My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark - Rewind with Karen & Georgia - Episode 3: Our Favorite Thirder

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

It's time to Rewind with Karen & Georgia! In this episode, Georgia and Karen are rewinding back to January 31, 2016 to discuss the Cameron Todd Willingham arson case and the Oakland child killings.  Whether you're a brand new listener or a card-carrying Murderino, we invite you to restart the catalog with us and enjoy the true crime conversation, the laughter and ALL of the life lessons we learned along the way. Head to social media to share your favorite moments from Episode 3: Our Favorite Thirder.  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-3-our-favorite-thirder 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 of 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.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is exactly right. When things heat up, you don't just want a cold one. You want the coldest one. The cold-loggered, cold-filtered, cold-certified one. Mountain Cold Refreshment. Coors Light. The chill choice. Visit CoorsLight.ca to learn more. Celebrate responsibly. Must be legal drinking age. This is Kate Winkler-Dawson inviting you to listen to brand new episodes of my true crime talk show, Wicked Words. On each new episode, I interview journalists, podcasters, and filmmakers about

the fascinating behind the scenes stories from their investigations into the world of true crime, many of which have never been shared before. So join me and a new special guest each week for new episodes of Wicked Words as we dive deep into the stories behind the stories. New episodes of Wicked Words are available now wherever you get your podcasts. Hello. And welcome. To Rewind with Karen and Georgia. That's right. We are back here to cover episode three of My Favorite Murder, also with Karen and Georgia.

That's right. So here's the deal. We're re-listening to our original old school episodes. We're going to add new commentary to our favorite moments from the show. And once we stop cringing, we are going to reflect on our humble beginnings. We're going to discuss important case updates about the murders that we talk about. And we're going to talk about all the things that have changed since way back when. The original air date for this is January 31st, 2016. Seems like a lifetime ago. It is 100 years of solitude ago.

Now you can invite your book club and your pushy neighbors and your favorite apathetic arborists, so we can all be day one listeners. That's a group that I want to listen to podcasts with. Apathetic arborists? Yeah. Yeah. They're just so stuck up about trees. I will not stop talking about trees.

It's a very funny note to listener, just so you know, because this really is a painful exercise for Georgia and I in so many ways. I think we've already equated it to listening to your own answering machine message. Obviously, we volunteered for it, so our fault entirely. But very difficult to actually press play and try to re-listen ourselves. It really is. So what's beautiful about that is that we have many

talented producers here at Exactly Right Media and on My Favorite Murder who have been working for a very long time basically taking notes on all of these episodes and telling us on paper what is in the episode. Yeah, because we tried the first one or two to listen to ourselves and take our own notes, and I was just sweating the whole time.

It was a mess. I couldn't see my writing through my tears because of the kinds of things. Just a disaster. So this will actually be fun for us. That's the whole idea is this is fun. We're looking back. We're looking forward.

We're looking around. We already lived through the mistakes and suffered through the repercussions of those mistakes. All of the listeners and other people that have been here with us know that. And they know those learning arcs that we've been through. So now we just wanna have fun looking back at the other stuff that happened in all those episodes.

That's right. For example, both stories in today's episode, episode three, deal with the deaths of children, which is something we're a little more cautious of covering these days. Yeah, it's clearly in this episode, we are very new, we don't think anyone can hear us, and we are just having essentially a true crime kind of recap conversation. And there's, you know, sensitivity issues that like, of course, in this day and age,

and after all we've learned and gone through, the conversation would go incredibly differently. Absolutely. These are two cases that we're both still pretty obsessed with ourselves. So I think we would have covered them no matter what and they're important stories to tell and there are updates on both of them so that's exciting. It's very cool. A funny thing that someone figured out is that this episode of My Favorite Murder came out on a Sunday when the first two episodes had already come out on Thursdays and whoever the person was taking notes was like, do you guys know why?

Just like, because no one knew what they were doing. None of us had any true idea that this was supposed to be real, a business, a job. We didn't know when it was listening to Care what day it came out on. And we didn't know that podcasts were supposed to come out on like... There was no reality to this. It was amateur hour, essentially. I mean, and I think we've kept that energy of amateur hour all throughout. We've been authentic.

We've been our authentic amateur selves. You guys know it. So, you're about to listen to the top of episode three, where George and I are just chatting with each other, as we do on this show. Time machine, it's time to rewind. Here we go. Hi. How do we start talking about murder?

I don't know. Hey Karen, how was your day? It was pretty good. Did you get murdered? I did, and I lived through today. How about yourself? Didn't get murdered. See, that's all we want. Yeah. Um, this is my favorite murder. I'm Georgia. I'm Karen. Let's start with a new piece of news based on murdery stuff. Okay, good. Okay. So you know how one of the many ways that you can collect and present evidence is by matching hair follicles from the scene to the person or the murderer or whatever?

Turns out it's a completely bonk science. No. Yes. And the Justice Department is acknowledging that nearly every examiner of an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than two decade period. No. 95% of the 268 trials viewed so far says that they overstated forensic matches. Holy, no, this is humongous.

I know because I've seen shows where they do this and I'm like, great, legit. That's crazy. I feel like every forensic files that I've seen. The hair matching challenge. And they're pulling up those microscopic things, the slides. And you see the ridges and you see the color. It turns out in one of the cases, it turned out to be dog hair that they found. Oh shit.

It wasn't even human hair and I got convicted on it Um, do you know that in the the guy it's the Atlanta child killings? The guy that guy they only had him on carpet fibers. Holy shit, which one's that? He that's the one where there was tons of little kids in Atlanta little black kids only That were getting murdered and they had this guy and he is super suspicious because he was like, do you want to be a star posters all around the neighborhood? And he had a recording studio, which is like textbook, like pedophilic entrapment stuff, or also a way to get a star, a young star on the rise. But these kids were getting dumped, they were getting murdered and then thrown into the river. And then one night it was connected to him because one night

someone was near the bridge where a kid was rolled up in carpet and dumped over. And then his car was spotted somewhere nearby and they got him on it. But it was all about matching the carpet the kid was wrapped up in to carpet somewhere else in the home or in the car. Yeah. He like, there was a big piece of carpet cut out of his house. Yeah, I think so. I mean, now it's stupid, right? Yes. But the idea of that were because it's such a believable piece of evidence. Well, you know what another one is that might be flawed, that is one of my favorite ways to collect evidence besides handwriting analysis is blood spatter evidence.

They might totally debunk that too. Really? I feel like it's, I mean, yeah, I guess it doesn't... How do you scientifically prove those things for every single time? Which of course puts me in the mind of the staircase where all that blood spatter and I mean, that was a big part of that documentary was all that. But are they saying that the science of how it lands and all that kind of stuff isn't real? Yeah. I mean, yeah, you can't call it scientific evidence because it's not science. It's kind

of like conjecture. It's like, yeah, and magic talk. So are when do they get to the part where they throw out owls? You can use these things to get someone to confess, then great. But using it like the only thing to convict someone, that's insane. Yeah. Well, but also I think it's fascinating, like the Memphis, West Memphis three, where you can get stupid people to confess very easily. Right. That's true. And those tactics, the other thing they need to reform is keeping people in a room for

12 hours with no food and water and asking them the same question over and over and eventually having them just kind of go insane and want to be out of there. Yeah, you lead the conversation. You convince them that they did it. They're not confessing because they want to get out of there. Sometimes it's like, maybe I fucking didn't forgot. They tell you all these possibilities. Crazy. It is super crazy. And if there's some fucking creepy ass dude and there's a missing blonde kid and they find a long blonde hair in his trunk, why would her, you know, why would that long blonde hair be in there?

Because he's a wig maker, because his mother has long blonde hair, because this, it's the kind of thing where it's like saying being creepy is illegal. Yeah. That's the problem is that it's that thing of like, you can't wear a black shirt, depending on which part of the country you live in. certain things aren't allowed culturally. That ties into my favorite murder today. Does it really? I wanna hear your favorite. Let's do, let's tell each other our favorite murders.

Okay, well you don't wanna use that natural segue to go into yours? I feel like then I would be talking too much. Taking up too much of the- But you know this is a podcast, right? Okay, I'll go into mine. Get into talking. So mine. Okay.

We talk about the staircase owl theory a lot in the beginning of this show. I feel like it was kind of, you know, the staircase had just come out. It's how we first met talking about it. It was very relevant and kind of pop culture at the time. People were blown away. These notes they give us, that our producers give us, keep saying like, what do you think now? And I actually don't remember. I've gone back and forth so many times on whether it's the owl or the husband.

I mean, I was very dismissive of the owl theory being an ornithologist myself. What's the term? I just was dismissive of it in the way that it really felt like someone was trying to figure out a way to get somebody off a murder charge. But having heard, of course, in that time, it explained that idea that tiny feathers were found in her hair and like explanations scientific explanation scientific scientific based explanations Can you imagine but all of it is like still you know? That's why we continually talk about not being experts Yeah, because we all let just like every average person on the internet It's all just a bunch of people who read the same article, pretending that they know more than other people. So of course I have no idea, and if the owl theory eventually gets proven, I will laugh

along the loudest at me for having argued it that hard. But like, to me, it seems like of all the possibilities, knowing about, you know, domestic violence or women being murdered in their home, it's just like you're pulling out a theory. Right. And the circumstances of their actual life. I mean, you know what we need is one more documentary. Just one more. Throw in it out there. I'd watch it for sure. That's a fucking Lully.

Did you wait? You did watch the series. Oh, my God. It was excellent. I still haven't. I just remembered that right this second. I'm so jealous. What's it called? Is it called The Staircase? Yeah, it's called The Staircase. You can watch it on Macs. I am so jealous of your weekend, like this weekend coming up.

Yay. Wow. If nothing else, the Rewind series has brought me this piece of information and improved my life. That's right. Okay, so we're going to go into my story. I'm telling the story of Cameron Todd Willingham. I mean, devastating.

I was telling Georgia earlier, this is one of these cases, but I think this case most of all, I think about this case and this man once a month. Yeah, me too. It's crazy. And because we didn't cite sources back way back when. No. It's crazy. And because we didn't cite sources back way back when, my sources are The New Yorker, an article called Trial by Fire by David Gran, and Wikipedia.

I'll have a couple updates and recommendations at the end of my story. So here is my favorite murder. BOOM. As a segue into mine is this person had like Led Zeppelin and like death metal band posters on the wall. So they were like, he's, but I feel like he was in the early nineties. Yeah. So this, my favorite murder is, um, the man was tried and convicted and put to death for this murder. Oh shit. But it might probably isn't a murder

in the first place. What? Oh my God. Have I not heard of this one? That's what I would love. Okay. His name is Cameron Todd Willingham. In the early 90s, he busted out of his house that was engulfed in flames and his three little daughters died in it. Oh no. Have you heard of this one? No. It's a big case about the Innocence Project and debunking the arson investigators testimony

that ended up being just completely bullshit and wrong. Oh no. Yeah. Dead children with high stakes. We start out high stakes on this one. Yeah. He was fucking a bunch of death for this. Okay. Fuck Texas.

Yes. Oh yeah, yeah. Don't mess. So yeah, and they think that how it really started. So the arson investigators said that they found puddles where accelerant would have been and the outline of where the accelerant had been distributed around the apartment or the house because the burns don't happen this way and this is what fires do. We've been studying this for years and years. We all saw back draft. Right, exactly. So it turns out that that's just bullshit. And the neighbors and the firefighters and all the people who initially got there said that he seemed so insanely distraught and was trying to get back into

the house, but he couldn't because it was on fire. And then they later changed their testimony. He'd be like, yeah, he was too upset. I think it was fake. And no, he didn't seem upset at all. He moved his car. And then they said he moved his, he said he moved his car so it wouldn't explode and add to the fire, the common fire. Right. I don't know. But maybe he's guilty though. I mean, maybe, but so sorry, would he be guilty of wanting his family dead?

Just like, was his wife gone? His wife was gone at the time and he said he was sleeping and heard his daughter say daddy and it was already smoke, heavy smoke. So he left the house with the children inside. He tried. Yeah. He said he tried to get to them, but the fire had originated in their bedroom. The children? Yes. So he couldn't get to them. And he tried to go back in. He tried breaking windows. I was like of one mind when you started this story, that just turned me hard. Well, here's what they say probably happened. And I kind of can see this and believe it

that they're they used space heaters. Yes, those things are deadly. Yeah, old junkie space heaters that literally are on fire. The daughter like to lay near it and fuck with it. And her fucking blankie probably caught on fire. And her cheap Kmart polyester pajamas. Yes. Wait, this was the 90s? Yes, 91. Because when I was growing up, those pajamas were covered in stuff that caught on fire. How are we not dead from the 80s and 90s?

It's a miracle. It's like anyone that's my age is a total kind of just a walking miracle. Yeah, that we got to this point. No seat belts, no you got left home alone all the time. Can you imagine having a kid and watching them fucking run full throttle into death? Fuck, well, here's the thing. It's that thing, like it's the moralistic thing of,

oh, no man, which kind of goes back to that, the thing that happened, the last episode when we talked about, we were like, no man would let kind of goes back to that, the thing that happened the last episode when we talked about like, no man would let his wife get raped in front of her or whatever. It makes me want to say that of like, no man would leave a house where his three children are burning. Right. But the instinct to get out to live and the heat, the amount of heat. I mean, think of like the last time you cooked something and like the pan was hot and you touched a pan. That's what the walls would have been like if the house is on fire. I mean, in reading his account, it sounds like it was, it was already up in smoke and

he came out, got a breath and tried to go back in, but just it was walls and black smoke and you couldn't get in. What's the poster, like the metal posters and stuff? What is that about? There was like an Iron Maiden poster that had like a skull and cross bones on it. And they're like, he's satanic and he's a sociopath. And here's the proof because he has a like, like a sword and a heart tattoo on his arm. So he's in the cultism and Satanism. And it's just that kind of small town shit in the 90s. And now that would be anyone, if you went to Intelligencia right now, it's like, oh, so this whole place is filled with Satanists.

Although I have a feeling that there's places in this country where you can still get, you know, that's evidence towards you being a murderer still. Yeah, for sure. Thank God we don't live there. And also think of how creepy it would be if you were the fire investigator and you were walking through a burnt house and you see, because those people, they're just people and they're just civil servants.

So like they go in and see dead children in a room, their first responders, that's a huge emotional reaction. They look up and see a pentagram poster or whatever the thing is, and they're not thinking, let's not be reactionary or whatever. They're just human beings going, this whole thing looks like living hell. Yeah. Or look at this pentagram. Let's look for the accelerant traces and you can find them if you look or, you know, I can't remember how they explained away the accelerant. Maybe

that, oh, they did say something weird that I was like, me how they explained away the accelerant, maybe that, oh, they did say something weird that I was like, meh, that there was accelerant in the doorframe, like lighter fluid. And when the firefighters came, there was a barbecue grill on the porch. Maybe that's it got blasted off. And that's how the lighter fluid got there, which sounds like a little fishy, but it could happen. Totally. And also it doesn't sound like they're running a tight ship over there. Right. It doesn't sound like it. If you have shitty old space heaters, probably the rest of your house is a lot of random paper towels in bad places and stuff.

Right. Oh, there was a refrigerator blocking the second door and the kitchen and all this. It's like... But my dad used to talk all the time because my dad was a San Francisco fireman and he would talk constantly about how stupid people were about stuff. Like at Christmas when they would not water their tree, cover it in lights, leave the lights on all night and then everything's next to old curtains or like the people don't even realize or like, people don't even realize

or like I'll just take the time right now to tell everybody clean out the lint trap in your dryer every time you do a load of dry, every time you dry a load because that's the number one way people's houses catch on fire. You know when you pull off like that big crazy sweater of lint trap.

Because it's so much fun to see all the lint. Right, and it's like a big thing. But that's how people's houses catch on fire. Also, battery. I heard the thing about batteries. If you leave like a D battery out and near another one, they can spark somehow together and light on fire. Is that true? Because it's like, jeez. It's supposed to be the most like crazy way. Yeah.

I worry all the time. I know. Well, and some people don't at all. And that's why shit like that happens. They're just like, you know, we'll see what happens. But that's fucked up. Three little kids died because of that. Either way. And in the beginning, his wife was like, he's absolutely innocent on his side. Later, she divorced him and kind of went back and forth between if he was innocent or guilty. In the end, when he was put to death, she thought he was guilty. But she went back and forth a couple times.

Oh, I hate to be here. Yeah. How could you not? And also, it's not, you didn't lose one child, you lost all of your children. All of them. And now there's kind of a backlash because there was a prison informant that he shared a cell with who testified that this Cameron Willingham guy confessed to the murders, but now it's coming that he actually had been paid with money and less jail time to testify.

Jailhouse tests. Oh yeah. How do you ever go, no, this guy's really telling the truth this time. This one is trustworthy. This is it. Cause it perfectly fits our investigation and what we need to hear right now. And now we have the information. I have a hard time when like in this article that I was reading, it's not in the New Yorker, it's called trial by fire. They were saying that like his parole officer had said how nice and sweet he was, which I can never... Sociopaths are the nicest, most charming people you'll ever meet. So I don't believe any of that.

I don't give a shit about nice. Nice does not qualify for anything with me because it's the easiest way to be. Nice is not a big deal. I don't like charming. I'm creeped out by charming people. Yeah. Well, they want something. Right. I mean, everybody does. But like if you're gonna be, if you're gonna put the energy behind being charming, then there's something going on. There's an agenda at play. Also, if you feel like you need to

please every single person that you meet, you've got a fucking emotional mental issue. Yeah, there's something going on. I mean, truly, at the end of the day, give me an asshole. And I don't mean that the way you think and want me to mean it. I didn't think about it until just now. But yeah. But you know what? But you stand by that. I stand by it in every interpretation. No. Of just like people who are self-possessed

enough to not care what other people think or need them, need to manipulate what other people think. That's what it is. It's like, I'm going to make you think this certain thing about me. That's where that's the problematic thing. That scares me so much that I just don't ever believe anyone until I know them well enough. But I think that's the healthiest way. Because I remember being in my 20s and getting tricked by plenty of people who I'm sure were sociopaths or just deep narcissists. And you kind of, I think eventually you learn, you know, you just start picking up on those signs. And that's a good thing. That's what we're supposed

to do. This is my therapy session. Let's like, let's do half murder half, half kind of a psychological analysis of how to be. It's all intertwined. We should tell everyone these. I mean, who else are they going to hear it from? Right. There was my story. Yeah, that was just such a wild... Miscarriage of justice.

Everything, retelling, like all of it. What a great choice to have for your story. Because really that's like, I think this is what the true, true crime fans that are the hardcore, you know, they don't want any chit chat, they don't want anything, they want to talk about these cases, they want to go over the facts. This is what they're looking for. It's because we, I don't know, there's something to talk about these cases. They want to go over the facts. This is what they're looking for. It's because we, I don't know, there's something about us, true crime people who just want to look at the ugliest side of humanity because we know it's there and I can't bury my head

in the sand. I've never been able to and pretend it's not. So like show it to me completely and at that point I'll be able to handle it. Or like or anticipate or be able to recognize in the moment, oh this is what happened to that person, I'm seeing the same signs or something. It's like we're telling ourselves that it's going to give us some sort of experience that will help us in the future or save us in the future. But then this one where no one knows what's going on here. And the more people interact with this, the worse it gets, not the better. That's not what we're used to as a story.

Yeah. So here are some updates. In 2014, the State Bar of Texas formally accused the state prosecutor overseeing the case, John Jackson, of misconduct. Specifically, the board accused Jackson of making false statements, concealing evidence, and obstructing justice. There's like a bunch of stuff, including the jailhouse snitch having been promised favorable treatment and in return for testimony at Willingham's trial. And in 2017, a Texas jury found that Jackson had not committed

misconduct. So since then, the family of Willingham has been seeking a pardon for him, and that's still in the, it seems like that's still in the process. There's a 2010 documentary called Death by Fire from Frontline that I highly recommend that tells the story. And it's just this hole you could fall into finding out more info about the case. I mean, the idea that the state bar accused the prosecutor, they went through the whole thing, and then they were like, no, he's not guilty, or that didn't happen. That's one more wrinkle that no one needed on a case. There's still no satisfaction. There's still no direct anything. Awful.

So frustrating. So we go from there, as is our style, into my story. So I just want to warn everybody, it's the Oakland County child killer case. Again, murdered children, which is really sensitive, but in this story, I use the outdated term for child sexual assault material. So I just want to put that out there. Very difficult story to listen to. Most people know it. So here

it is. What's your favorite murder, Karen? My favorite murder this week is one that I've been so excited to talk about because this was one of those ones where I went deep Wikipedia one night alone and it was too late at night and often there are not very many friends I have that I can be like, guess what? Not until I met you. Yeah. We're the only people that won't text back. Are you okay? Are you okay? What's really going on? So there were these four kids were murdered in Oakland County, Michigan in the late seventies.

And they this whole case was called the Oakland County child killings. And sounds fucking awesome already. Right. So they found a 12 year old boy kidnapped and raped and smothered. And that was the first one. And then like a week later, these I didn't write down, I didn't do my super accurate homework, but it's people are coming here for facts that are in the wrong place. Yeah. And also it's all off Wikipedia. So you can get it and really, really enjoy it for yourself firsthand. But essentially, all 11 and 12 year old children. And so it goes a boy and then a girl, a 12 year old girl was found kidnapped, not raped, bathed, fed, and then

shot point blank and left in the snow. How was the first kid killed? Smothered. Smothered. So those aren't the same murderer probably? Well, they don't, they don't, they probably didn't connect them then. Okay. But then the third kid who was an 11 year old boy, who was kidnapped and so he was gone for like, he disappeared. And so on, say the seventh day or whatever, they went on the, the parents went on the news and said, please, um, you know, bring him home so we can give him his favorite dinner, Kentucky fried chicken, you

know, that they do to personalize. And the next day they found his body. Don't tell me have Kentucky fried chicken in his belly, Rape smothered with Kentucky Fried Chicken left in his belly. No! Exactly what you didn't want to hear. Oh my God. And he was also washed like the girl was. His nails were trimmed. His clothes were spotless. They were washed and pressed, and his body was still warm when they found it. So that's when they knew something super terrible was happening. Oh my god. And then the last girl was 11 and she was, she disappeared, she was kidnapped, and then she was found murdered. So the girls were not sexually interfered with and the boys were raped. So that was just, that was like a big thing that happened.

And they called, they, so after they got all that information, they called him the babysitter killer, which is, it's fucked up and almost sweet to him. Because the way he treated the kids. Because he, the way he, well, because of the way he left them, which kind of implies the way he treated them was nice, except for we all know that's not true and imagine because he kept them for a while, which is a lot, but the nightmare part alive, alive. So yeah. So that's horrifying. So I feel like when you're alive, there's some chance of escape. Like there's some hope left. Yes. Well, while it's still happening for sure.

Yeah. But then it's just that thing of like it's the it's it goes to the total insanity and and I don't know what to do. I wish I knew the difference. Yes, to probably for sure. But like when you're really psychotic or whatever, I don't know what... Depravity? I wish I knew the difference. Yes, depravity for sure. But like when you're really psychotic or whatever, where you're keeping the thing you're going to murder, like you know this is all the plan. And so you're keeping a child like a pet or whatever.

It's just beyond. But when they started looking at the suspects that were around Oakland County One of the people and this is this is where I went down the hole One of the people that was a suspect was like a 24 year old rich kid and his name Shit, I'm not gonna find it Dang it Christopher Bush So his father was like either the GM or the vice president of

one of the huge motor companies. Wait, it might have been GM and his father was the vice president of GM or one of those ones. Yeah. Hugely rich. He was always in this big mansion by himself. His parents were always like working or on vacation or whatever. And there was a constant stream of young boys coming in and out of the house. Why? Because he was a child molester. So he was paying kids to come over and whatever. And so he got arrested for sexual assault and child molestation several times. Like he was a known pedophile. How the fuck those people stay out? Because he was rich. So his they always bought him out of jail and cleared him and whatever and tried to do stuff. And he so they went and found him and started looking through

his room and looking through all his stuff. And they thought that they found a picture of one of the boys, I think it was supposed to be Tim, the third one, screaming, like a drawing of him with his hoodie on because I think they said he was found in a hoodie or something. So it was a picture of him with the hoodie looking like he was in total terror. But they don't know for sure that that's who the face was, but that's what he looked like. And so it was like, it was the circumstantial evidence. That's such a small thing to go on though. Yeah. And they were trying to put all that together. But apparently his room was really messy and filled with all kinds of creepy stuff. And then one of the things that they

connected because apparently so that kid Christopher Bush of they confiscated eight rolls of film in his room. And it was all kiddie porn. And then they find out and this is the thing that stuff like this is what makes me so fascinated it piques my interest in it. It's probably the writer in me where it's like, this is such a good story, separate from tragedy or whatever. They figure out that there is an island. So I guess there's like an island chain up way north in the peninsula area of Michigan. And one of them is called North Fox Island. And it was empty, they thought. And they find out that there is a Christian boys camp. There's a camp like Saint Somebody's for wayward boys on North Fox Island. The only way to get on or off the island is by plane. There's one airstrip down the center of it. And that when they go to investigate this island, they find out that they had set up this fake boys camp to get boys, like poor children,

who would sign up for a place like that. So it was like this free thing, like come and they were all being used in kiddie porn. It was just a kiddie porn ring. It was a kiddie porn ring. So then when they showed up, that's what was happening. And it was nightmare. I mean, like, that's like a Friday the 13th, Freddy Krueger nightmare movie right there. So they had all these people that they suspected. And they found a man named Ted Lambergean, who they, they got on kitty on those kitty porn charges where he was definitely involved in that. The ring that they busted in the bad part of Detroit, he was somehow definitely linked

to it or whatever it was. And then, oh, and this was a thing where a prisoner, a detective from Detroit was out in California interviewing someone about something else. And then the prisoner was like, I know who your babysitter killer is. Holy shit. And says it's Ted Lambergine. I knew him from this pedophile ring. He basically pointed to a picture and said, doesn't that look like Tim, whoever, the third little boy. Oh my God. And so that that detective went back and went and they started casing this guy who is now 70 and only leaves his house to go to church and da da da and like living like the silent old man that no one knows anything about. And then they go into his house and they find all this evidence

and he will not admit that he was the babysitter killer. But he first put all the evidence points to it. All the evidence points to that. And he and they have him on all the pedophile charges and all the ring charges and all the ring charges and all that. When did this happen? When did he get busted? 2005.

Oh my God. Yeah. So, and they, oh, Christopher Bush, the rich kid killed himself in 1978. So they kind of like assumed it was him because there was all that weird evidence and stuff So then the Ted Lambergean thing they like kind of came out of the blue So they're arresting the 70 year old and that's how it's ending Yeah, well they they got him on the other charges, but they can't get him. They don't have enough Hard evidence on those murders, but they're positive

They they lined up because he also the murder stopped when he moved to Cleveland. And when he moved to Cleveland, he started going to church every day. And they think that the priest there knows, like they think he confessed to that priest and the priest isn't saying it. There's all kinds of things like that, that are very clear. And it was like the days he wasn't at work or the days the children disappeared, all kinds of stuff. Those are always so interesting to me or like finding out that someone, you know, had someone clock in for them, even though they were, they have an alibi and it turns out it's total bullshit and here's how they know. And I just, that's so fascinating, the detective work

that it takes to find that. And also those poor detectives, like the way your life gets affected by having to go and investigate these people. I mean, nothing justifies the crazy murdering that's happening on the street of most black people today in America. I will never, I never ever mean anything is justified in that way. What I mean is that when you, like as a detective, when you have to visit time and again, people who are depraved. So it's not just crime or like I'm desperate and on drugs and so I'm doing this thing. Or I'm going to fight with my wife and kill her. Yeah. It's the depravity of like a child rapist murderer.

Coming face to face with the actual evil thing, which you and I probably never will unless we search it out, but these detectives then knock on wood. But these people have to then delve as deep as they can into it. And all the facts. Right. And not kill them so that they can be brought to justice and have some jailhouse justice and just get killed terribly in jail. That's the ideal.

But them getting even arrested is a small, you know, can't be a huge percentage of them. So even getting someone arrested has to be hard. So imagine retiring after never having solved this case. No, that's terrible. I know. And it ruins people's lives to go investigate this stuff and to discover this like, it's just the seamy underside. Yeah. And I only, I surfed it on Wikipedia and was just like, I'm mesmerized by how horrifying it is. Okay, wow. Yeah. So that's a heavy one when I'm still completely fascinated by, I think, I think there's the answer out there. Yes.

Like you've discussed, but it's just never gonna be closed. I don't think it'll be closed. Well, the people, so clearly this is a thing about the rich. I mean, what I think is incredible is there was a period of time when Oakland County child killer, it was all supposedly like conspiracy theory about who was responsible and all that. It was all proven that the Fox Island situation was real. It was proven. It did not come out anywhere. And that millionaire that did it got into his airplane and fucking flew away. And then basically, culturally, at the time, we were like, oh, that didn't happen. That's too crazy to happen.

Now we live in the post-epstein world where we're like, it absolutely happened and it is still happening. Totally. Absolutely. There's a really good podcast I want to recommend that came out in 2018 called Don't Talk to Strangers and it's like a whole deep dive into this case. It's great. Also, just as a, it's kind of a correction, but I did not actually say the names of the victims in this episode. I can explain that simply in the way that there were some decisions being made on the fly

of like, oh, it'll make it less sad or something, or it'll, it was a true misunderstanding of kind of the purpose of true crime storytelling. And I think it was like, oh, maybe if we just say a boy, a girl, it'll make that easier somehow, which was just a, I was just thinking wrong about it. I think we thought it might be less salacious somehow, but really it's just like, you know, not giving the victims the proper respect that they deserve, which we didn't really

realize at the time. Correct. So the victims in the Oakland County child killer case are Mark Stebbins, Jill Robinson, Christine Mihalik, and Timothy King. And you could say Timothy King's father, Barry, who spent decades searching for justice for his son and died in 2020 with no answers, was also a victim of these crimes. Yeah. I was thinking about the, my use of the term kitty porn in that story, and realizing that was the only word anyone used back then. Absolutely. To describe that.

It was like the vernacular. Yeah. And once you see it, once you hear it in the light of day of like that, it should not have been that way. It's not only how great this evolution of talking about these crimes, talking about victims, talking about all of it, that evolution really is happening.

But on top of that, it just kind of made me realize like, the people who termed it that in the first place, the reason we're saying it that way, the reason no one cited it is because of kind of the culture that we have been living in for so long that is just seeming to start to change right now. Which is downplaying, which is ignore. I mean, it does like make light of this very serious problem

that then people don't take seriously. Or worse, sorry to interrupt you, or worse, it is this kind of like, I equate this with porn, it's just that there's kids in it. That's the problem with that term, obviously. And it should have been gone long ago. Yeah. Well, that's why we're doing this rewind, is to, you know, right some wrongs, to see how far we've come. Well, and also because all of this, if you listen to any true crime podcast that started,

you know, five years ago or further back, all of this is how people speak. This idea of canceling people retroactively takes everything out of context and immediately assumes bad intentions and it assumes things that are actually not true. And I think it's like if you grew up only ever hearing one term and then you hear the old disgusting term that was fully in use and no one questioned it, you do want to say you're a bad person for saying that. And we learned and people said you shouldn't use that word or you should use this phrase instead and we did.

Oh, they still have, this is kind of important, the Michigan State Police confirmed this case is still an open case and they have a tip line. And all new tips are investigated as they come in and that tip line number is 1-855-MICHTIP. So, can I be cynical as fuck for a quick moment? Of course. And say that the reason it's still open is so that we don't, the public won't have access to the files. Because if it's a closed case, then we could put in a Freedom of Information Act to look

at the files. True. Yeah, that's a good point. Like, it could be exposing people. Yeah. However, if it's a cold case, it's still going to be open no matter what. But it is also like there's a lot of information that we don't have, which is what drives me crazy about cold cases is they understandably keep information back from the public. But when it's been decades, maybe that a couple of those pieces of information could help lead to, you know, a suspect.

Right. Right. It's just, I hate it. It's horrible. Yeah. And also there's so many, there's so many suspects and kind of guilty parties in this story of what is going on. What I think is exciting though is it's not just an open case, but they have a tip line.

Absolutely. They have a tip line. Absolutely. They have a tip line that they're letting people know about. They're like, please let us know if you know anything. So that's different than the average cold case. Definitely. Definitely. You want to add anything? I don't know.

Just like try to be nice to people. Yeah, people might get murdered. Like people you don't really know once you see in the grocery store line. That's like for them. And also just for yourself, like be excited that you're not murdered yet. And enjoy yourself. Do what you want. Don't do what like you're, you're someone's telling you, you have to do because there's no have to because you never know what could happen. You never know. This is really, I mean, when it comes down to it, this is a positive podcast. Yeah.

We're trying to lift people out. Yeah. And make them their best selves. And sometimes you lift, we lift each other up by pushing down the murder. Yeah. It's as if to say it's a celebration of life. Yeah. Lechaim to life.

Lechaim to life and death. Alright, so let's move from that to what we would have also done differently, which is name these episodes. Don't shit on the episode names. We were doing our best with what we had. Well, this is called My Favorite Thirder. My Favorite Thirder is pretty good. It's pretty good. It's pretty good.

It's pretty good. It's pretty good. Okay, so we're both going to give each other alternative option names if we didn't do number puns, if we had done what we do now, which is get a funny quote from the podcast and use that as the title. Right. So we both have a couple. So one is a walking miracle, which I guess I was referencing how any of us were born

like before 1990 are still alive. A walking miracle, that's so true. Mine is magic talk, because that's what I talked about how blood spatter isn't scientific evidence. It's fucking magic talk, which sounds so much like me, I can't even handle it. Well, it was you. It was me. 2016 Georgia, she's a glass of heart.

This one is hilarious. Just be nice to people. The thing I say at the end to you when you're like, do you have anything else to add? Just be nice to people. Just like, wow, was I having a hard week or what? It's like, and did we, it's a good thing we went to stay sexy and don't get murdered because I feel like if we had not had been our catchphrase, it would not have caught on. Be nice to people. I mean. Oh my mean, it had to happen the way it happened. It did.

Thank you guys for listening. We're going to put one of these out a week, turns out. So we hope you like them and tell your friends. And please rate, review, and subscribe. That really helps us. Yeah, join us on a look back and a look forward. The update part of this is so compelling to me. Really cool.

This is fun. And it's fun to just like, we had no fucking clue what our lives were about to become. No clue. Yeah. And then Hannah Crichton and Asia Hamilton and Alhondra Keck went and typed up for us what we were doing that got us to this place. And now we can look back. It's like they typed out a yearbook for us

that we can look back on with no pictures. Sign your bans. Also, just to like, I have to say, once you do start hearing back from an audience about all the things you're doing wrong, which rightfully so, it does make you self-conscious and it changes the dynamic and it changes the energy. And it's like that part of it too is kind of interesting to me. Where we were very funny when we thought no one was listening. Totally. How it always is and then I think my self-consciousness started coming where it was like,

of course I knew my own intent but it doesn't matter because people are sitting there and it's like the impact of what you're saying. Well we were very funny to each other which was the only point of the podcast, because we didn't realize there were other people, really didn't realize like that many more people that would listen besides us. Yeah, and they did. But you did and you do and we appreciate it. All right, well, we'll see you next time for episode four next week. Yay.

Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye. And be nice to people. And be nice to people, please. Goodbye. Elvis, do you want a cookie?