baby, never met his biological parents. He was raised in Ames, Iowa. And by all accounts, he had a normal childhood.

He was a bright child. The only issue was his temper, which when he got into high school, he channeled through playing football. And it was in high school that he met a girl named Nancy Stallman. They started dating in the, basically in the early fifties, they became high school sweethearts and they married after college in 1955. So after they get married, Bob enlists in the army and then he gets discharged and him and Nancy settle down and start a family.

And in 1961, their son, David, is born. And two years later, their daughter, Susan, is born. So Bob over the years works a number of different jobs. He works at Honeywell's camera and instruments division. He works in public relations. He works as a radio DJ and he actually even worked at a job where he helped develop Sesame Street for PBS. Wow.

Yeah. In the mid seventies, he takes a job as the PR director of a Denver based nonprofit called American Waterworks. So he moves the whole family to Littleton, Colorado, which is where the Columbine shooting took place years later. But at this point in the mid seventies, it was just a little town in Colorado. But as life progresses, he grows tired of basically being a family man. And after 20 years of marriage to Nancy, he starts cheating with a younger secretary named

Sharon. And with that secretary, he starts hiking all the time and adventuring with her, especially in the Grand Canyon. And basically Bob and Nancy's marriage is slowly falling apart. Yeah. It'll do that when you're cheating on your wife. Yeah. Actively.

It's like, it's almost like you're trying to make it fall. Right. But, okay. So then on the morning of December 30th, 1978, 15 year old Susan has a boy. A boyfriend named Tim, who's 16. And he was there at the Spangler's house the night before he was there a lot. And he shows up the next morning and knocks on the front door, but no one answers. So he goes back to and throws rocks at Susan's window, which is what he usually did to try

to get her attention to let him in the house. But she doesn't answer come to the window. So then he goes through the laundry room window to get inside, which he'd also done a bunch of times. So he goes upstairs to Susan's room and he's surprised to see she's still in bed. So he takes off his gloves and throws them at her and says, Hey, come on, you need to get up. And she doesn't move.

And then when he gets closer to her body, he sees there's blood on her back and he runs across the hallway into Susan's older brother, David's room to get help. And there he finds David, half in and half out of bed. And David's been shot in the chest and is dead and Susan has been shot in the back and she's dead. Let's look good. Oh, he's 16 years old and it's horrible love and her family. Oh my God.

And he just, it's like, I would think if it's December 30th, they're on Christmas break. And so it's, they're probably going, you know, like it's so horrible and such a horrible thing for him to have to witness. So he runs, calls the police, obviously, and the Arapahoe County Sheriff's office arrives. And then when they look through the house, they also find in the basement Nancy's body. She's been shot and it looks like she's shot herself in the head in their downstairs basement office. Yeah.

Holy shit. But beside her body, she has a bullet wound in her head and next to her on the ground, there's a 38 caliber pistol with a man's sock wrapped around the handle. And in the typewriter that's sitting on the desk where she's seated, there's a suicide note that's been typed up in the typewriter and then initialed with her initial N. Oh, how convenient that it's not in her handwriting. Well, so, but the thing Nancy had a neurological disorder. This is what Bob would tell the police later where she could, she actually couldn't hand

write things and so it was very common for her to just initial things and she and she typed correspondence all the time. Okay. But what about the sock? Why would, if you were going to take your own life with a gun, why would you wrap the gun in a sock? Good question. I don't know.

Thank you. So you're welcome. I'm a detective. You are. You're getting very good at this of all the stories we've read to each other. Thank you. I'm sorry. So, so Bob comes home from work to find all that his house taped off in police tape and

and, you know, police filled. So they have to take him aside and explain to him what's happened. And he seemed shocked and upset. He tells police he left for work that morning. He was there all day and then he came home to find the sheriff's deputies in his house. He does confide that he and Nancy had been having problems and that they had recently separated, but that they were working it out, basically that they were working it out and they got, they were back together, but he does admit that they had gotten into a fight

the day before to the point where he had to leave the house to cool down. He went and drove around and listened to a football game on the radio and went to the movies. But he, he tells authorities he's completely shocked that Nancy would do this and that he's, he, he's baffled. So Bob and Nancy's hands are both swapped for guns, gunshot residue. Let me read my sources really quick. So the Denver Post, the Arizona Sun, the New York Daily News, and then source for me on

this was there, there's a Canadian true crime series called Crime Stories that's on YouTube that pretty much every story we cover has been covered by this, by this series. And just the last time when I was talking so much about that nightline episode for the Chow Chilla, I realized like it was the, it was the kids that went through it as adults telling their story, but that I probably should have decided the writers for that show or the producers because they did all the work to get that together. So for this episode of Crime Stories, it was written by Drew Karnwath and then also Wikipedia and Murderpedia also.

So the reason I say that is because in this series and Crime Stories, they have the people who worked this case and who are at the scene at the time. Wow. And yeah, it's amazing. The people was the police photographer. So Bob had nowhere to go basically once the authorities were done talking to him at the scene, he had nowhere to go. And so this police photographer, because I think it's kind of a small town.

So he went home with the police photographer. Weird. Yeah. And just so he had somewhere to stay like for the night, because obviously he can't go back into the house. And this police photographer is in this series and says he didn't seem upset or worried or in any way in distress when he was at his house. Like once he was away from the scene and from the people that were questioning him.

And hey, look, that could also, we've talked about this where it's like, you make those judgments and it's like the behavior does not indicate one thing or the other. Everyone grieves differently, however. He could be in shock. He could be completely dissociated. His entire family has been murdered. But the photographer was creeped out by the lack of any kind of like, even seeming distressed. He said he just seemed fine.

That's fucking creepy. Yeah. Okay. So when those tests come back for gunshot residue, there's none on Nancy's hands. But there is gunshot residue found on Bob's right palm. And when the authorities bring him in for questioning him again, he changes his story. And now he says that he had gone home, that he went to the basement first, that he found Nancy, that he saw the gun, he picked it up.

He stepped back and saw the whole picture, screamed, oh my God, dropped the gun and ran out. Yeah, I did. And right. So with that story change, of course, the police are like, mm-hmm, like more suspicious. But it puts into doubt any kind of like, you know, chain of evidence that they're trying to put together. And he was the legal owner of that gun.

So his prints being on the gun were easy to dismiss. It's not enough. It's not enough. It's not enough evidence to arrest him. It's not enough. Meanwhile, Nancy's family absolutely denies this murder suicide story. They're like, she would, she would have never heard her children. She would, she had just sent out like the family Christmas letter that was all about

what's going to happen next year in the future. It was not her. She didn't even like guns. She was very nervous around guns. She never touched them on top of that. She wasn't the type. It was not something that she would do. But the type written suicide note with that signed initial did match other correspondence

that she'd sent to friends and family. So then they give Bob two different polygraph tests by two different separate private companies and they both determine his answers about his role in the murders to be inconclusive. One of the guys actually told the investigator that he goes, this guy is so wound up. We're never going to get normal. We're never going to get normal results from him. On January 3rd, 1979, the Arapaho County Coroner rules these deaths to be a murder suicide that were committed by Nancy Spangler.

Oh God, her poor family who are just like having to live with that. So Bob has the bodies cremated almost immediately. Of course. And this guy? Yes. So step by step, how to not, how to look guilty as fuck? Yes, entirely. And how, like when people think they're masterminds or something, because they're smarter than

everybody. So of course, the family is absolutely horrified. Then he goes on to give a eulogy that they said was bizarre and tearless and weird. Oh my God, I want to see it so bad. Yeah. The police ends up just being closed and most of the evidence is either returned back to Bob Spangler or it's destroyed. Okay.

So now seven months after his family is murdered, Bob Spangler marries Sharon, the woman that he's having the affair with. Yep. They get married and they move back in to the Spangler family home. Yes. I thought that apparently, apparently, but then apparently the neighbors were, everyone was freaked out by it. Like just how is this even possible?

Yeah. Oh, this poor kid. And when it's, for real, when the authorities talk to Bob about it, he says he doesn't live in the past. He's really good at putting things behind him and he's all about like making a new start and moving forward. Congrats to fucking Lations, dude, way to go, you're great at life. So basically him and Sharon spend the next nine years hiking around Colorado, especially

in the Grand Canyon. Basically they hike so much, Sharon eventually writes a book called On Foot in the Grand Canyon. But as the years go by, the marriage begins to strain and after Bob's father dies, his anger issues really come to the fore. And Sharon basically has an emotional downturn. They start fighting more and more and Sharon can't shake the feeling that Bob is quote out to get her to the point where she actually ends up calling the police and they go to the house and they find her hiding in a closet because she's so scared of him.

So she ends up leaving Bob and moving out of Littleton and in 1988, they get divorced. So in 1989, after this split, he decides to take out a singles ad in the Denver Weekly and he gets a response from a Denver woman named Donna Sundling, who's who we started with. So Donna's at the time she's 55. She works as a bookkeeper for Warrior Oil Company. As I said, she had five grown kids. She has five grandchildren.

She's been divorced since 1974. And according to her friend Carolyn, she told her she was ready to take some risks in life. So she answers Bob's ad and they immediately hit it off and fall in love. And according to Carolyn, Donna's thrilled. She just loved him. So within a year, they're married. So on August 18th, 1990, Bob convinces her to move with him to Durango, Colorado. So basically they move down there by a Winnebago so they can travel and of course, so they

can go hike in the Grand Canyon. Donna not only has that fear of heights, but also she's at the time suffering from vertigo. So when they hike together, they always take not steep trails. They take the lower trails or like ground level or whatever. They don't do anything dangerous. So they settle down in Durango, they start getting involved in the community. Bob gets his part-time job as the country music DJ for the local radio station, KRS JFM.

And he's well-liked by his coworkers and by his listeners. He has a natural charm and a charisma and he starts kind of building up some local fame. He gets recognized around town. He's like basically a local personality. And his boss at the time has this to say about Bob. He says, the only complaint I ever had about Bob was that he was too cheerful too early in the morning. Monster.

I mean, for real. Stick with the assholes everybody, I'm telling you. Cheerful people are up to something. I think we know this. Don't fall for it. They're psychopaths. So Donna's working as an aerobics instructor at the Durango Sports Club. Then Bob starts referring soccer games for the Park and Rec League.

Or they're being perfect, which we all know isn't real. And again, it's not real here because by 1993, their relationship starts to get rocky. And the cracks in Bob's personality start to show. He starts talking. So basically, the longer they live there and the more friends they have, he actually does start talking about what happened to his family. And this is the part that really, really made me sick to my stomach. He tells different people different stories.

He tells some people his son killed his wife and daughter and then killed himself. He tells other people that the three of them were killed in a car accident together and that somehow he survived like with just a couple of scratches. And then he even confides in some people the quote unquote official story, which is that his wife killed the family that just shows how cocky he is that he was openly even talking about it. But then also lying. And it's almost like you can tell that those are the other options he considered before

he did. Right. He's like, maybe I can kill them in a car accident. Maybe I can make the sun look like he did it. Yes. And I think it's that thing of a truce. We like to call people sociopaths and psychopaths or whatever. This is the person who does not have a conscience, who does not these and these people exist

in our world. It doesn't understand how other people even think he can't even wrap his head around that. No, he doesn't care. He's not interested. Other people are things to him. It's objects to move around in the world so he gets what he wants. And this is the kind of thing like if this podcast for all our mistakes and all the things that we do wrong or whatever, if there's anything that I hope to God that people get from this

podcast is that psychopaths are real and they are among us in the world. And this idea that someone is a DJ and nice, therefore he could never do a bad thing. We have to stop thinking this way, please. We have to stop thinking this way. Their brains don't work correctly and they don't have consciousness. They don't care. They're tricking you. They're really good at it.

They made a life study of tricking you. So the mimicry, the things they do, the things they say, it's learned behavior so that they can blend in and so that they can then get what they want. And the idea that a man would lie and say that his son and that ultimately spoiler alert that his wife would kill the family is so disgusting and sickening and self-serving. It's unbelievable. Okay, so that speech is over. Now I'm telling you this story again.

I wrote at the end, there are people in this world who do not have a conscience and only act in their best interest guilt-free without a second thought. It's a fact. Learn it. Accept it. And get a necklace that says it. Not sure where I was going. Learn it.

Accept it. Get a necklace that says it. That's a rip off of your love it. Learn it. Love it. Learn to levitate. Remember that one? Yeah.

You said, what do you want to do this year? That was my birthday. I said, live it. Love it. Learn to levitate. Learn to levitate. So this is a sidebar off that. Learn it.

Accept it. Get a necklace that says it. I love it. Okay. It's just so important. Don't just because it's the thing. We all make this mistake where I go, I would never do that. And then I think because of that, that means somebody else wouldn't do something.

Right. Or like someone stupid because they trusted Ted Bundy or it's like, you don't understand that not only does that person do everything in their power and learn how to make you trust them. Society does everything in its power to also tell you that you need to trust people and not question people. And if someone's nice to you, you need to be nice to them back. Yes.

Instead of just. You're the weirdo. Yeah. If you go, ooh, I have a bad feeling about this person. Goodbye. If you take time to learn to trust someone instead of just immediately trusting people, even if they're nice people, that you're not fucking weird. Yes.

No, no. That means it's a good thing. If he tricked Ann Rule, right, he could trick anybody. This is, we just know this now is smarter than us, was smarter than us. Ann Rule knew a bunch of shit and he tricked her. That's the point of the stranger beside me. Stop making me yell at you. Why are we explaining this to you so angrily?

We're sorry. Because we have nothing else to do in quarantine. Okay. Okay. So Bob and Donna Spengler's marriage is falling apart. They're fighting more frequently and Donna often finds herself trying to appease Bob because of course he's a psychopath. So he wants what he wants and he's very good at getting hit.

He's very good at cajoling people, convincing, using his charm, his charisma or his anger to get his way. So when Bob asked Donna to go hiking with him at the Grand Canyon for Easter weekend, even though she has vertigo, doesn't like heights and doesn't like hiking and doesn't want to go, he won't stop pressing her and she doesn't want to fight anymore. So she just relents and agrees, which is not her fault because what the fuck else this guy won't stop. So essentially that explains why she would go on this trip.

She doesn't want to go on to do a thing she doesn't want to do, to be scared, to feel like she's at risk. It doesn't explain why he'd ask her to. Right. You know what I mean? Right. Why is that so important to him? He doesn't want to do a thing, he knows for a fact she doesn't want to do and isn't into

it all. So when he's questioned, Bob tells the Rangers that after Donna's fall, he ran up to where her body was, he washed the blood off of her face and covered her with a tarp and then went to get help. So there's no eyewitnesses for this fall and there's no one to corroborate how like the chronology of it. So he's saying before getting help, he ran to the bottom of the fucking cliff. Yes, to check on her.

Which is 160 feet down, to check on her as if he could give her any aid instead of running to the fucking people who know how to take care of shit. Yeah. And you think that's the part you're going to dislike the most, but it's not going to be because nothing explains why when Bob arrived at the Ranger station to alert them that his wife had just fallen off a cliff, he got in line and waited patiently behind a bunch of backpackers who were there to pay for their permits and he took his place in line and waited until he got to the front to report it.

Explain how low my jaw has dropped. It's all the way open. It's below her ponytail. That's how long. That's how big it's what we're talking about. Who he's reminding me of in this instance is fucking Michael Peterson from the staircase. You know, like over dramatic, but not dramatic enough in certain moments and acting weird and reacting in a way that most people, if they were actually in an emergency situation,

wouldn't act. Yeah. No, you're right though that it's the vibe. It's hard not to the way we all ingest these true crime stories and these documentaries and all the different things we watch. It's very hard not to start recognizing one thing to the other. These kind of connections and these personality types that are hard to believe exist and then you start seeing the behaviors.

I think it's part of why I'm so interested in it because it is rare. We're talking about the part of, you know, like the part of crime that's so rare. It's like the fucking Loch Ness Monster where it's like serial killers, they're very, very few of them. This is not the majority of crimes, the things that we talk about and the thing that makes it fascinating is that these types of people are out there. And the majority of psychopaths, I think, don't kill people, don't become murderers too.

No, they become CEOs. That's true. They become politicians and CEOs, you're fucking right. Yeah, they don't have that extra part of them that's bloodthirsty or whatever. But it is like, it's just absurd to think that someone could act that way. And it's scary. Yeah. And you start to question everyone around you.

Right. Sorry, Vince. Sorry, but you're pretty suspicious on your birthday. Okay. So, yeah, that part, when I got to that part too, I was just like, what did, holy shit. So, Donna Sunling Spangler is 58 years old when she tragically falls to her death. When they have the funeral, Bob immediately cremates her body, doesn't wait for her family, her five children and five grandchildren to get to town to have a final viewing.

You're like a short-term husband and you fucking make that decision that her children have to deal with for the rest of their lives. It's such a huge red flag. Yeah. So, he doesn't wait for them and then he gave a eulogy that was tearless and weird, they say. So, he puts himself again in the spotlight at his third wife's funeral and doesn't say anything that makes anyone feel better just for himself.

Yeah. Okay. So, after Donna's tragic death, Bob Spangler then becomes the face of hiking safety. No. So, yeah. Yes. So, he actually even makes a few TV appearances and does newspaper interviews as the grieving husband advocating for safety along the trails.

Oh. Yes. Is there a video of it? Did you watch video of it? I didn't see a video of it, but you might be able to find some. In one interview, he tells the Associated Press, quote, the people that visit the Grand Canyon simply forget how spectacularly dangerous it can be. He gains national recognition for this campaign while he still continues to hike the canyon

trails. Yeah. But this grieving husband image doesn't last long because in July of 1994, so it's about a year later, Sharon, his second wife, comes back into the picture. She comes to Durango for a visit and so, she's fallen on hard times. She had gone through a breakup, she'd had some mental issues, so at first, she moves back into Bob's house as like a border and she's paying him rent. But then soon, they reunite and get back together and they're involved again.

But three months later, on October 2, 1994, Bob comes home from work to find Sharon unresponsive with a bottle of Tylenol beside her. No. Another? No. It's just violence. But she dies from what authorities determined to either be purposeful or accidental drug overdose.

She's only 52 years old at the time. Of course, it turns out good for Bob, he no longer has to pay spousal support to her. So when news of Sharon's death reaches Donna Sunling's family, they immediately call authorities to report Bob Spangler has had another wife die. So the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office decides to reopen the 1978 Spangler family murder and take a second look at all the evidence. The first thing they notice is Nancy Spangler's suicide note is very atypical because most people who are writing a note do not write that they're about to do all the things that

they're about to do and list them out in detail in the note. That's very uncommon. And also, Bob had told police that Nancy had a neurological disorder that caused her to have to type her correspondence. They then find all these canceled checks that Nancy filled out in full and wrote her full name and the full check, and she clearly had no problem handwriting things. So that whole thing where she could only sign an initial because she simply couldn't write anymore is they immediately, that's cast, doubt is cast onto that as well.

Then they're thinking, if Bob's claim is true that Nancy couldn't hold a pen long enough to write her full name, how did she hold a gun long enough? Great question. To murder two people, her own children upstairs and then herself. So then they start looking at the crime scene photos and they see, first of all, they notice that the bullet wound is in the front of her head. And also, based on the amount of gunshot residue that's on her forehead, they realize that the gun must be at least six inches away from her head when it was fired, which would

mean that as opposed to the typical spot where someone would hold a gun up, I'm doing this, this is another visual aspect, but essentially, it's as if she held the gun as far forward in front of herself and shot that way, which they say is almost unheard of, just not, doesn't happen. Basically, everything, once they reexamine everything points away from suicide and to murder. Meanwhile, Bob is still in Durango and he stays there for more years after Sharon's death. And then in June of 1998, he moves to Irwina, Pennsylvania, telling friends and co-workers

he's moving to connect with a woman he met online, but he's back two months later. So that didn't work out. Now he's in Grand Junction, so it's three hours south of Durango, he doesn't move back to Durango. And he moves to Grand Junction, he joins the local theater, because he loves to perform and he reconnects with an old friend, a 53-year-old woman named Judy Hilty. And soon they're living together, but this whole time, the Rappahoe County Sheriff's Office is watching him and has their eye on him because they're slowly trying to build

a case. And they know now that he has this new woman in his life so that they're on a clock. In January of 1999, the Sheriff's Connect with other investigators from the FBI, so because Donna's death happened on federal grounds, the FBI is involved. So they're talking, the Sheriff's, the Rappahoe County Sheriff's are talking to the FBI, the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, the Arizona Assistant U.S. Attorney. So there's tons of different factions that are involved in trying to analyze and solve these cases and crimes.

And they're basically all trying to work together to assemble everything that they know about him and his history and everything. Meanwhile, Bob's now 67 years old and in August of 2000, he's in rehearsal for a play and all of a sudden he blanks and can't remember his lines and has kind of like a weird moment. So he goes to the doctor because he's also been, he's had weird problems with his coordination, his vision has been failing, he's having a hard time concentrating. He finds out that he has terminal brain cancer. So he tells Judy about it so they decide to get married because the prognosis is not

good for him. So on September 1st, 2000, Bob Spengler marries his fourth wife. So Bob tells everyone about his cancer and he starts basically, he's pulling people aside at work, he's telling his friends, you know, I have terminal brain cancer. He's also starting to write letters to people explaining what he's going through. So there's a woman that was friends with Bob who had been interviewed by the authorities about him and she gets one of these letters. And so she contacts the sheriff's office to let them know that Bob basically has terminal

cancer. So the thinking now is that he's going to want to confess to his crimes because basically maybe why wouldn't he? Yeah. Okay. So the lead investigator, Paul Goodman, he decides that he's just going to open, he's going to start a conversation with Bob and see if he can't kind of play on what he thinks might be a conscience to start to say, Hey, this might be a good time to start telling

us some stuff that you haven't been telling us. Basically he says that, quote, he told the Goodman told the Denver Post, quote, we knocked on his door. He didn't seem surprised. It was strange. He did seem like he was expecting us. There was no reaction. He just said, Oh, hello.

So the first day of questioning lasts like four hours. And they ask Bob about all three incidents, the deaths of Nancy, David and Susan, Donna's followed the Grand Canyon and about Sharon's overdose. And it's actually super genius. They talk about this in crime stories because the FBI did a profile on him and they said if he's a true psychopath that he, what they need to do to get him to open up is to play up his importance. So they're basically saying, we need, you're so fascinating.

You've done all these things. We need to study you. You need to tell us what you've done and how you did it so that we can study you and learn from you. Oh my God. And they actually set up a room and made it look like there's a full on task force like trying to crack the case. And they said that he walked in and immediately loved it.

They could tell that he was just, he loved that idea that he was there to educate them. Yeah. Ew. So basically Bob tells them they're, quote, naming one too many when they, when they lay out, these are all the crimes we're looking at that we think you're involved with. He says there's one too many. So basically he indicates that he's taking responsibility for two out of the three incidents but not confirming anything with an outright confession.

So they take a break and they say, we'll come back tomorrow and talk some more. And in this second interview, that's when Bob Spangler finally admits that he murdered his first wife Nancy and he murdered his children, David and Susan Spangler in 1978. He says the day of the murders, he brought Nancy down into the basement of their Littleton, Colorado home, sat her in a chair and tells her he has a Christmas surprise for her. And sits her down and tells her to close her eyes. No. Yeah.

And then he, he had, he had already hidden the gun in the basement. So when she closes her eyes, he pulls it out and shoots her in the head. Fuck. Yeah. He'd already gotten, he says he'd already gotten her to initial a blank piece of paper and then he typed up that note that was supposed to be a quote unquote suicide note afterward. Oh my God. Yeah.

That he left in the typewriter making it look like she's sitting at the desk writing this note. So then he goes upstairs. He goes into Susan's bedroom first and shoots her while she's sleeping. Then he goes into David's bedroom and David has heard at least one of the gunshots. And so he's getting up out of bed and that's why he's shot in the chest because he knows it's his father and is basically half out of bed when Tim, Susan's boyfriend finds him.

Right. Yeah. So he, he didn't, this is really terrible part. But David didn't die right away. So Bob Spengler suffocated him with a pillow. Yeah. Oh my God. He admits to all of this.

And basically he tells investigators he killed them because he was tired of family life and his girlfriend didn't like children. So he thought killing his entire family was quote easier all the way around. Oh my God. So then they move on to Bob's third wife, Donna Sunling, and at first he, Bob is hesitant to confess that he murdered her because he's afraid her kids will file a civil suit against him. Fucking asshole.

Yeah. So, but they, they get him to do it. And he basically describes planning out the whole scheme first from picking the perfect spot along the trail to the moment that they stood face to face at the edge of that cliff. Oh my God. Before he pushed her off and into the Grand Canyon. But he, yeah, so he, that he admits that entirely, which is obvious, of course, the way I told it, but like, but up until that point, it was, he had it perfectly covered

in every way. You can think about her knowledge and her, her face being up close to his and her knowledge and it's just heartbreaking. It just is what makes him such a monster. It's just, it's, that's something, it's what, it's monstrous. He does vehemently deny having anything to do with Sharon's death though. He says that that was her either accidental or intentional overdose. One of the agents on the case says that Bob, quote, told our investigators during the confession,

it was his opinion that he was a model citizen and a good human being, except during two days of his life when he did something terrible. He can say he was a good citizen, but his actions on two days of his life took away thousands of days of the lives of four people. I mean, and that kind of rationale is like also so of that, that clearly, yeah, a person whose brain isn't working the way everyone else's brain works, where it's like, you've actually rationalized it down to just, oh, it's just two days and only two days. I was bad and the rest I was great, or it's like, I know I disagree.

It doesn't work that way. When Spangler's confession spreads across the state, many of his friends and acquaintances are shocked. They believe him to be such a nice man who could never do anything like that. So police arrest Bob Spangler on October 3rd, 2000. He appears in federal court three days later. He pleads guilty to first degree murder. He sentenced to life in prison.

And they say in the Crime Stories episode, when he walks into the courtroom, it's like he's walking on stage. He has a big smile on his face. He winks at his current wife. What? Uh-huh. And he never... It's so Michael Peterson from the series.

It's so Michael Peterson. He doesn't, he never looks at any of the victims' families or any of his, you know, extended family or whatever. I want to look up a photo of him real quick. What's his last name? Spangler. He looks like any, like a shop teacher, like he's a bald guy with a white beard. Oh yeah.

He's a total shop teacher. Right? Yeah. He is the kind of person you could see him playing up the role of, hey, it's me. Yeah. I'm the good guy. Kind of grandpa features a little bit. Yeah.

Oh God. Big, big weird smile with dead eyes. While in prison, Donna's kids do file a civil suit against Bob, just as he suspected they would, thank God. They claim that their mother's murder hurt them financially and that Bob and his current wife, Judy, are responsible for compensating them. That suit was settled in April of 2001. So nine months after his conviction on August 5, 2001, Bob Spangler dies in prison at the

age of 68. That is the story of the family annihilator and serial killer, Bob Spangler. That fucking asshole gets to die of natural causes. What a piece of shit. And have, I mean, just to have chance after chance, he's like John List times five. Total John List. It's crazy. But yeah.

Wow. The idea that two days in my life, I was bad, but otherwise I'm not a bad person. I was a model citizen. Yeah. That's not how that fucking works, dude. The majority of us aren't doing that ever, any days. But also let's take, let's actually pull those two days and really take a look at them because that's kind of what we're talking about here.

It's like, that's what we're talking about when we tell these horrible stories where it's like this behavior isn't normal and it isn't like, it's just like this is, it's so beyond the pale that one day, it wasn't just his own family's lives in 1978 that he took away, but all the surrounding family and friends and loved ones and poor Tim, the boyfriend who is never going to stop being affected by that day. And the families that the son and daughter would have had and affected and the people they would have made their lives better and what they would have done with their lives. You take all of that away and the moms and the, you know, the grandmoms.

It's not just this 24-hour period that you made some mistakes in. Yeah. You don't get. So, yeah. Wow. Great job. All right. So the story I'm doing got brought up in a mini-sode, I think this week or last week.

And it's a story I'm obsessed with and have been following since it happened over three years ago. And when I found out you hadn't heard about it, I wanted to wait until it got solved. But when I found out you didn't hear, hadn't heard about it, I thought maybe so many people hadn't. It's such a solvable case and it drives me fucking crazy. So this is the Delphi murders. Okay.

I mean, this is my fucking one of my rabbit hole Reddit late at night stories that I can't stop thinking about. Okay. So I got info from Indie Star, a medium article by Julie Fiddler and who's a true crime blogger, the Indie channel.com article by Katie Cox investigation discovery. It's on all of the channels. There's so much you can read about a website called theorem fact Reddit ABC news.com. And then there's two like seasons of two different podcasts about this that give you so much

information and they interview the family members of the murder victims. One's called down the hill and one's called scene of the crime and they're both really good. And then murder squad did an episode about it. There isn't like an in pursuit with John Walsh about it. And then friend of the family, the true crime investigative journalist and author James Renner has a YouTube, like a bunch of YouTube videos called virtually detective that you can watch and he goes to Delphi and like studies what happened.

So, so I'm going to tell you about the town of Delphi. It's about 70 miles outside of Indianapolis and it's really rural. It's surrounded by, you know, cornfields and farmland. It's got a population of under 3000. So it's very small and it's the kind of place where everyone knows everyone and it's close knit. It's very safe, very little crime. And the town has one main street that goes from the jail to the library and it's surrounded

by like a beautiful nature and hiking trails and nature walks that are really popular with people who are into that and the locals. So Monday, February 13th, 2017, it's February in the middle of February, but it's unseasonably warm and beautiful out. It's a sunny day and the local kids are unexpectedly given the day off of school. So they're stoked and two of those kids are best friends Abigail Williams who's 13 and Liberty German who's 14 and those gals go by Abby and Libby. So the girls are classmates in their small eighth grade class.

They're on the volleyball team together. Abby was an only child and lived with her mom and her cat Bongo and she's close with her grandparents. Her hobbies are horseback riding. She loves to read. She's really smart. She's quiet and shy but warms up easily and makes friends easily. Just the sweet little lovely girl.

Libby was the youngest of three girls raised by her grandparents in Delphi. Like her whole family is from the area on both sides. And she, while Abby was kind of shy and reserved, Libby was this like outgoing adventurous girl and she's kind, thoughtful person. She stuck up for kids when they were getting bullied. You know, she played sports all year round. She had just gotten into welding, which I think is rad for a 14 year old girl. That's very cool.

I know, right? Yes. Libby was described as wise beyond her years by her family and actually at 14 she's already taking classes at Purdue University, which is nearby at fucking quarantine. So clearly she's really smart. Both of the girls played the saxophone in the school band. They loved arts and crafts. They love photography.

They're both Abbott sports players. And they're also both into true crime and like they talk about pursuing careers in forensic science one day. So I think they were into like CSI and stuff. Just like, you know, one of my worries about having kids is that I'll have a daughter, a teenage daughter who was like me. But if I could be promised two girls, or if I could be promised a teenage daughter that was like either of these girls, I would fucking do it immediately.

They were just like good. Please don't do it. Please don't do it. Okay. They're like, they're like Nora, your niece. They're just like these sweet, enthusiastic, smart, kind people. Yeah. Which means those parents busted ass every single day to do right by those kids, even

when it was the hard thing to do and even when it was not the fun thing to do. And their grandparents too were just, you know, they were amazing, everyone. So back to that Monday, the girls don't want to stay inside during this beautiful day with them, day off of school, so they decide to visit the Delphi Historic Trails to take some pictures. You know, they ask their families, can we go? And it's a popular hiking area where the girls have been before in the past, so them going alone isn't a big deal.

You know, they're 13 and 14, so they're in that stage of like becoming teenagers, but still kind of young. So around one o'clock that day, Libby's older sister Kelsey drops the girls off at the entrance to the trail. That's part of the Delphi Historic Trail system, which runs through the valley of the Wabish River in northwest central Indiana. And the trail that grows around that day, it's, you know, kind of a small trail, two people wide, it's enveloped by trees, but it's, you know, the middle of winter.

And it leads to an 850-foot-long abandoned wooden railroad bridge called the Monon High Bridge. The old railroad bridge is one of the tallest bridges in Indiana at 63 feet high. It sits several stories above Deer Creek, so it's just like rushing a little river below. And it's things like standby me, you know, when they have to run across the railroad track? Yeah, totally. It's just like that.

And actually, I think I want to send you some pictures while we're doing this so you can have an idea. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So because it was built in 1891 and abandoned in 1987, the wood at the bridge is rotting. It's disintegrating in a lot of places. So crossing it takes some time, and you have to really pay attention to where you're stepping.

Because some of the wood chunks are just completely rotted, you don't want to step on them. And if you go on YouTube, you can find people filming them crossing the bridge, and it does look really scary and treacherous. Well, because there's also no sides. Right. That's really scary. There's no, there's, it's just the tracks and the bridge. There's absolutely nothing that you could put your hand against.

Exactly. There's no sides. Yeah. It's crazy. It's so standby me. If you were, you know, younger and you'd grown up crossing that bridge, you wouldn't be as scared of it as you and I would be, you know. Right.

And if you have a fewer heights, it's not something you'd want to cross, but it's a beautiful location and the locals treasure the spot. And a little after 2 p.m., Libby posts a Snapchat photo of Abby walking across the deserted bridge, so there's no one else on it. We don't, so that's two o'clock, and we don't find out about this until later. But at some point, a man crossing the bridge alone behind the girls creeps them out enough so that Libby starts secretly recording him, which as women, we fucking understand what, why one would do that, you know what I mean?

We don't know if they had an encounter with him before that creeped them out. So when he was crossing, they started filming him. We don't know if it was just the look of him that creeped them out, but for some reason Libby starts filming, that's her instinct. When Libby's father shows up at pickup time to drive the girls home, he's not really worried when they're not there yet, you know, thinking maybe they were just running behind. He assumes that maybe they lost track of time, but he starts to worry when there's still no sign of them by 4 p.m. and calls to Libby's cell phone, don't get picked up, which is

not like her at all. So both families search for the girls themselves before calling the police. And then later than that night, with still no sign of the girls and a large amount of people searching in the area for them, the sheriff's office releases a statement to the press saying there's no reason to suspect foul play or to believe the girls are in any danger, but dozens of volunteers look into until midnight when the search is officially suspended and some friends and family continue to search overnight, right? Which is like suspending, I mean, I can't imagine what the families were going through

when the fucking search got suspended at midnight for like a 13 and 14 year old girl lost in the woods. Right. You know? Yeah. The next day is Valentine's Day and the search for Libby and Abby resumes and around noon a volunteer searching at the back end of a piece of private property spots two bodies. Oh, no.

Yeah. And the location is about 50 feet from the creek, Deer Creek, and half a mile east of the bridge. The next day it's confirmed that the bodies found are those of Abby and Libby and during a press conference after their completed autopsies, the deaths are ruled homicides. And the details on how the girls were killed are not made public and we still don't have any detail. There's so few details about this case.

So there's a ton of speculation. Indiana State Police, they won't say how they were killed, but Indiana State Police Superintendent Doug Carter calls the murders, quote, the epitome of evil. It's not stated whether or not there's DNA, although it's assumed there is. And all of that info is still not known. Investigators saying that they're holding some of the case details close to their vests with the goal of having information that only the killer would know when they finally arrest him.

Right. Now it turns out that Libby's phone had been found with the bodies of the girls. And so Indiana State Police distribute a grainy photo that they say came from Libby's phone and it's actually a still from the video that she started taking of the dude crossing the bridge. So it's kind of grainy because it's kind of far away. Let me send you that. Oh, yeah.

The photo is of a man who seems to be following behind the girls on the bridge. White man has his hands in his pockets. His head is tucked down almost like he's not even aware of them. You know, he's just walking across the bridge, but clearly there's a reason Libby is filming and continues to film this guy. He's wearing a hand. Yeah. Sorry just to interject.

Yeah. But when you have your hands in your pockets, the, what's that called, body language experts say you're hiding something, you have something to hide. And it's like knowing how treacherous that bridge is would, if you were really, you wouldn't cross with your hands in your pockets. You know what I mean? No. It's not a natural walk when you're walking across a bridge like that.

He's wearing a bulky blue jacket, like kind of like a windbreaker jeans, like a flat looking cap in either a long brown shirt or some sort of fanny pack. And it does look bulky. Like he has something in his, like his clothes don't fit properly, doesn't it? Right. Yes. Well, also I didn't think that was a hat. I thought that was his hair.

Yeah. Because it looks like, it looks like that's a part, like he has a big part down the middle. Yeah. But I mean, who knows? Anyway. Yes. Who knows? Yeah.

Right. And so people start to speculate that one of the girls must have started taking video of him. So that freaks people out too, is that she even started like something is wrong with this person. And remember the girls were interested in true crime. So the fact that she started filming him is indicative of that. Police officially named the man in the photos a person of interest in the murders, but don't give more context to the image.

So on February 22nd, law enforcement circulates an audio recording from the video that was on Libby's phone because remember she's taking video. So the sound is really muffled and it almost sounds like he saw her taking, like she stuffed the phone in her pocket and left video running because she didn't want him to see that she was doing that. And you can hear a man with a deep voice kind of almost commanding, say the words, down the hill. So officials say that Libby's a hero for being able to take stealthy video despite the fact

that she must have been scared to even have started taking video at all. And police indicate that they have additional evidence from the phone and from what she did, but that they don't want to release it because they don't want to compromise any further trials. And so they're thinking this audio recording and this fucking photo of a fucking dude in a small town of Indiana is going to catch the guy, you know what I mean? Sure. I think everyone thought that.

And so when no one's arrested, Indiana State Police distribute their first composite sketch and a description of a person of interest in July because it still hadn't worked. And after they receive information from witnesses who were in the area at the time of Abby and Libby's disappearance, they're able to make a sketch because this isn't even like, there's other people out that day hiking. It's not even that secluded. So right. The person of interest is described as a white man between five foot six and 510 weighing

180 to 220 pounds with reddish brown hair. And it shows him wearing a flat cap and he's got a goatee. And detectives say that the hat, sorry, the suspect becomes known as the bridge guy. And on Reddit, they just call him BG as well. You'll see it like that. So six months into the investigation, there are more than 25 police agencies assisting the case. Everyone in the small town of Delphi becomes suspicious of each other, you know, every

single face they're trying to find his face. And the fear and paranoia gets so bad that the local county prosecutor has to specifically warn residents not to harass, bother or accuse anyone. And they have to say, stop putting photos side by side of the sketch because fucking everyone looks like him. But this is the thing, like this is the thing of these stories, like this is a town that two little girls get killed. They people want something to come of that.

They want forward movement. They want obviously justice. Like that idea that it's, it's the intent is so good. And the results of the mistakes of that intent are so bad. And you know, which opens the door into the entire other conversation. But it's like, yeah, when you've got a town that's already emotionally charged, then it can go wrong so easily. And it also can be said that when the police agency gives such little information to go

on, there's going to be, that's all people are going to do, they're going to panic. So eight months after the murders and after having investigated more than 24,000 tips and interviewing 500 people, police finally name a quote, person of interest and announced that he's in custody. So 31 year old convicted sex offender named Daniel Nations is arrested on September 24th on a charge of weapons possession in Colorado and where he lives and Nations also has an expired Indiana license plate, which ties him back to the surrounding area of Delphi. So there's a lot of similarities between Nations and the composite sketch released

by police. Can I send you, can I send you that? Yes, please. Okay. Yeah, very similar. Right. The down turned mouth, the goatee, the like, big eyes. Wide set eyes.

Yeah. I mean. It looks just like him. Yeah, it does. So, so for the ears, sorry. Yeah, totally. Okay. So they also believe that Nations, who was allegedly threatening people with a hatchet

on a hiking trail in Colorado, it might be also the same person who shot and killed a bicyclist on that same trail at a different time. So he's definitely a dude who fucking threatens people with a hatchet on a trail and he might also be someone who killed someone on a fucking hiking trail. So Nations has a lengthy criminal history. He's required to register as a sex offender in 2007 after being convicted of indecent exposure for exposing himself while sitting in his car in a parking lot and later flashing a woman and child.

In previous years, he is when he stationed at Camp Lejeune, he's charged for indecent exposure four times, charged once while in Spartanburg, South Carolina. In 2016, he's convicted of public indecency in Indiana for fondling someone in a public place. He's caught spying on women and masturbating in a woman's restroom at a gas station. He's convicted of domestic abuse in Indiana, a number of other minor convictions and Nations wife says, so he's married and she says he didn't have access to a car in the day of the murders and that the day after when the girls bodies were found, she had driven him

to his weekly sex offender check-in. So kind of giving him an alibi. But according to her, they watched the news coverage of Abby and Libby's murder, which is also a red flag if someone's too interested in it. And while she's like, yeah, he totally looks like the composite sketch, but he doesn't own any of those clothing that wouldn't match. And in January, 2018, he's transferred to Indiana's custody for failure to register as a sex offender.

And everyone's like, this is fucking it. Do you want it? Do you need one? Yeah. This is the problem. It literally looks exactly like him in this, that picture. And then when you go backwards, because there's not enough detail in this picture, but with the detail that there is there, I can see it exactly.

Like it looks too much. It's too much. Like his face. He looks too much like him. Yeah. Don't scroll too much because there's more. No, I won't. I won't.

So everyone's like, he got transferred to Indiana fucking custody. This is fucking it. They finally caught the killer. But in early February, 2018, authorities say that nations is no longer considered considered an active person of interest in the Delphi murders. So you think that might mean there, it might be in some kind of a DNA comparison. And we don't, they don't, they don't know us. And it's almost like, give us a little more information, which I think is one of the frustrations

about this case. And I don't want to talk shit on the investigators. I'm sure they have a rhyme and reason and hopefully are really good at their job. But it's almost like it's not enough information, but he's not, he's not taken off the suspect list and he's not ruled out officially. Oh, he's not. He's not ruled out. Okay.

He's not in any interest right now. And so for the town of Delphi, who thought that justice was about to be served, it's a huge blow and they don't get a good reason as to why he's not anymore. In January, 2019, here's another suspect, 46 year old Charles Andrew Eldridge is arrested during an undercover sting operation in Union City, Indiana. He thought he was going to meet a 13 year old girl for sex, but is greeted by an undercover cop instead. And following his arrest, he's charged with two counts of child molestation, one count

of attempted child molestation and one count of child solicitation. He becomes a person of interest in the Delphi case after his mug shot is aired on the news and tipsters call in and they're like, y'all, he fucking looks exactly like the sketch. So let me. Are you sending it to me? I am. This is a big problem with it is like everyone fucking. So now look at this one.

It's like a different direction, but it does look like he kind of looks like chunk from the goonies. But also, yeah. But he looks just like the sketch, right? And he also, he looks like the first guy. I mean, that's crazy because it's, yeah, it's very similar. And also in the picture of the actual man, which also is not, we don't know for a fact that that is, what if that was just some guy out walking, that's exactly right.

Well, they don't, they didn't tell us this, okay, it'll get worse. So it always does. It's just amazing because when you have very little, like when the thing, when the piece of evidence where it's like, it could be this guy, but it's vague enough, then you're just trying to retrofit people. All you have to go on. Yeah. And someone on Reddit, it's always like, you know, every man in the Midwest can look

like this fucking sketch. Right. You know what I mean? And like that outfit he's wearing crossing the bridge is what everyone fucking owns in the, but it's not interesting. And clearly is probably a choice, wearing a hat, having everything kind of obscured, like the outfit is perfect and having your head tucked down. Totally.

Or is it? Because maybe he just went there for a fucking hike that day. It wasn't a known day off of school. So it's not like he went there looking for children. It was a Monday. Knowing that. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. It's just, there's so many questions about this. So, so they're like, he looks just like the bridge guy. He's got this dude has a reputation Eldridge for being a pervy fucking weirdo by regularly posting stories to his multiple Facebook pages about missing children, sex crimes, murders, haunted killers. And he even posted.

Sorry. Wait. No. I feel a little bit of time. We are not middle-aged creep azoid men. It's fucking different when we do it. Okay. Okay.

Don't you think? Yes, it technically is. But then at the same time, that's that kind of thing where like, that would mean we're suspect number one if anything happened near us because we have the same. I get that. But we're doing it as with an angle of solving these crimes. And fixing it. And I feel like you can read the text and know that if someone's stoked and getting off

on this shit, he even, I mean, he even posts stories about Abby and Libby days after their bodies are found. So he's posting. Shit. Okay. Hold on. Let me tell you one more thing about him before you say anything. Okay.

He openly admits to FBI and local and state police that to having multiple sexual encounters with minors under the age of 13, which I'd like to point out is in the sexual encounters fucking rape and molestation. That's rape and molestation. Let's not call it sexual encounters, but they don't have any concrete evidence that links him to the murders. Okay. So like, you got to hope DNA.

You got it. And there's a multiple other suspects I'm not getting into because it's all similarly like vague shit. And you just hope there's DNA that they're testing. Right. You know. Yep. About two years after the murders, investigators have interviewed over a thousand people, including

possible witnesses from that day, suspects, anyone who may have information about suspicious activity on the day that the girls went missing, but nothing has led to an arrest or a definitive suspect. And it's crazy. There's cases that have less evidence than this that gets solved quicker. Right. You know, we have, I think everyone was like, this will be solved immediately. I remember when it happened and it was like, thank God that girl took video, but it's not

working. So on April 22nd, 2019. So the year, you know, this is more than a year ago. It's fucking July. No, it's August. It's August. What is happening? So.

Well. Oh, right. April 22nd, 2019, Indiana State Police hold another press conference. And this time they announced they're moving in a new direction in this case, like this shit's not working. Let's try something else. First, they release a brief video clip of the bridge guy walking along the bridge. So that that photo that they have of him, it's just still of the video, which is really

grainy and hard to see. And clearly it was from far away. They released it as a one second video, which I'm going to send, which I'm going to send you. Oh, okay. Hold on. Oh, you just heard it. You just heard it.

Sorry. Sorry. Okay. Okay. So they released the one second video of him walking on the bridge, the same video they got this still from his gate is weird. And they acknowledge that because he's walking along the wooden slats. So they, they put it out there to like get people, someone who knows this man and knows

the way he walks, they put it out there. So someone will identify him, but he's walking different because he's on the bridge. So they won't, you wouldn't identify like I immediately identify him because of that, which is weird. Yeah. Um, and he's moving fast as if he had walked this path many times, right? He's just fucking moving along on this bridge that you and I would be slowly taking little steps over.

And then so this guy, James Renner, a friend of the family, he's the investigative journalist and on the author, he's a, you know, Billy Jensen type, I'm sure they are best friends. He wrote the book, true crime addict. He said he and I were messaging on Instagram because I know he, you know, has been involved in this case. And he said, quote, to me, he said, I went out to the bridge when I visited the family and I couldn't even step out onto it. He said, you don't get a sense of the scale from the photos.

It's so high and so old. You, um, if you look at him in the photos and video, he's not, he is striding across it and that tells me he's crossed that bridge a lot probably since he was a kid. He's not scared of falling. He's a local. That's what James told me. Yes. And he's walking with his hands in his pockets, which aside from the body language is also

difficult. It makes balancing twice as hard. Yeah. So he's going across it. The first thing I think is he's trying to, he's trying to present an image of a casual, not dangerous person. And the girls know, and I guess supposedly there's audio because they did let the family listen to the audio, more of the audio, that it's a dead end at the end of the bridge.

Like you're, it's trespassing if you keep hiking. So the girls were stuck at the other end of the bridge, probably didn't want to cross and pass him. All right. So, um, that's what James said. And then, so police also released another piece of the audio. So you just heard the down the hill part that they released earlier. And everyone's like, oh my God, this is exciting.

We're going to hear his voice more. So someone's going to identify it. But all they release is him before he says down the hill, he says guys. And then it's, so it's guys down the hill. So he addresses them. Yeah. So there's, they don't tell us what, but something about that command is meaningful to them.

And a lot of people speculate that maybe referring to two young girls as guys is like a military thing or a, you know, a teacher, something a teacher would say, like who, and I asked Vince, like, Hey, you know, from, he's from the Midwest from Michigan, like who addresses women as guys there. It's not really, it doesn't seem like a normal thing to me. He, you know, kind of speculated, um, but who the fuck knows. But it means something. It means something.

We're supposed to find something in it. Huh. You know what I mean? Like what your dad would love you guys guys. I feel like your dad would. Guys. Yeah. That's true.

It's, it's kind of like, well, this is wild as per year, wild speculation. That's what it's. Purely. It's called podcasting. Purely a purely, uh, uneducated and obviously this is the first time I've heard of this case. So I'm dying to know your opinion because of it. It feels to me like in the way he's trying to present himself as non-threatening, basically

talking to them like a, like a gym teacher, like you're saying, or like guys down the hill, he's not saying ladies. He's not addressing their gender or what he thinks that means it's, uh, yeah, it's almost like business as usual or like, you know, this was coming almost. I mean, who knows? It's got it's so weird and so maybe they asked him a question before that. You're right. They had some kind of interaction.

So he's saying, yeah, it's, it's me again, you guys, like, let me tell you my theory in a minute. You know what? Can I just say this reminds me? Yes. This, this is such a cuff links conversation. It's totally the cuff links from all began in the dark because everything has meaning when it's, when it's an unsolved case and a question mark, everything needs to be poured

over and then who knows? It's just opinion. It's all opinion. Yeah. But like someone could be right. And the more you, I guess that's what really, maybe one of the reasons I thought of doing this case finally, even though I really didn't want to do it because it's so awful until it was solved.

But when there is a part in all be gone in the dark on the HBO series where they blend, they show this, the, um, witness sketch of the, um, like the sailor ransacker, like one of the sketches of him and blend it into that time period of Joseph D'Angelo. And it never hit me until then how much it fucking looks like him. I always thought how bad the sketches were. And then they did that. And I was like, how did nobody see this and go, that's the guy, that's my brother-in-law's best friend that I saw at a barbecue.

That's the guy I used to work with. How did no one do that? And it's like, because it was towns over. And so no one would ever see it. But also he made that transition, which is another very psychopathic thing of basically morphing for use. So when he was the vice sailing ransacker, he looked different than when he was later a cop in Auburn or, uh, you know, a mechanic in Citrus Heights or whatever, like the,

he looked different throughout the years, like entirely, but at the same time, I think that if enough people had seen that sketch as they can now because of the internet and maybe because of this podcast, someone will, someone, a few towns over in Visalia will say, holy, okay, that kind of looks like them. I'm just going to get clear my mind and call it in. I'm going to call this. Maybe, except for, let's go back to the Ann Rule Ted Bundy story where there was, they knew after Lake Samamich, they knew gold bug guy named Ted and she was like, nah.

So I feel like it's that, it's the, when we have these ideas, pictures in our head of who people are, that stuff is too out of bounds and insane, we just can't imagine someone would do something. Yeah. That's a great play. Yeah. It's a great point. Anyway.

Um, they also released a second sketch. So there's a new sketch of the suspect and it looks like a completely fucking different person than the first sketch. Wow. In the first video I watched that comes a second and it's entirely different. That's a completely different, right? So it, it's a much longer younger face. It's a completely different person.

It looks like it could be this guy's son, you know, but also who is the second sketch from? So, so it confuses everyone. Indiana State Police Sergeant Kim Riley said the new sketch was not another take on the man in the video, but was another person entirely. And this person depicted in the first sketch was not presently a person of interest in this investigation. So the first sketch with the goatee that everyone who, you know, got questioned look

like isn't someone to even fucking consider, it turns out, but they don't tell us why this person is now the person to focus on and they don't tell us why they released that first sketch and why he's not part of it anymore, right? You know, which kind of drives people crazy, understandably. Yes. Entirely. So they update the description of the suspect to be a man between 18 and 40 years old, but they say that he could appear younger than he actually is, have a younger face.

They say, quote, we don't want to say the old sketch is not involved. We just want to say that this new sketch is more indicative of what we're looking for at this time. So like everyone's like, are there two people involved? What are you talking about? And there's a bunch of controversy, of course, because a lot of people feel like time has wasted, had been wasted because they're searching for the wrong fucking face altogether. And it turns out that the new sketch was actually made days after the girls were found.

So it's the original sketch, but it took this long to actually release it, which upsets people, obviously. And the last thing investigators reveal is that they believe the man who murdered Libby and Abby currently or previously lives in Delphi, this tiny town of 3,000 people or works in town or visits on a regular basis. So it's a fucking local because a lot of people are like, it's right by this Hoosier Heartland highway. So he could have been a trucker.

Everyone, of course, you know, we got a trucker, but apparently this bridge is really hard to find. Like even people who are from town, if people write about it already, didn't know it existed or go to try to find it and can't, it's a local fucking place, right? So maybe you grew up there and moved away when you were young. Who the fuck knows? And this, of course, terrifies the small town and the families of the girls as well, knowing that a murderer could live among them.

You know, they go to the grocery store and the fucking dude bagging their groceries could be the murderer. Yep. So here's the, there's tons of theories. There's tons of little tidbits. The only one I'm going to get into because I really like it and I think it's interesting. I don't know if it has anything to do with it is, okay, there's this thing called geocaching. Yep.

Do you know what that is? I sure do. How do you know about it? Because I didn't know about it before this. It is like one of the first interesting things or things that I found of interest when the internet came out. Like, I never cared about chat rooms. I always thought chat rooms were the weirdest idea.

Me too. I'm message boards. I was like, well, what are you, post a stick it note on a website? I don't get it. And you don't know who you're talking to and you don't know if they're saying who they are, if it's real or whatever. But geocaching is, it's people go and bury interesting little. It's treasure.

It's a treasure hunt. It's a treasure hunt. Pre-buried, treasure hunting. But then you're given what? The coordinates? Yeah. So I wrote, it's like an outdoor treasure hunting activity like a scavenger hunt in which members, it's like an online geocaching community.

You're like, you sign up and you're part of this community. They navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates. So if you're a member, you'll bury one and be like, here are the coordinates. And they're all over the world. It's like kind of like families go and do it or, you know, adventurers or if someone is like a trucker and travels a lot, that might be a fun thing for them to do to make it less boring on the road. You know what I mean?

But it's also like, it's also not going to be at the exact coordinates. So it's kind of a fun little treasure hunt. And players will sometimes leave a small token behind. So I think that they leave like a box and you can put a little, you know, toy or whatever the note into the box. And then usually there's a guest book and you sign the guest book and say when you found it. So people know when the last time it was found was and you can take a token if you find it

and leave one, whatever. Well, it turns out that not only were Libby and her older sister, Kelsey geocachers, there's a cache at the Monon High Bridge, which, okay, I just thought was so fucking interesting. But wait, Libby and Kelsey had found the cache a couple days prior to the murders and Kelsey had logged the cache. That's according to the way, you know, I might be wrong about that, but that's what I read. And at the news conference, so this new news conference where they're like, we're changing direction.

It's like a big fucking deal. This news conference on Indiana State Police Superintendent Douglas Carter addresses the killer in a really heavy way and says, quote, we believe you are hiding in plain sight and may even be in this room. Well, the geocaching like tagline or motto is hiding in plain sight. Is it? So some of us think that him saying we believe you are hiding in plain sight is a message to the killer that we know that there's a geocaching angle.

Like we know who you are and we just need to find the right evidence. Like what weird wording. Like it sounds like, come on, let me have it. No, sorry. I mean, I like the connection and I think it's definitely possible and it makes sense going along with the other behavior where they're being so guarded about whatever they're releasing that they would be speaking in code and everything that releasing has to mean something because they're releasing so little, right?

Maybe, maybe, but also hiding in plain sight is a very common phrase and it is used and that idea. He says it's, yeah, yeah. It's the way he's, it's the delivery. So it's delivery. Yeah. Yeah. But I think it is that thing he could also just be saying because this happens a lot.

It put me in the mind of, I think it's season one of Mindhunter where they go to the, like the Pennsylvania town and there had been a murder there and they were like, they're telling everybody, they're telling the local cops. Yeah. Yes. And they're, that thing of like it's someone here and then it's like basically saying often times again, like the Golden City killer, they don't run and move to a different city often times.

Right. It's not a stranger. No. It's, it's someone that is, has the perfect mask on. Ann is comfortable there and someone made a really good point on Reddit as well that was like, you know, if it's a fucking resident of this 3,000 town, 3,000 people town, someone would have seen them, but then they were like, you know, there's like, there, they could be a second or third shift worker that lives at night and goes out, you know, it doesn't

actually interact with people during the day. So no one would see him at the grocery store. He's there at fucking 530 in the morning or whatever, you know. We could also be one of those kind of, I feel like there's some killer words like that, the perfectly neutral, like the people that have learned to camouflage themselves in the light of day where it's, you would never notice, you would never think twice. This is not a person who stands out in any way and that's all on purpose. And that guy on the bridge is wearing bulky clothes.

So that could be a fucking skinny as shit dude, but no one looks twice out because he doesn't have the build of the bridge guy. Right. Well, I mean, and I wish there was more information. I feel like, I feel like, I feel like investigators keep expecting the tiniest piece of evidence to get this solved because it's so obvious and it's not happening and they need to release a little more because adding guys to down the hill, what, that means something, there's a reason they did that, but who the, but it didn't work.

It didn't fucking work. Right. Well, and also usually from what I've seen and read in the past, usually they, they keep one specific, it's not, they don't keep everything and then release things one at a time like that. So usually it's like, there's, there's a bit more shared, but they just withhold something that is crucial and the type of secrets because it is, it does make sense to that. It's like, there's a bunch of people who are connecting these, this murder, these murders

to other murders across the country, but we can't really do that because we don't know how they were killed. We don't know any of the signatures. So it's impossible to do that and maybe it would be easier to solve if we knew that it was connected just to a murder, a, you know, a state over, maybe we could pool, you know, we, I'm saying we, yeah, just cause I lurk on Reddit all the time, I'm like, yeah, okay. So the citizen detectives, it's almost like there needs to be a jet, another, people need to start to understand the kind of work that people can do from their home.

And I think they're starting to learn it, but it's like, yeah, put that information out there. And maybe right now, would we have all the time on our hands, nothing to do but help, you know, right, or, or fuck it up because we could also fuck it up really bad, which is true. All right. True. So anyways, so in the three and a half years since their deaths, police have received over

40,000 tips during the course of the investigation. And as of now, no new leads have appeared. The Indiana State police say they still received new tips about the Delphi murders almost daily. And there's two state troopers, two Carroll County Sheriff's deputies and a Delphi city police officer and someone from the, someone from the prosecutor's office working regularly on the case as do many internet sleuths. And sometimes the FBI assists, but more, you know, it's a dead end right now, but it's

not a cold case. And, you know, they, they reiterate that the reward for information leading to the arrest of the Delphi killer is over $250,000 made up of big and small donations from the community, fundraisers and includes a $97,000 donation from retired Indianapolis Colts punter, Pat McAfee and CEO, an owner of the team, Jim Ursay, which is like, I told Vince that today. I was like, do you know who Pat McAfee is? Cause I fucking don't. And it turns out he's about to be like start wrestling.

Oh, and Vince was like, oh, I've been talking shit on him this whole time. Now I, now I need to go back and be like, he's actually a good guy. Yeah. You know, as of October, I was just gonna say, let that, let that new information inform your opinion. That's right. Yeah. As of October, 2019, Libby's grandmother, Becky Patty, who you can hear talk in these

other podcasts is fighting cancer, but she stays positive knowing that even if she loses her battle, she will get to see her granddaughter in heaven. Becky says that the families have asked police to release more information and she believes they do have DNA, which is good. Abby's mother, who is pretty private, that's poor woman, Anna, is frustrated that three years have gone by, but is grateful that no one has forgotten the case. Libby's sister, Kelsey, is this incredible fucking woman and advocate. She has become an advocate for the hunt of her sister and Abby's killer.

And she even changed her college major from communications to forensics because she's like, I want to help other families solve cases like this. She's she's incredible. Kelsey told James Renner as a way to keep going and honor her sister. She said, quote, I want to be the person I saw Libby as so outgoing and fun and talking to everybody. If they were still alive today, Libby would be 17 and a half and Abby would have just turned 17 in June.

And that is the yet to be solved Delphi murders. Solvable. It's so fucking solvable. It's solvable, but more information needs to get released. They have to they have to share more information or the right person needs to see him walking across the bridge, even with the weird gate or the right person needs to hear guys down the hill. They need to get released or they need to put out more information for sure.

I have to say they need now they need a Michelle McNamara. That's right. It sounds like it could be Kelsey. It sounds like that's what she's trying to do, which is beautiful. But oh my God, it's too much for like the family members can't be expected and there has to be. Totally. And yeah, so I do recommend down the hill, but it is dark.

The podcast is called down the hill or or scene of the crime or the two podcasts you can listen to with more information and like a lot of good interviews and and then there's tons of YouTube video of the of the location, which is like hard to picture and I mean. Good one. That's amazing. I'm definitely going to look up all of that stuff because that is really fascinating. And also it's I feel like sometimes when things happen in small towns, there's more activation around it because it is that thing where it's people knowing people you're one degree away

or whatever as opposed to when things are in bigger cities and it's easier to have that kind of be diluted in that way. Yeah. It it makes me think of when Polly Closs went missing and my entire town was in I mean in our town is way bigger than Delphi, but it feels like a small town. It's a very it's a very small town feeling town and it and it is it is that kind of thing. And yeah, it's just you want to protect your babies. You want to protect the children?

Well, and it's the point of yeah, it's the point of community and and it's the point of knowing your neighbors and caring about your neighbors and learning who they are. And then also for the you know, for lots of reasons to care about them and to also then be aware of who's around you. It's really troubling. Should we do a fucking hooray? Yeah, we sure should. We sure should.

But that was great. Great job. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. You want to go ahead? Go first.

Okay. This is from Instagram from doctor underscore tickles. Ew. No, I think it's an animal account. Not a real. It's not a real doctor. Yeah. Don't worry.

Okay. This one says my fucking hooray after losing my sweet purebred Siamese baby unexpectedly during this time at home, I was looking for a rescue kitten and ended up adopting one and a puppy. It's the most quarantiny thing I've done other than learned how to play the ukulele. But Luna and baby Georgia hardstark have been the best fucking hurrays ever. And I've loved watching them grow together. Precious.

I wonder you love that so much for writing in your diary. I was just like, no, I was listening. I was listening, but then you're just like, me, my Siamese cat, and I was just like, you're not allowed to write in on fucking hurrays, Georgia. What if I named my cat baby Georgia hardstark? What if I do that? Right. Kitty Perry.

Kitty Perry. Kitty. Puri. Want to hear mine? Yep. Fucking hurray. My fucking hurrays after being sexually harassed at my job for two years by my boss who doubled as HR and then in parentheses, oh, the joys of small companies, I not only was finally

able to get out of my contract, but was immediately hired at a new company. While starting a new job remotely during a pandemic is not ideal. I am oh, so grateful that I did not have to choose between my mental health and making money. Oh God. Although the past two years I've really taken a toll on me. I'm so lucky to have a good support system. My best advice for those who may be going through something similar is do not keep this to yourself.

Find people to strengthen and comfort you. Write everything down. That's so true. Write everything down for processing purposes and in case somehow and in some way justice is able to be served. You're not defined by what is said or told to you and you are loved. A. Hey.

That's beautiful. Amazing. Congratulations. Hell yeah. Good job. A. You got through it. We're proud of you. You should be proud of yourself.

That's amazing. Yeah. So good. A. 420 granny underscore Etsy, which I want to hang out with right now. She just makes golden girls' coasters. All stoned. Maybe. Because her fucking array is my fucking array.

I've started my Etsy store at age 68. Hell yeah. A. Anyone can start at any age. I just needed some help from my grandkids. Oh, so rad. Also from Instagram. How rad is that?

Do they say what the Instagram store is? Let's look it up. Let's look it up. Hold on. I'm going to look it up. 420 granny. It turns out she's selling heroin on Etsy. I think this is her.

What? But it's like a lot of cute. Oh my God. It's like adorable. Look at this. Minimalist stoner joint rolling embroidery. Look at that. Whoa.

Okay. It's a tiny embroidery of two female hands rolling a joint. Oh, guys. And it's the core 20 granny support her on Etsy or them. I should say. It's awesome. 420 granny. That's great.

Fuck yeah. That's very cool. Yes. Okay. This one says hello all my fucking hooray isn't anything crazy, but it feels like a big deal to me. I'm a nurse in Ohio. Woo.

Woo. Thank you. Thank you. And this February I transitioned from working on a step down floor to the ICU where the patients are much sicker. I started seeing a lot more deaths than I ever had on my on my floor. And even those who live don't always have a great quality of life. It started to weigh me down emotionally.

I also work the night shift, which doesn't help my mental health at all to the point where I drunkenly emailed my manager one night asking her for some advice after having a particularly rough few weeks of patients. She was the sweetest and referred me to our employee assistance program for me to start getting some therapy for how to cope with all of this loss of life. It's something I'd wanted to do for a while, but was holding out on because I wanted to feel as tough as some of the other ICU nurses I work with, which seemed who seemed like they were coping just fine.

It turns out being tough means being mentally strong enough to handle this shit. And there's nothing like, and that's nothing therapy can't help with. Thanks ladies for all the laughs. You're the best. And I can't wait to hopefully see you on tour one day when the world doesn't suck so much. Rachel. That's incredible.

Look, just because you got there in a lightly drunkenly way doesn't mean it wasn't a great decision. Totally. And sometimes that's how we have to do it because asking for help, especially if you're raised by certain people who teach you that asking for help is bad, can be really difficult sometimes. Especially, yeah, if you're surrounded by overachiever badass ICU nurses, you don't want to be the weak link, but yeah, they do that all the time.

And all you can do is become a better nurse for them by going to therapy. All you can do is become better at being yourself. And that's going to help so many people in this incredible career you've chosen where all you're doing is helping people, which is exhausting and yeah, you deserve all the support. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Rachel. Good job. So many fucking incredible listeners. This one's from my last one's from Nini Martini Exo. My fucking array, after having mom guilt for the past two weeks for not feeling like myself, a little depressed and lots of anxiety due to the pandemic, my six-year-old and I were driving home from a dentist appointment and he said to me out of nowhere, quote, you're a good mom.

Oh, no. I said, you think so? And he said, yes, I love you. And I said, I love you too, honey bunny. And I turned up the music a little bit and drove the rest of the way home teary eyed. Sometimes moms just need that little reassurance that we are still good moms regardless of our mental health hashtag SSDGM. Six years old.

I want to say like as an adult, my mom once told me it was like 1990 and she was at a stoplight and suddenly she had just started taking Prozac and suddenly hit her that she wasn't depressed anymore and how depressed she had been. And I had to remind her that, yeah, I had been going through her depression too at that point 10 years. So you need to take care of your mental health for your children as well because they do notice that shit and whether or not they just want to take care of you or they're getting in whatever it is, it's not just your mental health at that point, it's your children's

understanding of who their parent is. Yes. And absolutely. Someone who's on Prozac and taking care of themselves is a way better example than someone who is suffering with depression. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, here's my last one. My fucking hooray is actually my four-year-old daughter's fucking hooray on this same note because she can't type for shit. After her quarantine-style birthday parade of family members driving by and dropping off presents on our driveway, she discovered that not one but two of the dresses she received had pockets. The look of pure joy on her face as she discovered this for the first time in her little life was too much to handle.

What else could I say but welcome to our world? Oh, okay, I'll have one. I'll have one. No, it's too late for me. It's precious. You can have another Mr. Tickles. That's what you can have. That's a great idea.

Still to this day, every time I get a dress and it has pockets, I get fucking stoked. It's so funny. It's, you know, it's a joy. It's a true joy. Fucking pockets, man. Pockets just might be the solution to everything. I don't know. It could just be an indication.

Masks are just face pockets. Hey. Hey. Hey. Oh, Jesus. Now that we're coming up on hour three of this podcast, I think it's time to wrap it down and say. Here we go.

Send us your fucking, fucking, a raise on Instagram, on Twitter, email, on fan call. And thank you all so much for suggesting so many stories to us. It's so helpful. Especially these days when I feel like I'm doing much more escape viewing of entertainment than what I used to do, which was much different and it's really helping me kind of, and there's some great ones too. We have, there's so many ones I think I'm excited about. Oh shit.

I have three. People are suggesting. I have 3% battery left. I just want to say how lucky we are to have the most incredible fucking listeners. This is our job. And it's, I just, I was going through things that I am grateful for when I was at the beach yesterday because my therapist said it creates new neural pathways to even do that. Yep.

And this obviously my life is one and it's because of you, Karen and Stephen and all our listeners. Thank you. You guys made it happen for us. Thank you for your support and your participation and you know what, stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Elvis, do you want a cookie? Elvis? Elvis?