My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - 76 - My Own Sinkhole

Episode Date: July 6, 2017

This week, Karen and Georgia discuss the murders of master forger Mark Hofmann and the case of the Central Park 5. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

We at Wondery live, breathe, and downright obsess over true crime, and now we're launching the ultimate true crime fan experience, Exhibit C. Join now by following Wondery, Exhibit C, on Facebook, and listen to True Crime on Wondery and Amazon Music. Exhibit C, it's truly criminal. Happy 4th of July. Hello. Wait, let's start over. It's not 4th of July anymore.

Oh, oh. Happy 5th of July. It's not the 5th. It's the 6th. Hello and welcome to my favorite murderer. Hi, welcome. Thanks for coming. That's Karen Kilgarib. Why do we always start with like... It's super uncomfortable. We've gone over this a million times.

We're staring at each other. For many reasons. And maybe that's part of it. We just stare at each other. To see who's going to go first. And then the fakest voices that we have to offer come out of our heads. And then we ask to start over.

But we don't. And we never plan anything. I mean, what? What are you going to plan? What are you going to plan? I mean, we have an ending. What more do you want? Who cares anyway?

Yeah. Of all the things. Have you seen that picture? The newest pictures that have come back from the Hubble telescope that show the galaxies? They're purple. They did it basically. It's like black background.

They did purple were the galaxies in the picture. And orange was the gas. The different things of gas that make stars. And it like there's a countless number of galaxies in this photo. You're giving me an anxiety attack. I'm just saying who cares what we how we start this podcast. Dude, we're stardust. Dude.

Dude, we're made of stars. We really I can't even start to think about it. Wait. That is it the the vastness of space gives you anxiety. The vastness of space, the reality of life. What is it? What are we? We're aliens.

Clearly. I mean, everyone is. I'm not. I'm not. I'm actually Irish. Which is worse and harder. There's that podcast. We love mysteries abound that we go to sleep to.

Then like in the last episode is like are are humans actually aliens? And it's like I got so into that episode that when I land it, when I went to Petaluma for Father's Day, when I landed and Lauren Adrienne came and picked me up, I got into the car and was like, so the thing is that there's a really good chance we're all aliens. So that's events too. He was and I explained it very poorly.

She's like, I don't know. Yeah. I don't. And then I then I turned to him and one night when Elvis was sitting on me and I said, do you think cats are aliens? He was just like, no, I am. I am the weird one in the relationship. He is the like, what's it called?

He's the voice of reason. Yes, that. Oh, speaking of which, there's a reason we can never think of the word trophy. And I would like to say I would like to take responsibility for it because I think every time it's happened, it's been in my story where we like a serial killer takes trophies. Yeah, they take a thing. They keep it so they can look at it and remember the bad thing they did. That's called a trophy.

Okay, but it's the word memento, which is what we use. This is the fucking same word. Yeah, but I guess I guess the most often used term and the ones that people's tweet to us in all caps with 17 exclamation points after is trophy. Yeah. So maybe here in the podcasting loft, which we finally moved into and everyone are you going to ever tweet picture or put pictures on Instagram? Yeah, I just like didn't feel like it was done yet, but I should just post it.

It's so good. You guys all of the awesome art you sent us and dolls you've made us and pictures and everything Georgia has arranged in her loft obsessively. And it looks so cool. It's super fun to record it on social media. But there's like things I want to frame still and things I need to put up here and there, but I'll post it for now. And there's also a drawing of a let's sit crooked and talk straight drawing.

And I thought it was so funny when I hung it crooked. Yes. Well, I saw it immediately and it made me laugh. It's driving me crazy. Like as a fucking OCD person, but it's got a point. There's a reason it's that way. Reason I don't need to download the app that is a measure leveler. Oh, they have that.

I can have that. Dude, dude. You can have an app for anything. I know. Man, when the grid goes down, we're going to. We're screwed beyond belief. Nothing will be straightened. No frames will be straight.

And that you won't know, even if there are like landlines, if they can get a hard line in some way, could you do you know, even your own phone number anymore? Yeah. Do you know mine? No, I have Vincent and I purposely memorized each other. So I'm going to give it out right now. Okay, great. Please call us day or night.

Do you know what I like? I'm super prepared, trying to prepare for earthquakes, you know? And so I got like this is boring. This is so boring. Nobody cares. Right. As I take a huge sip of Diet Coke thinking you're going to cover for at least 30 seconds. No.

Preparing for earthquakes is necessary and a reality in California. Yeah. But would you do buy some flashlights? Come on, just shush it up a little bit. Have a flashlight. I have a external batteries in my car and in my. The hand crank kind? No, no, no, no, for the phone like, like that have a charge on them.

Oh, right. Listen, everyone be prepared. Yeah, that's it's very important. Yeah. I have a like an, I have an earthquake kit in my front closet. I have one too. But all I think of is what if that's the part of the house that goes down? Dude, I have one in the loft and I'm like, clearly the loft is going to collapse.

What is it doing here? I stick flashlights under everything in my whole house. Smart. And I've actually, when I bought my house, I had to sign a piece of paper declaring that I understood that my house is on land, that if there's a strong enough earthquake, it turns to liquid and sinks into the earth. What? I will get my own sinkhole, which is, as many people know, one of my great passions of life

is sinkholes. Well, I have a question. What kind of liquid are we talking about? Because it's something fun, like Kool-Aid, then I'm like, great. Yes, I have, there's a Kool-Aid spring underneath my house. No, it's because I'm near the quote unquote LA River. Maybe the one that's feet from my door. Yes.

Well, that goes right up kind of near my house if you go north. And that creates the water table is right, I guess, close to under my house. So basically, if the ground shakes, the kind of silt or whatever ground is under my house, we'll just mix with the water, become like. Sand. Quick sand. To buy. And goodbye.

And goodbye. And good night. So just things to. Do. Skippers. Come back. Skippers. This is what you need to know the most.

Skippers in places where there isn't and won't be earthquakes ever. Hi. You never know, though. Do you think there's a geologist who listens? Is that an earthquake doctor? Yes, definitely. Okay. He's going to email.

So you are completely incorrect about all of this information. I signed paperwork. Listen, speaking of, I'm not. Oh, experts, that's right. I have a letter, an email from a girl who. So I did the mainline murders, the fucking insane mainline murders last week. Yes. And the girl who was, whose dad was involved in the case emailed us.

Whoa. Okay. I'm so excited when you covered the mainline murders in your last episode, as my dad was very closely involved in the case. He prosecuted Karen Reinhardt's lover, William Bradford, patches. Patches, the professor. Yeah, for stealing from her estate. So the one thing he got in the beginning.

He described Bradfield as a master manipulator and a truly evil man, despite being a prosecutor for over 30 years and putting hundreds of murders behind bars, including billionaire murderer, John DuPont. Oh, wait, wait. Is that the Fox catcher guy? Hell yes. My dad says no case has ever affected him quite like this one.

He's a father of four daughters and he still tears up when he talks about the kids, the innocent children, and the discovery of Karen's art museum pin on the floor of the car. And by the way, I accidentally called her Carol at the very end of it and that's just horrible. You were off the page though. You were just trying to talk. Yes. That's always a mistake.

It's the mistake that we're, we're dedicated to making on this podcast. Yes. Never apologized for like, I just apologize. So patches and principal Smith were co-conspirators, he thinks, and that patches had agreed, I'm just calling them this, agreed to split Karen's life insurance money with principal in exchange for killing Karen and her children. To this day, he's still heartbroken over the police mishandling the evidence that led

to Jay Smith's conviction of being thrown out. Thank you guys so much, et cetera, et cetera. John Manay, JFK, thanks again, stay sexy, don't get murdered. Brianna P.S. And Steven said he asked, could I read this to you? Oh no, you're going to be embarrassed. Steven said, I don't want to embarrass you. Say it and then we'll decide after.

Okay, we can cut it out, Steven. P.S. is Steven Stingle. Nope, I said that wrong. Is Steven Stinky? Yes, totally. Is Steven Stingle? Oh, sorry, Steven, I'm going to take this one. Wait, can we say that?

Steven, you can cut this out, obviously, you're in charge of this whole show. Look at everything else. Well, there's got so many, so many listeners like this. Yeah, inquiring minds. He's a cat guy, which lots of girls like, but don't mistake that for innocence or, or any kind of, don't mistake his kindness for gentleness. What is the saying? Don't mistake my weakness for kindness.

I like that. I saw that one time on Tumblr. I dig it. Right, Steven? This is going to be in my dating profile. That whole clip of this podcast. The whole thing can fit on a Tinder profile. Where are you going?

Are you going to Tinder? Let everyone know. Oh, I don't, I haven't decided yet. Okay. I think you should take it over to what's it called? Too Many Fish? The Christian dating site? Too Many Fish, is that it?

Plenty of fish. Plenty of fish. There are too many fish. I don't like fish, so I feel like there's too many fish. That's true. Yes, Steven, religion. That's really important to you. I mean, I am a satanist, so.

So bring that act over to Too Many Fish and then, you know, for change of pace. Speaking of traveling. Can I just say one thing really quick? At the end of that email, did she start calling the woman Karen? Because Karen was the daughter. Yeah. Now I know only because somebody that has my name. No, no, no.

She said the discovery of Karen's art museum pin at the floor of the car. So the kids, the kid. Oh, right. We're going to Karen, yeah. But then later on. Um, yeah, you're right. She may have. No, you're right.

She did. Fuck yeah. Not just me. Right. I just want to make sure. So the, I know, I feel awful. The mother's, no, this isn't right. Okay.

Anyways, here we go. Well, just so, just so they know we didn't do it. Yeah. Should we start? That was just a run through. I'm going to say this. The, the Cleveland murderinos had a meetup. They sent us pictures.

They sent us video. There's a bunch of them. They're a good looking group. They were all in a bar. Enthusiastic. And a lot of people were tweeting just saying what a great group it was, how happy it made them to be a part of it. Other people were writing saying, hey, I didn't know.

I wish I was there. Yeah. And they, they ended up collecting $500 for and the backlog. That is amazing. Which is so cool. So thank you guys so much. And congratulations and way to go. Cause that really makes a difference.

That's lovely. Yeah. That's nice. Des Moines. Sorry. Des Moines. Sorry guys. Sorry we're talking shit.

I actually have no idea what it's like there, but apparently it's lovely. Yeah. I think I was like a great place to live. And I think there was an Iowa meetup too. Where they went and saw Despicable Me together and sent us a photo. And I'm like, what's, what's cool? You don't have to make a bunch of cocktails with like funny names.

You just go watch a movie. That's so good. I, there was a, somebody sent, I can't tell if he, it was the person that sent it was wearing the sweatshirt. Cause he kind of looked like a model or if it was just showing the picture of a sweatshirt. But you can get a sweatshirt that says Des Moines, D-U-H. Like it's basically spelled phonetically, but also Des Moines.

Des Moines. Made me laugh really hard. Yeah. Well, so we're, you know, I guess we're going to, no, we're not. We're on each other's radar. We might. Yeah.

We're going to, yeah. Yeah. Speaking of traveling, Steven is coming with us to Australia. That's right. Everyone. I don't think we've announced that yet. So don't look. So, okay.

There's a friend of a friend of Vince, this girl named Sarah A. And she's a leather worker and she sent us some handmade, what are they called? Passport covers. Covers in leather. Smell that. It's like. Oh, and they say SSDGM on this. And they say SSDGM.

And her name, her, uh, Martine is the name of the company. It's M-A-R-T-I-N-E. So they're really beautiful. With a big rabbit head as the symbol. It's like classy, like the classiest thing. Noctine. I've ever had SSDGM. That's gorgeous and cool.

I know, huh? Thanks. Sarah. Sarah, I was going to call her Martine. Thank you so much. Oh my gosh. We're all going to be matchy-matchy. I know.

We're going to just walk through security, just like, phew. Yeah. And they're like, oh, upgrade them. I'm going to hold mine like those FBI agents did. Yeah, cover your face. And they flip their thing open. And you learn how to flip your thing open with one hand. Do you have, I know, I'm taking over this thing.

Oh, can I say one more thing about Murderina? Yes. So on Instagram, they're having, I guess, a thing called the lettering challenge, which I didn't know was a thing. It's all these people who are like written to calligraphy and like write and like lettering, I guess, is a thing. And so they're having my favorite murder lettering challenge.

I guess there's like a whole, it's a whole community. They have challenges for like the month. And so they're, it's hashtag letter M-F-M. And I think I found my, the girl who was going to design my tattoo, my, my favorite murder tattoo from it. Oh, that's great. So do you want to get one with me or should I surprise you? That is so fucking weird.

Why? I had a dream the other night that everyone in my family was getting a tattoo together. And I was in the dream, I was like, really, Aunt Mary? In your mid 70s? Like I was just looking around at my family like, and you know what we were getting a tattoo of? Some toes.

What does that mean? I don't know. I'll look it up. But yes, I'll get a tattoo with you. Should I get one together? Yes. Okay. Can I, I want to get mine all across my one haunch.

Just, just my whole hip. Front to back. I think I'm going to get mine like, what's this called? Under my armpit side of my body ribs. I love it. And then I'm going to get a SSDGM. And this chick who does calligraphy really well, who I'll shout out when I get the tattoo,

I'm going to have, I'm having her design something. Maybe I'll get it on my neck. Are you serious? No. My, um, I used to know a guy that used to call neck tattoos, job stoppers. Yeah, they have hand tattoos. But I don't think that's true anymore.

Because how many chefs do you see with neck tattoos or like? Podcasters. I mean, people who are tatted up or like, yeah, fuck you. I run my entire company. I have a face tattoo. Deal with it. And Anna make more money than you and your dad combined.

I'm my own boss. Too bad. Your dad needs to, okay. Do you know my dad is driving Lyft now? And he said, I keep wondering if all these young girls who get in my car are murderinos. That sounded like he was going to kill them at first. Yeah.

He has to be careful with how he brings that up. Yeah. So if you see Marty picking up on Lyft. Marty. Marty. I think that's all. It's all for you. Let me see.

I think it's Stephen has. I was going to say, there's a little fun thing for us based on last week's story on your story, Karen. I know it's July right now, but I think it's never too early for us. Okay. All right. What is it?

The Andy Williams Christmas special. Holy shit. Oh my. Claudine Lange's first husband. God. And this was the one that like, was it that it was, this is the highest ranking television show before he got knocked out by some Super Bowls?

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. This is, this is the classics. This is when we spend a weekend watching this. Yeah. That is amazing. Do we save it for Christmas?

Just to get on there. Okay. A July Christmas special event. Yeah. Thank you so much. Wait, someone sent it to us or did you get it? No, I got it. Yeah.

Oh, Stephen. Stephen. Really good gift giving. You're now invited to watch it with us. Yeah, you just qualified. I'm the only one that didn't bring presents for everybody. Why didn't you fucking buy these? Oh, you didn't?

No. Oh, she fucked you then. She sent them to us on her own accord. Oh, I thought you would like. Oh, no, no, no. A friend of Vince's does this thing, so she sent us these lovely things. So nice.

Yeah. Oh God, I'm glad I clarified that. Because I didn't want to take responsibility for her. Okay, good. Yeah. Okay. I'm guilty. No, I wouldn't buy us anything.

Ever. We have everything we need. Ever. We have a sink, a whole house. We have a cat podcast. What more do we need? Oh, yeah. That's all we need.

You know. Um, we are blessed. Truly blessed. Truly, truly, truly. Okay, it's me this week, right? Yeah. Yes. I knew.

Now you know. Steven's not fucking paying attention. Steven doesn't. I was trying to look up who. First list. I definitely went first. Yeah. Yeah.

Because now we're all back. We're all like, we're all on it again. What's a bummer though, and I think that we have this often, is that mine is a real bummer at the end. And I hate closing with a real bummer. Yeah, but. Then we have something positive. That's why we have a positive.

That's why we turn it hard. We take a hard left into positive land. Yeah, people don't like when murder podcasts are a real bummer. They don't? No, they do. Yeah, that's the whole point. Looking for a better cooking routine? With meal planning, shopping, and prepping handled,

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Goodbye. What makes a person a murderer? Are they born to kill or are they made to kill? I'm Candice DeLong, and on my new podcast Killer Psyche Daily, I share a quick 10-minute rundown every weekday on the motivations and behaviors of the criminal masterminds, psychopaths, and cold-blooded killers you hear about in the news. I have decades of experience as a psychiatric nurse,

FBI agent, and criminal profiler. On Killer Psyche Daily, I'll give you insight into cases like Ryan Grantham and the newly arrested Stockton Serial Killer. I'll also bring on expert guests to dive deeper into the details, share what it's like to work with a behavioral assessment unit at Quantico, answer some killer trivia, and even host virtual Q&As where I'll answer your burning questions. Hey, Prime members, listen to the Amazon Music exclusive podcast

Killer Psyche Daily in the Amazon Music app. Download the app today. Okay, mine is... It's hard sometimes, as we've talked about, to get, for me to get my homework done. No, it's, yeah. And especially when I will work on something for a while, and then if I have a friend who goes,

have you ever heard of this one, I will switch immediately and go do my friend. I switch, I switch, you know, you're halfway done. It's not like you're just reading about it. No. I switch all the time. Yeah, and so many of these stories, because, you know, you guys are just as into true crime,

if not more than either of us. So oftentimes you feel like I'm only telling a third of this story. I know there's so much more. I should have read an entire book about this, whatever. That's what other people do. So sometimes I'll bail just because I know a story has much more to it, and I should invest more time. You're not going to give it just, do it justice.

Right, exactly. Someone else already has. But this one was so juicy, and I loved it so much. My friend Bridger is the one who told me about it. He's a hilarious, he's very famous on Twitter, and he's a great writer. And he grew up in Utah, so he was like, have you ever heard of this one?

And I had never heard anything about it. Turns out there's a forensic files. There's lots of stuff. There's an amazing book. But anyway, I'll just give you, I'll give you what I know. So we're in Salt Lake City. OK, what's this, is it called anything? I'm not going to call it anything because I usually do that,

and then I end up giving it away. Yes, I totally understand that. OK. So we're in Salt Lake City the morning of October 15, 1985. OK. A man named Steve Christensen, who is a businessman, a husband, a father of four, and a bishop of the Mormon Church. He arrives at his office on the sixth floor

of the judge building in downtown Salt Lake City. One time I did a story, and it was that horrible one about the woman throwing her kids off the top of the hotel. In Utah. In Salt Lake City, even. Right. And in that, I threw out the random idea that it was a very, because all of Utah, I assume,

is very Mormon, that Salt Lake City would be a conservative town. Well, I was, couldn't have been more wrong about that. I would like to say now. I now know, because of making that mistake, that actually, Salt Lake City is the liberal part of Utah, and it's a college town, and it's the hip place, and it's probably best case scenario. And if you're looking for, I don't know, a great shirt

or really cool flats, I don't know. So Steve Christensen gets to his office. He sees a brown, wrapped box-shaped package in front of his office door, and his name's written on top of it. He picks it up, and it immediately explodes. Oh, fuck. Here, I thought it was something else, and this is fucking, let's do this.

Yeah. So it was a pipe bomb. Steve is killed. The Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Fright, yeah. It's, it was a pipe bomb that was made with concrete nails or inside, and concrete nails are the nails you use to pound in. They're not made of concrete. They're the really strong industrial-sized nails

that you pound into concrete. So the person that made this pipe bomb wanted the person who picked it up to be killed. Wow, what a bummer. Yeah. So the ATF officers arrive, they begin to piece the bomb back together to figure out that it's a pipe bomb,

and that was activated by a mercury switch that would go off when the package was picked up and tilted one way or the other. So the minute the mercury shifts. Exactly. It's in a little glass circuit, and if it is laying on one side of this little glass thing, and then when you pick it up, if you put it

and chip it one way or the other, the circuit connects, and that's when the bomb explodes. Wow. So they know from a bomb like that that the person, that the bomber dropped that box off, because they would have to make sure it stays exactly the way it is. And they couldn't mail it. Yeah, you can't just give it to somebody else.

OK. So also inside the bomb were Tandy brand batteries, which is as many RC enthusiasts know. Tandy is the Radio Shack brand of batteries. Really? So they start going around to the local Radio Shacks trying to find out who's bought batteries there in the past week or whatever.

Mm-hmm. They also find out that Steve Christensen recently worked at a financial company called CFS, which after doing huge business in the 70s and the early 80s had started losing money and was in serious trouble. So this is the part that actually found really interesting because so the 80s were like a time of big money.

That's when everybody pretended to be rich and preppies. And you know, it was a very eyes-on Coke time. Yeah. And apparently Salt Lake City in that time was a hotbed for financial fraud. Really? Yeah. So what people would do, conmen would go to Salt Lake City

and they would kind of like get into the Mormon church. They would either pretend they were Mormons or they would befriend higher ups in the Mormon church. And then when they would do business, they would like say they were in securities or whatever stocks bond. They like, I got a ground floor fucking thing to get in on. Exactly. And then the elders or whoever in the church would be like,

oh, this guy is trustworthy. And so then all the parishioners or Mormons, I'm not sure what you call the general word for it, but all the people in that church would then trust that person and buy into whatever thing that that person was bringing to the table, whether it was high finance or also very popular pyramid scheme, vitamin sales got to be very popular. What the fuck?

Back then. Yeah. So it was kind of an amp. There was lots of amway, low grade amway kind of bullshit going on. Did they get the vitamins? Did they ever get the vitamins? Did they ever get the vitamins they needed? I don't know. But it was a kind of thing.

They call it affinity fraud and it happens in lots of different kinds of religions. This is why my money is under my bed. Right. And trust no one. It's the same. It's the assumption that quote unquote, one of your own is going to look out for your best interest as opposed to an outsider.

Oh, I don't trust anyone, do you? No, I'm scared of all money. My fucking cousin isn't financial, whatever the fuck, and I like I'm scared. Sorry, Mitch. Well, because it's so anyone can tell you anything. And if you don't know exactly what's going on, it's 100% pure trust.

Yeah. And if people are that into money, like they're into money and they want it. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Well, so it's the same thing Bernie Madoff did to he got $20 billion, as you well know, watching that documentary. That's so good.

From wealthy Jewish people, a guy named Alan Stanford did it to Southern Baptists. He had a $7 billion empire that fell. There was even a con man named Monroe L. Beachy who became a trusted within the Amish community. And he went to prison for orchestrating a scheme that defrauded 2,700 investors. Many of them his friends and neighbors.

What a dick. So it's just a very common practice of like this idea that your religion would would stand for your good morals. And that that therefore the business is trustworthy. It's almost worse con than just, you know, clients, because yeah, these people are trusting because they because if you're in their religion, it's because you believe the same things they do.

You have the same morals. They're going right on the inside. Yeah. You know, they're not just standing out and like rolling the dice that maybe you'll believe them and maybe not. They're they're asking you, they're playing on your ultimate faith, which is very ugly.

And and in the Mormon religion, it was the kind of thing where they're, I believe a lot. I know lots of Mormons. I've grown up. I grew up with Mormons. One of my good friends that I used to work with Betsy is a Mormon. And, you know, it's it's a very moralistic.

They the life they live is really the whole idea of it is that you live this life based on your faith. So it's like my friend just said it the other day. He's like Mormons really walk the walk. Yeah. So it's not just and I may maybe I'm only saying this because all those like design websites that you see these days. And when you trace them back, it's like a young Mormon family,

but it's like the most beautiful, you know, table setting and the cutest design. And it's like, here's a great thing for your baby. I've heard so many bloggers like famous bloggers or like the big ones that have beautiful websites are Mormon for some reason. Yeah. Because it's kind of like it's the whole idea of like home building and like putting the best into your home. Right.

And being ambitious and always having something anyways. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, these are insane generalizations, obviously. We're not speaking for every single person that's in the religion, but there is just there's something to that. There's something to that where there's it. There is a there seems to be an innocence that that in the 70s and 80s con men were

like, oh, we can exploit this, this community, this sense of community that they have. Okay. Okay. Two hours after Steve Christensen's attack, there's another bombing at the home of Gary and Kathy sheets. Gary sheets with Steve Christensen's boss at CFS and his wife Kathy was the one who picked up the package. It exploded in her hands and she was killed.

Oh my God, how I never heard of this. I know. So now the police are thinking that these bombings are related to the failed CFS business dealings. And so it could be retaliation from an old employee or even the mafia. Oh my God. Police talked to the sheets, 13 year old next door neighbor who saw a tan minivan pull into the sheets driveway the night before around midnight and thought it was suspicious. But all he saw was the car.

He didn't see anybody. Anybody get in or out. But then they also talked to a jeweler who worked on the fifth floor of the judge building one floor below Steve Christensen's office. His name is Bruce Passi and he tells the police that the morning, the morning of the bombing, he got into the elevator with his father and there was a man standing in the elevator wearing a Letterman jacket, but with no letter on it. And he was holding a brown, like paper wrapped box that said to Steve Christensen on the top

of it. Oh shit. So he, Bruce Passi describes this man to the police, saying he's a white male, five foot eight, medium brown hair. The next day there's a third bombing. This time it's inside a car and the victim is seriously injured, but he's not killed. It's 30 year old Mark Hoffman. He is rushed to the hospital where he's in critical condition, but he ends up being

able to tell the police that he'd opened his car door and the package was sitting on the driver's seat with the action of opening the door. It fell off and exploded. Oh good. So he didn't get the full impact. Right. But he had a fingertip blown off. He had a huge wound in his knee where parts of the explosives went into his knee cap,

like his knee area. So he was, he was pretty badly injured. But this, but immediately the police are suspicious because if he had his fingers blown off, that doesn't, that means that the box was in his hands, not on the seat and then tumbling to the ground. Also with the direction, the guy in forensic files explains it really well, but it's basically the way they know bombs explode and the directions they go. If the thing was in his knee, then he could not have been standing outside of the car.

He must have been inside of the car leaning over and so they basically reconstruct it. I want to watch that. I'm like trying to picture it in my head and like, basically they, with the trajectory of the stuff that flew out of the bomb, which hit him, they realize he must have been leaning over the center console holding the box and basically inside the car. So his story, why would you lie about that? Why wouldn't you just tell him exactly? I love when cops figure that out.

Like this person killed themselves and it's like, no, the trajectory, like yours last week, the trajectory shows that that person couldn't have killed themselves. And that's the relatively new forensic part. That's like what forensic files is all celebrating because it's like we, you would never have known that until forensics comes in and is like, hold up. So the police search Mark Hoffman's house and they find a Letterman jacket just like the one that Bruce Passi said the guy in the elevator was wearing. And they also find, they also see that he has a tan minivan.

Oh shit. And there's gunpowder that they find traces of around his house that match the brand used in all three bombings. Well, there you go. So Mark Hoffman maintains his innocence says he's the victim and he demands to take a lie detector test and he does, they give him a lie detector test and he passes with flying colors. Yeah.

Yeah. So the police start looking into who this guy really is. So Mark Hoffman was born in Salt Lake City on December 7th, 1954, raised in a strict Mormon household. He was a mediocre student. But later he was tested to have an IQ of 169, which is insanely high. That's one point over mine. I feel like in stories I've read people who are like mad geniuses are usually in like the

mid 130s to 140s. I was going to say that, like, I feel like very, very, very fucking smart is like 130. I think so. But like then genius is like 160 something and maybe I like us trying to guess what genius IQ of the dumbest way well, I know when my brother was a kid with fucking attention issues, they tested him and he had like one very high up there because it's like, well, he's just fucking bored. Yes.

That's why. So yeah. And I never, I was not that smart. And I was never bored. No, I was always bored. You're like, this is fascinating. I was just bored. I'm not smart and bored.

Okay. So he collected coins as a teenager and when he was, when he was young, that's a weird cut and paste. He collected coins as a teenager and at some point he forged a rare mint mark on a dime that was verified by an organization of coin collectors to be genuine. And when he was a kid, he tricked the shit out of fucking professional coin people. Exactly. He got, he got the taste early of like, you know, it's impressive.

I think so too. This don't kill people next. I mean, so in seven in 1973, he volunteered to spend two years and as an LDS missionary. When he came back from his mission, which was in England, he enrolled as a pre-med major at Utah State University. He married Dora Lee old in 1979. They eventually have four children together and she filed for divorce in 1987. So in 1980, Hoffman claims to have found a 17th century King James Bible with a document

inside that he claimed to be the transcript that Joseph Smith's, who was the founder of the Latter-day Saints Church, he had a scribe named Martin Harris and was supposed to be a transcript that Martin Harris brought to a Columbia Classics professor in 1828 that was originally copied by Joseph Smith from the golden plates, from which he translated the Book of Mormon. So I'm going to say this probably incorrectly, but the general idea of the founding of the Church of Jesus Christ, the Latter-day Saints is Joseph Smith found golden tablets that he dug up and from those tablets, he wrote down the tenets of the religion.

And an angel appeared to him as he dug up those tablets to help him. So basically, he presents this document. They freak out because they're like, they'd never, it's a historical document from their church they'd never seen before. And the church ends up buying it from Hoffman for $20,000. So this not only sets him financially, but it also sets his reputation as a historical documents dealer. So I wonder where he said he found it inside the King James Bible.

So he was already trying to become like a historical book dealer, so one of the books, okay, that makes sense. It was a really old, it was a 17th century King James Bible. So then it was like inside that. So basically, he then starts, for the next several years, selling forged, quote unquote, lost LDS documents to the church, the most notorious of which was the Salamander letter in 1984. So he basically starts forging pieces of historical text and bringing them to the church and as

a church member himself going, I found this, I found this. Now the church is, part of it is like a little bit like, oh yeah, we need to be owning these papers and sometimes he would donate them and sometimes they would buy them from him. But essentially, it was text that was relevant to them knowing about their own religion and the founder of their own religion. So the one that is the most infamous is the Salamander letter, which basically said that when Joseph Smith dug up those tablets, it wasn't an angel that appeared to him, but a white Salamander.

So that was such a change of the historical record. And they had never heard that before? They'd never heard it before, it was super freaky and it was kind of like they didn't know if they should announce it. They put them in a really weird position because suddenly it's a very non-religious sounding and almost like a magical witchy sounding version of the story of how their church is founded. Right.

That's a sound Salamander is kind of like, not as cool as a snake, is it a snake? No. Well, but snakes in Christian religion are evil. So there's, but there's just something weird about it's an albino Salamander, like as opposed to an angel. Man, I think he could have done better. Well, a bear, an albino bear, a blue bear, a blue, um, well, it turned out he was actually forging all of these documents and he had lost his faith in when he was a teenager.

Like he went on his mission basically, he felt a lot of pressure from his family because he was raised in such a strict Mormon household, but he, um, he was trying to embarrass, uh, the church. So he was writing these documents and changing these stories and basically adding in little inconsistencies and mistakes so that the church would kind of be scrambling and not knowing what their official approach should be. And he, and he was like a master forger because he had already, um, sold, let's see this. Here's the list.

He'd forged unpublished poems by Emily Dickinson signatures of Mark Twain, a full handwritten letter, uh, supposedly written by Betsy Ross. No. Um, he tricked the library of Congress. He tricked Sotheby's. He sold signatures by George Washington. John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Daniel Boone, John Brown, Andrew Jackson, Nathan Hale, John Hancox, Francis Scott Key, Abraham Lincoln, John Milton, like, wow, this guy is so lucky.

He just finds all this shit. Yeah. And makes a shit ton of money off of it. Um, there was somebody named Button Gwinnett signature was the rarest and therefore the most valuable of any sire, signer of the declaration of independence. The guy named Button signed the declaration of independence. Or girl. Oh, sure.

No way. But little button Gwinnett got up there, um, he also said he, he claimed to have discovered a famous document called the Oath of the Free Man, which, um, is believed to be, or, you know, some say the precursor to the declaration of independence. Um, it's from the 1600s and it was worth over a million dollars. Oh my God. But this, they never knew it existed until he came. They knew it existed, but they didn't, there were no copies of it in, in America.

Um, uh, so he had claimed he found one and he was trying to sell that, but it was the sale of that was kind of held up because, um, they were questioning its authenticity. Finally. Yeah. Like, you know what we should do? Well, in this, it's funny because I think in the forensic files, they start talking about how they, because it's within the church and the way he did it, he, he was a master manipulator. She was super smart.

Um, so he knew how to do it where they would not, they didn't question the documents because of who he was and what he had already sold. So it was like, well, if he sold something to the library of Congress and Sotheby's and all these places, what are we going to, we're going to question him. Yeah. This guy's an expert, Andy's a Mormon. So get him all the way in on the inside. Um, but he also would buy really expensive things.

So he was always broke, even though he would make big money on selling these forgeries, he would then buy like rare books and he was buying things so that he could then forge other things later. Right. I mean, it's very complicated and there's a, there's a book called, um, The Poet and the Murderer by Simon Worrell and that is, tells the story of Mark Hoffman, but specifically from the view of him pretending to have discovered poems by Emily Dickinson and the public library in Amherst, Massachusetts, which is where she was from, collects money to buy these here

to for unpublished lost Emily Dickinson poems that were fake. Um, yeah, so he's, he's like a, he, he was like one of the greatest forgers or the, you know, most infamous forgers, um, anyone had ever seen work in it. Uh, he's doing it. So essentially what happened was he was trying to sell some new set of documents to the church. Steve Christiansen knew a little bit about, um, ant, antiquities and old documents. And so he was questioning, he was like, I heard this guy is being questioned about the oath of the Freeman.

They're not even sure like he's under investigation. We need to look closer at these papers calling him out. Yeah. So what he did was he plants a bomb at Steve Christiansen's office to kill him. Then he planted the other one at Gary Sheets house to make it look like it had something to do with CFS instead of anything to do with him. Shit that's fucking tricky. Yeah.

I mean, this guy is, you know, yeah, tricky. He's a trickster. Uh, he was eventually arrested in January of 1986, charged with a total of 27 counts, including murder, forgery, possession of an unregistered machine gun and Jesus Christ. Yeah. That's literally Jesus Christ. Uh, Salamander. So he albino Salamander, you can't forget the albino.

I mean, all of their beliefs for hundreds of years are one thing. And then he gives them paper that's like, it turns out an albino Salamander had a say. They're like, you know, an angel sounds cooler. So we're just going to stick with that. They're like, we, now we need to have a really big meeting. And what if we have to start fucking praying to an albino Salamander? I mean, would that ever even have been a choice? No.

Uh, they say also, so he had like 600 forgeries that got sold and are in the market where they're still finding them. Yeah, I was going to ask. Yeah. Apparently, and he wrote a letter from jail explaining which things that he did were forgeries because some things obviously when he started out, he kind of, there were valid ones. So, um, but they're saying that they're like, there's, um, some Daniel Boone, uh, uh, signatures out there, um, that are fake that like there's, there's, um, because there were hardly any

in the first place, but then Mark Hoffman comes along and suddenly there's four that are in the marketplace, which brings the value down, um, and it turns out, you know, three of them aren't real. Do you think that his forgeries are now worth money? A lot of money to murdering types? Yeah. Or like, is there a forgeries museum? I'd go to that.

I would too. I mean, I think overall the historical signatures are going to be worth the most, of course, because they're like the, you know, but I feel like some, there's got to be like Smithsonian or some kind of thing that's just like, you know, it's history. Look at this rap bastard in that apartment. Look what happened. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, I just think it's funny that he did it so much. And when you see the paper, like he would bake the paper in the oven. Yeah. He's going to ask for like a lighter. Yeah. Exactly. Like an old Western. Yeah.

Um, all that. They found all this, you know, they found ink that he specifically mixed to match. But then the, when the, um, the guy who finally started investigating it forensically, he was like, the new ones all globe blue underneath a microscope because they're new. Yeah. And so he was just really easily able to once they knew, start investigating all of them and just be like, none of this is real. Yeah.

Sorry. This letter from Betsy Ross. That's crazy. I bet he'd be good at the lettering challenge. He might be. He's got to have good handwriting. He would add in, he'd be like, I believe that this is a real, um, I don't know what I was going back.

Anyhow, he initially maintained his innocence, uh, but at a preliminary hearing, um, the prosecutors showed so much evidence of his forgeries and his debts, um, and all of the evidence linking him to the bombs that instead of risking the death penalty, he pled guilty to two counts of second degree murder account of theft by deception for the salamander letter, um, an account of fraud for the sale of the McClellan collection was, which was that last collection he was trying to sell when Steve Christiansen stepped in. Um, he confessed all of his forgeries in open court. Um, he was in January, 1988.

He was sentenced to five years to life in prison. He's spending life in prison. Five. Uh, wow. Wow. And he's still there. We can still there. Wow.

Yep. That's Mark Hoffman. Everybody. I first, I thought you were going like towards the Ted Kaczynski route when I heard about a bomb, but that's fucking crazy. I've never heard about that. Oh, to be killed by a bomb, do you ever open on the lobes and you're like, I don't know what this is going to be?

Yes. Well, that's my moths thing. I never think it's a mom, um, a bomb though, or a mom. Just a mom coming to tell me to sweep up the kitchen. Honey, do those dishes. Oh, what is that fear? They're just sitting there. You let him soak for too long.

Yeah. You can't just let things soak in cold water, Karen. It's true. But also this was the 80s when like this was back when you could walk into an office building with a plain package. I feel like, you know, as worrisome as it all sounds, we don't live in that world anymore. It's like that was definitely a very pre 9 11 era. Yeah.

Except I, yeah. Yeah. But maybe not, you know what I mean? Well, I'm scared. I know. I know. You can be. Well, that's fucked up.

Good job. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks. Good job. I don't know what. Thank you. Um, okay.

I'm glad we were talking about the 80s and you explained kind of like the money stuff because mine takes place in the 80s too and has a lot to do with class wars and all this stuff. Maybe should I not tell you the name of it? What do you think? Because I think you'll know immediately about it. Okay. All right.

I'm going to. Yeah, I'm not going to tell you. Okay. All right. So New York late 80s. It's insane. Um, Jim Dwyer of the New York Times calls it completely schizophrenic. They've got one side where there's just insane wealth from Wall Street.

Everyone's getting fucking rich and doing coke and having eyes odds and such. Like we said, um, the financial industry industry is booming after a long period of stagnation and it got so bad like in the 70s and I think early 80s that the city of New York was going to file for bankruptcy. Oh, wow. Do you remember that? I didn't know that about New York City. The city was going to file for bankruptcy, but I mean, it really was so bad in the 70s

and like the late 70s and the Carter administration where it was just like recession, huge recession like we've talked about before gas lines. You couldn't get gas on certain days. I mean, the whole, the whole country was going through this, but New York City, um, because they had so much violence and, um, that sort of thing. I feel like it was a lot worse. And in fact, um, so during the financial crisis of the 70s, a ton of neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx, uh, the homeowners and the landlords were lighting the apartment buildings

on fire and burning them to the ground just to collect insurance money. So all these people had nowhere to live and the name and they left them like that. So there are these, you know, looks like how you see, how you saw Detroit for a little while. Just, you know, it's, it's insane. There's, um, sorry, there's a movie, now I can't remember what it's called and Albert Finney is in it and they have, it's basically like, it's basically a kind of a werewolf in the, in New York city movie, but there's parts of it where I think it's the Bronx where

it's just people, maybe like kids, whatever, playing in like their vacant lot filled with just burned out debris. Wolfen. Wolfen. That's exactly right. It's kind of a cookie. It's supposed to be scary, goofy movie, but you can see all that where it's like now New York city is pristine and amazing.

And of course, like the real estate is like, once Giuliani took over and made it fucking Disneyland, but there's also photo, not that I'm think that it's better when it was dangerous, but there's photographs. You can go. There's a couple of great, um, photo, uh, what are the slideshows of New York in the 70s and 80s, and I mean, just the subways alone are terrifying. Yeah. And, uh, yeah.

And they had kids playing on like mattresses and vacant burned out. It's just, it's crazy. It's fucking crazy. And especially, I think younger people who'd never saw that should go and look those photos because you'd be, you'd be very surprised. Yeah. That's where punk rock came from. Yeah.

Yeah. So it was mostly in black and Latino neighborhoods that this burning down was doing, uh, let's see. So both unemployment rates and crime rates rates were at an all time high and because of the bankruptcy coming up, police and firefighters had been laid off, municipal services were cut, including sanitation and afterschool programs were totally cut. So these kids who had working parents had nowhere to go afterschool. So they were, you know, on their own in this insane city, um, and during this time, son

of Sam was on the loose. So people were fucking terrified of that as well. Um, then, and then there was the blackout of 79 and there's a fucking great American experience called the blackout and I fucking, I everyone should watch it. It's so good. And it shows what it was like at that time. And after that, there were these crazy fires and looting and it never really got cleaned up.

So you have abandoned buildings, you have all this stuff. Um, so then in the early 80s, Wall Street suddenly boomed, created crazy wealth for people. I mean, the wealth they had compared to what normal people had even was insane. Um, and then the other side of the city is experiencing crazy poverty, the crack epidemic starts, crazy violence that's fed by an understaffed, a lot of times racist and corrupt police department that is, you know, horrible and there's class tensions and racial unrest in about 84 crack came to New York and that just increased the crime, the crack wars came. So also giving really young kids access to a lot of money and weapons.

So you just have these young kids and teenagers, you know, with, yeah, all hell rakes loose. That was like the way to get a job and to get out of, of the hood. Totally. Basically was, and for some of them, it was the only way. Yeah. I always thought there's an amazing movie called fresh. It's one of my favorite movies of all time. I've never seen it.

It's really good. It's a beautiful feature with this other movie with the Andy Williams Christmas special. Um, it's such, it's about, uh, a black kid who's trying to figure out a way to get out of the bad neighborhood and the bad situation he's in. And it is so brilliantly written and brilliantly shot and it's, I, it's one of my favorite movies. Let's, I definitely want to watch that. Yeah.

We need a fucking, we, I need, and I'm sure other people want, it's just a lineup of movies you suggest because it's never me. It's, I think I suggest documentaries like Ken Burns and you're like, here's this movie that'll change your life. And I'm like, I've never seen it. So we're going to need someone to make a list of those movies. We're going to need someone with a mustache to write that down. If only we had, oh shit, I owe you money.

Um, I owe you a paycheck. I forgot. I didn't forget. Oh, Stephen. I'm sorry. Um, so crack came, hell breaks loose. All right. On a typical day in 1989, which is where the story takes place.

New Yorkers reported not one day, nine rapes, five murders, 255 robberies and 195, 94 aggravated assault. Shit. Yeah. And that's later in the 80s. 89. God. Yeah.

Okay. So. So the people who are experiencing this, of course, are the poor working class families. Um, they're falling through the cracks, brown and Latino, black and Latino communities in mostly Bedford style in Brooklyn, Harlem, Brownsville, East New York, these neighborhoods are experiencing all of this. And then you have the upper East side of fucking richest shit people. All right.

For example, and then I'll get onto the story in 1984, Bernard gets, he was a 37 year old Queens native white dude, nerdy white dude. He's on the subway and he starts getting, uh, accosted by four young black men. They tried to mug him and he takes out a gun and shoots all four of them. They all survived, but he became known as a fucking subway vigilante. People celebrated him. Right. Uh, and he was ultimately found not guilty on all charges except for possession of an

illegal firearm and sentenced to one year in prison for shooting for people. Yes. Um, so, all right. So that's also, sorry, but that's also the time that they started doing guardian angels. Yes. It was almost like people didn't believe anyone was going to help them with crime. Uh, and like the Bernard gets thing was such a racially kind of motivated situation, but also it was just the, these everybody, it's the irony of like what you just said was the

people that were in the worst neighborhoods, which were, uh, demographically minorities and people of color were actually getting the worst of this crime. But then it's like the white vigilante that starts shooting everybody. Right. Oh, you know, it's not like, yeah, you don't go to these neighborhoods and every, you know, there's work. These are working class people. I mean, they're working their asses off and they're not going to be able to move into

other neighborhoods. There's so much racism. There's kind of this race where between white people and people of color, but it's, you know, it's not everyone who's they're being affected more so by this. So okay. So we'll get into this. We'll get into the central park five and the east side right there. Oh shit, dude.

Yeah. All right. I'm going there. You sound all right. Like you're not. No, I mean, this is just one of the heaviest. The thing that I remember most about this case is how go, you know, go ahead. Tell me.

No, no, no. It's just, it was such a big deal. And this was like when I was in high school. Yeah. I remember this. I was maybe 10. So I didn't, my mom kept that away from me. So you'll have to jump in at any time and tell me stuff.

Yeah. All right. The night of Wednesday, April 19th, 1989, around 9pm, approximately 30, 30, God I'm burping. Sorry. 30 teenagers who lived in East Harlem went into the northmost part of Central Park and they proceeded to commit several attacks, assaults and robberies. Can you imagine 30 teenagers?

I don't care what, what fucking nationality or color they are. I would run. No, no. Teenager are bad. Teenagers are bad people. Teenagers are horrible. So two tiny teenagers are fine. Yeah.

30 teenagers. 30. They're the volume alone. Yeah. I don't care if they're women, girls. I fucking run. I think girls are worse. Yeah.

Here's the thing though. Were the, do we know for a fact that they were committing those crimes or was that, was that like a fact? Well, I can, yeah, I have a list of great, great crimes they were actually committing. Okay. So I don't, yeah, it's hard because you want to see every, everyone is innocent, but they, you know, and it was 30. So who knows how many of them were actually doing it, right?

So they attacked several bicyclists through rocks at a cab and attacked a man who was, who they assaulted, robbed and left unconscious. A school teacher out for a run was severely beaten. They attacked another jogger, hitting him in the back of the head with a pipe and a stick and they beat two men unconscious, hitting them with a metal pipe, stones and punches and kicking them in the head. So they def, there was a group of these 30 kids. And they were basically kind of wilding throughout the park.

Well, that's the word that was created later. Okay. So a chase ensued by the police and about 10, 15, a handful of the kids are taken into custody, including Kevin Richardson and Raymond Santana and they're both 14 years old. So these are young kids and they're charged with quote mischief. So cut to 1 30 in the morning, passerby has discovered the unconscious body of Trisha Miley in a shallow ravine in a wooded area of the park wearing only her bra. Trisha had gone for a run on her usual path in Central Park before 9am, I mean, sorry,

9pm that evening when her, and then when her almost lifeless body was found about four hours later, she had been knocked down, dragged or chased 300 feet and violently assaulted. She was stabbed five times, raped, sodomized and beaten almost to death. The first policeman who saw her said she was beaten as badly as anybody I've ever seen. Meanwhile, back at the police station, the kids were about to be released from custody when a police officer was told about Trisha being found. And then what followed was hours of intense interrogation using tactics to get them to wear them down as now we know that's how you get a confession, whether it's legitimate

or not exhaust them, they get no food, no drink, no sleep for almost two days. It takes, and they're repeatedly told that they could go home once they confessed. And then eventually after like two days, the boys turn against each other, they tell them, they admit just to, you know, go home. And these are 14, 15 year old children that aren't bad kids. So there's this documentary by Ken Burns and his daughter, and it's this incredible documentary that I definitely think everyone should watch called the Central Park Five. And they talk about the kids' backgrounds, and they're all good kids from good homes.

None of them had ever, ever been arrested or taken in before. You know, they were little league baseball players, they were not bad children. So they also, when there's a group of 30, yeah, how do they know who threw what rock, who threw like what, basically it's the slowest kids get arrested or this, yeah, go ahead. The thing is later, none of the people who had been attacked that night aside from Trisha were able to identify any of the boys who got, who were brought in for this attack. So they probably didn't have anything to do with it, otherwise they would have been identified. So they implicate each other in the assault, the boys begin to confess after two days.

I already said that. So in the written statements and videotape confessions, each confessed to being an accomplice to the rape, although not participating in the rape itself. And they start telling details of what happened and how. And then they implicate three other boys in the attack. And they're picked up for questioning. And Anton McCray, who's 15, Yusuf Salam, who's 15, and Corey Wise, who's 16. And they, they ultimately all confess, except for Yusuf Salam, along with, and then along

with the other two boys, the five of them are arrested and charged with the attack. The media fucking loses its shit, which is such a big part of the story, right? And probably how you heard about all of this is it was huge news. And the story kind of confirmed, you know, the white New Yorkers image of what's wrong with the city and confirms their racial prejudices. The boys, when they confessed, were calling it that they were wilding, which is a phrase that became huge and everyone used it. And it was kind of this reference to them all being these untamed, you know, children

running amok. They formed, quote, a wolf pack, which is also was what they made up. So, sorry, those were the boys words? Yeah. Like that's what they were telling the police. Wilding. Yes, they called it wilding, which they made up. And then the underage suspects names were printed, despite the fact that the names of criminal

suspects under the age of 16 are supposed to be withheld from the media and the public. They also print the names, photos and addresses. No fucking way of the juvenile suspects before any of them had been formally arraigned or indicted. Wow. Yeah. Who did it? What was it that I just think that at that point it was so many of them.

But it's basically the New York Daily News and New York Post or one of those. It's the it's the tabloid. Yeah, the tabloid. Yeah. Seeds. Yeah. The weed. None of them were arrested.

And they retracted their statement within weeks, claiming that they had been intimidated, lied to and coerced into making false confessions. And the confessions themselves were videotaped after they had been interrogated and confessed and written statements. That part wasn't taped at all. So they had no way to to show that they were being fed information and coerced. So they only taped the part where they said, I did it or someone else did it. They only taped the part after all this when they had their stories down.

Okay. And they knew the details they were supposed to be talking about. Didn't tape any of the part where they make them tell the story 500 times. Right. Or you know, you've seen these things where they say, is that what happened? That's not what happened. Right. Tell me the truth.

And they kind of feed it in this really creepy way. They lead them into the the correct story. Right. And who knows if they even do it? Do the cops do it on purpose? Do you think the detectives just don't think they even know? I mean, I just part. It seems like for a long time, it was just the way things were done until people lawyers

and whoever, you know, rights activists came back and were just like, you can't tell them how it went. And then when they repeat that back to you is because they want a sip of water or they want to go home. Yeah. Use it against them. Well, it's the whole thing too. Of like, that shouldn't be in miss.

The confession videotape should not be admissible in court because there's no background. Right. It's okay. It's not a temperpove. Nothing essentially. Yeah. Okay. So meanwhile, Trisha's injuries are so bad that she's given last rights.

Like they think she's going to die. But after being comatose for 12 days, she survives and was eventually able to talk, read and walk. But she had no memory of the night of the assault whatsoever. So now the trial and so usually the homicide detective, usually they look in, okay. Head of the homicide unit getting put on the case because they thought she was going to die. Linda Fairstein of the sex head of the sex crimes unit and her prosecutor, Elizabeth

letterer were put on the case. And for some fucking reason, they're part of the police investigation from day one. So they're helping investigate this case, thinking that these five kids did it and building the case around that. So they get to analyze the crime scene. They get to do all of these things that, that clearly are going to lead the case for the prosecutors, you know, And, but they were supposed to be the defense.

No, they're the prosecutors. Right. They're the sex crimes unit and their prosecutors and they are investigating case from the minute to happen. Okay. And that's not normal. No, because this way they can skew the results in the direction they want, which is immediately for these five boys.

Okay. So, you know, usually the prosecutors and the defense team and the attorneys wouldn't get the information until after the whole investigation has been completed by the detectives or the sex, the sex crimes unit, which is this woman who allowed her prosecutor to be in on. Oh, I see. Okay. Got it.

That makes sense. Yes. Okay. So the boys are brought to trial. 16 year old Corey Wise is being tried as an adult for some reason, because he's 16. And the newspapers are going nuts. The case of a white woman being attacked by a rowdy group of black teens stirring up the racism in the city, which kind of was this underlying thing that no one was talking about.

But finally, they had something to point at and be like, this is, it was the equal opposite of the Bernie gets situation. Yeah. It was, it was basically, uh, yeah, that's, that's kind of retribution, right? The idea of retribution and piling it all very conveniently on these five boys. Yeah. Um, so for example, the night of the central park rake, a woman in Bedford style was raped and thrown off a building, never fucking talked about in the media.

And that same week that this happened, 28 rapes were reported, but this, those were not being reported by the media. But the black community even turned against the boys as well, because some of them, because they were having their own run ins with the black youths who had salted and intimidated those people in their own neighborhood and they felt that they were giving the whole community a reputation as, you know, drug dealers and felons. Right. So even the, you know, the black community was fucking pissed about them.

Oh, and good old Trump puts out a full page ad in four newspapers calling for the death penalty to be reinstated in New York, even though the death penalty wasn't even on this table for this. He just put this. And at the time he was a, he was a slum lord and a very wealthy one, a very wealthy slum lord, very wealthy businessman, yeah, who made money off of basically being a slum lord. Yeah.

Oh, and casinos. Yes. Okay. And then the city sun newspaper and the Amsterdam news, Amsterdam news used a victim's name in their paper, despite the media policy of not publicly identifying victims of sex crimes. Yeah. So they gave out her name, even though it's supposed to, and they said it's because, well,

if the other people are willing to put out the boy's names, then she should have her name out too, which is like so fucked up. Well, that doesn't, no, that's not a one to one thing at all, not, but it sounds like this was the wild west, essentially. Yeah. This sounds like the worst 89 man, eighties, just this like, yeah, wild west. So the analysis was done on the DNA that was collected at the crime scene and it didn't match a single one of the suspects, they also didn't have any hair, any, any evidence and

the crime scene looked like it didn't look like five people could have been attacking someone. It looked like a single person was attacking someone. There was like the small little path that was walked up and taken Trisha away from the main road, but there wasn't, you know, beat up dirt or anything like that. So it was like, she was down in a ravine and there was like one track down to her body and back up. That's not like five people walk down.

Right. And when the boys got in there, they didn't have any mud or dirt on them. And the other thing is, if she were fighting back, which they said, the cops said that she put up a hell of a fight, they would all have scratches and crazy things on them. One kid had, one of them had a scratch on his eye, but that's it, right. So the DNA collected. And so when the DNA was collected and didn't match, the prosecutors just said that they must have been, there must have been a sixth one of them then that the DNA matches and

still brought them to trial with a case that was almost entirely based on the confession circumstantial. So okay. So the four boys, Kevin, Yusuf, Anton and Raymond are convicted of rape, assault, robbery and riot and the attacks. They were 15 years old and 14, so they got maximum sentence for juveniles, which is five to 10, but Corey Wise is 16 and tried to lose adult. So he gets five to 15 in fucking Rikers, which is like a hardcore prison and going in as

a rapist, especially against a white woman where there's a lot of Aryan people in the prison. Right. Exactly. All right. Well, the summer that the attack on Trisha occurred, there's a serial rapist terrorizing the Upper East Side called the East Side Rapist. Okay.

I just got a weird chill. Did you remember this? No. I've never heard of this before. Yeah. So you know that story, but you don't know the end of it. I know that story very well. All I know is that the mentality at the time was they caught some, this was the mentality,

they caught some of them and they're going to jail, like good. And everyone, yeah, everyone rejoiced. Everyone was absolutely, and I feel like in general, unquestioningly swallowing the story that was being fed. Yeah. Everyone. I mean, they wanted it to be solved and it was a perfect backdrop and proof of what was going on and what they'd been saying was going on and what they were mad about and something

to say, this is why I feel this way about, you know, this is why my racism is justified. Exactly right. And to say as if this is the only, these are the only people that are breaking the law in New York City. And that to me is the, that's the thing I feel like all the way up to and obviously past until very recently, but like around the OJ trial where it's this idea of you don't just get to say who is innocent and who is guilty, but like you don't just get to pull people through the legal system and just be like, they're the problem is solved because if you

have, if it's a setup, which many of them have been, you still have somebody that's guilty out there doing it. Totally. And who knows what color that person is, but you've now not solved the problem, ruined people's lives, supported racial stereotypes, not told an accurate story. So, but this is how the story ended in 2002. Okay. So, the summer that the attack happened, a serial rapist named the East Side Rapist

is fucking terrorizing everyone. August 5th, 1989, 17 year old Matias Reyes is caught after raping another victim. He's the East Side Rapist, up the East Side Rapist. He, so the woman who was raped noted to detectives that she saw fresh, fresh stitches on his chin and it was right after the attack on Trisha. So he ultimately confessed to one murder, five rapes, two attempted rapes, and the rape and murder, the murder was Lord, Lordus Gonzalez. And she was pregnant and her three children heard through the bedroom.

So, so August 5th, you've got this guy getting caught for raping and saying that he murdered people and then on April, and in April, a couple months before that, this rape of Trisha happened. Yeah. This attack. Let's see. So after being in prison, he's in prison for more than a decade for the murder. In 2002, he finds God, Reyes finds God, comes forward and says that he is the attacker of

Trisha. He did it. So he then goes on to detail how he followed, raped, brutally beat her with, and then details that the five, the Central Park five never got right. They never even had similar stories of what happened. They were all different. And he just tells exactly how it really went. From where he threw the socks to where he threw the keys and why, because he was mad

that she wouldn't give him her address so he could break into her house. So he threw the keys and they had always wondered what the deal with the keys were, what exactly what she was wearing, that she had a walkman that was stolen and they never, they weren't sure if there was a walkman involved. He, all her friends said she always ran with a walkman. And he said it too. Yeah. But it wasn't even at the scene.

So the fact that he knew about it meant, you know, he was there. He definitely fucking did it. Yeah. And the DNA is then tested and it's his DNA. Oh man. So, let's see. The detective who gave him, who gave the statement, who he took the statement said, Matias Reyes is one of the top five lunatics he's interviewed in more than 20 years investigating homicides.

The five boys had already been released from prison, their adults now, but they were struggling because they were now sex offenders on the sex offenders registry. And Raymond Santana was still in jail because he had a drug charge he took to selling drugs because he couldn't get a job with a sex offender on his as a sex offender. But his sentencing because of that drug charge because of his prior convictions was longer. So he was still in prison based on his prior conviction. So he's released. And then in 2002, Manhattan, Manhattan district attorney Robert and Morgan Thou threw out

the convictions in the Central Park Jogger case. The five are exonerated and in 2014, New York City paid them $41 million as a settlement. Really? Yeah. Are you crying? Yeah. Yeah. 41 million.

That's like, we fucked up so hard. Yeah. So, the prosecutors, the woman who was the prosecutor, the sex offender, unit, head, refuses to admit that they were wrong. She's now a teacher at some big college and they're like starting a petition to get her kicked out because she uses this case as one of the highlights of her career. Oh, no. Yeah.

So she can't say it's true. She says maybe they, maybe there were six of them still sticks to that story. And doesn't acknowledge the hard evidence of the lunatic, no, rapist, no, who admitted he did it. How would you admit you did something? And did it alone. And then no, and then actually have the hard evidence and know the details. I mean, that's very difficult to deny.

Right. Yes. And then, so the police detectives, a lot of them won't admit that they were wrong. And of course, Trump refuses to admit. He says, look at the confession. So he's still stuck on this confession, which as we know now, so many confessions are coerced easily. Right.

Totally out of children, totally as for the victim. So Trisha had five months of rehabilitation. She returned and then she returned to running in Central Park in 95. She ran the New York City Marathon and in 2003. So she had been anonymous up until then and in 2003, she comes out and with a published it publishes a memoir called I am the Central Park jogger. I remember that. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know. I want to know what she thinks about thinking that these five boys were her attackers for so long and then having to switch your brain completely. It's just so scary. And I feel so much for her just based on that. And now she then she began a career as an inspirational speaker. She works with victims of sexual assault and brain injury in the Mount Sinai sexual assault

and violence intervention group. So that's the Central Park five and the East side rapist. Wow. Huge. I know. That's such a huge story. Did I tackle that? Okay.

Did I give it justice? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I mean, this is I feel like especially in this day and age, it's so difficult to talk. The first thing I thought of while we were talking about this is I remember one time a long time ago, we were talking about something and the way we intimated it, it made it sound

like what we were saying is all people of color live in the ghetto. And we got a lot, a lot of people who wanted to talk to us about that where that is in no way what we meant, but it was like the wording of how it sounded. And so I would just point that out that, you know, like this isn't the assumption that because you are of color, you live in the worst part of the Bronx. Yeah. I mean, that because you're of color, you go wilding, like none of, none of what we're talking about is to say every single person was living only this one way in New York in

that time. I'm sure there was tons of, you know, upwardly mobile black people and people, Hispanic people and people of color that lived on the Upper West Side. So it's not, it's not that, but I think that the lines are absolutely drawn because back then the white, like it was basically white men ran most media and white men were the cops usually for the majority, I would say. And so that was the, that was the story that we were always given. And that's the, that was the story people were reacting to.

And that's what we're talking about. Well, it's just so hard because for this, with this podcast, like, you know, I don't want to do a thing that so many people talk about is that like blonde white women, that's all of the stories we cover, which I don't think we do, but you know, I want to give, I want to tell them the stories because I want to represent as many people as we can and as many victims as we can, which I totally think these boys are victims in this story. But you know, it's hard as a white woman, I won't, I try to empathize, but I'll never, I know I'll never understand completely what's going on.

So, you know, like the Mitrice Richardson case, I just really wanted to, to, yeah, I just want to make sure that we're covering them, but I know it's never going to be perfect. Definitely. So it's a bit of a risk to even talk about them because everything is very loaded these days. And I think people, it makes people feel better if you make, if you misspeak about something, it makes people feel better to tell you how wrong you are. And it makes, it makes it feel like that's, that's making a difference, which it definitely

is. Yeah. I mean, in, in some ways, but, but I guess our hesitation is when you put stuff like that out there, it's easy to say something incorrectly or sound insensitive or make it sound like you're making a generalization. Right. I don't, I don't want to do that. I tried very hard not to, but please email us, we're always open to, you know, hear your

story or have your corrections and... They know that. I know. I mean, Jesus, that's the one thing we do get, I think. But I think what's better than not, not covering it because it's too loaded is just not talking about it at all. And so I think that's important as well. To talk about it.

Yes. Yes. Especially for people who have a podcast, you know, who are talking specifically about murder and podcasts in a podcast, it's like, we can't just cover the easy ones. Well, and also the ones that have been covered because that you're exactly right. That's the thing of it's the blonde cheerleader. When the blonde cheerleader goes missing, everybody freaks out because the society that's built up around us is basically said, well, that's what makes the money, that's what sells

the newspapers. There's a lot of like very convenient rationale that goes into why we talk about some murders and crimes and why we don't talk about others. Yeah. I think that example of like a woman who was raped and then thrown off a building on the very same night and no one has heard of that story. Never. That's, I think that's very kind of symbolic.

And I think it's that thing of like, it's just good, it's good to start trying to open your eyes. I think it's a hard thing for some people to do. There's some people that'll never be able to do it. But if you can try, I think it's important. I think it is going to help our society needs this kind of help very badly to come together and to be like, I get it. Nobody's, nobody's, you know, horror is worse than another person's horror.

And then for you and I to, to kind of, to kind of open the conversation up because we're two white women and that it's not, you know, that we're trying to understand what's going on in other people's worlds. And I'll take that out. No, I had it and then it was gone. Okay. All right. So something positive.

Yes. That's how we end this. So everyone doesn't get bummed. Do you want to go first? No, you go first. Okay. The good thing that happened to me, I, you know, I said I went last week to a new psychiatrist the fucking change in medication is already working.

Oh, really? I am, it's just makes me so hopeful when I wake up in the morning and I'm not exhausted all day, you know, and I'm sleeping at night without any pills. It's just like, it makes me really hopeful. Oh, good. I'm really, you know, I had two days of not exhaustion and I was just so happy about it. That's great. Yeah.

What's yours? My friend, I have a friend, my friend Kevin Farzad has a band called Sure, Sure. And they have new music coming out. They're truly one of my favorite bands. It's like the kind of music you can put on, like I just feel so stressed out lately and I think a lot of people have been. It's the kind of music that's like super catchy and great, but it's not like invasive. I can't explain it.

It's just very good. I totally recommend it. I think they're coming out with a new album soon, but I will be retweeting their music. I'm just a big believer in Sure, Sure, the band, and so I think everyone should listen to them. That's a good one. Yeah. Music is such an important part of, you know, the human existence, the human experience

and life and happiness. Well, thank you guys for listening. What is Elvis? Thank you guys for listening. We've done it again. Oh, oh, I forgot to mention also we have new merch. I totally forgot about that. We have a fuck.

We have a here's a thing fuck everyone shirt and it's got an adorable little drawing of Terry Joe Dupereau. I believe is how her last name is pronounced. She's the 12 year old girl that got stuck on a raft after the captain of her family's boat murdered her whole family and the boat sank. It's in like episode 18 or 28, I think. And our friend Kat Solin on her own accord just drew the based on the photo of her in this little raft before she got saved.

And we were like, after that episode, we were like, everything's the worst and everything sucks. So we were like, here's the thing, fuck everyone, but she's totally a survivor. And so, right? So go buy those shirts. Yeah. Those are on my favorite murder shirts dot com. Yeah.

And there's like mugs and hats and things. And yeah, it's good stuff. All right. Stay sexy and don't get murdered. Bye. Elvis. Elvis. Do you want cookie?

Elvis. Want cookie? Come here. He's coming. Elvis. Want cookie? Come here. There he comes.

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