My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 254 - Little Bandit & Pirate George

Episode Date: December 24, 2020

On this week's quilt episode, Karen and Georgia cover the murder of Lori Ann Auker and The Donner Party.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https:...//art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is exactly right. We at Wondery live, breathe, and downright obsess over true crime. And now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C, on Facebook and listen to true crime on Wondery and Amazon Music. Exhibit C, it's truly criminal. Hello and welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hardstark.
Starting point is 00:00:46 That's Karen Kilgeriff. The end. And wow, what a, what a week it's been. Wow, these past 14 days are so just perfectly 2020. I mean, coming to a close of this Godforsaken year, hoping 2021, I don't know, yeah, how's it going? Good, good. I mean, as good as it can be going, you know, well, all things considered, I think a lot
Starting point is 00:01:24 of people wrote in on Twitter last week about how sad they were that the end of the Minnesota there was no Elvis Meows. Right. So Elvis, my cat of 16 years passed away last week. I do think we should continue to put the meow, repurposed meows at the end, don't you? Totally. We don't need to, we don't need to leave those off. It's part of, it's part of it.
Starting point is 00:01:52 He did the work. I mean, it's been recorded, it's why we're recording all of this so that it can all be reused in the future in some way. Let's get him those residual checks, you know. For real. So you could take it all the way to the bank. Yeah. I just want to thank everyone who reached out and who thought of him and he's just been
Starting point is 00:02:18 such a huge part of my life and so many reasons why I've been brave and happy and like laughed for so many, for so long. And so the fact that he brought other people happiness too and made them laugh and mean so much to me and I think he's, it's just so weird to have him gone, you know, after so long. Yeah. And I'm so lucky. I had him for as long as I did, but it's just so weird just that he's just not around anymore.
Starting point is 00:03:00 But you know, everyone who reached out made me feel so incredible and we did this amazing thing that you and Denton had suggested of putting, you know, cookies for Elvis on the website so you could buy a $5, you know, non-existent cookie to raise money for the ASPCA and we raised $30,000 which is so much money, I just can't believe and it's just such a beautiful tribute to him and I just appreciate everyone's like thoughtfulness and what an incredible community this is that comes together and, you know, I feel lucky to be a part of it. Yeah. I do want to take full credit but it was completely Denton's idea to put that because, well, Denton
Starting point is 00:03:56 texted me and said so many people are writing in and on the fan cult and on, you know, social media saying where should we donate or get something together. It's like the funny thing is we had to really start putting that together quickly because the second people start talking about it, it's like they're irritated, you haven't already set something up. I mean, all these other people, some other people were doing it on their own already, you know, and like some people are like by this print and I'll donate all the money for it from to like, you know, and all these immediate, beautiful portraits people were selling, selling
Starting point is 00:04:33 me people, people were selling me portraits. How much did you pay? That's good. It seems like they're taking advantage. No, just like the beautiful drawings that they have that I have of him and all over my house are like a murdering now memorabilia of Elvis, which is beautiful and hard, but it will be easier, you know, as time goes on. But yeah, yeah, it's really, I mean, just another example of how incredible the listeners
Starting point is 00:05:01 we have are and they're big animal people to begin with. So this I think got a lot of people where they live and there was a lot of people like kind of telling stories, people that lost their pets this year. And it's, you know, it's, it's been a hard enough year for everybody. There's, there's lots of loss this year. So I think this was kind of one that even though he was 16, he still seemed, you know, it's like he sounds great every time you hear him on the show, it's like, you know, only you knew like the truth of his health and right, but I do want to say he didn't, he
Starting point is 00:05:39 was okay up until the last minute, like really literally the last two days. And he wasn't in any pain. And you know, we had this lovely nice lady that come and, you know, while he was on my lap and it couldn't, we couldn't have been luckier to have him so long and have it be a peaceful passing and then have the huge amount of support that we had. And so I'm really grateful for that. Yeah. And 16 years is so long.
Starting point is 00:06:13 Well, you know, that's, you know, that's what I asked him for when like a couple of years ago he got sick and had these kidney issues and almost died. And I just said, you know, I just said, I just need 16 years. Just please give me 16 years. That's like, I don't know why that number just like I had a cat live to be 20. I was like, I need 16 years of you. And literally two months ago he turned 16 and then he just started to kind of go downhill. So, you know, he, he understands English, you're saying he speaks English and those
Starting point is 00:06:49 numbers loyal to the end. I don't know. There's just something special about that to me. And so, you know, every, it's just, yeah, he, yeah, he has a very special cat. Yeah. Yeah. And now he's going to live in infamy. I mean, you kind of can't ask for much more.
Starting point is 00:07:06 Yeah. He's legendary. Yeah. He's legendary. Nobody lives in infamy instead of infamy. Oh, you didn't hear about the bank robbery? Yeah. Oh, that would be so cute.
Starting point is 00:07:17 I know. He would just kind of sneak in. No one's paying attention. A little bandit. One teller can't explain what's happening. Right. It's so hard to describe what he looked like. Oh, that'd be adorable.
Starting point is 00:07:30 Oh. I mean, yeah, I don't, it's like, what's funny is. You've said, it's like you so actively loved that cat, you know, you always pulled him into everything. You always wanted him to be like front and center. So it's not like people don't understand how much that cat meant to you, how central he was to you. It's like, you know, you both kind of lived it.
Starting point is 00:07:51 So that's why it meant so much to people is because they knew how much it meant to you because you always made that really clear. So, you know, it's, I think it's really kind of nice because that's your vulnerability and you basically sharing a part of your life with people and, you know, and that's, that's what happens in life. He made me so happy and I wanted him, I wanted everyone else to have that too. And I think it worked. So yeah, but yeah, but life, yeah, it feels different now and I don't, I don't know.
Starting point is 00:08:22 So then I got a call from you like a week later, that's bombshell city. So yeah, then I was, I couldn't stop laughing even though it's truly one of the worst things that's happened to me lately, George, my dog, George had pulled her ACL. So she's been limping. She's basically been hopping around on three legs for about a month. And when I first took her to the vet, she was, could kind of put her foot down every once in a while. And then she over a couple of weeks stopped doing it.
Starting point is 00:08:54 Then I noticed her behavior was changing in different ways. Finally she stopped eating. So then I had an appointment set and I was like, can we move that up because something else is going on. So I take her to the vet and then it's all COVID set up. So she gets taken in and I'm just sitting in my car in the parking lot and then they call me and the vet says your dog has bone cancer. And so then I have to decide basically where we can amputate her leg or you can put her
Starting point is 00:09:27 to sleep. And your dog, what was it, 14 years? She is, yeah, she's almost 14 and I believe I've had her eight of those 14 years. Very dark, awful. Of course I picked the surgery and then I had to call Georgia laughing going, you're not going to fucking believe what I'm about to tell you. You're like, I'm not stealing your thunder. I'm not trying to one up you.
Starting point is 00:09:56 I literally said, I don't think we can tell people about this because I'm going to look insane. I'm going to look like you're stealing my spotlight. I can't let her have it for a minute. You can't have her sorrow spotlight. I need my sorrow spotlight. Oh well, I want sorrow too. Well anyway, I'm lucky enough to be able to say George May is making a full recovery.
Starting point is 00:10:16 She has three legs. We are renaming her Pirate George. It all suits her very well and she's actually like, she's been, she was loopy the first couple of days and it was kind of a bummer and scary obviously, very weird. But like on day three, she popped up and I looked her and went, do you want to eat? I have to spell it because she'll fucking jump up. And then she just was like, it was like she was kind of back to normal and running. She's not, there's no kind of like in between rehab part of it, she's back and she's fine
Starting point is 00:10:53 on three legs. Well, I'm not in pain anymore, so who gives a shit and just do her thing. So let's go up and down some stairs. So yeah, George's, she's had her life adjustment, but she's doing great and yeah. So let's face it now, let's face it like a year apart. I mean, that was that thing where it was just like, I was like, yeah, let's not record and let's maybe let's not just record for the rest of the year because what the fuck is going on?
Starting point is 00:11:25 I definitely appreciate having the week off, like a week or two off of like responding to people, you know, it's like, well, it's not a very fun, yeah, it's not, you're grieving, you are grieving. So it's just like, we're, what are we going to record? You know, I mean, like that's like, that's really not the, that's not what we do or how we do it. Well, I'm glad George is feeling good. I was gonna, I have a photograph for you of some cookies that Vince and I made for holiday,
Starting point is 00:11:56 the holidays and we're going to bring you and you might just get a photograph because we've been too lazy to leave the house to bring them to you. Oh, don't. The last thing I need is cookies, honestly, I thought you'd appreciate the laziness of it. 100%, text them right over, text those cookies. Yeah, that's, I might end up eating them and sending you the photo of them. I mean, I feel like also it's just, I feel like if, if I think all of America needs to
Starting point is 00:12:26 fall down and take care of themselves this holiday season, everybody needs to lay on the couch, start a Netflix series that you don't even care about, eat what you want, be nice to yourself and to other people, like take it easy, put down social media. Everything is hysteria, everything is insanity and like, you know, we've had a full year of it. Yeah. A year of it. That's really my plan for the next two weeks is just to be, be gentle with myself and I
Starting point is 00:12:59 will say, so I haven't of course wanted to watch all the dark, deep, depressing shit that I normally want to watch, so I've been watching, yeah. The comeback has been a real, real great distraction with Lisa Kudrow. Of course, I highly recommend if you need a distraction, it's a little cringy, but it's so fucking good. A little. A little. The whole point is that it's cringy, but it's because Lisa Kudrow is such an incredible
Starting point is 00:13:24 actress that she just makes it that way. It's a great show. It's so subtle. She is like the thing she's doing in that show. It's so real. It's like overtly subtle somehow. Well, it's very realistic. It's just like that she's clearly, I think, thinking of a specific person and someone
Starting point is 00:13:42 she knows or whatever, but it's just like, you never think about Lisa Kudrow, the actress, this person, Valerie Cherish, is such a real person and you're just like gripping, white knuckling it. Yeah. From the fucking, from her house, the set of everything about it is perfection. You know, definitely watch the comeback if you need a nice distraction from everything. Yeah. Now, did you, did you watch the stand?
Starting point is 00:14:11 No, I haven't watched it yet. I mean, is it great? It's good. It's funny because, you know, you, you read, there's, there was a lot of reviews of it and people kind of like playing it down. And then when I went to see it, I was just like, what are they talking about? It's better than ever. Like, I love this thing.
Starting point is 00:14:29 So I think I just, I've been waiting so long since like the first time we didn't add for it. Yeah. I was so excited. But it's great. It sounds like a perfect distraction. Come on. I love that.
Starting point is 00:14:41 It's really good. Okay. So another really pure show that I've really enjoyed and been watching is Taste the Nation by Padma Locke, hosted by Padma Locke Shmi, who's just really smart, interesting woman. And she just travels the country, the nation even, just really tasting. Yeah. Tasting it. But like really authentic stuff, like real, like finding out where burritos actually come
Starting point is 00:15:03 from and why they, you know, they're, they're, they were what they were. And it made us go into Boyle Heights to this like old school burrito place and get burritos because we just wanted to try them. It's like a really lovely show. Were they amazing? They were incredible. It's just meat. There's no like the whole like huge overstuffed burrito thing is, is like a current thing.
Starting point is 00:15:26 It wasn't that way before. It's really fascinating. So she does all those interesting cultures and tells you about them. And it's just like a, it's a nice distraction show and it'll make you really hungry. And then maybe it'll make you like search out some authentic food in your town, which I think is a positive thing. Is that a Netflix one too? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:15:44 That's on Netflix. I hope. Let me double check. And I love Top Chef. So Padma is like a favorite. You have never watched that show. Shut your face. I can't.
Starting point is 00:15:55 Karen, you're going to love it. I can't believe that because it's great. I never have. I think it's just one of those ones that it, I don't know, it got by me somehow. And then people would talk about it and then I didn't know what they were talking about. So then I was like, it's not for me because I missed it. So taste the nations on Hulu with Padma. Oh, that's Hulu.
Starting point is 00:16:15 You have to watch Top Chef. It's like one of my favorite competition shows. Okay. It's so good. Let me send you a good season. Like Richard Blaze's season is one of my favorites. You just have to, and all these characters and, oh my God. Now I did watch Iron Chef, which like was in, that thing was the greatest, the original
Starting point is 00:16:38 version. Did you watch that way back when before, me too. One of my, and even the, even the like current one that's not just subtitles is so fucking good as well. That was my dream when we were on Cooking Channel is to be a fucking judge on Iron Chef. Yeah. And it never happened.
Starting point is 00:16:55 I was heartbroken. Heartbroken. I had to, wouldn't you have to have your own restaurant or some help? I had a Cooking Channel TV show. No, no, no. I don't want to be a contestant. I want to be a judge. I want to taste the food.
Starting point is 00:17:07 Right. Oh, they had all kinds of weirdos on that show. The judges were like randos. I could have been a judge. You're like, why can't I be a judge? Oh, I thought the judges were, well, the, the original one that I saw like that, because I think it was like late night food networks. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:17:24 Like maybe even before food network was like food network, whatever, but yeah, they would have like, so the current one would be like, yeah, there'd be like a restaurateur and a cookbook author. And then there'd be like a random, like Steve Austin, the wrestler or something like it would be just some random person who loves food. I like it. Yeah. So I could have done it.
Starting point is 00:17:43 And then one of my favorite party questions when there used to be parties was if you could be a judge on Iron Chef, what would your like dream ingredient be? Because you know, it's like, you have to cook with asparagus this week or you have to cook with like, what would your like, like squitting worse. Yeah. Yeah. Squitting. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:18:01 Gross. There was always in those early ones that were, it was Japanese, right? It was from Japan. There was always a thing where I was like, because I don't like seafood at all. So then there was always a thing where everything was like, I'm glad I'm not there. Oh, I'm glad I didn't have to smell them cooking that. But of course it was always, you know, amazing. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:18:19 They did, that was the whole. The American version was cool because it'd be like, it'd be like eggs, but then it'd be like ostrich eggs and like, you know, like a row and just like really interesting stuff like that. So I always thought that would be really cool. So I'm a little heartbroken that I never got to be a judge on that show. Well, it's not too late. I think it is.
Starting point is 00:18:37 That's what I got you for Christmas. You brought back Iron Chef. Yeah. And I'm going to go. I called Bobby Flay. Listen, it's for Georgia. She's been having a hard time. You know, I had drinks with Bobby Flay once at the Soho house because he was big timing
Starting point is 00:18:52 us. No, he wasn't. We just really wanted to go to the Soho. Ali and I met him to like talk about maybe doing a TV show. And he was so lovely and a really amazing person. And then we saw him make his barbecuing, not grilling TV show and he's just like professional. But then we never heard back from him. The lovely guy.
Starting point is 00:19:12 You want to hear about a podcast I listened to? Oh, yeah. I have a book. Go ahead. Let's see. Well, a couple. I'll do it chronologically. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:19:24 So the first one I listened to that England's owned April Richardson recommended to me when I talked to her like last month. It's a tea. It's a. Sorry. It's a podcast called Chameleon the Hollywood Con Queen. Yes. Did you listen to it?
Starting point is 00:19:38 No, but it's I subscribed. It's on my list. Okay. It's unbelievable. Tell me. It's unbelievable. The premise? Well, it's people who are not huge in show business in Hollywood.
Starting point is 00:19:52 Start getting conned by this woman who calls them and books them for jobs in, I believe it was Singapore. Oh. Then they go to Singapore. On their own dime. Kind of a thing. On their own dime because it's like they, yes, there's they get talked into it. And there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of parts of the business where it is
Starting point is 00:20:09 that kind of thing. When you get there, then our travel department will pay you back or whatever. There's a lot. There's a lot of that kind of stuff. And it like basically playing on the desperation of people of like, this is my break. Yeah. This is my big break. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:20:23 It's such. But that's how it starts. And you're like, that's really fucked up. And then it begins to develop into a whole other thing. And it's really satisfying. It clipped along so fast. It's such an amazing story. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:20:35 Cool. It was unbelievable. Chameleon. Chameleon, that one's like, that one's like super trending right now. I'm, I have that one on my list. Yeah. I think it got really popular because the story is, it's like a dirty John level story that like everyone, you know, in the podcast biz people are looking for like, what's the
Starting point is 00:20:53 story that really has it or whatever. And this thing is like, this thing has like seven stories and when they break while the podcast is recording and while they're reporting on the story and it breaks podcasty live, it's so exciting. Yeah. Yeah. It has it all. So yeah, if you're looking for a new one, Chameleon, the Hollywood Con Queen.
Starting point is 00:21:12 That's amazing. I'm into it. Sorry, what's the other ones that you're listening to? Oh, then the next, well, basically then I was kind of going along because I really, lately I'm loving a scam story, a really, a really, you know, journalistically investigated scam story because I feel like the more people are going to be in peril with money, the more scammers are going to be trying to scam people in all different ways. So true.
Starting point is 00:21:39 So, but this one, this one, it's called Smoke Screen, Fake Priest. And it's, it's by the neon hum, the people that did Dr. Depp. And it is again, one of those stories where as you're listening, you're like, sorry, what is happening? What is happening? You find out, you will meet him. It is unbelievable. You just con the shit out of people into fake baptisms and stuff.
Starting point is 00:22:05 It's because, and this is again, that thing where it's, he, he presented himself to be a priest that, that did Latin mass and he was like a traditionalist Catholic priest. So it was like, cause you know, Vatican II in the 60s basically was like, all right, you don't have to eat fish every Friday and you don't have to, like the mass doesn't have to, have to be in Latin and all that stuff. But there was lots of people who were like, that's not the real thing. If you're doing it, this new, this quote unquote new way, you're not a real Baptist. You just have to hear it.
Starting point is 00:22:37 It's just like, it's unbelievable, but is that kind of thing of again, these areas, these certain areas that scam artists always gravitate to because you do not question the church, right? You don't question religion or religious leaders and those people scam people like crazy. It's amazing. Oh, that's awful. Yeah. And then just the most recent one, I always rave about the Canadian, the CBC broadcast
Starting point is 00:23:05 and the Canadian investigative journalists. I went back into the Uncover series. Oh yeah. They're the ones that did Nexium first, but they have now, I think eight seasons, there's so many good ones. And the most recent one is season four. It's the cat lady murder and it is, you have to hear it. It's just another one of those ones where it's people scamming old people and the elderly.
Starting point is 00:23:33 But that one's actually very, it's less entertaining and more like, oh God, this is such a bummer. It's so dark. The idea that people like pray upon and exploit the elderly and people in nursing homes. And then it's like whole life saving situations. I have a friend who that happened to, the bank called quote unquote called his dad and was like, you need to get all your money out of the bank. There's been a breach, turn it into, you know, Amazon gift cards and then call us and read us the number of the Amazon something so simple like that that if you just called our friend
Starting point is 00:24:07 his son and been like, this is happening, his son would have been like, that's a scam. But yeah, of course he's like, oh, this is an emergency and didn't. And they, you know what, in one of these, and I think it was the chameleon, they had, they interview that woman who I talked about her book that I love so much and she talks about the con con men. Her name's Maria, but they talk about that. That's one element of scam artists is it's always a rush. You have to, you're going to get the job, but you have to answer me if you need to answer
Starting point is 00:24:40 within the hour. You have to, it's the bank things happening. You have to do it right now or so it's all, they create a false sense of like it's a big rush, rush, rush, and it's emergency and time, like you're running out of time. And that's how you know that's like step one of a scam is that you can't take 15 minutes to call a younger person and go, is this real because you have to do it right now. Or to even consider it yourself, which you probably would be like, wait a minute, I shouldn't be doing this.
Starting point is 00:25:08 Yeah. Yeah. I know. I know. Guys, send us your hometowns about scams that you've fallen for that someone you know has fallen for that you almost fell for that you played on someone else. You can be anonymous. I want to hear scam stories, don't you?
Starting point is 00:25:24 Scam stories are, they're amazing. Oh yeah. And there's, there's a thousand podcasts that feature that, which you can listen to all of those too, but there's, but also it's good to learn from other people. And that's the, that's another thing they talk about is people that get scammed don't talk about it because they're so embarrassed and they're so ashamed and they don't want anyone else to know, oh my God, how, because people go, how could you have given someone $6,000?
Starting point is 00:25:49 And it's like, if you thought you were about to get a huge job with this, you know, the Hollywood conqueen using these huge director's names, you think you're about to get this big job where it's David Fincher shooting in this place or whatever. And it's not like they don't have evidence. It's not like they're just like, great, here's $6,000. It's like that $6,000 is a couple thousand over a period of time. So you're already in it deep and they've given you evidence as to, you know, quote unquote evidence as to why they're legit.
Starting point is 00:26:17 And so you've believed those, which makes it easier to keep believing because you don't get, you don't want to get scammed at $3,000. So it takes $6,000 to finally admit it that it's gone. Yes. And even then you don't totally know. Yeah. That's fucking crazy. That's a good one.
Starting point is 00:26:35 So it's, yeah. So Karen's, I'm all about those scams. Watch out. I'm reading a book. Well, so we were also, oh, the other thing we were watching was just bad Christmas movies. Just. Yes.
Starting point is 00:26:49 Karen, have you seen the movie Family Stone? Oh, yeah. Ma, I never seen it. Yes. Ben and I watched it for the first time and we were, I feel like I'm going to anger half the murderinos. You will. This is a very divisive film.
Starting point is 00:27:05 I didn't know this. I didn't know anything about it. I had never seen it. And then I looked up to read all the negative reviews and all there was is positive reviews. Yeah. Well, I'm just going to say what a movie. Wow. Wow.
Starting point is 00:27:19 What a movie. I refuse to fucking indict myself. Um, well, I will, I will indict myself because who gives a shit. What's funny is you missed the, um, the staff zoom meeting where we had this discussion. No, you didn't. Yes, because someone recommended it and then Katrina. Guys, we have these, can we just say our, okay, we have staff meetings every Friday morning with the now huge, exactly right, uh, employees.
Starting point is 00:27:45 Like we have what we have an 11. Huge to us. That's huge. It's huge to us. We have 11 employees and everyone kind of fills each other in on what's been going on that week. And now we started doing this thing at the end where you just recommend something. Usually it's a TV show or a book or whatever.
Starting point is 00:28:01 And I was gone the week that Elvis passed away. And so I fucking missed this conversation. You missed the family stone debate. It was hilarious. Tell me everything. It was so funny. Well, I'm, I'm busting Katrina right now, but I think she would be fine with it because she was just like, it's, I, that movie is terrible.
Starting point is 00:28:20 And then I started laughing because I'm like, I love it. You do. I could see it being one of those ones afterwards where like God, that movie, I need to watch it again. And then being like, okay, I get it. Yeah. There's something about it that is, it's, it's corny and everything, but there's a Christmas element to it.
Starting point is 00:28:40 And I'm sorry, but Luke Wilson does it for me and especially men right in that movie. He's almost like a surfer. Yeah. He's like Mr. Cash. And he's kind of like, he just immediately knows he, well, spoiler, but he immediately knows he loves Sarah Jessica Parker is just like, Oh, well, I'm, I'm in love with you. It's like the most natural kind of like love at first sight, but a boy doing it, which you never get to see in any movie.
Starting point is 00:29:08 Especially with an uptight woman, you know, like an uptight anal woman quote unquote, but it's like, oh, you still, you know, you fall in love with her. It's not like she's quirky and falls down the bus stairs and then you fall in love with her even though it's your sister, your fucking fiancee sister, which that part lost me. No, it's, it's his brother. If it's his point of view, it's his brother's fiancee. Yes, but I'm talking about, I'm talking about Claire Danes' character. Claire Danes.
Starting point is 00:29:37 Right. Right. Right. Okay. Well, yeah, it's definitely a movie. And that's, we can all agree on that. Movie for this, it is a movie reflective of Christmas or the holidays in general, I guess. And then we did Home for the Holidays with, of course, Robert Downey Jr.
Starting point is 00:29:54 Thank you. And the. Holly Hunter. Yeah. So that was fun. I hadn't seen those before. Oh, yeah. So that's like, that's another great one, but it's a different vibe.
Starting point is 00:30:04 It is. What, what's another good one that's like, you got to watch it. For the holidays, I think people always like, like to talk about on Twitter how, you know, like die hard to Christmas. Right. People, and now the joke has become on Twitter naming a thing that's a Christmas movie because there's one, like one tree in the background or whatever. But the Ryan Reynolds movie, Best Friends, is one of the greatest.
Starting point is 00:30:28 It is a LOL for real movie. They're like undercover cops or something. No, it's actually very, it's problematic for 2020. They're all problematic. Well, and so Ryan Reynolds basically, it's like he's now successful, like, I think he's supposed to be like a music agent or something, but in high school, he was fat and he had this best friend who he was in love with and she would, she didn't think he, she could ever like him.
Starting point is 00:30:57 And then he goes home for the holidays. Right. And now, an arbitrary number on a scale means that he's lovable and worth, worthy of love and right. But see, he has this, he now is a Ryan Reynolds type exactly. So then he thinks, no, I got it, but he's actually kind of a scumbag. So she's like, oh, you're different. And it very much is like she actually loved him before.
Starting point is 00:31:22 Who's the she? Well, but you have to watch it. Who's the she in it? I can't remember. I'm so sorry. It's called just friend. Oh no. Look at his fat suit.
Starting point is 00:31:32 I know. Amy Smart. Amy Smart. I got it first. You're fired. You're fired. Damn it. I deserve it.
Starting point is 00:31:40 She's really good. Okay. She's really good. It's a, but it is, there are jokes in this thing that are, I laugh out loud when I watch this movie. And it is legitimately a Christmas movie. Okay. Great.
Starting point is 00:31:51 I'm doing it. I love it. Yeah. That's perfect. Thank you. Just friends. Just friends. Ryan Reynolds.
Starting point is 00:31:59 Never forget that Ryan Reynolds is the real deal. Okay. And I'm, I'm reading a book called Good Morning Monster by Catherine and is it a children's book? It does sound like that. Catherine Gildeneyer and it's basically this woman, it's a, it's kind of a memory type of thing. Catherine Gildeneyer is a therapist and in the book she presents five of what she calls
Starting point is 00:32:24 her most heroic and memorable patients. So it's like five chapters of these patients that like transformed her as a therapist. So one of the, one I'm listening to right now is like her first patient and like how hard it, how hard it was for this patient to admit that she had childhood trauma and understand that what she went through, even to every, you know, to everyone else were like, girl, you went through some shit, but like she was like, nope, I did what I had to do, but like really you were nine years old and abandoned and like she just couldn't even handle it.
Starting point is 00:32:56 So it's just, I think it's really good for people who are like interested in therapy, but don't know what it's like or don't know how to, it sounds great. Yeah. Like don't know how to break through with their own shit. It's definitely helping me where I'm like, Oh, I think my life is totally normal and my therapist is like trying to knock down these walls, but she, she can't knock them down. She needs me to knock them down.
Starting point is 00:33:16 And so what, what am I, you know, what, what tools am I not equipping myself with to knock down said, I've been watching a lot of HGTV to just, I'm trying to have an open concept brain and it's just really hard. You want to put an island right in the middle of your personality and just so you can like, I can cook and then watch the kids do homework. And all I have is ball peen hammer that I'm trying to fucking knock the wall down with it. It's not working to pull that drywall down with your finger nails sometimes, but I'm
Starting point is 00:33:44 using a butter knife. It just doesn't make any sense. That sounds great. That's really good. Morning monster. I'm going to write that down so I can get on here and recommend it in two months. Good morning. Morning monster.
Starting point is 00:33:55 That sounds great. And then let's see. Am I listening to anything else? The vanishing half by Brit Bennett, I finished and I'd fucking highly recommend it. That was the one I talked about last time about different generations of a family, but I didn't realize it was really like mother, sister relationships. That's really cool. So I like that one a lot.
Starting point is 00:34:15 Very relevant. Like that's all I got. Anything else for you? I mean, that's, that's a lot. That's a lot. That's a lot. 42 minutes. Oh, can I do one more cottage core, new obsession?
Starting point is 00:34:25 Please. There is a cottage core corner. It's cottage core time. Let's hear it. This one. Yeah. You made your own clock. Great.
Starting point is 00:34:35 I made my own time. This one combines doll houses, two of my loves, doll houses and decaying haunted houses. So people are making doll houses, but making them abandoned haunted houses instead of. Oh fuck. Yes. How great is that? I think that's genius. I think I've found the one.
Starting point is 00:34:58 A bunch of people are doing this. I don't know. I think I've found it's called, it's an Instagram called Southern Gothic doll house. And it's straight up looks like the haunted mansion at fucking Disneyland. Like cobwebs and, you know, decaying things and like using teeth as like tile. It's just creepy and cool. That's great. I like that.
Starting point is 00:35:19 There's so much artistry that goes into that that I think doesn't, has never gotten the respect it deserves. Like once we talked about, you know, could there even be mid-century doll houses? I get the pictures of them constantly on Twitter now because there are a ton. And like, it's, there are lots of people that are into it and do it and they're gorgeously put together. Like it's, it's really cool. And it's so funny because it's such a thing that's like, it's, it's, there's no, like
Starting point is 00:35:48 they're doing it because they love it. Like they're not going to do anything with that doll house. It's not like you're going to walk in there living room and be like, wow, you decorated it well, it's like going to be a doll house on a mantle somewhere that only they get to enjoy an Instagram. Perhaps a child or two. What? Why?
Starting point is 00:36:05 No, don't bother. That sounds boring. Get them away from there. Oh, and then there's a guy. He's an artist named Ryan Thomas Monahan on Instagram. It's what underscore the hell. And he does the most incredible like decaying cityscapes and actually did like an abandoned vintage McDonald's scene in full miniatures.
Starting point is 00:36:27 That is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. So check out what underscore the hell as well. Actually speaking of, but it's a little bit rando, but from the last time we recorded, we were talking about murder on middle beach. And at one point I said, I don't know why it's called that. Oh yeah. Um, Liz Prince wrote to me on Twitter, uh, at comic nerd NRRD, and she wrote, regarding the conversation that Karen Colgar from Georgia Heartstark had about why murder on middle
Starting point is 00:36:58 beach was called that in last week, my favorite murder episode. Number one, the murder took place on middle beach road. Yeah. No, that makes total sense. That was the whole tweet where I was like, damn it, Liz. But then there was an, there was an attached tweet to that, which I didn't for some reason take a picture of, but she basically said, um, their last name was beach and murder on middle beach is mom beach.
Starting point is 00:37:29 And then she wrote number four, I'm a nerd. And so thank you Liz for, um, that was help we needed. That was help we were asking for. And it's so obvious now that you pointed out, but I, I never noticed stuff like that. I, I mean, clearly I didn't even retain the information that that was the street they were on. And it was done in a non showy, offy way, which we always appreciate and you were self deprecating, which is always a ingratiating thing.
Starting point is 00:37:57 It's a world that you're not getting. It's nice to not be yelled at. Yeah. Are we done talking about ourselves for, I think so. 50 minutes, 50 or so minutes. 50 years. I mean, look, listen, it's nice to have company. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:38:10 You can't take that away from me. Speaking of ourselves, let's do exactly right news. Oh yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about some shows. Okay. Well, our new show 10 fold more wicked, which is our first, uh, limited series, like kind of docu true crime by the great Kate Winkler Dawson.
Starting point is 00:38:30 It has actually been included in, uh, Apple podcast, top true crime podcasts, which is very exciting. So rare. And yeah. So, you know, this season of it will be ending like the end of this year and then a second season is going to start next year. So she's done so much work and she's got this stuff ready to go. I mean, she's an incredibly accomplished author and her books are amazing.
Starting point is 00:38:57 If you haven't read me, look her up because they're so good. And so yeah, she's got, she's got that content ready to podcast. That's right. So the thing of lists that's messed up our SVU podcast hosted by Kara Klank and Lisa Traeger is trending on iTunes, which is so rad. Thank you guys so much. We're glad you love that's messed up as much as we do. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:39:20 Thanks for supporting it and subscribing and giving it great reviews. It really makes a difference for all those, all the podcasts. Um, also this, uh, this week's episode, the legendary actress, Marsha Gay Hardin is, is the, is the SVU cast member that they interviewed, which is just like, it's the coolest booking. It is what an honor. So cool. And speaking of Christmas movies on, I saw what you did. One of my absolute favorite Christmas movies is discussed, Scrooge.
Starting point is 00:39:53 So check that. They also covered the silent partner. So check those. Check out. I saw what you did. That's another podcast that's doing really good. Yeah. And they, in the movie, movie and TV category, which is very cool.
Starting point is 00:40:05 And those million Danielle are the greatest. If you, if you, even if you're not super into cinema, it's such a great podcast where they just kind of talk about it's cause it gives you great ideas for movies and why to watch them. And it's like hanging out with your friends. So yeah, it's really fun. Then fricking speaking of lists, the podcast bananas was on vultures, top 10 comedy podcasts of 2020, which is so huge.
Starting point is 00:40:32 We are so proud of Kurt and Scotty. So make sure you check out bananas. They have incredible guests. It's such a fun, lighthearted podcast. Weird news. There's nothing funnier than weird news because it really happened. Yeah. It's not just people talking about bullshit.
Starting point is 00:40:46 They're reading you real actual news articles from Florida and around the world. And they're really good stories. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. Oh, also I said no gifts, Bridger Weinerger's wonderful podcast was featured on the iTunes new, new and noteworthy page, which was very exciting. No, we're trending and shit.
Starting point is 00:41:13 Yeah. Oh, thank you for, you got a rate review and subscribe. Those are the ways we get on those lists and everyone on the network appreciates those little bumps. Yeah, they do. Oh, and also if you're looking, if you're still looking for something to watch, Steven and Sarah on the, on the podcast, talk about the Garfield Christmas special 1987. How dare you not say that?
Starting point is 00:41:38 I'm so sorry. A classic classic and Emmy legend. A perfect activity for the holiday, whoever wrote this, this. That was another one that we talked about in the staff meeting because people were talking about remembering it, watching it when they were a little loving it and it being really touching. Yeah. Garfield Christmas special.
Starting point is 00:42:00 Yeah. So check that out on the podcast. Looking for a better cooking routine? With meal planning, shopping and prepping handled, Hello Fresh has you covered. Hello Fresh makes home cooking easy and affordable so you can stay on track and on budget in the new year. Hello Fresh meals are convenient, seasonal and delicious. Stay cozy all winter long with classic comfort foods available weekly.
Starting point is 00:42:23 While I stop with just dinner, now you can enjoy Hello Fresh's expanded menu of quick lunch solutions, weekend brunch, simple side dishes and amazing desserts. Karen January is going to be my month for Hello Fresh. I am so sick of takeout. I miss cooking so much I haven't lifted a knife or a pan since like early fall. So I can't wait to get back in the kitchen and Hello Fresh makes it so easy and also makes it so that my food tastes good, which is hard to do on my own. It gives you everything, everything you need.
Starting point is 00:42:54 So get up to 20 free meals with purchase plus free shipping on your first box at hellofresh.ca slash murder20 with code murder20. That's up to 20 free meals plus free shipping on your first box when you go to hellofresh.ca slash murder20 and use code murder20. Goodbye. What makes a person a murderer? Are they born to kill? Or are they made to kill?
Starting point is 00:43:20 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. On Killer Psyche Daily, I'll give you insight into cases like Ryan Grantham and the newly arrested Stockton Serial Killer. I'll also bring on expert guests to dive deeper into the details, share what it's like to work with a behavioral assessment unit at Quantico, answer some killer trivia and even
Starting point is 00:44:00 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. All right, let's get into this, we've done it. We're about to introduce, this is a quilt episode. For you. Oh wait, Stephen, who goes first in this quilt episode?
Starting point is 00:44:26 Oh yeah. Georgia. Oh. Because the former fan called Exclusive Live Show, Georgia went last in that one. All right. Perfect. At least there's a logic to it. That's all that matters.
Starting point is 00:44:37 I mean, you can say whatever you want and I'll believe it. All right, well, I am so excited about this one because it involves a heroic cat. So I feel like it's the perfect setting. It's perfect. Right? So apt. This was from a show in Pittsburgh at the Benadom Center on March 14th, 2019. So not that long ago.
Starting point is 00:45:02 Very recent. Right. And this is the murder of Lori Ann Ochre. Enjoy. All right. Amazing. We're going to do the murder of Lori Ann Ochre. Here she is.
Starting point is 00:45:17 That's what I didn't want you to click on. Okay. Lori Ann Ochre. All right. So this fucking, this story is forensic files fucking wet dream. Like, I'm not even kidding you. The producer probably pissed him or herself when they saw this. The episode's called Cats, Flies, and Snapshots.
Starting point is 00:45:39 Oh. Someone was like, we got to get this out. Let's get this out and name it. And it's about, it's kind of like our theme that we like lately of pet heroes. There's a tinge of that involved, too. That's right. So. It doesn't like a pet hero.
Starting point is 00:45:55 Pet heroes. But I bet the trend to come after pet heroes is going to be pet scumbags, pets who have stolen from you, pets, pets who crush your car. Failure change from your purse. Flip you off behind your back. Okay. So Lori Ann Ochre grows up in a quiet agricultural area known as Susquehanna. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:46:23 How many times did you say that in your hotel room? Three. The Susquehanna Valley in central Pennsylvania. It's about 100 miles from Syracuse. You know what? Okay. I don't know if you guys hate Syracuse. The thing where we go to a city and they like hate the next town over, but we don't know.
Starting point is 00:46:43 So they start booing and we're like, why are you booing? We're from LA. Okay. So she's a typical 80s teenager. She's a sweet girl. Her friends, I'll say she's just normal and lovely. She loves animals and she wants to be a vet when she grows up. So she marries Robert, this dude, Robert Ochre, right out of high school and she's 19.
Starting point is 00:47:04 He's 10 years older than her. And he works in a, what did you say? Hot. It is. Man knows what he's doing. It's hot when you're 19 and then you become the age that they were and you're like, what the fuck? He doesn't know shit.
Starting point is 00:47:21 But when you're 19? So hot. So hot. A 29 year old wants to date me and then you become 29 and you're like, that's disgusting. He just had a job. That's all I like. He had a car and a job. So they get married.
Starting point is 00:47:36 He works in a warehouse. They soon have a son. They need Matthew and they need to make more money. So Lori, wanting to be a vet and loving animals, gets a job at a pet store in the local Susquehanna mall. Yes. Okay. You're fine.
Starting point is 00:47:51 And this, you know, this isn't a pet store like they sell pet products. This is the 80s. So they probably sell pets. But don't get mad. It's just how it was at the time. I mean, you could truly get, you could get a monkey if you wanted. You could get a full-size healer monster. There was a bunnies.
Starting point is 00:48:06 They were all in the same cage. You get a pet them and just put them back. Touch your eyes. It was great. All at the mall. Yeah. But she loved animals. That's where she worked.
Starting point is 00:48:20 And she'd take her son Matthew, there was like a little baby. She'd take him there whenever she wasn't working and he loved animals and she just showed him all the animals and wanted him to like be friendly with them. Very sweet. Okay. So after he's born though, Lori and Robert start having problems. And Lori's not happy because Rob is super controlling. She had to answer a million questions before she was allowed to leave the house and...
Starting point is 00:48:43 Fucking old guys. Yeah. Where are you going? What are you doing? Yeah. How many fingers am I holding up? I don't know. Just take your...
Starting point is 00:48:52 I couldn't think of another one. I was just like, shut up and take your osteoporosis medicine, dad. And he used physical discipline when he was upset with his kid. So she was like, fuck this shit. They're fighting all the time and so they separate after 18 months of marriage. And Lori and her baby Matthew move in with her parents while Robert moves back in with his parents and he has visitation rights with Matthew. So let's get to the day of the disappearance.
Starting point is 00:49:25 Oh, there's a disappearance, by the way. On... What's the... Oh, let me show you the Sasquahana mall vintage. I tried to find old photos of it, but it's a network. Sasquahana Valley Mall. Here's this deck. What?
Starting point is 00:49:44 Is there a slight pronunciation difference? Sasquah... Sasquahana. Okay. Thank you. Sasquahana. Sasquahana. Jesus Christ.
Starting point is 00:50:01 If you just wait till you get up here. That's that asshole. There he is. Oh, okay. Okay. He's so old. He's 10 years older. Gross.
Starting point is 00:50:12 And what? So, okay. May 24th. First? 24th. May 21th? Nothing. Okay.
Starting point is 00:50:20 Okay. May 24th, 1989. Your favorite year. Well, it was right after my birthday, so I was still hungover. My birthday's on the 11th. So, Lori's getting ready to go to work. It's her normal shift, 4 to 9, at the pet store, and Matthew, the son, is with Robert that day.
Starting point is 00:50:44 So, she packs her lunch and leaves for work, and in forensic files, because they have to do foreshadowing. She picks up her cat in the hugs and puts it back down, and you're like, that's got to mean something. Yeah. Steven. Steven, what does that cat symbolism mean? And this cat must have been fucking drugged, because it was just like, great.
Starting point is 00:51:05 Totally let her do it in the TV show. Could it have been like a Jim Henson cat puppet? Really realistic? Yeah. I wonder how they got the cat actor, because they couldn't have a budget for it. Like, does anyone on set have a cat that's super chill? Could you just bring your cat, and then we just don't talk about it? Don't call the union?
Starting point is 00:51:24 We'll give him some CBD, it'll be fine. So hugs her cat goes to work. Okay, so about a half an hour later, there's a call to her house, and her dad picks up, and it's her boss, where is Lori, of course, and he's like, what do you mean, she already left for work, so he drives the route, thinking maybe her car had broken down, but he doesn't find her, then he goes to the parking lot of her work at the mall, and he finds her car there, and in the car is her person keys. No they're not.
Starting point is 00:52:00 No they're not. Nothing seems out of place, and her person keys are gone. They're gone. Yeah. Yeah. They're not there. They're not there. No.
Starting point is 00:52:11 It's the opposite. Yeah. I had 50-50 chance of getting that right. Hey look. You're still an all-star. Thank you. Okay, and she's nowhere to be found, and her parents report her missing. Lori's disappearance fucking sends this small town crazy.
Starting point is 00:52:30 They are all, it's like a conservative community, the normal shit, and they couldn't believe someone had been abducted in broad fucking daylight, so they canvassed the area, they questioned employees and shoppers, but no one saw anything suspicious, and they obviously immediately suspect Robert, her ex, but he claims he hadn't seen Lori all day, he was babysitting their son, he went shopping, and you know, I went to these things, and I did this stuff, and they're like, great, goodbye. So he has details and everything, and he said he bought a dishwasher for his mom, and she was like, it's true, so they're like, great.
Starting point is 00:53:09 They're like, great, we'll never talk to you again. That's all we need. So the public police, family, friends, and volunteers continue searching for Lori with no success, but then on June 12th, about two and a half weeks after Lori's disappearance, a woman jogging a few miles from the mall, smells something bad, and she went to investigate, which means she was definitely an old school vintage murderer now, for sure. She went to investigate, and she spots skeletal remains in a ditch along a hillside south of an area called Seven Points, so the remains, hold it, this is about to be bad, the remains
Starting point is 00:53:48 are dressed in a jacket, jeans and sneakers, so it's Lori's outfit, but it's skeletal remains at that point, and there's no skin, there's nothing to pinpoint how long she had been there for, but they are able to determine it's Lori's body, but so, okay, let's just have a go, okay, so he sees it's Lori, he determines from, and this is all kind of new forensic stuff back then that they didn't really do anymore or yet, so, again, I almost had it. You're there, you're there. So of course they see cut marks through the clothes and on the bones and realize that
Starting point is 00:54:30 she had been stabbed at least seven to 11 times, and so she's identified by dental comparisons but no murder weapons found at the scene, and so investigators bring in an entomologist to determine the cause of death, or the time of death, which is kind of a new fangled thing where they check how old the bugs are, you know, have they graduated high school yet or whatever, and calculate that Lori's been dead for 19 days, which places her exactly the day that she disappeared, so then police are then like, it's been 20 days, you know what we should have done, they say, let's go and see if any of the mall stores had a camera facing the parking lot.
Starting point is 00:55:11 You know what we should do now, they said, yeah, 20 days later, yeah, yeah, okay, yeah, so it's what they do automatically now though, yes, you'd hope, okay, so they discover an ATM, an ATM, not an ATM machine near the entrance of the mall, because it is an ATM, I wasn't sure, yeah, ATM machine, ATM, so they find out an ATM, there's a camera basically pointing at the parking lot, it's been taped over so it's super fuzzy, but they can still, I don't know, make it be seen, I'm not a videographer, oh well if you're not a videographer you shouldn't be telling this story, so they find the camera aimed in the direction of Lori's car in the diver disappearance, the images just show a man making a bank transaction and in the
Starting point is 00:56:02 background out of focus they see Lori's car pull in and a person, and then a car pulls in in front of her car and a person is standing by, but they can't fucking see anything because it's super blurry, so state prosecutors ask the Pennsylvania State Police Lab and the FBI for help, awesome. So the FBI asks NASA for help because they couldn't improve anything, yes this is a first, we've never gone to NASA for help in the history of this show, fucking NASA, yes, and they're like we mostly do moon stuff, so no, sorry. But it makes total sense because they have this sophisticated digital photo enhancement
Starting point is 00:56:48 technology that improves space pictures, so they're like, you know, you just went from expert to non-expert in one sentence, that's me, yeah, me too, yeah, they refer her case to a research scientist in the ballistic missile field organization, and so he uses a technique similar to the one that was used to determine the cause of the Challenger explosion in 1986, and he digitally enhances the black and white surveillance footage, awesome, now we can see it, I forgot to get a photo of it for you, but it's good. It's like a spaceship and a guy kind of in slow motion coming down, he puts a flag, he jumps around a little bit, and there's an ATM machine in the background.
Starting point is 00:57:41 That's how you know it's fake. So they're able to identify the kind of car that pulled up next to Lori's car as a Chevrolet celebrity, and they can even tell it was made between 1982 and 1985. Because that's the only time Chevy celebrities were made. Have you seen one lately? There's one. Oh, it's gorgeous, hold on a second. It's not the one, but this is one, remember those handles, look at how they parked it
Starting point is 00:58:12 in front of a mansion, right, as death, tell me you wouldn't drive that. That is the poor man's Volvo right there, look at it, it's a beauty. So they're like, let's look into Robert, Lori's ex, does he own a Chevy celebrity, no, but his parents do, made in 1984. Right in there. That's it. Robert's parents tell police that Rob borrowed their car on the day of Lori's disappearance, and they sold the car a week after he returned it.
Starting point is 00:58:48 Interesting. And neighbors were like, we saw him frantically cleaning that car, but the parents had planned on selling the car to begin with, so they're not accomplices. So it seems like he kind of knew that, and so took the car at the right moment because they knew it was going to be gone. But then he's dumb enough to frantically clean the car out like in the driveway. Rob. Murders, come on, it's so like the number one, every fucking murder has a clean car.
Starting point is 00:59:14 It's like the number one thing. Stop it. I mean, do it. Whatever. Stop it. Don't start it. Don't kill people. What do you mean?
Starting point is 00:59:23 Okay, but guess who had bought this car? The celebrity. Was it a celebrity? Oh, yes, a retired state police officer. Hell yes. So they're like, can we borrow that? And he's like, apps are fucking Lulia. That's right.
Starting point is 00:59:41 I don't know what I was thinking in the first place. You can have it. How sad is this? He bought it for his stepdaughter, who wasn't old enough to drive yet, so it was just sitting in the garage untouched, waiting for her to be 16, maybe she like flunked her fucking driving test. You only have the celebrity when you pass here. I saw those wine coolers under your bed.
Starting point is 01:00:01 No celebrity for you. But stepdad, you're not my real father. You're not my real father. You're just a state policeman that's really good at handling evidence. Hopefully. Please, God. Okay. So they get the vehicle, they test it for prints and trace evidence.
Starting point is 01:00:17 They don't find anything. There's no blood, of course, because it's been cleaned, but it hasn't been cleaned well enough because in the trunk, forensics people discover a couple little strands of hair. And they put it on their microscope. Guess what? It's fucking cat hair. Yeah. Lint roller.
Starting point is 01:00:43 Get out of here, lint roller. Suddenly. Suddenly. Pet hair isn't so bad, is it? No, it's not. And they also, let's see, they also, yeah, find a couple strands of her hair too, but they're able to know that Robert doesn't have a cat. He never lived with them when they had the cat.
Starting point is 01:01:02 He has no access to a cat, it said, which is like... That's tragic. Your Honor, he simply had no cat access. Not at home, not at work. He wasn't allowed at the pet store. Probably my worst nightmare. If you were denied cat access. How many times have I looked at them in the cat cam today at home?
Starting point is 01:01:29 Six? Like, seen. Probably. My dad's watching the cats, and when I first turned the cat cam on to stare at them, it makes a noise, and I see him go, hello, like, put his head in there. Hello. Artic! Artic!
Starting point is 01:01:47 It's a cat and dad cam, actually. Just catch him eating a handful of peanuts or whatever dads do when they're alone. What are like, you can put cat treats in the machine, what if I just put peanuts in it? And to get Marty to come in, just fucking... He's jumping up and catching, intercepting them. Fighting Elvis off. What? Elvis are for me.
Starting point is 01:02:13 Oh, that's not the kind I like. That's your kind. That's not my kind. That's a mix of cat treats and peanuts. George's trail mix. That's right. Promo code murder. Promo code murder.
Starting point is 01:02:24 So... Okay. So, they arrest Rob for the murder of his estranged wife, Lori, and based on the cat hair evidence, and during their arrest, when they tell them Rob said, you've got to be kidding me. Fucking asshole. Okay. So, prosecutors believe the surveillance photos support their theory that Lori was abducted in the parking lot.
Starting point is 01:02:48 So, they reconstruct the crime scene by the photos that NASA, you know, did, cool shit too. Developed. Mm-hmm. And they see that the Chevy he was driving was in the mall parking lot and they see her kind of, it sounds, it seems like they, like, she got out of the car to go to work. He who had the kid that day probably was like, oh, my God, you have to come with me. There's something wrong with Matthew.
Starting point is 01:03:13 So, she jumps in the car because she thinks something's wrong with her kid and then they don't really know what happens after that until she, until she's missing. So, prosecutors allege that he had two possible motives. First was that he had taken out an insurance policy on Lori and his son and listed himself as a beneficiary. And he took that out after they separated, which I feel like you need to prove you're still married if you're going to take out a fucking life insurance policy. I know there's a, there's a lot going on in this country right now, but if we could,
Starting point is 01:03:43 at some point, when the shit stops rolling, if we could take a look at these insurance, yeah, these, I mean, arrest anyone who has an insurance policy for their spouse above what, 50 grand, you know, 10, 10, yeah. My guy fucking shot Grady Styles for $1,500, that's right, I mean, fuck. That's true. That's true. Fuck. I feel like my guy.
Starting point is 01:04:11 That's embarrassing. You're a best friend. And the payout, oh, hey, the payout for criminal homicide was $10,000. You're psychic. I mean, oh. Oh. Yes. Remember, you just said that.
Starting point is 01:04:28 Yes, I fucking did. I was psychic. Fear me. And of course, the other was that they were engaged in a custody dispute over their kid. And Lori's boyfriend at the time, the student Malcolm, says that Robert was stalking her. And Lori, Lori's mother had discovered two shotguns under her bed two weeks before she disappeared. And when she asked her daughter about them, she was like, I'm fucking scared of my ex.
Starting point is 01:04:55 Oh, man. Yeah. And one of Lori's friends testified that Lori carried Mace in her purse in case Rob attacked her and the supervisors at work would say he'd come stand outside the window and she'd fucking run in the back. And they would watch her leave work and walk to her car to make sure nothing happened to her. But nobody fucking thought, like, on your way to work in broad daylight in a busy fucking
Starting point is 01:05:17 mall parking lot, like, just doesn't cross your mind. So a background check reveals that Rob had a troubled past shortly after marrying Lori. He's convicted of a DUI and serves a stint in prison. And while he's there, okay, while he's in prison, everyone, he orders a book about how to commit murder and get away with it in prison. So they have, like, it's almost like this classic book series where you can just order, uh-huh. Like, Uncyclopedia Brown, that's fun, oh, and then also a murder book.
Starting point is 01:05:53 Yeah. How did it, there was no internet. There was no fucking book selling place. I just feel like the warden should tighten that game up a little bit. They did. They were like, they, like, got it and they were like, no, but they knew he had ordered it. They wouldn't give it to him, though.
Starting point is 01:06:07 Oh, good. They just put it in the prison library. Yeah. When you have library access, you can, you can read your book. You have to earn the privilege of learning how to murder correctly. So in March 1992, Rob Ochre is found guilty of first degree murder and sentence, and kidnapping and a sentence to death. Um, but on appeal, the death sentence is vacated, but he will spend the rest of his life in
Starting point is 01:06:30 prison. Yay. Yeah. So Lori's case and NASA's involvement is the first time digital video enhancement is used on a crime scene photo, making it a forensic breakthrough, and Lori's murder signified a scientific awakening, I'm reading from forensic files, obviously. Yes. Do it.
Starting point is 01:06:50 I support it. In the forensic world, and set a trend of utilizing this same technology, which is like pretty standard now. And, um, countless crimes have been solved because of the technology used to identify and prosecute the killer of Lori Ann, and that is the story of the murder of Lori Ann Ochre. Nice. Wow.
Starting point is 01:07:15 And there you go. Heroic cat. Just the kind of stories we need these days. Yeah. Totally. And what about you? What do you have for us? Mine.
Starting point is 01:07:23 It's a classic. It's from, uh, it's from Salt Lake City or Salt Lake City show February 16th, 2018. It's the Donner party. I mean, You gotta. This is my Christmas gift to you, everybody, uh, horrible story about people wandering in snow. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:07:41 You did a great job of this one. I remember that for sure. And it's a perfect story for when everyone's snuggling in this, on this week that is Christmas. Yeah. Just be snuggle in and don't eat anything for days and days and days. Grateful for what you have and thankful for your warm. That's right. I really appreciate it.
Starting point is 01:07:59 You're not a pioneer. You're not trying to cross the Great Salt Lake. You're not getting bad directions from anybody. No. Anyway, I'll let myself tell the story. I'm first. Okay. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:08:10 Great. And so. Great. With the help of Barbara Gray and Emily Clausen, I present to you the Donner party. What? That is like, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, go ahead. You deserve it.
Starting point is 01:08:35 I'm impressed. I just like did that didn't cross my mind. Can I tell you, I have a bad memory of, I wasn't in the Donner party, but this whole thing brings up a lot of negative stuff for me. It's really hard for me when I the first seat, the firt, I did drunk history the first season. Yes. You did.
Starting point is 01:08:56 Everybody. Thank you. The best one. My sister Laura thinks it's the best one. Oh, it's really good. episode of, what are they called? Lewis and Clark. But what happened was that same night they were like, we're going to get two in one night. So the second one was the Donner Party. And so 12 hours after we had started drinking and had done Lewis and Clark, then
Starting point is 01:09:15 we started on the Donner Party. Don't remember a fucking thing. It was unerable. I was hung over for the rest of my life. I broke up with my fiance based off of, I was just like, no. Shut it all down. Goodbye. Maybe you can bring it back. Okay. Tell me when things start to come to you, please stop me. Flashes of memory, smells, a single cigarette. I want to hear about every word of it. Got it. Okay. Did I just burp right into the microphone? I didn't even notice, but now that you mentioned it, I think you did. Who's here for the first time tonight? Who's never looked at this podcast before? The poor people come for the first time because their significant other is a controlling freak. So sorry. We know you want to be home
Starting point is 01:10:13 watching professional wrestling. There's a lot of details in this that I left out, and I'm not sure we're going to have about a 10-year range of accuracy issues. Now I just doubt every fucking thing that comes out of my mouth. Why not? And that's our brand. So it starts out, obviously, with George Donner, his family, his wife, Tamsen, what a great name. It's his third wife. Right? 1846, they're doing it. The flu. It's the flu. Boom. 1846. Okay. That just, I don't know why the flu made me laugh that hard. I loved it. I think we have an oxygen tank. Can we have it? We said some weird things last night. What was the thing you said about the police line or something? I don't know. Someone might know it. Yes.
Starting point is 01:11:20 What was it? Hoskey restages. It was like that moment when you're like, oh shit, I'm too stoned to be in this record store. That's what it was like. But up here holding a microphone. Much like tonight. Okay, go on. Just like now. So this all starts April 14, 1846. Okay. Quite some time ago. George Donner and a man named James Evried, they leave Springfield, Illinois, because it's all that manifest destiny shit. They're like, let's go to California. We've already killed it in the farming game out here in Illinois. Let's go 2,500 miles west in wooden machines. Word for word, so far the drunk history I did. This is exactly how you said it. Okay. So they forget it. Basically, the reeds and the donors have their
Starting point is 01:12:31 own little wagon train, right? Then they meet up with a bigger wagon train. It takes them a month. It's May 19. They meet up in independence. They meet up with Colonel William H. Russell's wagon train. When they meet up and they all combine, it's two miles long. And it's a lovely spring day. So then a month later. There's so many deaths. These are people that just are out in the middle of nowhere with no doctors or provisions. One slight bruising and they're fucking dead and buried next to the trail. So I can't mention every single person and especially child who died. I'm skimming. The Wikipedia page on this story is deep and wide. And I suggest you go there. It also contains the diary entries of a man, I believe it's
Starting point is 01:13:26 something brain. His last name is brain. And he keeps a diary the whole fucking time the Donner party is stuck at the old pass. And every day, while everyone around him, spoiler alert, is starving to death. He gets up in the first thing he writes in his diary is beautiful day to day. And like after the 11th one of those, I was like fuck this guy, fuck these details. I'm not fucking naming every name. All right. So. This podcast is not called my. Oh, this podcast is called my favorite murder. My favorite murder. That's right. Thank you. That's Karen Kilgara. That's Georgia hard start. This podcast is not called my favorite Dahmer murder. So. Jeffrey Dahmer. Yes. Look, listen. So just a quick reset. So then also they're losing leaders. Some person dies and then they're like you're no longer allowed to be in charge of here. Colonel William Russell resigns and then a guy named Boggs becomes the leader. So then they start calling it the Boggs company, which is kind of rad. You have to admit. Really good title. They all head to Fort Bridger, which is in the southwest edge of Wyoming. It takes them over a month. Oh shit. Hold on. We've got some pictures. These are the Donners. They look like a party or George. Would you say they look like party or the Donner party or the one standing has her head cocked ever so slightly like, yeah, I'm drunk. So what? It's the fucking 1850s. It sucks. And then here's the reeds. Oh man. Doesn't he look like Gabriel Byrne? Like crazy. Don't know who that is. The Irish actor is your favorite. Oh yeah. And she looks like the lady from Game of Thrones who nursed her child for too long. Doesn't she? The most haunting image I've ever seen in my life. So great. So now you know who the players are.
Starting point is 01:15:46 Oh, there you go. Okay. So you guys are going to recognize that when I start talking about it right now. Okay, so it takes them a month to get there. And on the way, this guy, his name is Lanford Hastings, and he starts spreading a rumor that there's a short cut across the Salt Lake Desert. So normally they go this, I think this actually Stephen made a map. Oh Stephen. So check this shit out. That's amazing. Oh, sorry. Stephen pulled a map off the internet that someone else who read books and studied and cared. Okay. So they're starting over there far to the right at Fort Bridger. Okay. And they're supposed to go up, like up over there to kind of avoid all the bad parts of the desert. Okay. But Lanford Hastings is like, psst, you guys. Oh man, they named it after him too. Because they were like, fuck you. Everyone's going to remember because we're naming it after you. That's right. No, he told everybody there was a short cut. And so George Donner and Reed were like, yes, our wives are bitching at us. We need to cut at least 40 days off this trip. And everybody else in the bogs company, it sounds like they're all wearing vests with pocket watches, but everybody else in the bogs company is like, absolutely not. What are you fucking thinking? Because we know not only is it going around the worst part, but it's a trail. People have gone down it before. Come to find out. Lanford Hastings had never gone down his short cut before. So it was all just an act of love. He just believed in the short cut and he was trying to take some people down with him. So they end up, oh yeah, I just wrote. So they just want to get to California so they can finally get tan. That's a waste of time, Karen. Just write facts down and maybe it'll be a better podcast. Get the date right first.
Starting point is 01:17:51 Okay. Also, just in life, keep an eye out for the Lanford Hastings because they're everywhere and they'll always be like, oh yeah, yeah, we're all going to go out. We're going to go to this restaurant. It's going to be great. And then you show up there and you have a party of 12 and there's only tables for eight or whatever and it fucks up the whole night. There's always a person that's like, I got this and they don't fucking got it. You have to keep your eyes peeled for these people and you have to overpower them because if they can't plan for the group, if they can't think for the group, if it's all centered on them, no way. Got it. That is important to me. Yeah. But what a... Okay, never mind. No, you can devil's advocate away. I mean, don't take a shortcut, you know.
Starting point is 01:18:47 So you're on my side. Yes. I mean, yes. Yeah. The problem is, and this is the thing that's the overarching thing, as you know, as your mind deep down knows, is that they're fighting against time. Yeah. Because it's late spring going to summer or maybe even summer. So they have to get past this past before winter actually hits. Right.
Starting point is 01:19:10 Yeah. Yeah, but I don't want... I don't want to don her shame, but... Don't go. Don't follow this person you just met. He probably smells real bad. It's... They all smell bad. I mean...
Starting point is 01:19:23 And following was a whole big thing. That was the thing. I was like, follow me to California. Yeah. Okay. All right. Follow me from... For 2,000 miles. Okay. Get good at following me.
Starting point is 01:19:34 Okay. So, hold on. Okay. So then they decide... So Reid decides to go and Donner decides to go and they elect Donner to be the leader of the group, therefore retitling the smaller group that took the shortcut, the Donner party. It's like pterodactyl. Okay. Just trying to set the seat.
Starting point is 01:20:14 Okay. So on July 31st, 1846, get that oxygen out here quickly. The Donner party is comprised of 74 people, 20 wagons. They leave Fort Bridger. It doesn't go well. So it starts off okay. They're in Hastings Trail. He's like a couple of days ahead of them.
Starting point is 01:20:32 They're just following where he went. Everything's good. They're making good time. Five days in, they find a note left by Hastings saying that the road ahead is impassable. Uh-huh. How the fuck? Oh, sorry. We can only seat four people in this booth.
Starting point is 01:20:44 I guess everyone else is just gonna stand in the middle of the fucking restaurant with their ass on other people's fucking table. Or it's that thing where they're like, well, we'll just... We'll break up and we'll sit in two and then you're left with the people you don't really know and didn't work. We're here for a time. Yeah. You're not central. Yeah, you were like, I came here for that fucker. And now I'm over here with his guy that you work with.
Starting point is 01:21:04 And his cousin. Get out of here. And then it's high tea. You have to eat tiny sandwiches. Nobody to be quiet the whole time. So James Reed and two other guys run ahead. They fucking meet Hastings. This is the best.
Starting point is 01:21:22 Hastings walks them back. They go walk up to the top of a mountain and then Hastings goes, okay, so we were gonna go that way. Go this way. So from the top of a mountain, he points to the new trail. I'm tired just hearing about it. I mean, hours and hours in a bumpy... Like basically on a picnic bench that's bumping up and down. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:21:45 No. Okay. Thank you. On August 30th, they reach Redlam Spring. It's the last source of water before they cross the desert. So they collect up obviously tons of water, a ton of grass for the animals. 87 people, 23 wagons set out across the desert on the shortcut. On the third day, they run out of water.
Starting point is 01:22:09 Oh, that was fast. I thought you collected up all the spring water. Okay. So it takes them five days altogether to get to the foot of Pilot Peak. They have lost 38 head of cattle on the way. What? Most of them are reeds. Four wagons broke and had to just be abandoned.
Starting point is 01:22:32 So people just had to leave their old fashioned trunk of shit in the middle of the desert. Should be imagined if you found it. So jealous. It's old like a handmade cloth doll. Blocks that the dad carved for the child. Oh my God. But then porn. I was going to say what if it's got the flu on it.
Starting point is 01:23:00 The old flu bug that's been eradicated. You're like porn. Yeah. 1980, 18 something. What? Flu. It's face full of flu. It's the episode of house.
Starting point is 01:23:13 Then they have to come back and inspect the trunk. All the doctors, even though no doctor would leave the hospital for you ever. It's personal. It was supposed to take them a week on this shortcut. It took them a month. Perfect. Right. So just how you want.
Starting point is 01:23:31 They arrive, they take stock, they realize they don't have enough provisions for the rest of the trip. And two young men, Charles Stanton and William McCutcheon ahead to Sutter's Fort to request more. Sutter's Fort is like north of Sacramento, I believe. It's definitely in California. Isn't it? Pretty sure.
Starting point is 01:23:54 Make it up. There it is. Yes. I was fucking right. Fuck all of you. Whoops. Okay. Sorry.
Starting point is 01:24:02 I didn't mean the last part. How is this our job? I know. It's so rude. I apologize. Oh, no. Okay. So after fuck you, what was I going to say after fuck you?
Starting point is 01:24:18 Okay. They get there. I'm going to say it. So it's the beginning of October. The Donner Party, no. Time's running out. They have to fucking hustle up the Humboldt River. Somewhere around October 11th, Paiute Indians killed 21 of the Donner Party's oxen, which
Starting point is 01:24:37 is kind of a great way to take people out. They just fucking killed a bunch of them, 18 are stolen, a couple more are wounded. So over 100 of the oxen are now gone. Can we leave the animals out of this shit, please? Well, and also the food and the way wagons get pulled sometimes. Poor animals. Like this fucking sucks. We wanted to stay in Chicago or Illinois or other fucker from.
Starting point is 01:24:59 We don't care about the sunshine in California. They're worshiped in Chicago. They love us there. Yeah. California has a bunch of fucking assholes. For one second, I thought you had said support oxen. And I was like, that's the best idea in the world, just fucking go into a sushi restaurant with a fucking bison.
Starting point is 01:25:15 Like it's, I'm so stressed out. Emotional support oxen. My emotional support oxen. You can't do shit about it. I have a little blue vest for it. And that is now the law in America. It's just fucking ripping shit up. I don't know what a oxen act like.
Starting point is 01:25:34 It's Starbucks and just eating all the sandwiches. Don't stop it, Rusty. I told you no. Okay. Adopt, don't shop for oxen. Please don't buy bison anymore, you guys. There's so many stray bison. One fucking.
Starting point is 01:26:00 So when Charles comes back, he has seven mules loaded with provisions and two Native American guides named Lewis or Luis, maybe, and Salvador. And he also brings the good news that there's still a month, the series should still be open for a month. They can still cross the path. Great. Let's go for it. It's my birthday month.
Starting point is 01:26:24 Let's fucking do it. It'll be great. I am going to live it up this month. I'm going to drink so many ladles of water. Don't even. So the problem is on October 28th, a huge snowstorm strikes and they're trapped at Truckee Lake, which is bad fucking news because I went to college in my short stint at college. There were two girls from Truckee in my dorm and they were fucking scary, but I was legit
Starting point is 01:26:50 scared of them. Oh, my God. It's a serious area. So they're trapped at Truckee Lake, snow starts piling up, they have to build shelters and cabins real fast. They can't move on. And this is where it becomes this horrifying groundhog's day of people trying to leave a place and climb a mountain and the snow coming and then them coming back.
Starting point is 01:27:15 It just keeps happening over and over. It's not fun with Bill Murray. There's no wonderful Andy McDowell essence in it. Hair. Jesus. Okay. So they try a couple of times, whether it beats them back, their food supply is almost gone.
Starting point is 01:27:35 They know they have to go get help. So finally on December 16th, they've been there for quite some time. They decide the 15 strongest people that aren't slowly wasting away. People were eating shoelaces and they're giving the children animal bones to like. Oh man. Oh my goodness. So they make their own snowshoes and they're like, we can do it and they go out to try to get to fucking setters for it.
Starting point is 01:28:03 So to get help. So they thought they were going to reach by their, you know, maps or whatever. They thought they'd reach California in six days. Oh, also they named themselves because I guess they had to just name their parties always. So just to keep it upbeat and positive, they named their party, the four Lorne Hope. Oh, oh man, people, they're like walking up and then people are like shutting their curtains like such a bummer, I do not want to hang out with them. So they think it's going to take six days and it does cut to two weeks later, provisions
Starting point is 01:28:46 of run out, several members of the party have gone snow blind. They're all exhausted and then on Christmas day, a blizzard hits and they're out in the middle of nowhere. They have no shelter. Come on, Santa. Get it together. Not cool. I wish for more shoelaces to chew on.
Starting point is 01:29:10 They're actually, it's so bad, they're caught out in the snow. They make a ring, they take their blankets and they put their blankets over themselves like fucking children in a fort while the snow falls on them, it is bad news. So also I hate being cold, it makes me so mad, anyhow, we're having fun here and we love it so much. I like being inside when it's cold outside and makes me feel superior, not in a blizzard outside. No, no, no, no, no, I want to touch it.
Starting point is 01:29:43 So they decide, in the night, eight people die from that. So they decide, oh no, sorry, before eight people die, this group, the four Lorne lovers, they decide they're going to kill somebody for food. So they have everybody draw lots and the one guy that gets the short lot, nobody can bring themselves to kill them. They're like, forget it. And then another snowstorm hits, that's when the eight people die and then they're like, well, dinner served.
Starting point is 01:30:20 Exactly right. It's in there, girl. I stole it from you though. You had a minute. I'm sorry. No. Okay. Dinner is served.
Starting point is 01:30:30 Then I'm going to own it. Okay. It's hot. I can feel my hand. No, it's. Oh shit. It's crazy. Okay.
Starting point is 01:30:42 You look at your hand. I don't have oily skin. Okay. So yes, they turn to cannibalism. From the people who died in the night, they removed the meat from the bodies. They eat it all while weeping and turned away from each other. As you do with cannibalism, it's not like, oh my God, did you see that fucking tree? The leaves out here are nuts.
Starting point is 01:31:11 We have to come back next fall. These leaves. Oh, what a bummer. I've seen the movie alive. I know how it's like. That movie, when it starts, I'm like, I can't do this. And then an hour and a half later, I'm like, we've done it. Why did I get to watch that when I was 11?
Starting point is 01:31:27 No. That was a fucking mistake. No. Because you need to know that a plane could always crash. Well, I'm never afraid. I don't need all of his annex on planes now. That's why. That's why.
Starting point is 01:31:37 I was like, fuck, we're not flying when I was a little kid. That was a surprise ending in La Bamba. I didn't see it coming as a kid. He was so beautiful and he had so much to give. Okay. Listen. Look. They cut up the bodies and package it, obviously, because they still need to keep eating.
Starting point is 01:32:00 But they label the packaging so no one eats their relative. Sorry. It's just a fact. I mean, great. I'm glad. That's awesome. But still. Don't come on.
Starting point is 01:32:10 Let's not. So. Are you okay? Yes. I'm going to make this. If they can make it. I can't. No way.
Starting point is 01:32:18 They didn't make it. They had cannibalized seven of their eight dead. They thought the trip would take six days. It took them 33. They finally arrive at Johnson's Ranch on January 17th, 1847. Hey, fucking man. It's five women and two men. Okay.
Starting point is 01:32:39 So the news of what's going on with the... Thank you. She's glad the men died and not the women, I think. I'm not fucking kidding. It's like they're all bummed. They're all, can we make you guys some dinner? We're here. I guess we'll go cook now.
Starting point is 01:33:03 We're starving to death. And that's the day feminism started. Don't share for that. Okay. So the word of how insane it's gotten gets back to Sutter's Fort and a rescue party gets sent out. It takes the soldiers 18 days. This is also the frustrating part of doing this research.
Starting point is 01:33:25 Everything takes 18 days and it's fucking infuriating. So you think like, oh, the rescue party and it's like, it's a month away. So one of the rescuers recalls when they arrived at the Truckee Lake encampment. He said, at sunset we crossed Truckee Lake on the ice. We came to the spot where we had been told we should find the emigrants with an E. We looked all around, but no living thing except ourselves was in sight. We raised a loud hello and then we saw a woman emerge from a hole in the snow. She had long black wet hair hanging down in front of her face and a wet nightgown on.
Starting point is 01:34:05 She was whispering something. As we approached her, several others made their appearance in the manner coming out of the snow. They were gaunt with famine and I never can forget the horrible ghastly sight they presented. The first woman spoke in a hollow voice, very much agitated and said, are you men from California or do you come from heaven? I'm sorry about that acting, that ruined it. Isn't that horrifying?
Starting point is 01:34:35 And then they started scratching at his skin, sorry. So they're all on the verge of death. They had started eating so they had covered their roofs in animal hides. They had started eating the animal hides off the roofs because there was no food. They were fighting over the animal hides. Like cotton fucking candy. Oh, that's creepy. It's not good because you're just chewing and chewing.
Starting point is 01:35:01 Babies were being fed ice melt mixed with a pinch of flour. That's all they got to have. I told you about the children and the shoelaces and the animal bones. Eleven people were dead from starvation and there was evidence at cannibalism at this camp too. They started calling it starvation camp. They got even lower than the original depressing name. Yes, exactly.
Starting point is 01:35:23 They're like, oh, the four Lorne bum outs, hold on, we can beat this. In mid-February, John Sutter, who was the proprietor of Sutter's Fort and Captain Edward Kern, the temporary commander, offered $3 a day to anyone who would join a rescue party and go help. So between February 21st and April 17th of 1847, they sent four relief parties to the Donner party encampment, starved camp. Now it seems like good news, when I got to this part in my story, I was like, I'm pretty much done and I went and had high tea downstairs.
Starting point is 01:36:00 But it turned out when I got back that this was when even more of the pain started because of course there was only a certain amount of people that were in these rescue parties, but there were, I think, 80, over 80, almost 90 people altogether, a couple that had died so far. And so it was, again, this thing of they're going, they're rescuing, are you strong enough to even leave? So they would leave, they would start up the mountain, the snow would hit, and they would fucking have to come back to starvation camp.
Starting point is 01:36:31 So the first relief party to get across the pass had 23 members that were strong enough to get out, two died during the journey, two went back. It couldn't take it. The second relief party arrived on March 1st. They found significant evidence of cannibalism. I think that was from up there, too. Oh, no. Probably all over the place.
Starting point is 01:36:54 It's a sprinkling of cannibalism all around the mountain. Here and there, the second relief left with 17 survivors on March 3rd, a blizzard strikes on March 5th. It lasts two days, two people die. Most of them return to starvation camp. What a bummer to be like, you know, it's a better option. Let's go back. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:37:16 Let's go to Chicago in one of those hotels. Oh, sorry, I've been saying starvation camp, it's starved camp. Is that why you guys are so mad? Okay. They try again in mid-March, and they're forced to return yet again. When another blizzard hits, by the time the third relief party arrives on March 12th, more survivors had died and been cannibalized. And when they left two days later, they only take four survivors with them.
Starting point is 01:37:44 Five people stay behind, including George Donner and his wife, Tasman, and a man named Louis Kesseberg. Near the end of that month, George Donner dies. His wife dies, I think, a day or two later. And then when the fourth relief arrives on April 17th, Louis Kesseberg is the only person alive and he is surrounded by half-eaten corpses. Is that true? I like to think so, so horrifying.
Starting point is 01:38:16 So he was the last member of the Donner party to reach Sutter's Fort and he got there on April 29th, 1847. In June of 1847, when the army fucking gets there to figure out what happened, and it takes that long because the snow was so bad on the pass, they get there, they gather up all of the cannibalized remains, put them into the remaining cabin, and they burn to the ground. So 89 people were in the Donner party, of those 41 died, 48 survived. None of the Donner adults lived.
Starting point is 01:38:49 But most, James Reed, who was the guy that started out with them, and it is certain, I didn't put this in, but it's very detailed, but basically at one point, early on, he gets into a fight with a guy and stabs him to death, gets ostracized from the group. And then he's like, tells his wife and gets, I'll meet you in California, and he fucking bails out, and then he comes back around, and he was in the second relief party that came to rescue people, and most of the Reeds lived. So don't fucking worry about him. They did great.
Starting point is 01:39:25 And oh, it's the guy's name was Patrick Breen. I highly recommend you go online and read Patrick Breen's diary of total fucking starvation insanity, where every day is clean and crisp and beautiful, and he's just a little bit more starving. All right. That's the Donner party. Everybody. Oh man, that is harrowing, harrowing.
Starting point is 01:39:48 Come on. Great job. What a, what a thing, what a thing to have gone through. Truly. All right. And then now we're going to give you a little hometown from our London show from May 12th, 2018. That's right.
Starting point is 01:40:02 It's called Camerasmith Apollo. Check it out. It's a good one. Boom. Do we have time for a very quick hometown? Yes. However, do our recipes come? Okay, good.
Starting point is 01:40:15 I'm going to tell you the rules really, really quick of a hometown. You may have heard these before, but I'll say it for the people who've never listened to our podcast. God bless your souls. I'm so sorry about everything that's happened tonight. So this is the home part where we were going to call somebody up to tell their hometown murder. Now, listen, you're going to want to tell it in a concise, clear, quick manner.
Starting point is 01:40:45 You have to remember that if you get picked, everyone who didn't get picked hates your guts. So they're not going to want, watch you like shout out your family and do a bunch of shit. Just come up and tell it. It really needs to have an ending. It's a key to all storytelling, beginning, middle, end. Don't leave us hanging. Don't tell us how confused and upset everyone was that they never got an answer because
Starting point is 01:41:07 then we'll be mad at you because then we'll be confused and upset. You can't be so drunk that you can't follow your own storyline. That's very, we've had that one before and it's funny and charming, but also boring as fuck. So you can be super buzz, but as long as you can power through it and, you know, hold your own line of logic, that's key. And I think that's it, right? Local.
Starting point is 01:41:32 It should be local. Yeah. Don't bring some Arizona shit up here. No one wants to hear that. We want a fucking London murder or story, whatever you have. Close by. Yeah. Georgia will pick the person.
Starting point is 01:41:42 All right. I'm on a roll. Don't fuck this up, everyone. Pick the moth. Pick the moth. No. I'm on a roll. No.
Starting point is 01:41:58 Vance, April, everybody. They're pointing at you. There he is. He looks like your prince, doesn't he? Hi, come here. Hi. Come here. Come here.
Starting point is 01:42:06 Come over here. It's scary. I know. Come here. Here. Come over here. It's scary. I know.
Starting point is 01:42:14 Hi. You sent her up and do a nice stage picture. She did the classic me look around and I was like, yep, yeah. Katapime. Okay. Where are you from? I'm from Rotherham, which is in the north of England. Is it anywhere near where they shoot the television show Vera, which I love?
Starting point is 01:42:43 It's a bit further, a bit further north of Vera. Is it a bit further? Okay. But I'm going to break one rule you just said. It's from Rotherham. My murder. It's from what? Rotherham's where?
Starting point is 01:42:55 Oh, from where? From France. Okay. No, that's fine. That's fine. And it's not a murder, but it is a pretty bad one that I'm sure you guys will like. Oh, okay. So it's the Rotherham shoe rapist.
Starting point is 01:43:13 I never knew about this. I saw it on a documentary last year, which was pretty weird, because it's like where we live. So in the 80s, there was a rapist. He was getting women on their way home from night's out, because in the north, we just walk home. We don't get taxis. Oh.
Starting point is 01:43:29 He was getting women when they were walking home through parks and stuff like that. And he was stealing their shoes after he raped them. So this guy did it for about six years, and then he just disappeared off the face of the earth. There was a young junior detective at the time. She was called Sue Hickman. Only woman's name I can remember out of the entire story. Sue was an absolute, she got this.
Starting point is 01:43:55 And when she finally made detective in the early 2000s, she looked at quite what's going off now with the Golden State Killer. She decided to look into familial DNA. Yes. But in the UK, you can get your DNA took for pretty much anything now if you commit a crime. Cool. She got some hits, 3,000.
Starting point is 01:44:19 She spent four years, she got it down to six people that she thought were related to him. How many girls? About four or five, it was, yeah. It took her that long. Yes. Well, she was only doing it part-time whilst doing, you know, crimes that were happening, her old room's pretty rough. And she was multitasking.
Starting point is 01:44:39 She was got this. She got this. And she was on number three of her list. This lady was arrested for drink driving. And she gave her DNA and when they did the test, she said, do you have any brothers? She said, yeah, I've got a brother, but I don't talk to him anymore. She says, all right, well, try and get me some information on that and left. Immediately after she left, the lady clearly lied, she rang her brother.
Starting point is 01:45:00 And she told him that she just had this lady here talking about some rapes. He put the phone down. Within minutes, the police were called. There was a man trying to kill himself in her other room and by the time they got there, she loves that part of the story. She fucking loves it. Well, he wasn't very good at it. His son found it, stopped it.
Starting point is 01:45:24 He was an adult, he's fine. So he got arrested, well, the police were there, they thought he was pretty weird. They took him to the hospital and they kept an officer with him. This guy was just your regular PC and he said something's weird about this guy. He was mortaring a lot of stuff and he arrested him for a crime that he did not know had happened. He said, I think it happened in the 80s. I think you raped somebody and I think he was a victim. And he arrested him for that.
Starting point is 01:45:49 And they took him down to the police station. He confessed to everything. So this is where it gets weird. They went to his place of work. He worked there since he was 18. They pulled up the floorboards and they found 126 pairs of shoes. Oh my God. Oh my God.
Starting point is 01:46:05 Wait, sorry. Where did he work? He worked at a printing factory in Rotherham. What? Yes. Yes. So we're all liars. Just out there in the shower.
Starting point is 01:46:15 No one knows what you're doing. So I'm going to end you on a high and then it's just going to go low at the end. So sorry about that. Okay, okay. So he got convicted. He played guilty. The judge, which is pretty big for the UK, he gave him life in prison. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:46:37 Yeah? That's that high. Then he's going to come back down low. In the early 2000s, he was overturned because it's England and we believe in getting people better. They can leave prison again and probably not everybody should get that. And he was overturned and they let him go in 2006. And he's probably still in Rotherham.
Starting point is 01:47:03 Oh my God. That's the Rotherham shoe right now. You guys give it up for Alice. That was real fucking roller coaster. All right. Great hometown. That's how you do it. Guys.
Starting point is 01:47:33 You guys. This will be our, I think our last personally recorded show for the year until we see you in 2021. Yeah. Yay. Let's all be there. Let's wear a great outfit. So let's put on the shoes we haven't worn in a year.
Starting point is 01:47:54 I think everybody make a list of the things you're grateful for. Get into that place and if you have something to spare, try to figure out a way to give it to people who don't because there are people that are going through really tough times these days with the government is doing to people is a crime. And don't forget. Oh, well, don't forget your food banks. And many of you have not because when we did our stay sexy mask fundraiser, we raised $35,791 for FeedingAmerica.org, which is you guys buying those masks.
Starting point is 01:48:36 You guys raised that money. That is amazing. So thank you so much. That is a murdering those taking action. It means so much because people really need help these days and keep it in mind. Anywhere you can spread a little joy or give people some support or just let people merge in front of you or whatever. Like, honestly, it's tough times.
Starting point is 01:48:57 Yes, for sure. And that is that's an incredible amount of money raised. It's so much money. I'm just I can't I'm blown away by everyone's generosity. And then also for the MFM logo pin that we were giving all the funds to the LGBTQ freedom fund, we raised 20 over $22,000 for the LGBTQ freedom fund, which is fucking incredible. We are we are just blown away by everyone's generosity and how incredible that is. So thank you guys.
Starting point is 01:49:27 Our listenership really, they really get stuff done when they come together and all your murdering out your subgroups, murdering out city by city, you guys, you get together, you take action, you support each other and you help other people. It's really a beautiful thing to say. There's nothing more touching to me. There's nothing more validating or like rewarding to me about the fact that we started this podcast. Honestly, then when we find stuff like that out that people raise money or they go out
Starting point is 01:49:57 and volunteer or do stuff, it is there's this really beautiful activist element to people listening to this podcast that has nothing to do with us. It's you guys doing it. It's like you show up, you show up for people in need. And we're so happy to facilitate that, but we are blown away. I mean, it's, it's you guys and we appreciate it so much. We love being the face of it, but you guys are the body and yeah, you've done very beautiful work this year and, and even little, little things.
Starting point is 01:50:29 If you couldn't give money because you're broke yourself, you know, just stay positive and stay strong. Call friends. Reach out. Yeah. Reach out. Make sure you're talking to people. Make sure that you are communicating with people.
Starting point is 01:50:43 Don't get lonely and don't stay in your own head. That's crucial times like this. And remember that we love you and we're grateful for you and stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. 2020. Elvis, do you want a cookie? Want a cookie?
Starting point is 01:51:00 Okay. That's there. That's the positive. That's. Okay. Elvis, cookie. Okay. Okay.
Starting point is 01:51:08 Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

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