My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 66 - The Devil's Number

Episode Date: April 27, 2017

Come shoegaze with us on the latest My Favorite Murder! This week, Karen and Georgia go mostly to Europe to cover the exorcism of Anneliese Michel and the Vienna Strangler, Jack Unterweger.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is exactly right. We at Wondery live, breathe, and downright obsess over true crime. And now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C, on Facebook and listen to true crime on Wondery and Amazon Music. Exhibit C, it's truly criminal. You said, what did you say? Cross your...

Cross your T's and dot your everythings. That's us tightening up, tightening the ship. Yeah, you know, trying to be correct. Trying to fucking do it right? Yeah, just be professionals. That's the goal, that's the dream. So cross your T's and dot your everything. It's not going to happen on this episode.

Nope. Welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hartstark. That's Karen Kilgarath. This is the show where we talk about our favorite true crime stories and other things. I love that our ads, like I'm having so much more fun with our ads now that we're like saying what they're saying, you know, like our tone of voice in them being very normal. Yeah, we're practicing being normal.

We're practicing having professional speaking voices. I think it's working. I like it. It's good practice. Yeah. Hi. Because you've just been asked to be the voice of McDonald's. Yeah, that's me.

Chicken McNuggets. Can I start off with business? Yeah. Way up front. This is important. The story that I told last week about Ronnie Chase's murder, her shooting death, was taken entirely from an article that a man named Gary Baum wrote for the Hollywood Reporter. And I did not credit him until the 50 minute mark.

And somebody called me out about it on Twitter. And of course, at first I was very offended and completely I texted Stephen. I was like, this isn't possible. And I remember you mentioning it too. Yeah. Like it was clear to me what you were saying. But I think the thing, the important thing and the reason I'm pointing it out like this is because the end, when I went to listen back, it wasn't even full credit.

The way I said it was almost like I was citing him for the following quote as opposed to everything I'd been saying. So just to make that point, my apologies to Gary Baum of the Hollywood Reporter. I did not mean to take credit for your hard work. I feel like the only reason that story is out there is because of the articles he's written based on the research he's done on these files that Beverly Hills Police has released. And it's all him. I was just reading his quotes and his timeline, chronology, all of it.

So I should have said that at the very beginning where it belongs. And I apologize for not doing that. Well, sometimes at the very end, we'll be like, and I got a lot of help from this article by this person. So maybe we should say that in the beginning, even if it's not the whole thing. Right. We could go through and pull. The thing is this.

We're never about like, I went down and read these files at the police station or whatever. But that doesn't mean people that are listening know that or give us the benefit of the doubt or understand. So I think that's especially for me as a professional writer, being accused of plagiarism is a horrible feeling and something that I never want to keep the door open on. So I will always cite from now on and just be very careful. But I think it's also, it's good to get called on something because that's a line that get, once it gets sloppy, it just gets sloppier for me anyway.

It's like, I'm always like, oh, I have to do my book report at the last minute. Yeah. And then it's you, to me, that's like, oh, it's this built an excuse to like be sloppy and there's no excuse for that. You can't do that. The thing of like, well, this was already said perfectly. So I'm going to do that. But you could put your spin on it.

Well, in the past, we've always just gone, I'm totally reading you this article from like the i5 killer was almost all ESPN.com article or like most of the timeline and most of that bulk of information. So like, that's how we do it. We're retelling you articles that we've read, but you just have to say it. Yeah. That's not what we're always doing. So I don't, that's not this podcast.

I'm sorry. That's what I'm always doing. No, that's not what this podcast is. So that was a dot your everything corner or across your T corner. That's exactly right. That's are those two different things? No. Yes.

No. Yes or no. You know what I mean? I do. I do. Oh, can I, this is a good segue into my podcasting favorites now corner. Okay. Can I do this?

So I'm now listening to in my fucking quest to always be listening to a like a season long narrative true crime podcast that I'm obsessed with and then finish in a week. And I'm fucking devastated. I love that that's the at the end. Like it's like you're throwing yourself off a cliff on purpose for a good story. Yeah, I need them. I crave those things. And then you grieve them when it's over.

Yeah. And I'm like, what do we do with my fucking life now? And then I find a new one. Thank fucking God. So please listen, keep making them investigative journalists and Georgia will keep not throwing yourself off a cliff for them. It's called the accused. And it's about this, this chick named Elizabeth Andes in Ohio in 1978, who got murdered and

like some dude, they arrested him and he went to trial twice and was acquitted and like who fucking did it? And this chick who's like researching it is awesome and asked the hard questions to the cops and stuff. It would like a really cute sweet voice. So it's not, I like it. Oh, and then, oh, the other thing I was going to say is speaking of just reading articles. This is my new sleeping podcast is called Mysteries Abound.

And it's just this dude with the most soothing British accent you've ever heard. And he's just reading articles of mysterious things that have happened. So it's like Mars and murder. And then like, you know, people who, people who have mysteriously, how do I fucking turn this alarm off? I watch. I don't know. I've always done that.

Just once a day, you have to think about it. Yeah. In the middle of a podcast. Yeah. Anyways, I've been falling asleep to it. That sounds awesome. Great. It's so soothing.

And they're real mysteries. Like he's not just making stuff up. No, he's reading them from like, this is from this article written by so-and-so and he'll just read it. Yeah. And so, you know, the whole podcast is him reading articles, but in the beginning he's like, I found this one. I found that one.

I'll save some of them because I'm like, well, I want to listen to this when I'm awake because it's really interesting. Does it affect your dreams? Do you ever have that? Yes. Yeah. But then I'm worried I fall asleep in the car when I'm like listening to the episode of like, that's about, you know, this person who disappeared, five unexplained disappearances.

And then your eyes are just suddenly getting heavy. Yeah. You've hypnotized yourself with mystery. And then I put my sleep apnea mask on. How did this get in my car? Hey, what? The whole thing is just, and then suddenly you're in seventh grade and you have to take a test.

No. This is the worst. My thing was I always had, my dream was always I had to go back and I'd be like 35 and I'd have to go back to high school and play a softball game. And I'd be like, you guys, this is A, this isn't fair because I'm old and B, I can't, I won't be good. Yeah. Like, why are you making me do this?

Trying to reason with everybody. Yeah. And they just go, come on. When you have to do something in your dream that you really don't want to do, that you could get out of in real life by saying, you know, have a headache or fuck this, I have a high the headache. Fuck this. Forward slash.

Yeah. It's just like, I feel like up until you were 18, you just had such a, such little control over your life that we're still getting over it. And like, when I realized when I was like, had my first job at 15 and I walked into the candy aisle and I was like, I don't have to ask anyone if I can buy any fucking, I could gorge myself on candy right now. Yeah. It was really freeing.

Yeah. And I did. Because it was your money. It was my money. Like, you could do whatever you wanted. Yeah. Yeah. I was there alone because, you know, my parents neglected me.

For a second, I thought you meant you worked at that place. So you were like, you worked at the place where you could get the thing you wanted. I worked at a place and had money to get the thing I wanted. But then when I worked in a bakery, yes, I would fucking accidentally break a ton of cookies. Oh man. So I worked at a coffee shop once that made the best, it was oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, that I just, it was just the beginning of the worst eating disorder because I would

just be sitting there and just like, well, it's your sixth cookie of the day and you're not hungry and you actually feel sick and you're still eating it. What are you doing? I was like, are those like, you know, those like shantilly almond cookies that are like, what are those called? Florentines. Yes. The ones that are shaped like that they have at Starbucks that are shaped like shells.

Circular. No. That's an outline. Shit. I mean, I'll eat any fucking cookie. That's, that's get to it. But a Florentine is what? Like, um...

It's like crackly thin, um, like... Does it have sugar on the top? No. Does it, does it have a face, its own face? No, you're thinking of one of those clown ice creams. Oh, that's right. That's right. A clown ice cream from Bowskin Robbins.

Yes. There it is. Steven, thank you. Oh, thank you, Steven. Dude. This kind? Yes. The crisp, thin almond-y one, it's like almond and maybe like something like Caramel says

the girl who fucking worked in baking for seven years of her life. It must be Caramel. Yeah. Because they're chewy. Or is it like a brown sugar on the screaming? Oh, now I'm making weird saliva noises on the mic. They have these at Trader Joe's. And they're half dipped in chocolate.

Yes. The bottom. I can't buy those because I'll fucking eat them all. I mean, here, my dad started buying those. Oh, I know, Steven. Steven's showing me and I'm like, honey. Steven started to pass the pictures around. Look, honey, don't show me a picture of the thing I've eaten 1,000 times.

Listen, don't show me anything. Can I introduce this saying? Don't show me anything. No, there's this. This is another thing I say all the time that nobody knows what it means except for me. And I think it's hilarious. There was this J.Lo documentary, quote, documentary when like on VH1 when she was like making her clothing line for the first time in like early 2000s.

And someone shows her this jean thing and she's like, I don't like it. And they're like, well, this is it. We've already manufactured. And she goes, don't show me nothing. I can't change. Yeah. Show me nothing. Like, why are you?

And then why are you showing this to me? And so sometimes I'm just like, don't tell me anything. I can't change. Please. That's right. Don't show me nothing. I can't change. I love her.

I'm sorry. I love J.Lo. What a bitch. I love J.Lo, who was like fresh out of fucking phid phid phidm phidm phidm. Fresh out of like fashion design college, just having an inner meltdown. Yes. That's a serious mistake. And it's like, oh, but we've already made 50,000.

Yeah. But this is what you said you wanted. Yeah. And she's like, but now that the cameras are rolling, you have to seem like you're the boss. Yeah. Well, and also you got a double check and maybe triple check that she did. I bet you she did.

I think so. I think she did. I'd love the behind the scenes. It's like the fake behind the scenes and the real behind the scenes would be just, I mean, anyways, that's the show. People actually want to see. Uh-huh.

Yes. The footage of the footage that wasn't the footage that explains the behavior. That's what we'll have. If we ever have it, doc, you just drama. No holds barred. Every single. Yeah. Every single thing showed.

Karen, your hair looks great. And then me going, why does Karen's hair look better than mine? Fired. Fired. You hire somebody that doesn't do hair. No. It's to prove a point. Yeah.

And you get them in there. They do hair better than the person I have. So then I lure your person away. Oh my God. Meltdown. Fuck, this is good. Then I fucking shave my head just to be like, oh yeah? Well.

And that puts you in all the papers. You get the most publicity. It's just all I want in life. God, Stephen, you're writing this down, right? This is the point. Oh, it's being recorded. That's right. Wait, we're recording?

Just a second. Okay. Do you want news? I can do news corner. I wrote some stuff down. Some of it's not that great. News corner about a crime thing. Yeah, do it.

Okay. So this was so hard for me not to tell you at the airport when we were on our way home from Austin. Oh. Because I read it and I was like, this is insane. So in Massachusetts, a crime lab, this woman named Annie Duke-Cann, was arrested for mishandling 60,000 samples of, it was a drug crime lab. She like tested 60,000 samples and she mishandled them.

For 34,000 defendants, 140 of those people were inmates because of her mishandling. So they have to let 23 convicted, people convicted got their sentences overturned. Now are they convicted of drug crimes? Yes. So that doesn't bother me that much. That they're convicted of drug crimes or they're let out. And I agree and then they're keeping the people who also had violent, you know, it wasn't just a drug crime.

It was like a violent felony added onto that. They're retrying those people. Fuck. So these 23,000 people, 20,000 of them, let's say, who were like, I had an ounce of weed in my pocket. You know what I mean? Yeah. They're like, oh, well, it wasn't weed, it was oregano, but this chick Annie like fucked

it up purposely. Really? Purposely. She was trying to put people away. She was trying to be the top dog and look how great I am at this job and like have the most convictions and like, but she was just, and all the people who worked with her were like, this isn't right. And the people who were her boss were like, no, this is great.

Oh, no. And so they're trying to get an oversight on crime labs now. There's the new, that's the TV movie I want to see, but it reminds me of the story that I told you last week of the body that was found in the car with the Uber sticker on it. And then a bunch of people wrote to us and said, was it, because you know, Cuba Gooden Jr.'s father was found dead in a car. But the guy in the car that I read about was in his 30s. And so it's not the same.

A bunch of people were saying, what if this is, what if this is the thing we're talking about? But Cuba Goodings Jr., could it, his dad, that's what, I don't know that happened. Yeah. It, it happened the same day. And that's why a bunch of people were writing to us. That's insane. Yeah.

I'm not saying about podcasts. I'm not saying like, you're not going to podcast recommendations because, and we both need to listen to this this week, fresh air has an interview with a woman who was a doctor at Bellevue Hospital with mentally ill inmates for 10 years. Dude, I saw somebody tweeted that to us and I saw, there is an amazing America undercover which used to be an HBO series, a day in the life at Bellevue that we watched. It just was in the nineties and talked about four months afterwards because it's so disturbing. It's unbelievable.

But it's also just that, that life, to be a doctor, I mean, that's what my mom did for a living. So like to also watch it and just be like, yeah, this is your day to day. It's so intense. And you like every, you know, everything is wrong, but if you leave, it's just going to get wronger because you're a good person trying to help. So like you can't really take yourself out of it because you feel like you need to try to do something to help.

Well, yeah. And most of those people have an incredible, obviously like thick skin, but like they're not going to quit. That's not, that's not it. They just like get stronger and tougher as the insanity grows around. I mean, it's, it's so intense. I would love to hear that interview. Me too.

It's crazy the way mental, mental illness was treated back then in a way that is horrifying to watch that documentary. It's yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, well, that just made me think of something else. Oh, I want you and I together. Can we please promise to watch casting Jean Bonnet together?

Absolutely. It's this Sunday. Yes. Okay. Can I come over because there's a wrestling thing that Vince is girl. Yes. We can do it from my house. Okay.

So good. Then casting Jean Bonnet is on the books real time feelings. Definitely. Um, do we live tweet or is that going too far? Sure. We could live tweet it. Let's do it. My favorite murder going too far or have we truly crossed the line this time?

My favorite murder on Twitter is what we are on Twitter. What we are. It's who we become. It's who we, it's who we've lived as for so long now. It's our identity. It's our spirit. Go ahead. Uh, done.

No, no. Um, we want to talk about those cards that we got. Oh my God. Present corner. I, everything is me. I have to be a corner. I need to stop it. We're recording in the daytime today and it's got a real, um, I feel like we're really forced

to analyze ourselves on this episode. Yeah. There's a lot of shoe gazing, a lot of internal, uh, analysis in the light of day, this podcast looks real different. Whoo. There's no, there's no, Steven doesn't have a beer, I don't have wine. Everyone's pores are really big. Oh, and the reason we're not recording yet from yesterday in the evening is because one

of my biggest fears in the fucking world happened, which is that a fucking big rig jumped the center divider. Fuck, is that true? And the oncoming traffic, which is like a big fucking terror. Yeah. I know when you're going like 80 in the fast lane and the, the center divider is like a brick. Yeah.

And you're like, any person could just jump over. I picture it happening. Yeah. Well, it did happen. It did happen out like down the street from both of us. Yeah. So it basically between our houses, it happened and then Steven texts and is like, oh no, like all these exits are closed.

I can't get anywhere near your house. And immediately I'm like, oh, well, should we reschedule? Just immediately. And we're like, okay, let's reschedule. Okay, bye. Bye. Cancel, cancel, cancel. I haven't left the house today.

I loved to cancel. Okay. So anyway, we, Georgia put this on Instagram. We got these cards in the mail that are the most amazing greeting cards and they are, there's a hand drawn, they're like just basically illustration, you know, what do you call those pen and ink or something? Pen and ink. Is that redundant?

Is it just ink? I feel like pen and ink is a term, but I could be wrong. Yeah. But anyway. But anyway. Sketches. Yeah. They're like, it's drawing.

So it's like a picture of John Wayne Gacy. And then it says, who ordered the birthday clown? Or. Or me and Steven King. The Ted Bundy one I love. It's, you know, it's, and it's a portrait of an actual photo of them that you've seen before. And it says, does anyone want to help me carry these birthday presents to my car?

And in that one, the Ted Bundy eyes are nuts. Oh my God. They're great. And then the one of Richard Vermeer is holding his hand up in court, which usually has a pentagram on it, but instead it, what is it? Happy birthday. Happy birthday. Which is like, okay, it might cross a line somewhere, but it's like horrifying serial

killers that, you know, are big in the society and we all know and love and hate. So I don't think it's like, no, it's just references. It's like, you've seen this picture a thousand times now, it's a birthday card. And then, okay, on top of that two things, he wrote a note with it in the style to us in the style of the Zodiac killer, including saying at the end like, Hey, I hope you like these blah, blah, blah. I shot a man sitting in a parked car with a 38 greeting at the end. And then it says, John, uh, John 12 s FPD easier, like it's got all the characteristics

of Zodiac. And then so you can go to Etsy.com slash shop. And the name of his Etsy is depressive ghoul, G-H-O-U-L, but it came to, to my house, your house house, which is my home, just so I, uh, unsettling. I brought this package to Stephen and Georgia when we were recording ads last Friday and I said, um, let's open this together. But just so you know, this got sent to my house and then, you know, Karen is fiercely private.

So I'm just like my dogs fiercely private. And so it was a little scary, but then they were so funny that we weren't that scared anymore because we were just laughing and kind of like going, can I have this one? I want this one. No one that clever. There's even a Mother's Day one from like Ed Gein. Yes. Like no one that clever can be dangerous or if they are, it's like, all right.

And meanwhile we're looking at picture, all pictures of people who are that clever and that dangerous. But we're so good. So anyway, so Georgia puts it, we love them so much. Georgia puts it on Instagram, blah, blah, blah. Then two days later, I get a DM from my Twitter friend, John Fryler, and he writes, Hey, I'm glad you like those cards. It seems like people on Instagram are mad at me for sending them to your house though.

And then I realized that this, I know this person and he asked me, he was like, I think he tried to send them to the PO box and they got sent back. So I just gave him my home address, my friend John Fryler. Who is he? He's a guy I know on Twitter. And basically I've known him for, it's just that where he was like, I love your podcast. Can I send you this thing? Did you have any idea how fucking talented this human is?

No, I had no idea how talented he was. And I had absolutely no memory of the conversation whatsoever until he basically was scared because murdering us were like, Hey, motherfucker, leave them alone. Oh no. Yes. He was basically coming back to us. I thought it was funny. I didn't, I didn't truly think someone was going to come attack you.

No, I know, but I think it's that thing of like, they don't want to be represented that way of like, yeah, we're not, yeah, we don't want to be creeps to you. So don't be a creep to them. And he's like, Hey, guess what everybody? I wasn't like, we tried to give him a boost to like sell his cards and they're like, fuck you. It turned on him. I'm sorry, John.

We, everything about your package was just amazing. I was going to give my mom, what's the Mother's Day, other Mother's Day one? I can't remember. It was again. And then something else. And I was like, I'm going to give this to my mom just to horrify her Mother's Day. Ed Kemper, the co-ed killer and said the thing of it's so funny. Ed Kemper, he really did not like his mother.

No. So anyway, thanks, John. Those are amazing and hilarious and that whole story. If he hadn't written to me forever, I would have been just a little bit worried in the back of my mind. I was in the front, she believes at night. But also what's funny is I was like, oh, we talked about that six months ago and then I checked it was like a month ago.

Horrifying. Oh, we're good. Horrifying. We're good. Also, this is just the anecdote I wanted to tell you the other day. April and I were at our pre where we do our show hangout and I went to the bathroom and I was standing there and there's a woman that was waiting and she's like, sorry, there's somebody in there and they're taking a really long time and we stood there for five full

minutes. Are you a knocker? I'm a knocker. I have full on knocker and rage knocker. So I was just like, get the fuck out of there. Three minutes. Yeah. So that's what you have.

Finally, a guy comes out of the men's room and then the woman, another girl came and was waiting behind me and we were both like, just use the men's room. They're singles. For sure. So she goes in there. The girl behind me steps up to like wait. So now she's second in line or whatever. And she looks and goes, oh my God, I was just listening to your podcast, whatever.

So we have a moment. Her name was Mia, I believe, from what I remember. We have a moment, chit chat, whatever. And then we're just, and I knock again, the whole thing and does anyone respond? No. And I was like, I was like, we need to get a waitress over here. I go, I bet someone's passed out on the toilet. Well, finally, Mia steps up and tries the door knob and it's open.

We were standing there for, I'm not kidding, like almost 10 minutes with an empty unlocked bathroom door just standing there. Oh my God. And like, and you've got angry out of it. I was mad twice. Oh my God. When the other girl came out of the men's room, were you like, listen bitch. No, that was, she was like, come and gone.

But when she opened it, I just yelled dude in her face and walked it. Like it was the funniest moment. It was really funny. It was a fun moment. Hi to you. I hope your name was Mia because I'm pretty sure it was. That's good, man. People need to.

What are you talking about at live shows and I'm fucking a big fan of this because it's like 70% women that before the show starts and there's like Vince goes out and to like look around and he's like, there's the craziest line in the women's restroom. And I know that in on the weekends at the fairy building in San Francisco, they'll close one of the men's room to women only and they're like, men go upstairs and use the bathroom because there's five of you and they turn the men's room into a woman's room, which I think is so fucking forward thinking and so fucking awesome. And I appreciate it very much and I think we should, I think some of the places we do

shows do that already, but I think we should all do that. You're staring at me. Do you not agree? No, I don't know. I'm just thinking of all that the bathroom politics that people, I mean, that it just immediately put me in that place of like all the people that are like, and then the people that'll go into the room and all that shit where it's like, no, that's not a real thing. Yeah.

It's not. Yeah. It's a public place. You're fine. And yeah, it should be dedicated. It should be dictated by the numbers. Like, have you ever seen? There's a really funny picture of the women's restroom line at a rush concert.

It's like, just there's no one there at all. Oh my God. It's same diff. Question. And I'm not asking for myself necessarily, but if you're in a public restroom, it's pretty, you know, sizable like at the airport and you're peeing is a public restroom and okay, place to fart. Yeah.

I think that's the only place. Okay. Cause sometimes I'm like, society acceptable. I mean, it's, they can still hear it just as loudly as if you were at the sink, but they can't see your face. That's all that matters. All right. Good.

It's all about shame. Yeah. Just do it where you can. I mean, especially at the airport. Jesus Christ. Everyone has gas at the airport. Gotta do it. Airport is fit.

Let's have the planes fly. They're fueled on everyone's gas from airport food, too much alcohol, $9 bottles of water. That nerves. Nerves. Fear you're going to get dragged off the plane for no reason. Constipation from massive pharmaceuticals just to get the anxiety away from. I never thought about that. There's so many more pharmaceuticals at the airport.

Yeah. And I just didn't think it. I didn't either. That side. That's exactly right. Dude. Have you ever seen that? Then we'll get it.

Then we'll get on to business skippers. Have you ever seen that I can't, it's not night vision, but it's like heat vision. Yeah. Footage of a guy that farts. Oh, no. I don't like those. So fun. You don't like it?

Well, because they do it for people walking down the street and not people who know, right? That's exactly right. But they don't show the person. It's just the torso down, but they just show. So you can actually see what it looks like when someone farts this, like the cloud. It's the funniest thing I've ever seen. I hate it. And it reminds me of when people would tell kids that if you pee in the pool, like there's

a dye and it'll make it show up green. And so it's not true, but you're terrified. It just reminds me of that where it's like, shame right on top of you. That's right. Yeah. It's anything coming out of you. Shame in you, human. Yes.

Although. Peeing in a pool isn't human. Peeing in a pool is enjoyable. It's, I mean, you got to expect some level of pee in a pool. Well, yeah, especially with children. But also because if you're in a warm enough pool, it's kind of like that trick where you put your hand, someone's sleeping hand in a glass to make them wet the bed, but you're in a pool.

It's like that same feeling. But it's so, it's so hard to get yourself to pee in a pool like to start it. Oh, I disagree. You're not supposed to be freely peeing. You're not supposed to be like, this is against societal norms. You got like trained not to do this when you were two. Yes, that's true. Do it.

But if other people are in the pool, that's gross. And then what if you had vitamins that day? People are swimming and they're like, this pool water tastes weird. No, but I have that yellow. I love that yellow pee when you take vitamins and you're just like, oh, fuck. It looks like you were in Chernobyl and then you're like, oh, no, that's a vitamin B. Yeah. Everything's okay.

Or when you eat beets and your pee is red. Oh, I've never had that happen. You're like, oh, God, I'm bleeding from my pee and then you're like, oh wait, I ate beets yesterday. Seriously. Oh, I went to see Plantation. Okay. We've really done it this time.

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

You can listen ad free on the Amazon music or Wondery app. Okay, I think I went first last time, didn't I? Yes, you did. Didn't I, Steven? Yes. I can't believe I knew. I can't either. That you knew because I didn't.

This would have taken me 10 minutes to remember. It's probably because I was, I had to go first. I have for some reason see it as a negative. Oh, you do? I do. I wonder why. I don't mind. I don't mind either way.

Like you have to break the ice or something. But I feel that if you go last, then you have to be like, you have to close it hard. Yes. You know what I mean? So I don't like going last because I don't, then I can let you close it hard. Yeah. Shit. I forgot about that part.

Okay. Let's just go back and forth every week. That's a good idea. We figured that out after how many episodes is this? 70? 67? 67? 68.

Steven, you should know this. Steven. 66. 66. 66. 66 is not lucky. This is the devil's episode. Oh, God.

Do you think we'll ever get to 600? Yes. For sure. That'd be crazy, right? We start tripling up. Oh, that sounds, I want to go take a nap. Just hearing that. Anyways, are you ready for the exorcism of Annalise McKell?

Fuck yes, I am. Yeah, you are. All right. Annalise McKell was born on September 21st, 1952 in Leibflig, nope, Liebelflang, Liebelflang, Liebelflang, Liebelflang. It's not Liebelflang. I bet you it is, L-E-I-B-L, Liebel, Liebel, F-I-N-G. Liebelflang?

Anyway, she was born in Bavaria, West Germany. Bavaria sounds good. Yeah. West Germany, which is a pretty, yeah, okay. It's a pretty forward thinking phase, it's not the place. It's not the fucking sticks, West Germany, you know, right? No. Bavaria?

No. Anyways, she lived with her three sisters and her parents and their family were devout Roman Catholics. They attended Mass like twice a week and Anna, as she was known, she led a pretty normal life. You see pictures of her. There's a lot of pictures of her. She's pretty. She looks very normal, you know, as a teenager, she's just a normal girl and her classmates

described her as withdrawn and very religious. Sorry. Which part withdrawn or very religious? Any. Or the combination of the two is like, you think you're better than me? You think God likes you more than me? Yeah, he doesn't. But you saying them being Roman Catholic and going to church twice a week, I just, being

a race Catholic, there's another echelon of Catholicism of people that go multiple times a week that makes me feel like I'm being suffocated invisibly when I hear about it. It's just that kind of like, it's such a ritualistic old, almost like. It's old. It's like, it's like ancient. It's ancient and it's, it's kind of like, I don't know, it just, it worries me. Tell us non-Catholics, like fiercely non-Catholics myself. What is mass like?

Because I've like been in a church three times in my life. It's long. It's like an hour long and it is a series of prayers and songs and then in the middle in Latin. No, no, no. In the fifties and then in this time, they might have done it in Latin. They definitely didn't in German. That's for sure.

At least not in English. But in the late fifties, early sixties, I think they passed a thing called Vatican II where they updated everything. So like when my dad was growing up, my parents were growing up, the mass was in Latin and you took Latin in school and all that. So like Vatican the sequel? Vatican II, Electric Boogaloo came out. This time, this time we're not Latin anymore.

That's right. And they kind of basically updated it so that it was all in English and they cut some stuff out and they just made it a little more maybe livable, I don't know. Accessible. Passed a couple extra laws. I'm not sure. Okay. The details.

I've been told it multiple times so I just don't remember anything. Just tried to update it from the 1600s. I think they allowed guitars for some certain kinds of hippies if they wanted to do it that way. Nobody that I knew did it that way. Well, Annalise did not have a guitar and she did not go to the, to version 2.0. They did not. Of mass.

But at one point you do eat the body of Christ. That's kind of the main point of mass. You snack on the body of Christ. That's right. Like the spread afterwards is like. No, it's all in the middle. You drink of his blood and you eat of his body and then you basically are forgiven for all your sins because as a mortal, you sin constantly and you have to constantly ask for forgiveness.

So it's just a little background. So many questions. That's that wafer, right? And the blood is wine. Yeah. The most masses, the normal people don't drink the wine, the priest drinks it on your behalf. What a dick. You're like, I'm good.

I don't need you to do it for me. It is all. It is all. Yeah. Okay. Then at age 16, she suffers an severe epileptic fit and is diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy and depression. Mm.

Is that what you have? I don't think I have depression, although I sure get low sometimes. But mine is petite, you get petite mall. No grand. Fuck. When I have them, they're grand. Karen doesn't do anything half ass. But they also call it seizure disorder.

It's a different time. Sure. Yeah. Okay. She's treated at a psychiatric hospital and is put on anti-convulsion meds. I'm sure the psychiatric hospital is not chill. Anti-psychotics and mood stabilizers as well as anti-convulsion drugs when the convulsions continued and none of it alleviated the problem.

She was prescribed another drug, aleptalopte, nope, which is similar to chloroplasm. Why didn't I take this part out? It's used in the treatment of various psychosis, including schizophrenia, disturbed behavior and delusions. And by 1973, she's suffering from depression and starts hallucinating while praying. She complains about hearing voices telling her that she was damned and would rot in hell. And her treatment in a psychiatric hospital did not improve her health and her depression got worse despite the meds.

Long-term treatment did not help and she grew increasingly frustrated with a medical intervention. She'd tear her clothes off, she'd eat coal, and she'd urinate on the floor and then try to lick it up. Huh. Yeah. Let's play diagnose her right now. She's got schizophrenia. Well, she's developing schizophrenia.

Or has it, but also, I used to always be fascinated, there's a illness called pica, which is the need to eat inedible things, which it sounds like she has, but that might be a symptom of a bigger, I think, the schizophrenia itself. And pica is like you're low on some necessary minerals. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people eat drywall.

My friend would have the incredible urge, she never did it, as far as I know, to eat laundry detergent. Oh. Yeah. Well, that's like on my crazy obsession. There's a show on TLC where people. Couch stuffing. Yes.

The lady who ate the couch. Yeah. Sonata. This same friend had bought, like, or stole from a pharmacy, Epicac. And she was like, I'm believe it. I'm going to try it. And then she did it. And she was like, that was the worst experience.

And I think she stopped being believe it after that because it was the worst experience of her life. Because syrup of Epicac just makes you vomit horribly. Everything you have in your stomach, it's for children to eat poison. Yeah. So a lot of parents will have it on hand just in case, anyways. Oh, and it gives you like food poisoning barfing? It's, it's retching until your entire stomach contents are just gone.

Anyways, that was a sidebar. Sidebar. And also. What? No, just, I just love how we're just like, maybe it's this. And maybe it's that. Anyway. Yeah.

Yeah. We're really, we're really doing a service to everything. So she finished high school and when she was 20, she started studying at the University of Würzburg. So she went to university even though she had these issues and I couldn't complete community college for more than a year. Like that's. I could barely hold down a job.

Good for her. Yeah. I mean, I'd walk out of jobs sometimes, which never come back. Her symptoms had significantly worsened though. Oh, she was studying to become a teacher, but her problems got worse. She heard voices telling her, I already said that she saw devil faces. She became suicidal and her family believed that she was suffering from demonic possession. Oh, jump to demonic possession.

Yeah. A family friend arranged a pilgrimage to a sacred spring in San Damiano and the friend became convinced that she was possessed because her inability to walk past a crucifix and drink holy water. Do you drink holy water? No. Why? So then what's the inability?

Not sure. Everyone's hands have been in it. I wouldn't either. Yeah. I've never heard of drinking it as a, except for in like horror movies. Okay. But what? I don't know.

Maybe it's different in West Germany. I'm not sure. Maybe. She became aggressive and she took to self-harming and she would, okay. And she ate insects. She growled at religious icons and would sit under her kitchen table barking for two days. So the family sought help from the church and then the thing that's causing the problem is where they go for help.

Yeah. I mean, it's like every single solution aside from like the psychiatric place, every single solution is religious based. Well, it's like when you hear of those parents who like these days who refuse to go to the doctor to get help and then they get arrested and their kid dies because it really just needed penicillin or whatever the fuck or no. And the kid dies and they get, they get convicted and of child neglect. Yeah.

So, yeah. Anyways, many of the priests they saw said Annalise needed a doctor. Even the priests were like, Hey, but one eventually said that she needed an exorcism. And then she was granted one, you have to get granted an ex or to be exercised under the condition that would be done in total secrecy. And her parents were like, that sounds on the love, let's fucking do it. Right? Like everyone's like, no, no, no, go to a doctor, go to a doctor.

One's like, sure. Just don't tell anyone. Yeah. Great. That's what we've been waiting to hear. Well, maybe because they were trying to be progressive and there's exorcisms are about as like retro as you could be in the church. Definitely.

So in 75, she and her parents stopped seeking medical advice altogether. So three days after her 27th birthday, 22nd birthday, and over the next 10 months, Father Arnold Rents and Pastor Ernst Alt performed 67 exorcisms on her for fucking, yeah, ten months and 67, like series of exorcisms. And it said that every, but they say that every action that they took during these times and rituals were all condoned by Annalise. Who's fucking mentally ill? She's like, yeah, bring it on.

This is what I need. Why are you letting? She shouldn't be, she shouldn't have decision making, you know, capacities anymore. Well, also what, if nothing else is working, what else are you going to do? I mean, if not, if you've gone to hospitals and you've, and nothing is changing it, then of course you're like, yes, keep trying this other thing. Yeah. They would attempt to drive the demons from her body while she would argue with them into

demonic voices and guess what? They fucking taped them all, audiotape them all and videotape them. Whoa. Would you rather watch and listen to one of those or listen to a 911 call? One of those. Are you sure? Yeah. Haven't been a Catholic?

Yes. It's terrifying. Is it? Yeah. I mean, it's terrifying because it's scary and her voice is insane, but it's also horrifying because you can tell, it's just like there's someone acting in a way that like they're mentally ill and it's like, it was almost like it was like ramping her up. Yeah.

It's really fucking horrifying. Wait, so when you listened to it, you didn't believe she was possessed, you believed that she was mentally ill and basically answering the call that they were. And having fits of like moments of mental illness and I don't believe in like, it's not like I would have believed that because I don't believe in God and the devil and all this. Okay. So the IL, I could see it was from a mental illness point of view because that's all I

have to hold me together and explain myself. Then me, she stopped eating altogether. She believed it would lessen the evil's control over her and she got so weak that her parents had to hold her up when she got too weak to do it herself. So they would like, hold her up, take her to bed, carry her around, shit. And there's these fucking photos, man. So she was this normal, pretty regular young woman and the photos look like they're from a horror movie.

Oh no. I mean, her like, she has these like blisters on her mouth. She ends up being 60 pounds. Oh no. She looks like, and do you ever see the photo of like when they found someone's sister in the back room who had scoliosis and they just left her back there and like starved her and they found her in like the seventies back there and took photos of her and she was alive, which is also terrifying.

She looked like that. She looked like an old woman. Oh no. It's really horrible, but you can tell it's her. I've never heard of that scoliosis story. It's really sad. It was making me think of that part in Pet Cemetery where the sister sits up in bed. It might be that.

Well, I mean, you know what? Do you think that's what it is? That's scary thing where she sits up really fast. That's her. Okay. But it looks like that. Yes. So what I was talking about was fiction.

And also, please, it's like people haven't been fucking abandoned and locked into back rooms or whatever. No. But it's just like the way you just described that, I was like, oh wait, that's the best part of that fucking movie, best, worst part of that movie is. I forgot all about that part because I thought it was real. But that's what she looked like. Okay.

Essentially horrifying, unkempt, way too thin. Like clearly to go from and you look at her and there's no way she's 22. In your mind to go to that level is just like the fact that they could keep doing that to her despite this is unconscionable. So she died in her sleep on July 1st, 1976. She weighed 66 pounds. Her knees were broken due to prolonged and repetitive genuflections as part of the exorcisms. And she was immobile and had pneumonia.

She broke her knees from kneeling over and over. She broke her knees. That's fucking insane. The knees are hard to break. Oh, I know, man. The autopsy reports say that her death resulted from malnutrition and dehydration due to almost a year of semi starvation during the exorcisms. The death was investigated and the state prosecutor found that Anna's death was preventable even

as late as one week prior to her death, they could have saved her. Her parents and the two priests were charged with negligent homicide and the trial began on March 30th, 1978. The priests were defended by church paid lawyers and the parents were defended by a dude who claimed that the exorcism was legal and that the German constitution protected citizens in the unrestricted exercise of their religious beliefs. So it's like, if you believe it, just do it. You know, it's like, Nike, just do it, they played.

It seems like you made yourself sad on that one. I did. Well, I was like, that's not a good exorcism. Just do it. You know what I mean? It's like, that's not. That's not a good attitude. Right.

About exorcism. No. They played the court, the audio tapes from the exorcisms, which they maintain prove that she was possessed due to the appearance of demonic voices on the tapes. The priest, tested by the Anna, was possessed by several demons claiming to be Lucifer, Cain, Judas. Scary. Judas is scary.

He's the one that turned on Jesus. Thank you. You're welcome. It's in there for a reason. And now I know why. That's amazing. Look at you. Who's Hitler?

Now, which one of the saints is Hitler? Hitler came out of her. Yeah. They said also Hitler and Nero. Jesus. It's not Jesus. It's All-Star-Villain. Jesus wasn't there.

Clearly. No. Jesus is against them. He was nowhere to be found in this situation. Nope. He didn't come to visit. Hitler. Fuck.

I guess he's coming to dinner, not Jesus. He took a pass on this dinner party. He latered right out of there. Nero, my God. Who's Nero? Nero is that the Roman, what do you call it, Caesar, Augustus, whatever, the guy that Rome, oh my God, uneducated, he's the guy that fiddled while Rome burned. He was the last emperor of Rome.

Okay. History. Even check it. History and math and science, not my thing, and anything really. They also noted that the exorcisms apparently finally worked. They said it worked immediately prior to her death, so like, well, so it worked. How unfortunate. Yeah.

They also noted that the, okay, they were found guilty of a manslaughter sentenced to six months imprisonment, which was later suspended and three years of probation. There's a photo of her mom at the funeral open casket, like praying next to her daughter's corpse that she effectively killed. Her story is dramatized in the films The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Requiem, which I watch, and Annalise the Exorcist Tapes. So like, this is where they all came from is pretty much this chick's fucking experiences. Yeah.

Despite the fact that in 1984, the bishops declared Annalise mentally ill. So even the bishops were like, remember what we said? They said she's not possessed, but still her grave became a pilgrimage center for fringe believers. Of course. Okay. And then this made me think of this book I recently read called Brain on Fire by Susan Callahan.

Have you heard of it? No. And then I looked it up to find the details of it because in it, she talks about how this disease that she had, they now think is linked to what they thought was the exorcism signs. And so I looked this up. It's not my, I'm not fucking, this is already been talked about a lot on the internet as far as Brain on Fire is concerned. So it's not me being like, oh my God, I just put it together.

Right. Everyone put it together. Yeah. So the book Brain on Fire is really fucking good. She's 24. She's a writer at the New York Post and she starts going fucking crazy. She comes fixated on the idea that her home was infested with bedbugs. She like calls a bedbug guy in to like clean out her, like what the fuck?

And he's like, there's no bedbugs in here. She's paranoid, irrational, laughing and crying all the time. Her family thought she was having a nervous breakdown and they like kind of blow her off and give her anti-psychotics and then anti-seizure meds when she starts having seizures so along the same lines. And she is eventually finally diagnosed with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, which does cause when the body's immune system goes haywire and attacks the protein in the brain that helps neurons communicate.

Fuck. Yeah. Which sounds a lot like Alzheimer's. Yes. They're linking it to that too and it was like there was one doctor who was able to finally figure it out and the way he figured it out is when he had her draw a clock and she drew the circle and wrote all of the numbers tightly on the right hand side so her brain wasn't computing.

It wasn't even seeing the other side and she thought it was normal. Fuck. You know what I mean? Yes. Because I feel like I've seen that picture. Right. Yeah. So she was...

So it's the same receptor that's blocked by PCP or ketamine and both drugs can make a neural person act like someone with schizophrenia. So much I didn't know. That sounds terrifying. Why would you take those drugs? In the 70s, I think most people accidentally smoked PCP. Yeah. There was a lot of like...

Because that's angel dust, right? Yeah. Yeah. We're accidentally on purpose because the drug wars were fucking racist and horrible. That's true. Look it up. Look up an arrow while you're at it. How dare you.

Look it up. No, I didn't mean it like that. I'm like, you better... Yeah. I'm right. I didn't mean like, I don't know. I mean, look it up. I don't care.

No, I meant like... You know what I mean? Yeah. Yes. The disease... The disease... Steven, make me sound like I can breathe. We can do this.

The disease typically strikes young women and symptoms worsen and include agitation, paranoia, delusions, hallucinations, then seizures, and psychosis. Fuck. Yeah. It's not... I'm literally thinking back in the 90s of like, did I have paranoia? Did I have... Was I hallucinating?

Did you think... Because schizophrenia hits younger women, it seems like really... That's really the main demographic. And so, did you ever be like, shit, man, if I'm going to hit it, this is going to be... Like at 24, I was like, get out of this without schizophrenia. Yes. Well, yes, because the... So the brain grows like a certain way every seven years, a certain amount every seven

years. That's like this. So that's why they say it's when you're 21, whatever. It goes in sevens of when they think, when they most commonly diagnose it. So they say, and when I... I was at the end, I was 28, and it was that my fourth one or whatever. Phew. Your fourth seizure?

Oh, no, your fourth seven years. No, no, it was like the cycle or whatever where I was... When I read that thing about the brain growing, and that's why sometimes people have seizures, and sometimes they have them and never have them again. I had one at 14. No, 12. Yeah. I had one at 12.

Your brain is a little... My brother has one too. Yeah. Pretty common. Doctors that because it's just complicated. Well, yeah, then it makes sense why a young woman comes in with fucking symptoms that look like schizophrenia who's like 23 or four. And of course, it's just an obvious diagnosis.

But then when the brain, the drugs don't work, that's a sign that it's not. But they didn't, doctors a lot didn't want to look into that more and would just send you to someone else. Well, it's like when they're supposed to be the final word, and if they don't know what to do, then what do you do? Well, she said she spent a million dollars on different drugs to try to tackle this. And none of it worked. And then finally, this guy's like, draw a clock, and she's like, what?

And draws it, and it didn't cost anything to draw the clock in for him to be like, you have this. Wow. Okay. So anyways, this isn't about her. So it's now speculated that anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis could be behind historical descriptions of what was believed to be demonic possession, including in the exorcist when she walks on her walk.

How do you explain that? Is she backwards crab walks? Yes. That's like, your bones get stiff, your body like turns into these crazy folds and stuff like that. And that's one of the fucking things that happened. Really? Yeah.

That's crazy. That exact symptom of demonic possession is actually a symptom of this. Wow. So appropriate diagnosis and treatment, more than 80% of patients have a good outcome. And then I wrote the worst line I've ever written to end a story because I didn't know how else to do it. Susan Callahan got better, but unfortunately, Annalise Michel didn't have the chance. I know.

Everyone, listen, listen, I think they're making a movie out of it, Brain On Fire. Really fucking interesting. I would love to see that. I think I have it. You can have it. I do want to read that. I saw, I think Requiem, is that the one that's in German? Yes.

That movie is so upsetting. I saw the first, I would say, two thirds of it, and then when she started having seizures, when it started getting into that thing, I was like, oh, I don't want to watch a girl have seizures. It looks so horrifying when she has a seizure. Yeah. I mean, it's just... Well, it is really, I mean, you picture back when demonic possession was conceived, and

when it was people who, like, if you had a brain disorder in medieval times or the Dark Ages, you were just fucked because there was no treatment. There was nothing to be done. Well, not even the Dark Ages, and the fucking 90s at Bellevue Hospital, like a seizure, you know, if they couldn't control it, right? Well, they can control it. They just don't know why you're having it unless they go in and they go have brain surgery and they look to find if there's scars on your brain.

Right. But like, if there's no... If you don't have like, oh, I've gotten a car accident and this is what's happening, if you don't have a story that they can put a storyline to, then they're just like, we don't know. And that's in the beginning of my seizure disorder journey. In the beginning, they were just like, oh, this is just alcohol withdrawal. This is what happens to alcoholics.

I of course then, with absolutely no shame whatsoever, was like, but I've never stopped drinking. So how could I have withdrawals? There's no withdrawal situation happening. But you know, and then it turned out that that wasn't what it was because I still have seizures to this day. You were probably even not aware of the seizures were going on because you were drinking so much that you just didn't even notice them.

I knew things were happening and I had injuries and I'd weird, you know, I'd weird eye because of the aura of my seizures, my eyes flick around. And so when that first started, I would be driving and it felt to me like I was looking at the other cars coming. Like I have a very specific memory of driving down fountain and just check. I felt like I was checking the other cars. And so I was like, oh, am I crazy now that I'm like OCD checking cars? But it turned out it was my eyes just going, because that's the aura.

And then you seem paranoid a little because you can't stop looking at the cars. I mean, I didn't think that. But you could put that together. Yeah. If you were a doctor trying to figure out what the hell was going on, all of that stuff fits. Totally. But the idea that they just keep going back to the church or to Catholicism to fix it

is just like, it's heartbreaking. Yeah, I know. Broken kneecaps is not cool. That's such a specific thing of like, okay, this is a thing you can point to of excessive what she went through. That specific thing of her knees being broken from fucking. Yeah. Someone should have said stop way fucking earlier than when she weighed 66 pounds.

It's insanity. It doesn't make sense. But the whole time she was on board with it. So they were probably like, because they're priests. These people have like... I don't know. She was because she was... No, I'm saying because priests are doing it to her.

She's a devout Catholic. Right. Those are... They know best. They drink the blood of Christ, man. They know better than doctors. Sure. They're like final word.

It makes me think too of, did you watch Taboo, the Tom Hardy series on FS? Oh, wait. We watched a couple episodes. There was just one near the end, his sister who's married and she's just like a rebel. She's just like a fuck you rebel for lots of different reasons. Her husband finally decides that she's possessed by the devil and has someone come to exercise the demons inside her. And she basically just gets molested by this priest.

And it's that thing too of women in society over the years where it's like when you did have these people and it's not the exact same thing every time, obviously. But it's such a good example of women having no ownership over their own fucking body. So then it was like if you're sassing back and saying fuck and all this stuff, then you're possessed by the devil. And then two men come in and get to just do what they want to, quote unquote, get rid of the devil inside you. And you are just tied down and you have to take it.

Well, it's the same thing as far as in like the 50s and 60s and 70s where it's like my wife is being rebellious and or depressed and it's like, well, give her a fucking pill. Lobotomy. Oh, shit. Yeah. The lobotomy situation. Oh, man. That's like she doesn't want to be a fucking housewife anymore.

She's going crazy. Okay, we're going back to the area that you were just in for mine. What are the odds? So we were talking to somebody yesterday who said, do you guys take requests? And we were kind of like, um, but then he said, do you know about this guy? And the second he started talking, I knew who he's talking about. And I got that thing that I always get when people talk to me about cases where if I know, I just want to interrupt them immediately and be like, it's this, this, this and this.

Well, that's what I did. And you were quiet. So you were probably like writing it down. I wasn't, I was just mentally noting, but that's what I wanted to do is just be like, and I think at some point I did say something, but it is so hilariously frustrating when it's somebody's going like, have you ever heard of this thing? And then they tell you the whole story and you can't, you can't immediately just be like, yes.

Or correct them. Um, so I knew if I had such strong feelings, I should tell that story. So awesome. I love it. That's like such a quick turnaround. I know. I heard about it yesterday. Yeah.

And look at me now. So, uh, this is the story of Jack Unterweger, the VNS triangular. And it's so crazy, um, this should be much more well known and talked about. It's so crazy. Okay. So essentially just to give you a little background on Vienna, Austria, which I can't tell you how many times I got confused while I was writing this, forgetting that Vienna is the city within Austria and not Austria as a city itself.

So much to learn so much, so many ways to grow. I feel like we're learning so much this episode. I mean, growing. It's kind of like being in school. It's school time, uh, it's school time of day. We're dotting our everythings. All right. So in 2005, there was a study of 120 world cities and, um, Vienna ranked, it tied with

Vancouver and San Francisco as the world's most livable city. Um, and then in 2011 and 2015, it was ranked second behind Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia. Um, and it is, uh, the, it is classified by the United Nations human settlements program as the most prosperous city in the world. Wow. 2012, 2013. Let's move there. So it's fancy pantsy, um, they don't, they barely have that much crime.

They have very little murder, very little. So on New Year's Eve, 1990, a woman's body is found by hikers in the forest in Western Austria. Her name was Heidi Hammerin. She was 31 year old sex worker. She was nude, face down, posed, and had been strangled with her own stockings that were tied in a complex slipknot. Oh, never worse.

I'm never wearing stockings because that's all they're used for, you know what I mean? In these stories. Absolutely. Yeah. So five days later in the city of grouts, hikers find the body of Brunhilde Massa in a forest. She's partially buried. She's been posed in the same manner as Heidi was.

She was strangled with her own bra that was tied in a complex slipknot. Don't wear bras. I'm just taking off all my clothes for this episode. There's all these solutions, solutions. No bras. Okay. So the police can't find any usable evidence on either of the bodies, except that Heidi had a bunch of red fibers all over her that didn't match anything that she was wearing.

So they took those fibers, put in a bag for later. But it was so uncommon that anything like this would be happening that these murders hit the papers and everybody in Austria is freaking out. So they have a crime reporter named Jack Unterweger who takes to the streets to talk to police and sex workers about these crimes for Austrian national radio. That's the same name as the guy he started talking about. I was trying to say it fast so you wouldn't notice that, but he reviews on the streets, he interviews sex workers about the fear that they're feeling and he goes to the police

and talks to the investigators about whether or not they have any idea of who they're looking for and the police tell him they have no idea. What a great ruse. Meanwhile in Los Angeles, California, that's where we live. A 35-year-old sex worker named Shannon Exley is found underneath an 18-wheeler in Boyle Heights. She's posed, she's naked, she's been strangled with her own bra that's been tied with a complex slipknot.

Boyle Heights is close to us. Very close. So the police, when they find, they see this, there's no clues, there's nothing. So they look into any other unsolved murders with the same MO and they find two others. Both Irene Rodriguez, who was found in Boyle Heights as well, and a woman named Piggy Booth, who was found in Malibu Cannon, had both been strangled to death with their own clothing, left out in the open. They were all sex workers.

They had all three been assaulted with tree branches. So immediately the LA detectives know that they've got a serial killer. That's three murders in 15 days. So they're like, we have a fucking serial killer. Emergency. But then nothing else happens and the case goes cold. Now let's go back to Vianna. There's two more sex workers bodies that have been found, Karen Araglu and Sabine Moitzi.

They were both also found in the forest, both strangled with their own clothing that was tied in slipknot. So every time it happens, it hits the paper and people freaking out, the pressure and the panic is building because this is just something that does not happen there. So finally, a retired detective named August Schenner from Salzburg is reading about these murders and he contacts the Austrian police, the Viennese police, I should say. And he tells them that Jack Unterweger, the crime reporter and the famous crime reporter, he's a well-known guy around Austria, that he reminds police that Unterweger is famous

because he was convicted of murder in 1974. And August Schenner tells police it's the same MO as the 1974 murder of these women that are being killed now, except for the 1974 murder, he knew the woman personally, she was not a sex worker. Why is he out of prison? But it's the same, oh, I'm about to tell you. It's the same MO, same knots, same everything. And Schenner says, I know you don't have any, you're saying you don't have any suspects

right now, you should at least take a look at his movements and see where he was all these different times in these different locations where these women's bodies were found. So the police start to look into Unterweger and that trial. So basically, he, as I said, he was tried and convicted in 1974 for the murder of this, let's see, her name was Margaret Schaefer. He was, he went to his, the girl he was dating at the time, he went to her hometown, so she could visit her family in Germany. And they see, as they drive into town, they see her school friend, Margaret Schaefer walking

along the street. So at that moment, Jack Unterweger decides that they're going to rob her and her parents. So he ends up taking her out to the forest, murder, attacking her, raping her, murdering her, strangling her with her own clothes. And he, and his girlfriend spills the beans on the whole murder and he ends up going to jail. So while he's in jail, he goes into jail and he can't read or write. He's had a horrible childhood.

His mother, he alleges his mother was a prostitute or a sex worker, sorry. The word prostitute is used a lot in this case, so, but he says that she was a prostitute. She gave him up to his alcoholic, horrible grandfather when he was little and she took off. He never knew his father. They think his father was an American soldier. And he has to live as a child, live with this alcoholic grandfather in a cabin in the woods, to a one room cabin where he is constantly bringing girlfriends and sex workers back

to the cabin to have sex while he's in the room. That's his childhood. When he gets older, so then finally the state takes him out of that situation. He goes from foster home to foster home. Then he goes to juvie for a little while. He finally gets out. And between 1966 and 1979, he's convicted 16 times of sexual assault and he spends most of that period of time, it was like nine years in jail.

So when he finally gets out of jail, that's when he finds the girlfriend, starts traveling all over and that's when he ends up killing Margaret Shaffer. So he goes to jail illiterate, but while there teaches himself, he's convicted and given a life sentence. And in that trial, he's declared insane by a psychologist who describes him as being a sexually sadistic psychopath with narcissistic and histrionic tendencies prone to fits of rage and anger and that psychologist said he's an incorrigible perpetrator. So he goes to jail and when he's in jail, I've said this now three times, he can't

read or write. So he teaches himself to read and write in jail. And he starts writing plays, he starts writing poems and he starts writing children's stories. And at the same time, there was this movement in Austria for prison reform. And one of the, like the approach of their prison reform was called resocialization. So it's the idea that if somebody is in jail, they understand what they've done, that they've done wrong, that they should have a chance to make good on that. And that's what jail is prison is for, you don't get to do that.

So there basically, it's this kind of, it's very the intellectuals of the country, we're kind of like this is what needs to happen, we need to give people a chance and through the arts and through self-expression, they can basically reform themselves. And so Jack, but that doesn't matter because they still committed this crime. Oh, I'm stressed. Sorry. Go on. No, no, no.

You're, you're exactly right. This pisses me off. But it's that old, I think it's back before they understood serial killers. They understood these, these personalities and what that actually means, how somebody can be actually totally unrepentant and have no conscience. So they don't, of course, they're not sitting there going, I shouldn't have done that. I promise I'm not going to do it again. Like that's not happening.

I think that mindset that some, that people had back then where it's like anyone could commit these crimes, not thinking that no, it's this, you know, those people who are saying that don't understand the urge to kill or to sexually assault someone because, you know, they don't have that. So they're like, they're grouping all criminals together. Yeah. Or they're grouping all humans together and mental capacities and fucking psychopaths. So there's, there's a lot of people who theorize that when he knew that this was the reform

because the reform started before he went to jail, before any of that happened. So he knew that was something they were looking towards. So he gets into jail and is basically like, this is the, this is the prisoner I'm going to be. And so instead of being here for a life sentence, I'm going to get myself out by playing straight into the need for this program and people's need for this program to be real and to work. So he, while he's in jail, he writes an autobiography called purgatory. I can't say the German version of that word because it's like, it's all so crazy.

And that autobiography becomes a hit and a director even makes a movie of it. It's basically his life story. Holy shit. And there's this groundswell of support for him and his art and his expression and the proof that he can be re-socialized and that this can work. In 1985, they start up the certain group of people start up a demand for his early release. So it's all actually, one could say if that was the plan, it's going perfectly for him. And he basically, in May of 1990, he gets released from prison after serving 15 years

of a life sentence. So immediately he gets released from prison and he becomes a fixture on television talk shows. He poses as the model of prison rehabilitation. He gets invited to high society cocktail parties. His autobiography is taught in schools. His stories for children are performed on the radio. What in the fuck?

Uh-huh. The poor woman who got killed by him is like, hey, I would be still alive if this guy. Yes, exactly. So, um, so he, he actually was there, there's clips of him on, I think it was called Cafe 2. Now I can't remember what the name of the show is, but it's, it literally a circle of men in like turtlenecks and it's like, you know. Suit jacket and turtlenecks.

They're very clearly like the intelligentsia and they're just talking about prison reform and he's there in an all white silk suit. What? He looks like Steve Martin doing a character in a movie. Oh my God. He's there to give his first hand account of the reality of prison reform to tell, to school them. Yeah.

To tell them how it really is. And this made, this is what everybody wanted and he was doing it and it was all like, this is how society should truly be. Um, diabolical, man. He also, um, he made a lot of money because of all of these successes. He wore designer clothes, the white silk suit, which I enjoyed. He's wearing it in a lot of clips. He also drove a Ford Mustang with the license plate, Jack won, which I don't know why I

think that's so hilarious, but he won is the number one. Oh, I think it's like he fucking won. Well, you're exactly right. Cause he did. Um, he gets, he gets a 18 year old girlfriend. So in September of the same year, he's released in May. In September of that year, some people walking along the Vitava River near Prague find the body of Blanca Bakova.

She's not a sex worker. She was just a nearby meeting friends for a drink. Um, and this is four months after he has been released from prison and is living this life. So, uh, on the advice of, um, the man from Salzburg, sorry, turn the page, um, uh, on the advice of, uh, our August Schenner, right? Um, the police get a search warrant and an arrest warrant. They start looking at, uh, Jack Unger, now I've lost every Jack Unger watchers, um, movements and they see that he coincidentally has been in all of the towns where these women have

been murdered when they disappear. So they're starting to track it and they're like, Oh, this guy is exactly right. Like this is serious. So they get a warrant to search his home and his arrest warrant, but when they get to his house, he's not there. So they start looking through his house. They find evidence that he had gone to Prague at the same time as Bakova's death to do research on an article about prostitution, um, and he was placed at a cafe 500 meters away from

where she was last seen the night she disappeared. They also find a red scarf and they bag that shit up. So one detective that's looking around his house sees that he has keepsakes from a recent trip to LA. And so they're like, what was he doing in LA? So they call the LAPD and they ask if they have any unsolved strangling, uh, sex worker homicides and LAPD is like, we got fucking three. So, uh, here's a, sorry, 90 ish.

What's that? What year is this? 91. Okay. So it turns out that Jack had been hired by an Austrian magazine to write an article on prostitution in America. So he went to LA and he called up the LAPD. They found in his apartment, they found a visitor's pass for the LAPD headquarters.

And they found, um, he had gone on a ride along with some officers downtown. And on that ride along, he asked them where, um, the sex worker, where the prostitutes work and are, and they drove him by the spot, uh, where they all stood around. So they basically pointed out his targets. Oh my God. And that article was published in an Austrian magazine in December of 1991. So he actually really was a columnist, but he was reporting on the murders he was doing. Can we please get an original copy of that article?

You want it in German? Oh, no, I guess not. Yes. I thought that's what you meant. Like, can we just see it as it was written? You know what? Yes, I'm going to go. Okay.

Yes. We'll go all the way there. I'm going there. He also stayed at the Cecil Hotel. That was where he was staying the whole time. I just scared the shit out of me because I, oh my God, the Cecil, a good friend, the Cecil. The Cecil Hotel, where everything bad happens, where Elisa Lam was found dead in the water tank, but also Richard Ramirez stayed there while he was doing a little killing in Los

Angeles. Um, man, it's like they have a discount rate and like murder magazine or some shit. I mean, it's so hilariously terrible, but it is right down there in the worst of the worst things that are happening in Los Angeles. The Cecil Hotel is like centrally located. I love they try to rebrand themselves by calling themselves like, stay on main, stay on main. Yeah.

No, honey. But the funniest thing is that sign is still up that says Hotel Cecil. It reads Hotel Cecil down like that. And the like vintage painting on the side that says Cecil Hotel or whatever. They can't. I think they can't. Oh, historically. I mean, that's my guess because they're, we just drove by there the other night and

we looked at it and that's all still up. Yes or no. We do a special episode from a room in the Cecil Hotel, the one Lisa Lam stayed in or Richard Ramirez stayed in or this guy stayed in a hundred percent. Yes. Stephen, can you write that down? Stephen ideas. And then we write in the dark German articles, listen for Austrian magazines, send them over.

We just do Google translate and send them over. Yeah. Send it in my hand, like paper, okay, good, great. We know what you want, George, let's move on. Well, okay. So he, so they put all of it together and they put all of it, it's circumstantial evidence, but they're putting all of it together and there's that, there's that guy that you see in every special that was in the, I watched, oh shit, I've done it again.

I didn't quote this at the top, but I got all of this from the biography channel, but this is different. It's all, it's all different. It's all different. You've got information from a place. And then you put it in. Several places. Your story.

Me too. I mean, you're going to fucking make it up. You know? This is all from the internet. The biography channel is the first special I watched on this. And it's that thing in the, it reminded me when it, when the title comes up, it starts biography channel. So you're just watching and then it's Jack Unterweger.

And I remembered normally watching like when the biography channel specials would come up, I'd be like sitting there and then it'd be like Reba McIntosh and maybe like, I don't want to watch this. But then it's like, if one of those came up in real time naturally, it was the most exciting thing in the world. Yes. When it was before specialized true crime television was really as popular as it is now.

And before DVR. So you kind of didn't know what it was going to be on. Yes. You just kind of like catch it. Catch. You had to be there. Listen. So he, he goes, Unterweger goes on the lam with his 18 year old girlfriend.

They end up in Miami. No, I'm kidding. Miami. Yeah. Do a show there now. And he also, he starts calling into the radio station that he used to work for explaining to them that he's innocent. He's being framed by the cops.

You know, he's just the most, you know, he looks bad because of that old murder, but blah, blah, blah. He's like calling in and trying to make a case for himself. And there actually are people that are on his side because there's, because they've bought into the celebrity of him so hard that like they can't turn around now. Sure. They can admit that loopsy. Yeah.

And cause then you're also kind of responsible for those women getting murdered in a like weird roundabout way. Well, yeah, there's definitely guilt. Yeah. There's definitely guilt. Not that you are, but you would think you are. You would. Yeah.

You'd have, you'd feel fucking terrible for, for that. Yes. So this guy from the FBI helps Vienna develop what they call a crime signature and his crime signature is, um, murdering strangulation with ligature made of clothing tied with complex slipknot. Wow. And, um, so they, uh, they go to trial. Oh, when he gets arrested, he gets put in jail.

He slits his wrists and there's even more support for him and more empathy for him. So he finally goes to trial and, uh, it's two months later after his arrest and his defense is why would I kill women? I have a very healthy sex life. I've slept with over 150 women, which is exactly the number that Alex Jones said when he was talking about how many women he's slept with, which I think is kind of funny. 150 is like just ridiculous enough. Yeah.

Um, and as if, as if it has any, one has anything to do with it. Really? I love women. Why would I kill women? We know. I don't need to have sex. Yes. I don't need to sexually assault one woman.

They give it to me. Yeah. Oh yeah. That's all it is about is. Yeah. Sexual gratification. Right. No, no, no.

You fucking lunatic. So, uh, up until they say up until kind of like this turning point, he did have those supporters weren't relenting until the guy from the FBI came and pointed out the crime signature and they had all these pieces of clothing from all the murders and he just held them up one after the other and was like complex slipknot, complex slipknot on every single one. And that's when the room turned turned and it all went, um, different for him. Uh, he was convicted of nine of 11 murders of sex workers in LA, LA Prague and Vienna.

Um, and in June of 1994, he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. And that night he committed suicide in jail. Um, and the interesting thing is that he hung himself with shoelaces and the, uh, band, the rope band from his sweatpants and he used a complex slipknot to tie it. Fuck. Uh-huh. Oh, I was holding my breath for that one. Yeah.

Oh my God. Yes. And then he matched the, the red fibers on Heidi matched the scarf that they got out of his apartment. Right. Like everything was, was adding up, but it's all circumstantial, circumstantial, circumstantial. So when they, that's, that's why LA didn't try to prosecute us because there was nothing, they were like, you've got nine murders or eight murders over there.

We're not going to be able to get him because everything over here is circumstantial and not, there's nothing solid. It's all just like basically these three horrible murders that match exactly while he was there and visiting. And his MO. Yeah. Fuck, man. How have I never fucking heard of him?

It's such a fascinating case. There's way more to read, but like the idea that while he was murdering sex workers and then writing columns about the murderer and the murders and asking people how they felt and asking the cops. He was just writing about, like acknowledging and writing about the murder. Yes. He was basically in faux investigating his own crime. It's amazing.

And oh, that was a thing that, I was trying to find this, but one of the experts talking about him said, the thing about the psychopaths, the kind of psychopath that he is, is you stop focusing on what they do and they make you focus on them. And that's how that, like it's cult of personality. So, so when he was in jail, the, the fact that he had strangled a young woman, faded away and it all became about me and my life and how hard it's been for me and read my autobiography. And this is so sad.

He never said like, I made a mistake and killed this thing. It was like, don't even point that out. No, he, it was all about him. And then, and he was, he was smart enough and manipulated and manipulative enough to play the part of the person they were looking for, you know, to really kind of like be the face of and spearhead this re-socialization plan. He was just like, I'm going to be that guy. Do you think that when, you know, when, when people get convicted of murder and then they

get to read a letter to the judge or to the family and they just talk about themselves, that's the same kind of thing instead of like apologizing to the family or saying, I made a mistake or whatever. Yes. I was like, I had a hard childhood, I was, that's the same thing. Wow. I've always, because it's pissed me off whenever I hear those. No, yeah, that's the, because it's the narcissist, it's, um, is it, I, some, you know, a bunch

of those traits go across the board and like, if you're this, you're this, you're this, but it's like narcissism for sure. But then also, um, the psychopaths where it's just like, it's their world and everyone is just an aunt in that world and they get to do what they want and everything is too power, everything is too, you know what I mean? Like it's to feed their ego and things are done to them and like they have unfair things are unfair to them and not, and if, and if they're like, I don't even want to talk. Like when he was finally arrested, they tried to get him to talk about the 1974 murder and

he was like, I have no memory. I don't know what you're talking about. And just like it says, if in his mind, since he doesn't acknowledge it, it didn't happen. Wow. I always wish there was a way to get them to like fucking feel bad about it, you know? Yeah. But that's the, uh, there's no such thing. They don't have a conscience that they think they can be rehabilitated, which they can't.

It's you thinking they're like you. Yes. It's that. Yes. And actually that's part of the fascination of all of this shit is there's these people that are built totally differently or because of their circumstances of how they were raised, which is like alcoholic grandfather who did these things. It's like there's no way your brain can then go to where you and I are and Steven and hopefully

and. But also I think you have to have that because lots of people get beaten up by horrible grandfathers and all that stuff. You have, then it's that extra piece of being a sociopath or being a psychopath where it turns because this guy was just like on fire with the Lord since fucking day one where it's like 16 assaults out of, you know, when he's like in his teens and early twenties, he had done huge problems from jump and never stopped doing it. And then just tricked everybody in this insane way because you know, he was getting off on

the idea of like, I'm going to go interview the head of this investigation and ask them if they have any idea who's doing this and the answer is no. And he gets to get. And they weren't like, none of them were like, that's weird that he's putting himself, you know, because that's one of the things is that they put the murderers put themselves in the middle of the investigation or just a little too interested in it. They didn't know that then. They didn't know it.

It's so funny too, because it's not that long ago, it's the 90s, but it's still police procedurally. It's long ago. Well, that just explains to me a thing that I haven't really ever understood, which is why Ann Rule never suspected or even took a while after Ted Bundy was arrested to be like, yeah, it was him. So she was under that same fucking spell. Yes.

Okay. It's like never understood. It was like, how did you fucking not know? Because you know, haven't you ever met a person like that? Like I've definitely met one person in particular where the charisma is such they make you think that they think you're the only person in the world. And that most people never get that unless you're like exceedingly beautiful or special in some way.

And that's the actual specific relationship you're having that's because of the two of you. Right. But there's Vince makes me feel that way. And I don't want to make. Well, that's because that's, that's it's you make him feel that way too. But when you meet those people, like it when it in my opinion, I think a lot of love at first sight is like the first time you made a sociopath because they know how they know

how to manipulate you and they have their reasons for it, even if it doesn't make sense to you or in your mind, it's like, why would he do that? We had this magical thing. And it's like, What are you trying to get? What are you getting out of this? Nothing. Well, having young women be in love with you everywhere you go, you know, is part of it.

Yeah. Because we don't need that. So we don't understand why other people would need that too. Right. Or you if you need it, you can then go, yeah, but that would be mean to do to a person who I didn't love back. Like you can bring an actual, you know, um, conscience into it. I saw a relationship like that of two people I know.

And it was like, everyone was like, how the fuck do you not see this person doesn't think like you. Yeah. And it's like, so surprising to see that from a smart person, not understanding these like really obvious to everyone else. Don't you think smart people are almost more susceptible because it's like, I never think I'm going to fall for anything. Yeah.

They're more like, they can intellectualize away, away these things because they're not just ding dongs going along with it. They're like, well, I'm really smart. So I would clearly know this. Well, and also I think that brain based people ignore their gut more. Oh yeah. So it's like, I've met plenty of people who aren't say book smart, which I also didn't mean to just say, I'm so smart because I'm true.

I've proven here time and again that I'm not listen, if this is your first episode, you know that we don't even have to say that, please know this, but you there are people who don't get bogged down in thinking and just go, I'll give goodbye. This feels awful. Yeah. For whatever reason. Whereas if you're a big thinker and a big analyzer, then it's like, you know, this never happens.

And this is I'm, I'm magically being chosen by this amazing magical person who is so charismatic and so, you know what I mean? Like does a thing that you're go, you're like what this doesn't happen. This is uncommon. Well, I want to say it's also because of self-esteem, but no, I was going to say it's also because you and I have been through a lot of experiences where that has happened to us and we have, you know, since we were very young and went through some shit, but it's also, so we're like skeptical on thinking that way.

But also when that happened to me when I was younger, I had a really low self-esteem. Yes. So, you know, it's not just that I didn't know it's that they were like that or what people were like, it's that I, when someone treats you that it's almost like they find the people with low self-esteem and they know they can see you at a bar that you are that person and the moment they say a word to you, they can tell if you are or not. That's right. That's exactly right.

Because you know, it's funny. The person I'm thinking of that I had this experience with where I was like, the things I was thinking that it was and the reality of what it was, I learned terribly about a year later when I watched him do the exact same thing to my friend who does not have low self-esteem. And I introduced them, I was standing there and I watched the look. It was like watching a look come over. It was like watching a predator, like, you know, like, like a change, like a thing change

colors to fit the environment. And when I saw the look on his face and my heart just dropped of like, oh no, that's, it wasn't love at first sight. That's the thing he does to everybody. My friend was just like, hey, what's like nice to meet you and moved on, didn't give a shit. And I was just like, oh man. This is all so awful.

Yeah. Yeah. But I don't think it can happen to us again, or if it does, we'll be more aware of it. And, you know, listen to our fucking friends. It'll never happen again because I'm an emotional lighthouse on the very tip of Maine and I'll be there forever. Goodbye. Well, at least you're going to have lighthouse packs.

That's fun. It's really the only positive I can think of that. At least you always get free clam chowder at a lighthouse. Oh my God. The oyster crackers on top of it. And the big sweater. And I'll play the cello. Oh my God.

This is going to be great for me. Mimi, go live with Karen in her lighthouse. I should get Mimi. I'm her number one fan. Um, all right. Anyway, that's, that's the story. That's how it is. And we're sticking to it.

On it. Tees and eyes. And it, hey, what happened this week that you're happy or like, and you know, what do you like? Oh, you know what? I'll tell you, I like, um, and it is, it is another present, but because we do get tons of presents. We do.

Thank you for all your presents. We love them. We do. We talk about them a lot. And then did you see the thing that someone gave us? That's this thing? Yeah. Like we really fucking lose our minds.

We really do it. So we did get a present last week and it was from another person that I know from Twitter, Andrew, and he tried to send this thing twice. I'm sorry. I don't pick up my PO box. I think they fucking hate me there too, because you get so much stuff now. Yes. They fucking hate me.

Lots of presents. Well, he sent us, he's a woodworker and we got these gorgeous pens in hand carved, um, pen holders, pen, uh, boxes, yeah, whatever they were. And then he carved Steven a mustache for his, I mean, a comb for his mustache. A giant wooden comb for his mustache. Stephen, have you been using it? I mean, every day. My mustache, I feel like.

It does look good. It's like, it looks good. I gotta, you know, keep it, keep it tight. Yeah, that's right. It's part of your persona now. High and tight. Um, so Andrew, it's Andrew Hess that I know from Twitter and he's a great woodworker. And thank you so much for sending those and we finally got them and we were blown away,

blown away by them. It was so thoughtful. Yeah. Um, I was always trying to think of things that make me happier, things that I loved. Um, so we, I just put up this hummingbird feeder right outside and like, I love hummingbirds and there's been like, fucking, it's been like a swarm of hummingbirds. And every time I see one, I yell, even if I'm alone, I just can't not yell, even though they're like, it's like every 10 minutes.

But the thing I love is that it made me realize that they're fucking assholes to each other. Hummingbirds are. Yeah. They're really aggressive and territorial and they keep fighting against it. Maybe so happy because it's like everyone's like, hummingbirds are so beautiful and they get tattoos of them and like, they love them and it's like, well, they can be fucking dicks too. Sure.

And it's just this like positive light to me of like, don't, don't compare yourself. Don't, don't put yourself up to standards of hummingbirds. No. Cause they're actually assholes. Yeah. And they're, and they're sugar freaks. They're addicted to sugar and they just got to get theirs just like everybody else. They are mean to each other.

It's very funny. It's funny because I face the sliding glass door where the hummingbird feeders are. And so the whole time, especially today, I can see them and there's a lot. It's like three at a time every four minutes. Seriously. So it's really hard to concentrate. Like every, I keep wanting to go, oh, look, but then it's like. And it's so, yeah, it's so distracting, but it's this peaceful thing of staring at a hummingbird

is so nice, but then they fucking dive on each other and chirp, like yell at each other. And then you hear their wings or this is like, it's just really fun. They're cool. Yeah. They're super cool. There's actually a video my friend sent me once. There's a guy who put a GoPro on his face and then put a hummingbird feeder like near under the GoPro so that it was basically hummingbirds flying up to his face, drinking their stuff.

So he could get these first person view like slow mo of hummingbirds, dude, the best videos. People are the best. Hummingbirds are fucking dicks. So don't worry about your life. Right. People are the best. Yeah. Especially when they have a GoPro strapped.

Listen, what we're trying to teach you is might be unclear now, but it's going to become clear very soon within the next 10 years. It'll be so obvious that you'll be like, oh my God, they were right. And now they live on a tiny island in Maine and we can't tell them. Clam Chowdertown. Clam Chowdertown. I'm the mayor of Clam Chowdertown. We are.

Mimi is the mascot. And you guys are the listeners. And you're the ocean. Thank you guys for being our ocean, our waves, our everything, our sea. You guys go deeper than we ever believe possible. Thank you for being the monster underneath the rock, deep down in the sea that's going to save us from the end of the world. That changes colors to match the environment.

You guys are always evolving with us. That's right. You're the cuttlefish of this podcast and we appreciate it. We want to cuddle with you. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. Bye.

Elvis, get your ass out here. He's keeping Ben's company in the... Elvis. Elvis. Elvis. Do you want a cookie? Wait. Okay.

Elvis, you want a cookie? Yes. Good boy. Elvis. Bye. Thank you.