My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - Rewind with Karen & Georgia - Episode 29: Twenty-Nein
Episode Date: January 22, 2025It's time to Rewind with Karen & Georgia! This week, K & G recap Episode 29: Twenty-Nein. Karen covered the family-annihilator John List and Georgia discussed Warriena Tagpuno Wright who fell 14 floor...s to her death. Listen for all-new commentary, case updates and much more! Whether you've listened a thousand times or you're new to the show, join the conversation as we look back on our old episodes and discuss the life lessons we’ve learned along the way. Head to social media to share your favorite moments from this episode!  Instagram: instagram.com/myfavoritemurder  Facebook: facebook.com/myfavoritemurder TikTok: tiktok.com/@my_favorite_murder Now with updated sources and photos: https://www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes/rewind-with-karen-georgia-episode-29-twenty-nein My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories, and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. The Exactly Right podcast network provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics, including true crime, comedy, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more. Support this podcast by shopping our latest sponsor deals and promotions at this link: https://bit.ly/3UFCn1g. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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This is exactly right.
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You see, every Wednesday we transport you to a simpler time, back when the iPhone 7
was cutting edge and Suicide Squad dominated the box office.
That's right. So join us as we take you back to August 11th, 2016, because now
you can basically all be day one listeners.
And today we're recapping episode 29, which at the time we named 29 with the
German spelling of the word nine.
Twenty nine, I think is how you pronounce it.
Seems problematic to me in the light of 2025.
In the light of everything, everything is problematic.
Yeah, that's very true.
So let's listen to the intro to episode 29.
Welcome to my favorite murder.
That's Karen Kilgara.
That is Georgia hard start.
You know, no one can tell our voices apart still.
I know.
It's pretty weird.
Someone sent us a, um, I love when the true, the hometown murders are people sending in
like I know secret information about the case you already covered.
Yeah.
Because I know people from the whatever the fuck.
We love that.
And someone was like, last week sent us one.
It was like, Karen, I'm sorry to disappoint you,
but it was my case.
And I was like, I'm sorry.
No, we're sorry to disappoint you.
That happens a lot when people talk about,
I love when, I think they say like,
Karen says, oh my fucking God,
when George is telling it,
whatever it was, it was like the reverse
and I knew it was for sure
because it was like one of your phrases.
Yeah, Jesus fucking Christ.
But yeah, I mean, I just think it's precious.
It's so weird.
I feel like, I mean, we're such different people.
There was a fucking thing on Facebook that was like,
are you a Karen or a Georgia?
Did you see that? Oh no.
And it made me sad.
Oh no, why?
Because I was like, nobody wants to Karen or a Georgia? Did you see that? And it made me sad. Kind of. Why?
Because I was like, nobody wants to be me.
Were they both bad?
No, everyone loves you.
And I'm not, I was just, everyone's like, I'm a Karen,
but my best friend is a Georgia.
So that's fine.
I'm a Karen.
How do we, and then people were like,
it's funny how people will explain to other people how you
can tell the difference between us and it's that you sing everything.
Yes.
That's me.
And I also have a scratchy voice because sometimes, sometimes late at night I smoke cigarettes.
You do not.
Yeah, I do.
Do you, Karen?
Yeah, sometimes.
And you can tell, you can actually, you can tell how many I've been smoking because like
right now I've been smoking too many.
I don't know why I'm scandalized by this.
Are you really?
Maybe it's because you never told me
and I feel like I thought I knew you.
No, I don't.
It's also because it's such a special thing
that you do alone.
I think it's wonderful that you have that time to yourself.
Well, sometimes at my house,
I'm home at the end of the night.
And you have a great backyard.
What else are you gonna use it for?
I can sit in that backyard.
Sometimes I just stick my feet right in that pool.
Karen, you're living the life I want to live.
It's pretty, I don't mind it, but it's also like I'm tired and I don't get to drink anymore
And I don't get to do anything anymore. So I'll just smoke a little hand-rolled
Valley shag cigarette. Do you hand roll them yourself?
Yeah.
Karen, this is why everyone wanted to be you.
Because I'm so fucking European.
They were saying like, Karen's a badass
and I wanna be, I think it's because I'm scared
of everything and talk about therapy.
That's all it is, is you are honest about your anxieties
and I'm always like, just try to kill me,
which is the most insane thing.
Every once in a while it'll hit me where I'm like, oh, I've actually said that out loud
in permanently.
These recordings are permanent.
There's nothing we can do about it.
And I've actually been like, I don't care.
When the end days come, there's going to be no record of this.
So it doesn't matter.
When what happened?
The end days come.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
This is all going to be wiped off. But well, the grid's gonna go down. And then it won't matter what's recorded
because we won't be able to access it.
Delta is the first fucking, is the first.
Airplane line that'll go down?
No, it just went down like yesterday.
Delta what?
They had like a blackout.
Really?
At their main hub and everything was grounded
and it's like.
Across the country?
Yeah, they're like, there was just a glitch
and you're like, bullshit.
Bullshit. Whenever I hear those things and I was like're like, there was just a glitch and you're like, bullshit, bullshit.
I, whenever I hear those things and it was like someone, there was just a glitch.
No way.
Don't even know there was, that was the lizard men that are underneath the
Denver airport.
Yes, they are.
They're down there and they're fucking with the mainframe.
Don't even, how much did you love?
As soon as I heard this on?
Stranger things that they had a fucking
MK ultra Line like really line. Did you watch it all? No, I think I have like two left or three left
Have you been to the possible?
11's mom's house yet
No, yes, but they mentioned MK ultra into the possible Eleven's mom's house yet? No.
Yes.
They mentioned MK Ultra in that.
That's why she's like that?
Yeah, because she was one of the people
they were experimenting on.
Has anyone listened to this?
I don't wanna spoil anything.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, spoilers.
Okay, I missed that detail.
I just thought-
They say MK Ultra in it.
Holy shit.
Yeah.
Oh, that makes me like it 1000 times more.
Yeah.
Okay, I have to go back and get through.
I have to be honest, when I binge watch shows,
especially on Netflix, and you just can like,
it hit enter on the blue box, and you just keep going,
there'll be times where I just fall asleep,
and I don't even know which one I'm on.
I just wake up and keep watching whatever's on.
I have the kind of insomnia that you can't fall asleep in front of television.
I've never fallen asleep in front of, maybe wrestling.
That's Vince's fault.
Wow.
We couldn't be more different.
That's how I fall asleep every night.
It's very bad for you to sleep in front of the TV.
Well, now I wonder how bad it is.
I can't fall asleep now without listening to the Sleep With Me podcast.
Oh, that's good. Like I can't.
You're his slave. I'm his slave.
Oh. It's the best.
So I wonder if someday they're gonna be like,
it's worse than falling asleep to TV
because he's infiltrating my dreams.
That's right.
Well, if he is from NK Ultra, you're screwed.
Oh yeah. Yeah.
I'm kind of okay with it.
Do you think he, He's so great.
You're fine with it.
I'm fine with it.
Whatever his agenda might be.
Like same with Elvis, when everyone,
and when it's like, oh, they, you know,
you get a virus from cats and it takes over your brain
and makes you a zombie.
And I'm like, I don't care.
He's so cute.
He's so nice.
He's so sweet.
If he thinks I need to be a zombie,
then I'll, you know, he knows what's best for me.
Sure, absolutely.
Yeah.
And also, you know, you're gonna go,
whether you're a zombie for a cat
or you get hit by a bus,
you are going to leave this earthly plane.
So just accept it.
Yeah.
This head smells like a library book.
The girl who was in love with her cat.
I bet.
All right.
Do you have housekeeping?
I have a housekeeping that makes me very happy.
Oh good.
Because it's two-fold housekeeping.
It was a tweet that my hero, Nico Case,
singer-songwriter Nico Case tweeted.
You got a tiny little happy clap from Steven just now.
Yay, we love her.
We love Nico Case.
Don't tell me that the connection was lost
and there was a loading error phone.
No.
Well, basically she retweeted this story,
I'm pretty sure it was from the CBC,
about how the Canadian government is now opening
an investigation on all the missing
indigenous women in Canada.
So that's like all the women.
So you know, like Robert Picton,
I'm going to eventually do one on him
if you don't beat me to it.
He's the pig farmer in Canada
that was just murdering women
and I think it was in the hundreds.
Did he feed?
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a bad one.
It's so dark.
I wouldn't tackle that.
It's yours.
Okay.
Cause it's too dark?
It's too, it's too something for me,
but I don't know why yet.
Too many pigs?
Too many pigs, man.
No, it's just, yeah, I don't know.
Well, so there's-
It's too making a murderer.
Oh, okay.
In a lot of different ways.
Go ahead, sorry.
Well, there's just a, there's been a bunch of,
and this is very, in America, I think our version of it
is women of color, black women that get murdered.
And it's just as if no one talks about it.
It isn't, you see all the little blonde girls
are always on the news if they are go missing or are murdered,
but it doesn't happen with black women.
And so the Canadian version, I think, is indigenous women,
Indian women is the incorrect term for it.
But so there's the Highway of Tears
where women go disappearing on it.
Robert Picton, they named another guy
that I didn't recognize the name.
How Picton is the right last name?
Anyway.
You know what?
I want to do mass murders because I feel like
I won't give enough time to each of the women.
I'd rather do a, this is what the victim was,
who the victim was,
their story. Right. Then here's who the murderer was. And it's like, and there's 19 women. Right.
Yeah, no, then that's okay. This is bad. But anyway, it's, it's like hundreds of indigenous
indigenous women have gone missing in the last say, if I could open this article, I would,
God, I would be accurate with my numbers.
But no, that's okay.
Do you want to pause?
I can give you my wifi connection.
Every time you get upset, let's pause it.
No, no, no, no, it's fine.
Cause the general idea is just what Nico Case
was trying to get the word out about.
And I retweeted it on our Twitter feed as well
is just the government is trying to do something about it.
They're trying to find the women, they're trying to investigate the murders the government is trying to do something about it.
They're trying to find the women,
they're trying to investigate the murders,
they're trying to actually put a focus
and say these women are important,
just as important as anybody else,
and we're gonna do something about this.
Which is humongous that a country, like on the whole,
would just admit that they haven't up until this point
and now they're going to.
That's incredible.
It's really great. That's incredible. It's really great.
That's amazing.
It's very hopeful to me about like this,
it feels like a new era in crime.
Thank you.
The name of the article is just how an unflinching gaze
on missing and murdered indigenous women
might move Canada forward.
Incredible.
Very cool.
And I was right, it's the CDC news.
I'll take it.
If it's even that small, I will take an accuracy moment.
I will not take it away from you.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
That's, I mean, that's really the whole story.
That's, I'm still trying to think of a way that we can donate part of the proceeds or like
help some way with the untested rape kit situation.
Mariska. Mariska. Mariska Hargitay. Thank you. I want to give her all my money and like
do it. Georgia was in a manic episode and Karen. She gave a multimillionaire all her
money and Karen totally was like, do it. So, so Georgia's suing Karen.
I think that's it.
It all ends in a lawsuit between you and I.
Oh, I didn't see that coming.
Because of my undiagnosed manic.
No, I don't have that.
We call it the big giveaway.
Georgia really just no, no, no.
I think that's a really good idea.
I would love to the proceeds of something that we earn money for
because this podcast
goes to those untested.
Well, we have live shows.
Like you guys were in the fucking process
of like having live shows be a part of our lives.
Yeah, and a part of your lives, Texas.
Yeah, we're gonna invite people.
Texas, what?
We got some numbers back.
That was a brag, but we got some numbers back
and hey hey Texas,
turns out you like us.
I was so surprised by that.
We both started laughing so hard, but it makes sense.
Yeah.
That's Texas.
Texas has some good murders.
Texas knows what they're talking about in terms of murder.
Can I just say that once we got all this information
about our numbers and then we were driving home
and we almost had to pull over to start crying with how happy we both were.
But how well this is, what a great-
It's pretty nice.
It's pretty great.
It's pretty nice that we're getting popular because we talk about death.
I think that's lovely.
I love you guys.
Thanks for listening.
Okay.
I also want to say really quickly that in therapy, one of the things I talked about was how crazy
I am and how much anxiety I have because when I go to the back of my building to do laundry,
I lock my front door and how crazy is that that I think someone's going to break in.
And then I read an article, there's a fucking Echo Park rapist. And one of the ways he got
into her house was when she was doing fucking laundry in the back of her apartment and she
left her door unlocked and went in.
There is, it's not anxiety when you're just being careful.
I texted my therapist the article.
And said in your face bitch.
No, cause she was like, you know, yeah.
Now she doesn't want to see me anymore.
And now she said, find someone else.
No, cause she was like, you know,
we're allowed to take certain precautions and that's okay.
And you can do that. But when you start, you know, blah,
blah, blah, then it's so she supported it. And I was like, I feel so justified.
Well, also, that's good. I mean, Jesus Christ, right? Yes. Hey, there's no shame in
locking things double. I lock people will walk by in in the crosswalk and they're part of my
brain goes they might be able to hear it if you lock the door or whatever. It's
like I don't give a shit. It doesn't matter. Much louder voice that says sorry
to offend you but you don't get to in case you had the idea. Right. Maybe you're
on some white drugs I can't detect. So like when you're sitting at a stop sign and someone goes to
walk by and you go click to lock your car door. Yeah. Yeah you're like oh they're
gonna get mad at me?
Fuck you.
Well, cause sometimes-
You look creepy.
That's a good way to let someone know they look creepy.
Yeah, I get the idea because you're giving me the eye.
Yeah.
So yeah, don't, we've said this a million times.
Fuck politeness.
Fuck politeness.
Essentially.
Yeah, there could be new listeners
who don't yet know to fuck politeness.
Oh yeah.
Fuck politeness and um,
well you'll, you'll learn. There's a ton of stuff.
You'll have a lot of experiences in your life that'll make you,
make you question. Uh, how about if you're going between the laundry room and your house, lock your goddamn door. Lock your fucking door. Lock it.
If you live in a major city or not at your parents house, lock your door.
It feels really good because literally that was a worry
every single time I walk out back is I come in the door
and I check for the cats because if the cats were still out
where they were, that meant no one was in there
because, but if they were hiding,
that would mean someone came in the house.
Right.
That's crazy.
No, that's a good theory.
That's a theory based on observation.
Yeah.
And we're back.
Hey, if you're still listening from Texas, thank you.
Yeah, thanks you guys.
Incredible.
What a miracle.
Texas was there in the beginning.
They were there hard for us.
They do that.
They do everything a little hard, like core.
Yeah, they're like, they rep and they're that. They do everything a little hard, like core. Yeah, they're like, they rep and they're there. That made me think of, wasn't it in Texas,
I believe Dallas, when the women got into our van to go to the theater.
Not on purpose.
And the driver was just like, yeah, no, they just thought it was like one of the
Ubers or something. And the driver was just like, yeah, I guess these are the podcasters.
Two girls. Yeah, that was, they weren't like,
and then we met them as they were returned to the hotel
and returned to the, like, to knocking us.
Yeah, and they were very funny.
Yeah.
That's Texas to me.
That's Texas in my heart.
It was a beautiful night.
It's so funny that that was the beginning of,
are you a Karen, are you a Georgia?
I know.
That was like the BuzzFeed days.
Crazy.
Oh yeah.
It was like 1,000 years ago.
That was a BuzzFeed quiz.
So exciting.
This is when everything was just like popping off in a really unexpected, insane way.
We just didn't know what the hell was happening.
We really didn't. We thought it was kind of funny. And as I've said a thousand times,
I thought it was going to wrap up in three to five weeks.
And you never covered Robert Picton, which I think is a good thing, right?
I do too. I was going to remember that show we did the first time we did a show in Vancouver.
I was going to cover him at that Vancouver show.
Remember we were in that high-rise hotel?
There was like, we had like, we were on the 18th floor or something.
We had these amazing views.
Wasn't I sick and so I was an hour late because I was napping and just like didn't
put the time correct because I was like, because I was like literally had a cold on stage.
Yeah. Yes.
There was also one also in Vancouver where I went downstairs and
couldn't find where Vince was meeting us. So you were on one side of the hotel
and I was on the other and I could not figure out where you were.
Yeah.
Do you remember that one where it's like everything was like this weird delay or
just kind of like what's going on?
That's what touring is. It's just a delay to get to a place to wait.
Yeah, to do homework.
Right, and not look at anything about the city.
And then have 3,000 people cheer for you.
Yeah.
Did you see this update that Robert Picton
was murdered in prison just this past June?
Right, yeah.
Wow.
I mean, not a surprise.
He's one of the worst serial killers of all time.
He is one of the worst predators of women and marginalized women. And like that story and that
all of that corruption around that story is so fucking dark that when I went to do it in Vancouver,
like, oh, this is your guy's hometown. It's like, ugh, nobody wants to recount basically
this kind of like internal corruption
that allows women with no voice to just be brutalized
over and over and over.
No, there's a few of these murders
that I feel like we'll never do.
And we've talked about it.
This is one of them, the speed-free-
Toy Box.
Toy Box killer, the speed-free killer. And then Charles Ng, I feel like, will never do.
Just because you read it, and it's just, there's just, it's just an empty pit of fucking horribleness.
I think too, it's like, that's how you kind of learn the shape of when you're doing a
podcast. It's like we very early on understood that we were going to do this podcast our
way. You know, for example, talking for 45 minutes at the beginning about everything
but true crime, et cetera, et cetera. But like just because to follow the pattern of
standardized true crime is like, is very difficult.
Those shows that do it that are actually journalist-led and thoroughly researched and are like, are
invaluable.
Have compassion, yeah.
Yes.
But it's like, just to retell these stories is, it's just, the darkness is tough.
You need something more than that for sure.
Especially in a quarantine, for example.
Right, right.
Which we were in for quite a while,
if I remember correctly.
We were in for quite a while.
Real quick, before we get into your story,
we did mention Marissa Hargitay's nonprofit.
It's still going on.
It's called the Joyful Heart Foundation.
And since 2004, Joyful Heart has been
a leading national organization with a mission
to transform society's response to sexual assault,
domestic violence, and child abuse,
support survivors healing, and end this violence forever.
Yes, you can donate or learn more
about the Joyful Heart Foundation
by going to joyfulheartfoundation.org.
I mean, I think Mariska Hargitay is like,
it's a legend now for having played Olivia Benson
on SVU for years and years,
and then basically turning all of that work
into this activism that's really been very effective.
And like, it's just the coolest, she's the coolest.
Yeah, and hey, while we're here,
let's donate 10 grand to the Joyful Heart Foundation.
Love it, great idea.
Cool.
How do you get these ideas?
It's just, they just come into my mind,
I don't even know how.
Speaking of ideas coming from nowhere,
let's listen to your epic story.
This is like a classic.
Karen telling the story of John List. the story to you live. Hundreds of wildfires are burning. Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canada.
This situation has changed very quickly.
Helping make sense of the world when it matters most.
Stay in the know.
Download the free CBC News app or visit cbcnews.ca.
So I've known about this one for a long time because it was made famous by that great American
television show, America's Most Wanted.
Hell yeah.
Do you remember the America's Most Wanted about John List, the man who killed his entire
family and then disappeared for 19 years?
Yes.
Yes, you do.
Yes.
Well, that's my favorite murder for this week. Let me hear it
I'm going to tell you all about it. All right, so John List was a successful business man
He was a devout lifelong Lutheran. He was a Sunday school teacher
He was a Boy Scout leader a husband a father of three
His family lived with his mother. So their grandmother, in a sprawling 19-room mansion called Breeze Knoll
in Westfield, New Jersey.
But behind closed doors, things were not going well.
Shocking.
This is me kind of trying to write
like a 2020 version of this.
This is a narrative.
I'm really trying to put something into this and it might
not really work out that well because it feels a bit sweaty right now. I feel like I'm trying.
Well, it's hot in here. It also is very hot. It's summer in Los Angeles. So John lists wife Helen,
which they didn't, none of this you knew from America's Most Wanted. Oh, I love this stuff.
Tell me. His wife Helen was an alcoholic
who was verbally abusive and unstable.
She sounds fun.
When you see the picture of the List family,
her eyes are going in two different directions.
Was she dressed well though?
Yes.
I love it.
The picture I think was from like the mid 60s.
So they look like any family.
Oh my God, I just picture her at like a party
and she's just drunk and like, but she looks amazing.
Yes.
I love it.
She's got like a Jackie O outfit on,
but her face is like, is just like kooky eyes
and like bubbles above her head.
She's like talking loudly about their bedroom secrets.
Oh yeah, girl, you just nailed it.
Shut up.
Okay, ready?
Oh my God.
So she demanded that demanded that John buy her that colonial mansion
in Westfield, which is a very ritzy, apparently,
town in New Jersey, or was in the 60s and 70s.
When John landed his high status position
as bank vice president and comp troller,
which is one of my favorite words in the English language.
So good.
Comp troller.
I don't know what it means.
I love to say it.
I'm running for comp troller this year.
Got it.
Okay, so what no one knew is that John had recently
been fired from being the bank president and comp troller.
Stress.
And he, even though he was an ambitious career man,
could never hold a job for more than a couple of years because of his
personality problems, personality issues quote-unquote. Oh my god. Uh-huh. But he
couldn't let his family know that he had gotten fired. So every day he got up and
he put on his suit and he grabbed his briefcase and he went to the train
station like he was going to work and he
People terrify me. Yes. It's such deep denial
It's insane denial of like da da da everything's fine
And then there's crazy things boiling underneath those those people man
Yeah
So he would sit at the train station and read newspapers all day until it was time to quote unquote come home from work
Right and meanwhile he was skimming money off of his mother's bank account so he could pay his crazy mortgage on his colonial 19 room mansion. And all the other bills are piling
up. So in short, John List was Lutheran fuck up under pressure. That's what I wrote.
So here's his plan.
He on the morning of November 9th, 1971, after his children had left for school,
John walked into the kitchen where his wife was drinking her morning coffee at
the kitchen table and he walked
up and he shot her in the back of the head with a nine millimeter handgun.
Then he went upstairs to the third floor of their mansion where his mother had her own
like what are the sweet.
Yes.
Her own little apartment wing wing.
Yeah.
The wing of the mansion and he shot her in the head right over her left eye, which to me
sounds like he shot her face to face. Oh yeah. Which is pretty intense. Jesus. Then he drove
to the bank and he closed his account and his mother's accounts and he cashed in his
mother's savings bonds. He came home, he went to a study, he collected some old photos and
documents concerning the mansion's history and he put them in a neat pile on his desk, and he composed a letter, a thank
you letter to John Witke, who was a descendant of the original owner of the house.
The shit.
You know, the important stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
And then he also wrote four other letters.
He called Barbara Bader, who is the woman who carpooled his sons, John and Fred, to
Roosevelt Junior High School. And
she had done that for the last time that morning. He made an excuse that the whole family was
leaving to go to North Carolina the next morning because Helen's mother was extremely ill.
And he promised that he would let her know when they were coming back. Then he canceled
the newspaper milk delivery and he asked the post office to hold the mail until further notice.
Was there going to be further notice? Absolutely not. No.
So now it was lunchtime. So he made himself a lunch,
sat down at the table where he had just shot his wife and then cleaned up the
blood off the table.
Baloney or cold meatloaf.
I would guess bologna,
because he's just like, he's all business.
He just wants to get proteins and calories.
Bologna on white with mustard.
With mustard only.
And some, do they have potato chips back then?
I don't think John List would eat potato chips.
I think he would eat two sandwiches
instead of having a delicious side.
Oh my God, Karen, that was the best,
that was what I was looking for.
Cause I love food details.
That's my opinion of John List's food details.
No, that was, that was beautiful.
Yeah.
That's the kind of stuff, I can't understand that.
Like that's such a dude move.
Oh yeah.
Where I'm like, you could have chips,
the only thing you want with a sandwich.
Yeah, or pickles.
You're just gonna double down.
Pickle slices.
Pickles are nice. Yeah. But I always, you know, me and the starches. Oh, right. Well, sure,
everyone can start, but you just don't keep them in your house or eat them all. That's right. I
mean, not you. One. One. So, then he went around and cut himself out of every family photo in the
entire house. Why is that the craziest part?
That is, to me, I did it as a standalone
because it's the creepiest fact to me in this whole case.
It's so fucking creepy.
That is so creepy.
Then come, now it's early afternoon,
so he's waiting for his children to come home from school.
Patricia, who was 16, a drama nerd,
and it was 1971, so she had been caught smoking pot.
Oh, she was the coolest.
She was cool, and she came home,
he shot her in the back of the head.
Honey.
Then his son Frederick, the youngest, who was 13,
came home, he shot him in the back of the head.
So they didn't even know that their father...
No and he actually in the court later revealed that he did it
his wife and his kids back of the head so that they didn't know what happened.
But mom is a different story.
His mother was a different story which is very telling to me.
All right let's get to yeah tell me more.
But then also John Jr is a different story the 15 year old who was named after him and
Supposedly his favorite there was like a couple different versions of this some said he just came straight home from school
But the one I like the best which is the one I would tell is that he had a soccer game that day
So John list drove to the school watched his son's soccer game, drove him home, tried to shoot him,
but he maybe saw the gun and freaked out.
So he ended up shooting him in the face and chest
over 10 times.
Wow.
So overkill, crazy fucking overkill.
Yeah.
And knew what was happening as it went.
Once in the chest and once in the face, I get,
something went worse than wrong, or he hated him more.
Like something went especially wrong for 10 times.
Yes, because this was a man that was doing it
like neatly and cleanly and pretending systematically.
He was like checking off a list.
But when it came, this guy wasn't,
John Jr. didn't play ball and made it hard for him.
And I think that's like the rage came out.
Oh yeah, like how dare you?
You're making this too hard for me.
Not even like you're showing me how, what horrible I am.
No, no, no.
It's like you're ruining my plan.
You're ruining my good time.
Oh my God.
It's hideous.
So then he dragged, he got sleeping bags
from down from the basement
and he put all the bodies on the sleeping bags
then dragged them into the back of the house
to what room?
The ballroom.
No!
Yes.
Yeah, they had a ballroom in this mansion
that wasn't even decorated or furnished in
any way.
That's how big this house was.
And so he pulled his wife and three children's dead bodies on sleeping bags back into the
ballroom.
He put a piece of cloth over each of their faces and he left them there, turned it into
basically like a makeshift morgue.
Then he fed the children's pet fish
in the 20 gallon tank in the dining room,
went upstairs and went to sleep.
Holy shit.
Yeah, so he's, are the fish okay?
That's the kind of thought this man is having.
Are the fish okay?
Is this, I mean, as much as,
cause I need to put a name on things, is this sociopath?
Oh, I'm, we'll talk about the name later,
but he probably, I mean, I don't know enough.
Anytime it's like, clearly you have no feelings,
that's what I wanna label it as.
Me too, but yeah, it's almost true.
But he is, the real term for this guy
is a family annihilator.
Oh. Yeah.
And it's like a thing that happens
and there's a couple different kinds.
And they'll never kill anyone else again, kind of a thing?
Yes, right.
It's a situational thing for them.
Tell me more.
Okay, so the next morning he gets up, he gets dressed,
he goes downstairs, he turns the thermostat
all the way down.
He turns on every light in the house.
And then he leaves the house and he leaves Westfield forever. Now, the weird thing is no one noticed. No one in the neighborhood
noticed that this family was not there. And that's because this family did not socialize,
which is kind of common if you have a crazy drunk mom. Like they stayed in, they didn't talk to anybody. The neighbors knew John List as
the guy who mowed his lawn in a suit and tie.
Jesus. I think the most suspicious part would be that all the lights are on.
That's right.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, like nobody, especially in a 19-room mansion, you're like,
sorry, nobody's in the greenhouse.
Nobody's in the brightest house. Nobody's in the brightest
house on the block. It's they're not having a party. So because of all this careful planning
and because they were basically anti-social and reclusive, it took a full month for anybody to actually discover these bodies.
A month?
A full month.
So the neighbors noticed that these lights were on day and night, and that they were always on, and that they started burning out.
And that's when they started getting suspicious.
Oh, that's creepy. Can you imagine seeing like, one room is out, and then the next room is out.
Yeah, and never comes back on.
So clear, and no one's coming in or out of the house.
So something super creepy is happening up there.
But also you don't want to think about it
because what could it be that would be that weird?
Yeah.
But who does?
This is the most cinematic, I think, of all the stories
because Patty's drama teacher is the one who's like,
I don't like the smell of this.
Oh my God.
His name was Edwin Eliano.
And he thought it was weird that the entire family was gone that long.
And also he he had a terrible feeling because Patty once told him,
if this family goes on vacation, my dad has killed us.
I knew she talked to him about something.
Yeah. She said that she said it to him.
So after, you know, 28 days. knew she talked to him about something. Yeah. She said that? She said it to him.
So after 28 days, oh, and he'd also met him once
and thought he was super weird.
Oh my God.
So after 28 days, Edwin Ileano convinces his associate,
Barbara Sheridan, to go to the house with him
to check on Patty.
And they drive up there, They try to look into some
windows and their being there makes the neighbors call the cops because they see people finally
on the property. And when the cops show up, Edwin explains to them, it's, oh, the neighbors
William and Shirley Cunuck are their names. They're the ones that call the police and
patrol officers George Zahelsznik and Charles Heller
were the first to arrive.
So Ileano explains what's going on,
and the officers decide they're gonna force open a window
and go inside, and when they open that window,
they're hit with the smell of death.
Thank you.
So I forgot, this might be my creepiest detail.
Oh, good.
When they go into the house,
the first thing they notice is that there's organ music
playing loudly over the house intercom.
I'm gonna cry.
I'm gonna cry because there's an intercom in this house.
And because there's organ music.
So you're jealous of the intercom.
Yeah, because that's so cool.
And organ music is the creepiest thing I've ever heard.
John List set up, they kept calling it a recorder
and all these articles that I read.
When you do research, you realize everyone
rips everything off.
It's hilarious.
Insane.
So calling something a recorder makes no sense.
It sounds like it's the instrument children
play in grammar school, which would be even creepier.
Just a child playing the recorder really loud.
Oh, god, no. OK, I was gonna go deep.
Go on.
He had set up a thing that just played this music
on a loop until you physically turned it off
and then set it to play over the intercom.
What was like an old machine or something like that?
I guess so.
I mean, they call it a recorder,
maybe a recording device or like a reel to reel perhaps.
Yeah, that sounds right.
Because it was 71.
Let's go with that.
So, oh, I said two things organ music is good for,
ice skating and mass murdering.
See, I'm trying too hard now.
Need to keep a cat conversational.
So upstairs in the study,
they find a five page letter that List had written to his pastor, Eugene Renwinkel.
Sorry.
I don't know.
It's like bad writing.
Like, what should we name the old pastor
of the Lutheran church?
Eugene Renwinkel?
Oh my God, I love it.
So in that letter, he said he felt the 70s
were a sinful time and that his family was beginning to succumb to temptation,
especially his daughter, because of her interest in acting,
which is an occupation that Liszt viewed
as being particularly corrupt and linked to Satan,
which is true.
So like fucking slayed them all.
Yes. What the?
Yeah, so the holy religious thing to do is kill everybody.
John.
So it was like, he thought it was like a mercy killing.
That's exactly right.
He saw too much evil in the world.
He'd killed his family to save their souls.
That's very nice of you, you fucking dick.
And also how giving.
Now he said he didn't kill himself because-
Yeah, well let's hear it.
He didn't kill himself because suicide is a mortal sin and that would definitely bar
him from heaven as opposed to murdering five people where you're still in a gray area that
can be negotiated.
What are you talking about?
Narcissism, extreme narcissism, sociopathy?
Definitely narcissism.
I don't think the sociopath thing might not apply only because
This is the one-off people get mad people get mad it's a five off. Sorry. That's five. Okay
We're not saying all that narcissists are murderers, right?
Yeah, but however, this is an extreme case of narcissists. Yeah, it's a it's a element in this
Personality disorder. Yeah, it's an element in this personality disorder.
Yeah.
I'm a narcissist, I've never killed anybody.
Except for in comedy.
Boo.
Okay.
Oh Karen.
Later a reporter who covered the trial described
hearing this letter when it was read aloud in court
and he said quote,
"'I'll never forget the audible sigh of shock
"'from the jury and spectators "'when the last line of lists read or letter was read
PS mother is in the hallway in the attic third floor. She was too heavy to move. Oh
My god, dang. That's your mom. Yeah
It's like I'm moving like a moving box that you just like couldn't yeah
Someone take care of that upstairs like it's your mother? Do you think you might have
had a slight problem with her?
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. So a nationwide manhunt is launched, but he's got a month lead time. He's way ahead.
Police investigated hundreds of leads without success. All reliable photographs of List had been destroyed. So it wasn't, I was creeped out.
Turns out it was kind of like,
creepy smart. Super smart.
Yeah. Oh, I didn't get,
I didn't catch on to that.
I did not either.
The family car was found at Kennedy Airport,
but there was no evidence he had boarded a flight.
He was gone and would remain gone for 18 years.
Wow. Then on May 21st,
1989, forward into the 80s, yay, the murders were recounted on America's Most Wanted,
which at the time had been on the air less than a year. And it featured an age-progressed clay bust sculpted by the forensic artist Frank Bender and it turned
out to bear an almost exact resemblance to Liszt's appearance.
Maybe I'm making this up, but I fucking remember seeing this.
No, you remember because I'm about to hold up a picture to you.
I'm so excited.
All right.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
I was nine, so I was like old enough to remember this.
Yes, and this was, I remember it, I was 19.
Oh, grandma and baby.
Amy Yuck.
Bender consulted a forensic psychologist
and created a psychological profile of List.
He looked at photographs of List's parents
and predicted what he would look like as he aged.
Holy shit.
He gave him a receding hairline and sagging jaws.
Bender was particularly lauded for one final touch
he added to his completed artwork.
It was a pair of glasses.
Bender believed List would not be vain enough
to wear contact lenses.
However, he said,
List would have worn a pair of glasses
different from those he wore before the murders.
He said they would be a pair with thick, dark frames.
He and the psychologist theorized
that List would do this to hide in a sense.
He would want to disguise the fact
that he was a failure and appear more important
than he really was.
Holy shit.
So he put these big old glasses, remember that?
Dude, I remember that.
This is real John List and this is that sculpture.
Holy fuck.
It's fucking like exact.
Oh my God, you guys look this up right now.
Look, Stephen.
Isn't that crazy?
We'll put it on social media.
Oh, I'll put this on our Insta.
But this, Frank Bender nailed it.
So literally less than two weeks later,
they got a ton of calls, but less than two weeks later,
they find him in Virginia.
And the hilarious part is in the court,
John List reveals he was watching the show that night
with his new wife.
And he was quoted as saying,
I was perspiring like anything,
but his wife didn't recognize him.
No way.
She had a fucking, she had a veil of I can't over her fucking eyes and I bet a little
Vin rose a little rose a little bottle of rose. She had all kinds of different veils
Uh, yeah the veil. Yeah. Okay, so they go to trial. Um
um, he explained that he had lost his job. He explained he was dealing with his wife's alcoholism and, trial reveal, her untreated tertiary syphilis that she had contracted
from her first husband, an army lieutenant who was killed in combat in Korea, and concealed
for 18 years. So his crazy wife that used to verbally
abuse him and publicly, oh, maybe I skipped that part, but there's, oh no, it's in this
part. He says in court that she used to publicly insult him about, wait.
Did I guess that completely right?
You absolutely guessed it.
Out of the blue.
I really didn't know that.
Yeah.
Well, syphilis makes you go fucking bananas.
He, List said, by then the disease
and her excessive alcohol consumption had,
according to testimony, transformed her
from an attractive young woman
to an unkempt paranoid recluse who frequently
and often publicly disparaged List,
comparing his sexual skills unfavorably
to those of her first husband,
the one who gave her syphilis.
He gave him fucking syphilis.
Jesus, that scared the shit out of me.
So here's me playing the prosecuting attorney.
Mr. List, can you explain how your wife
often disparages your sexual skills in public if she's a recluse?
No more questions, your honor.
And I turn around, slam my blazer down onto the chair.
All right, so basically John Liz makes
all these excuses in court.
He's like, I have PTSD from being in the army.
I, what else did he say? Oh wait, a smoker. It was my wife, my kids
were going crazy, I was abused as a child, my father always told me that you had to provide
for your family and that you had to do this and you had to do that and I wasn't doing anything, any of those things
because I lost my job, blah, blah, blah.
So a court appointed psychiatrist testified
Lis suffered from obsessive compulsive personality disorder
and he only saw two solutions to a situation,
accept welfare or kill his family and send them to heaven.
And welfare was unacceptable because it would expose him and his family to ridicule and violate
his authoritarian father's teachings, blah, blah, blah. So this is a common thing with family
annihilators. They say that there are two types and one is a livid coercive killer. And those are the ones that are usually abusive
and they kill the family when the family
tries to run away from them.
So it's years of abuse, years of abuse,
the family tries to escape and then it's like.
Let me see those all the time.
I'll teach you all, yes.
But the other kind is the civil reputable killer.
And they're motivated by a perverse form of altruism.
So it's his way of
rescuing the family from shame and hardship. And in his obsessive compulsive narcissism, John List
didn't choose to fix his own problems, but instead he fixated on the family problems and the problems
of society. 81% of family annihilators kill themselves after killing their family. So that's when,
in my opinion, John List's argument of this, I was doing the best for the family breaks
down because he went on to live a happy life for 19 years in Colorado. And what, sorry,
the part that I was skipping over is he basically told
everybody what happened was the day after the murders, he took the train from New Jersey
to Michigan and then from Michigan to Colorado. He settled in Denver. He took an accounting
job as Robert Peter Bob Clark. And that's subtle. Yeah. Kind of plain, but then also exciting. Yeah. Exciting in a way.
Pick one.
Pick one of those names.
He was the controller at a paper box manufacturer outside of Denver.
The Comptroller?
They said Comptroller.
I want to say Comptroller.
You know what?
It's our fucking story to tell.
That's right.
And then what he'd do, he joined the Lutheran congregation, ran a carpool for shut-in church members,
and met an army PX clerk named Loris Miller
and married her in 1985.
It's almost like he's trying to prove to himself
that he's actually a good person.
It was just circumstantial.
It was them.
His wife, his alcoholic syphilitic wife,
his hippie daughter, his rebellious children, they ruined it for him.
I feel like in the 50s, that might have worked better
than in the 70s and 80s, that excuse,
or like especially the 80s,
but that came to an end, it seems like.
Right, because it, well, that was also like
the oldest version of like,
there's only a father that's the breadwinner.
It's never the mother and no one gets divorced.
And this is the American dream.
You have to have a house and two kids.
All that bullshit everyone got sold.
That everyone kind of had to swallow whole basically.
Also, John List was abused as a child,
which is a very common thing in family annihilators
because they feel powerless,
they felt powerless as children.
So when they have families,
they're exerting power over the family
to give them that power they never had.
Now they're in charge.
Exactly, and then when that doesn't work,
they don't know how to deal with it.
Oh man, when the 70s come and the daughter's like,
I'm gonna go crazy.
Yeah, when there's a fucking cultural revolution
throughout the country and your daughter's like,
I think I might wanna act instead of being
a devout Lutheran.
Yeah.
Yeah, so they're trying to create the life they never had
that they fantasized of as abused children.
Right.
And then when that goes to shit,
they're just like, well, we're starting over, essentially.
Yeah.
I guess this has a great twist ending.
It's all good.
So that he was convicted of five counts of murder
of five counts of murder,
and the judge said, John M. List is without remorse and without honor.
After 18 years, five months, and 22 days,
it's now time for the voices of Helen, Alma, Patrick,
Patricia, Frederick, and John F. List
to rise from the grave.
That's beautiful.
And he imposed a sentence of five terms of life imprisonment
to be served consecutively.
It was the maximum penalty.
And List died of pneumonia in prison on March 21st, 2008.
His body was not claimed
because who's gonna fucking claim it?
He lived for a long time.
He really did.
The second wife didn't return the call.
The morgue was like, oh, we have your hello.
Hello.
But eventually someone took him back
and he was buried next to his mother in Michigan.
She's like, fuck this guy.
Yeah.
Get out of here.
You're showing me the fucking face
and then wouldn't even carry me to the ballroom.
But are you ready for this twist ending that I love?
Oh, that's not it, yeah.
This is it.
So somebody burnt down Breeze Knoll,
the great mansion.
No one's ever even looked into who might've done it.
Was it a ghost? They just did it.
Good about a ghost.
Good about a ghost fire.
There's a New Jersey ghost fire.
But destroyed along with the home
was the ballroom stained glass skylight,
which was a signed Tiffany original
worth at least $100,000 at the time,
which would have covered his expenses.
It was right there the whole time
in that room.
You didn't go in cause you couldn't deal with it.
Oh my God.
That's gonna be someone's new ringtone by the way.
That's John, that's John List everybody.
Oh, also because he disappeared in 71 and DB.
Cooper, DB Cooper.
They thought he was DB Cooper for a while.
Cause he kind of looks like that sketch.
Yeah, Mr. Vag.
DB Cooper sold $200,000, which was kind of around,
they figured around how much John List owed.
Are they sure it wasn't him?
John List vehemently denied it from jail.
That's how fucking boring this guy is.
No, I'm not, no, I insist I'm not DB Cooper.
Well, it could have been cool if you were.
Yeah, but maybe he doesn't, I bet it was him.
No, he, I don't think this guy would have jumped
out of a plane.
He was too scared to tell his wife he got fired.
Okay.
You know?
Okay, maybe he thought, I don't know,
just do Lutherans like Jesus?
Maybe he thought Jesus would. Help out Maybe he thought Jesus would help out.
Yeah.
Jesus did help out.
He gave him a beautiful skylight, a Tiffany skylight.
The Lord said it was right there all along.
You know that whoever burnt that house down was fucking bummed.
They didn't know that too.
Yeah.
There was some real estate agent that ran up at the last...
What are you doing?
No, no, no, no.
At least get the thing.
You ghosts and your arson.
Okay, we're back.
Remember when Conan O'Brien guested on our show and told us this story like we had never
heard it before?
Yeah.
But also, I mean, why would he have ever listened to this podcast?
But also that he was in the courtroom when John List...
Oh my God.
He's just...
He's a super gigantic murderino.
But he also was like, the assumption was we didn't know what he was talking about.
It's just like, sir...
It was a little like, you've maybe never heard of this one.
And it's like, try me.
Either that or just I'm fucking telling this story.
And it's like, oh, I have some details too.
Okay.
No.
You're right. you're right.
You're right.
One of which, God damn, I think about it literally once a week is that John List did all of that
because he was broke.
And meanwhile, in that mansion that he felt pressured to buy, there was a Tiffany fixture.
Glass ceiling.
It was the glass ceiling. Like a skylight. Yeah.
Or was it a light fixture? I can't remember.
But either way, it was worth over $100,000 enough to get him out of debt.
Let me throw this in there.
Do you think, AKA, I bet he still would have found something later to kill them all for?
He would have sold that skylight or light thing, used the hundred grand,
he still would have fucking killed them on something else.
I feel like a family annihilator, the problem isn't actually debt.
You're right, yes.
It's not getting out of debt and everything's fine and everyone's happy.
He wanted to and he found a way to do it.
Yeah, there wasn't a magic key that was going to solve it.
And also just that the whole topic of family annihilators, it's so intense, it's so way out there.
It's just, and it's crazy because now those stories are coming up more and more.
Yeah. And he, specifically this story is just so cold and calculated. The whole cutting his face out of the pictures.
I mean, it's just so sick.
Are there any updates?
I know he's dead, but anything more?
He is here.
This is what's important.
I've learned what a comptroller is.
Webster's Dictionary defines a comptroller
as a management level professional who
oversees financial reporting and accounting. Also, while he was on the run, John took a job as a controller, which
we also didn't understand or care about in the original story. Turns out, controllers
work for private companies doing the exact same thing. Comptrollers work for governments
and nonprofits doing that job. So, it out a man whose financial irresponsibility led him to
murder his entire family actually worked in accounting. That was supposed to be his specialty.
Yeah. You can't do anything right. The irony is everywhere with this John List story.
Also the John List story is the America's most wanted element that makes it such a legendary
true crime story.
Totally. And that his fucking new wife was sitting next to him and didn't recognize him
or just, you know, maybe something in her head did. But can you imagine? Jesus.
Can you imagine? This is why Conan loved the story so much.
Okay. It's time for Georgia's story that she does on this episode about the death of
Warina Wright.
All right.
All right. What's yours?
So I have one that I learned about recently because it happened recently.
And we're gonna Karen, we're gonna do a little play.
Okay.
This whole this theme.
What is this theme?
Um, drama, drama teachers. All right. Karen, we're going to do a little play. Okay. This whole, this theme, what is this theme?
Drama, drama teachers.
All right.
You mean for this episode?
Yeah.
Yeah, the drama teachers episode.
All right.
So, Warina Wright, W-A-R-R-I-E-N-A, Warina Wright was 26 from New Zealand. And she went to Queensland, Australia on July 29th, 2014
to celebrate a friend's wedding.
She checks into a motel on August 6th,
and then on the following day is like,
let's see who's on Tinder.
Do you know this one?
No.
Okay.
So she fucking, Tinder's beautiful girl.
She looks like a little bit, a little gothy, but not, you know, she's hot.
So she finds Gable Toasty's Tinder,
he's this like hot ladies man.
They meet up outside of a bar on the sixth.
I just wanna say by the next morning,
Marina will be dead after falling from his Gables
14th floor balcony. That's how this goes.
That's not good.
Back to that night by 9pm, they're in his apartment
on the 14th floor.
Okay.
This beautiful building.
So somehow Gable, which is a great name, isn't it? What's his first name?
First name? I don't know.
I like it. For some reason, he starts recording what's going on inside with a voice recorder.
Police somehow extracted it from like mobile phones that were found. I think it was tried.
They tried to delete. He tried to delete it. It didn't happen. They were able to get it. somehow extracted it from like mobile phones that were found. I think it was trying to
they tried to delete he tried to delete it. It didn't happen. They were able to get it.
So so there's um, there's a whole there's a whole conversation that's recorded. So
yeah, so I'm going to read. But yeah, I'm gonna read. I highlighted your parts. Okay, oh, thank you. You're Warina, I'm Gable.
But let me read it to you also.
Okay, so at 1 a.m., the sound recorder started
and it's later ceased, but the recording starts,
music's heard, and 20 seconds into the recording,
the man states, fuck me.
At 1.02 a.m., the man asks the female to chill
and have a drink.
And she says she is, I'm a psycho drunk and do not test me.
Then at 1.05, between 1.05 and 1.08,
the pair talk about death.
The male says, throw me off the balcony and that's it.
This is it, boom.
Then at 1.16 a.m. there's laughing sounds
are heard and sounds of hitting are heard as well. But the music continues to play in
the background. And that was scary. Is it funky? And there are soft sounds of groaning.
Okay. At 1 29 a.m. the male says, I don't like getting beaten up.
At 1.36 a.m., the argument begins
when the female says she's leaving
and can't find her iPhone.
She says,
Are you going to fucking untie me
because I will fucking destroy your jaw?
Oh my God.
And then Vince unlocked the door
and scared the ever-loving shh.
It's like the cannibal episode. Same thing happened when you were talking about cannibals. And then Vince unlocked the door and scared the ever-loving
Man Elvis
Then Sabro, um
Okay, you're gonna untie me blah blah blah so at 13. So at 1.38, the man says, I should have never given you so much to drink.
I thought we were gonna have fun.
And then he asks her to calm down.
At 1.41 a.m., the man asks the female to stay,
but says, you're just a bit violent.
He offers to cook some food,
and the conversation calms down.
At 1.53 a.m., more drinks are poured. Stop drinking, you guys.
You already decided the drinking's bad.
Yeah.
At 2 a.m., the occupant of the apartment below
is woken up by the noise.
At 2.10 a.m., the audio recording,
in the audio recording, the male tells the female
to relax and threatens to kick her arse ass.
At 2 11 a.m. there's sounds of struggle.
A minute later the sounds of rocks possibly being thrown
in the apartment is heard.
At 2 14 the man says, that's enough.
You've worn out your welcome, you have to leave.
The female out of breath says, okay.
At 2 15 a.m. the man says, I thought you were kidding
and I have taken enough.
This is fucking bullshit. You're lucky I haven't were kidding and I have taken enough this is fucking bullshit
You're lucky. I haven't chucked you off my balcony. You goddamn psycho little bitch at 2 16 a.m
The female who is breathing heavily accuses him of being sexist and then says lay off to which the male replies seriously what?
At 2 17 a.m. The man says you're a goddamn psycho. I'm going to let you go
I'm going to walk you out of this apartment just the way you are
You are not going to collect any of your belongings
You're just going to walk out and I'm going to slam the door on you
Do you understand if you try and pull anything I'll knock you out. Do you understand the female the female says?
I'm so sorry. I don't care
Okay, so the fall at 2 17 a.m. Sounds of struggling and heavy breathing are heard the man says let go of it
Let go let go let go at 2 18 the first choking sounds are heard breathing slows male
Let it go sounds of a metallic object dropping is heard at 2 20 a.m
The door a door unlocks and the female states know no, the sound of glass, a glass door possibly being hit.
220, the man says, who the fuck do you think you are, hey?
The female says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
The male says, you tried to kill me, huh?
Well, why did you try and hit me with that?
Shut your filthy mouth.
The female, I'm not gonna scream, screams now,
but she's screaming, no, no, no, no, no, no.
The man says, it's all on recording, you know,
it's all being recorded.
The female, a lot more knows, just let me go home.
The male says, I would, but you've been a bad girl.
And then the sounds are heard of a door slamming shut.
A police at this point alleged that he left her out
on the balcony, misright on the balcony.
The female says-
Just let me go home, just let me go home.
At 221 AM, a female's final words are heard.
Just let me go home.
Faint screaming is heard.
You're looking at me like I'm gonna-
It's horrible.
Okay, so put that down.
Okay.
So, the occupant in the apartment below his,
here's a female repeatedly shouting no,
and then sees two legs dangling down.
So what's going on right now is either
she's crazy and drunk and jumping,
or she's terrified of this person
and trying to get to the balcony below.
Yeah.
So the witness says, in a matter of seconds,
I saw the person fall from the balcony above mine.
At 221, a call is placed from Gables' phone to his lawyer.
The call doesn't connect.
At 223, a triple O, which I'm guessing is 911,
call is placed by the woman in the apartment below.
Police arrive at the scene, and at at the same time the Fob key to
his apartment is activated. Closed caption cameras capture a male believed to be Gable
approaching the front entrance of the apartment and he walks back to the elevator and rides
it to the basement. At 2 29 sounds of walking are heard in the audio recording which is
still going from earlier in the night.
So he has the phone or whatever he's using to record
what's going on with him.
With him or in the apartment?
With him.
With him.
He's like in the garage.
So sorry, he's recording this entire evening?
He's recording the whole thing.
And people said he might've done it
because he was like a creepy pervert
and liked to record these things,
or he took home a lot of women
and this is a way to like assure that nothing,
you know, just to have it, if they go crazy or if,
yeah, either way it's sketchy.
Yeah.
310 a.m. he orders a pizza.
What?
Yeah.
He says, a pizza of pizza supreme please.
He orders a fucking slice of pizza.
At 3.23 a.m., a call is placed to his father.
He says, hello, dad,
I might have gotten a bit of a situation.
I met a girl for a date, she started getting aggressive.
We kept drinking, and I think she thought it was like a joke,
and she kept like beating me up, because she was really drunk, and I forced her thought it was like a joke and she kept like beating me up
cause she was really drunk
and I forced her out on the balcony
and I think she might've jumped off.
And the dad says, oh no.
Are you okay?
Yeah.
So there's million cops walking around and fucked up.
I don't know what to do.
He says, I don't know. I like, I tackled her on my floor inside the building and I never forced her over the edge. So the
dad picks him up and, uh, eventually he's arrested. And, uh, so yeah, so he's claiming he's innocent.
She jumped, he has nothing to do with it.
He didn't push her over the edge.
It's not murder.
He's set for trial on August, on October 13th, 2016.
But he's free right now, he's out on Bond.
And he can't stop talking.
He's posting shit on like bodybuilders.com.
Oh no. He's just, he doesn't understand talking. He's posting shit on like bodybuilders.com. Oh no.
He's just, he doesn't understand why people are blind. He has to be somewhat narcissistic.
Yeah.
Oh, you mean like he needs to say his,
what his side of it is?
Yeah, but he's also saying things
about how many women he's been with
and he's never hurt them.
So he's like bragging about that,
how nice his apartment was,
how well he does, saying
it's a witch hunt.
But they, the prosecutors think he could be convicted for murder because she was reportedly
in fear of her life and was trying to flee him to the apartment below.
Who says that?
Those neighbors?
The prosecutors say that.
Oh, okay.
And I'm really interested, I really like, not like, but I'm really interested in murder
by suicide.
I think it's really interesting.
Like there's that one case of, there was the road rage incidents on a bridge in Detroit
and this man was coming at the woman who had rear-ended him and she jumped off the bridge
to get away from him.
Yeah, that's, that was actually a very famous, like one of the earliest law and orders.
Really?
Yes.
Wow.
Yeah.
Well, and he was convicted of murder or maybe manslaughter.
Because you just didn't know where else to go.
It was just like trying to get away.
Yeah.
But also, it was the idea of recording an entire evening just to be sure in and of itself is suspicious to me.
Maybe what do you need to be sure of that you have been in a position where this has been a problem for you?
Or maybe she just already was being a little crazy.
Oh, so he started the recording.
Yeah.
Not to, I'm not victim blaming. They were clearly very drunk.
Maybe he liked to record his sex.
But yeah, you're right. I mean, like she, the things that she's doing don't make a lot
of sense. It's not like, it doesn't seem like she's the only victim at the beginning.
Yeah. It's not, from what he's saying, but here's the thing. He's the only one who knows
it's being recorded. So what he's saying, but here's the thing. He's the only one who knows it's being recorded.
So what he's saying about her attacking him is very specific.
And someone on like a Reddit said,
or maybe on the Facebook page said,
when my boyfriend was beating me up, he'd say, he'd yell,
stop it, what are you doing to me?
Why are you doing this?
To like get the neighbors to think that she was doing
something to him or just to fuck with her in her mind.
So.
It could be that.
It could just be.
What it sounds like happened from when I read
the transcript, which I fucking stayed up all night
reading it, it was like, it's so crazy.
You know, they were having rough sex,
maybe she wasn't completely coherent.
She comes to and is freaked out by it
and is trying to get out but doesn't know how
and he's telling her to calm down
because he tells her to calm down a couple times.
I think at one point she realized what was happening
and picks something up to throw at him
and he gets so angry at that
because you can hear him say like,
you've been a bad girl. She's trying
to defend herself. He's like, I'm gonna have to lock you out on the balcony to like, to
protect myself. But she the whole time she's been the victim and she's freaking the fuck
out. Oh, and she's drunk and fucked up. And so she thinks the best option is to go over
the side of the edge and get to the balcony below, which...
Yeah, that's like something from a movie.
It's like, it only works when stuntmen do it.
Yeah, anyone in their right mind would never try that.
And so she clearly wasn't in her right mind.
And is there proof that we know that she, if she drank,
like, I know people who are almost like allergic to alcohol
where they have one drink and they're just like legless
and out of their minds.
No, I don't know.
It's not like that.
I don't know what her blood alcohol level was.
I don't know if they tested her for drugs.
Maybe they're keeping all of that for the trial.
Yeah, it sounds like that's the story he's trying to push
with this recording is like, you've gone crazy.
But he's feeding her alcohol too.
Yeah.
So even if it's like, well, look how drunk she was. I mean, his own
recording is, is gonna is gonna be the thing that convicts him,
I feel like. Well, it's super weird to, I can't imagine if
something terrible happened at my house, like horrifying, like a person committed
suicide, I wouldn't be ordering pizza an hour later. No, I mean I wonder if he was
so fucked up and didn't know what's going on, it would be almost be like he
would go lay down or something or go hide or you know like I don't think... But
also if you, I mean this also it just immediately makes me think of The Night Of
because The Night Of presents you the story
where you completely.
I haven't watched it.
I have only watched the first episode.
Okay, but I mean, just in general,
you empathize with the person that they put in front of you
because that's the story you're getting,
which is what happens a lot of the time
is whoever gets a hold of that narrative,
then you go, oh yeah, yeah, no, he would never do that.
He's so nice, or whatever story.
Yeah, and what people present you in the media.
And then the shit that they talk about the other person.
So in a way, not to defend him,
I have no idea what's going on in this one, this is crazy,
but it makes sense then that if he's kind of out on his own, he's
trying to control the narrative by tweeting things and posting shit on bodybuilders.com or whatever
you said. I mean, like then he's, that's a person that's just scrambling and making mistakes.
Yeah. I feel like the harder you try to defend yourself on social media, the worse you seem,
and then more people can pick it apart.
Yes, for sure.
Because I mean, you know, web sleuths
have gotten ahold of this.
The website web sleuths have gotten ahold of this
and are like picking it apart,
and they think there's been some comments
by fake accounts he's made
that just know too much about the details.
Oh, shit.
Yeah, it's like he's his own worst fucking enemy.
Well, and also he's paying a lot of attention
to the process of this.
Right.
Which is very strange.
Yeah, it's gonna be a hard one.
I feel like it's gonna be a hard one for juries.
So sorry, did this just happen days ago?
2014.
Oh, okay.
But he's being, you know, it's Australia,
so I don't know, I feel like he's being indicted
or there's gonna be a trial to indict him on, in October.
Oh, okay.
Wow.
From what I can tell from Australian legal ease.
Isn't that fucked up?
Yeah, I...
This poor, the poor girl, but this whole situation.
Guys, don't meet strangers on Tinder.
Oh man, I'm gonna get in trouble for slut shaming.
That's not slut shaming.
But it's so crazy that people just like,
meet people. That's just dating though.
Yeah, but I mean, how about that girl in Santa Monica
that knew the guy for a year and roof-eat or drank?
I mean, bad things happen to people, it just happens.
Yeah, you're right.
But this seems weird because you're,
the idea that a person is recording an entire evening
and their foreknowledge of that recording
and not telling the other person,
that's, there's a manipulation on the surface of that
that's suspicious.
For sure.
And to me, it's suspicious to say,
I record this just in case something happens
and I need to defend myself.
Where it's like, but that's not an accurate defense
because we can't see what's actually happening.
It's just your playlet.
It's also weird at the very end when he was like,
I've been recording it, like he uses it
to throw it in her face somehow, almost like.
You can't prove anything?
Yeah, you can't prove anything or,
like why would he use that against her if he,
you know, if nothing had happened
that he could call the cops for or press charges for?
Well, and also he never called the cops, right?
No, and he didn't let her go either.
Like at one point she was like, I'm getting my shit and I'm leaving where's my phone and he like stopped her from leaving. Yeah
So she was freaked out and wanted to leave too both of them
You know if you had a person this just throw this out there
If you had a person in your house, you met on a tinder date, so you don't know them
You guys are drinking they get a little crazy
in your house, you met on a Tinder date, so you don't know them.
You guys are drinking, they get a little crazy.
You're the guy, so they, it's a girl that tries
to beat you up, so it's like painful, irritating,
not life-threatening.
When they wanna go, what would be the, why would you
keep them there?
Like this is a crazy, if you're keeping a crazy person
in your apartment, quote unquote so crazy, that you're keeping a crazy person in your apartment, quote unquote, so crazy,
that you know you're making more problems.
Like when, if they, you just go, yeah, get out.
What are you trying to get out of the situation
if you want to keep the person who's
Crazy and abusive toward you.
Yeah, around there, you're getting something out of it
or it's not as it seems.
Right.
Well, there's that third option that, I mean.
Abusive people, you know, it's the gaslighting technique
where abusive people are like, why are you being so crazy?
Like, this isn't that big of a deal.
Right.
And the people who that works on, it works very well.
Well, and also you would get violent if you were like,
say, tied up against your will or woke up,
whatever the scenario was where you would try your best
to like, what are the rocks that got thrown indoors?
Like what's that?
I don't know what the rocks are.
I wonder if she was just almost incoherent.
You know what I mean?
Where it's like, you're not yet,
you're just like, you're aware that you're in a situation
that's not good because Because she's not forming
complete sentences. Most of the time. Yeah, she's just saying
she's reacting. Right. That's right. Hmm. That's crazy. I know.
And then you have to assume she was naked on the balcony too.
Oh, really? I think so. She's definitely barefoot, but I don't I'm not sure
if she's naked. Oh, okay. So check that out. I didn't I didn't think of facts and things.
Well, yeah, that's fucked up, right? Yeah, I've been thinking about that one for a lot
for a long time. Are you okay? I mean, no, no, no. Those ones just make me keep on thinking about it. I know.
The idea of recording an evening is super insane to me.
And also just like this weird day and age that we live in where like you could be recorded
in any time.
Yeah.
Like right now.
Oh shit.
Oh my God.
Wait, what are these microphones doing in our faces? Okay, we're back.
Yeah, this one is so rough.
Are there any case updates on this?
Yeah, I have a couple of case updates.
After a week long trial in October of 2016,
a Supreme Court jury in Brisbane acquitted Gable Totsie
of both murder
and manslaughter charges in the death of Orina Wright.
So I had done the story before I had even gone to trial
and he was acquitted.
And since then, Totsie has been going by a different name
and his name has popped up in the news a few times since,
usually tied to stories about his dating life or drinking habits, and just like fuel his notoriety.
And there's just some, you know, he gets into trouble.
It seems like it's just, I wanna know what really happened.
I don't know if we ever will that night, you know?
And so it's hard to be like, he got acquitted.
So you wanna be like, you don't wanna talk shit
on this person because what if he's not feel? This whole thing was this terrible, right?
happenstance that was, I mean, all of it is just so baffling. Yeah. And it's just like such a sad,
tragic, unnecessary death of this young woman. And that's really what it comes down to.
Yeah, that's right. That's right. So let's talk about the new title,
because incredibly we titled this 29 German spelling of nine. But I bet I made that up.
I don't remember. But I don't think that would be something you suggested. I really
don't think I would have. But yeah, who's to say? You know, I mean, it's who's to say?
Literally. But also, it's just kind of like, we're just trying to get this stuff done.
I wonder how much longer it is until we stop fucking naming things after numbers.
It's got to be pretty close.
If we're 29 is the fucking, is all we got.
Right?
That we just were like, we need a different gimmick here.
Please.
All right.
So if we were naming the episode today based on things we said
in the episode, we could call it Happy Clap, which I love because that's what Stephen does when Karen
talks about Nico Case, which is the cutest. I see Stephen sitting cross-legged on the floor doing his
happy clap. His quiet, sound guy happy clap. Yeah. Also, all the cookies, which is what Georgia says
Elvis is with Vince because Vince gives
him all the cookies.
Yeah, that's when we had to make Vince and the cats go in a different room, go in the
one bedroom of my one bedroom apartment.
We were recording and he couldn't make a noise or come out or do anything.
He was like, and also we were out there for an hour and 45 minutes most of the time.
Really were.
And once in a while I'd scream, Vince, what was the name of that movie?
Oh, that cute little apartment.
Prayers up to Vince Averill once again for being there from day one.
Still doing it.
Still putting in his hours.
He really is.
Thank you guys for listening to this episode of Rewind and for sticking with us and still being here.
Yes, we Rewind every Wednesday, so come back and we'll be doing episode 30 next week.
That's right.
And until then, stay sexy.
And don't get murdered.
Goodbye.
Elvis, do you want a cookie?