Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Killer Who Couldn't Get a Boner - The Stanwood Elkus Story

Episode Date: July 22, 2025

In January 2013, 75-year-old retired barber Stanwood Elkus walked into Newport Beach urologist Dr. Ronald Gilbert’s office under a false identity and fatally shot him ten times in an ambush—purportedly stemming from a decades-old grudge

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That's cool, then. Marvel Studios, Thunderbolts, The New Avengers, rated PG-13. Now streaming on, you guessed it, Disney Plus. So this guy, his junk stops working, like he can't get it up. And so he decides to get revenge on the doctor who he thinks caused it. Let me explain. Now the guy is named Stanwood, and Stanwood's about 54, he's a barber living in California, and bro has a big problem.

He has to pee all the time. Like he's always running to the bathroom, he wakes up several times a night to go. And this is terrible for him. And so one day in 1992, he starts making appointments with with doctors to get this looked at. And he talks to multiple doctors, and eventually he ends up at the Veterans Affairs Hospital. And there, one of the doctors he consults with is this guy,

his name's Ronald. And Ronald's about 32 during this time, and he's actually a resident. So he isn't the main doctor there. He's still undergoing some training. And so Ronald takes a look at Stanwood's junk, and he does his medical hocus pocus, and he concludes that Stanwood has a narrow urethra, and he advises him to look into getting surgery.

And Stanwood's like, surgery, that sounds kind of dangerous, are you sure? And the doctor's like, yeah. And see, Stanwood, he doesn't like the idea of surgery. I suppose no one does, but Stanwood goes home and he's like freaking out about the whole thing. Like, he's paranoid. He's worried that he might die during this surgery. And when I say he's freaking out, I mean, the idea really scares him. He's so freaked out that a social worker is assigned to talk to him and to get him to chill.

And eventually he does calm down. enough for them to move ahead. And so, boom, Stan Wood gets the surgery. And everything goes smoothly and, you know, he doesn't die. So that's good. And so he's in the hospital for a bit. And once he's recovered, the hospital staff is ready to send him home. However, I guess Stan Wood is still scared of something.

I don't know. He's kind of a nutty guy. But he's like, I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving. You can't make me. And he even threatens to yank his catheter out if they try and make him leave, even though that would hurt him more than it would hurt the hospital staff, so I'm not sure why he thinks that's a threat.

Anyway, the doctors are like, yo, this guy's having a mental health issue, just let him stay. And so he gets to stay in the hospital for a few days longer before they finally get him to agree to leave. And so then he leaves, and he goes home, and he still has this catheter in because, you know, he's supposed to. And a few days later, he comes back to the hospital, and he's all pissed off and he's yelling at the staff,

and he's like, take this catheter out! And the hospital staff is, like, it has to stay in for two weeks while you heal. And he's like, now, take it out. And I guess they can't really tell him no, so they agree to take it out, even though it's going to mess up his recovery and the surgery they just did. And so they take the catheter out. And that is that.

And that should be the last the hospital ever hears from Stanwood. Except, it's not. Over the next several years, Stanwood continues to have problems downstairs, like leakage of urine, His sex drive is super low, and even worse than that, and most importantly to him, is that he can no longer, to put it into proper medical terms, get a boner. And this, of course, is terrible for him. I mean, his name is Stan Wood, and he can't get... All right, you get the point.

And to make it worse, he believes the surgery ruined his life. Because it ruined his sex life, and ruining his sex life means they ruined his love life, too. I guess he has this long time. girlfriend and they had been planning to get married, but I guess once she learned his junk no longer works, she just leaves him, according to him. And of course, all of this pisses Stanwood off. Now, instead of just accepting that he was one of the unlucky few to have these side effects from the procedure he got, or that he may have been at fault himself because he made the doctors take out the catheter before it healed, Stanwood blames it all on the surgeons.

He's like, those damn doctors, they destroyed me. And so he starts visiting other physicians. I guess he's still trying to get his dong fixed. Meanwhile, he starts writing angry letters to his original doctors being like, I wish you would die. And so finally, one of the new doctors checking him out tells Stanwood exactly what he wants to hear. He says, all those years ago, you were misdiagnosed. You never needed the surgery in the first place.

Now, who knows if that's actually true? I mean, that's just one doctor's opinion, which differs from all the others. But Stan Wood is like, I knew it. I knew they screwed me over. And this is where shit starts to get dark. Because Stanwood starts thinking that he needs to get revenge. Those original doctors ruined him. They ruined his sex life.

His girlfriend left him. And he is not going to let that slide. And so by the time 2010 rolls around, Stanwood starts making plans for revenge. And yes, I said 2010, and he got the surgery in 1992, which means he's been mad about all this for 18 years. And so he looks over all his old paperwork, and he finds that the doctor listed on whatever records he has of that day is Ronald. Now, Ronald may have suggested to Stan Wood that he get the surgery for his peeing problem, but he wasn't one of the doctors who actually performed the surgery. That was a different set of doctors. But I guess Stanwood doesn't know that. He just needs someone to blame. And so Stanwood plots this revenge for like two years, I guess, because it's now 2012. And he's like 75 years old at this point. And he has finally come up with a plan. He's gonna unalive Ronald. And so he goes and he buys himself a Glock. And a month later, he shows up at the clinic Ronald now works at and he goes to the urology department. And there he makes a lot.

a later appointment under a fake name and he uses some fake documents and he requests to see Ronald specifically. And so everything is set and the appointment is booked. Meanwhile, Ronald, over the years, he's had a great life and a great career. I mean, he's 53 now, he's married with kids, he has his own practice. He even started a pharmaceutical company aimed at treating sexual dysfunction, which he's thinking about selling for millions of dollars. I mean, things couldn't be going better for him.

Until. We've now crossed over into 2013. And today is the day of Stanwood's urology appointment. And so he loads up his Glock and he drives 55 miles over to the urology clinic where Ronald's office is. And he gets there and he checks in under his fake name and he takes a seat in the waiting room. And he has all this frustration built up, more than 20,

20 years worth, and he's finally getting to do something about it. And so a nurse calls him back, and they take him to a waiting room, and they tell him to wait here for the doctor. And so he sits down, and he waits. Then there's a knock at the door, and it opens, and there's Ronald, happy to see Stanwood. But Stanwood immediately pulls out that Glock, and he points it at him, and blam, blam, Blam! He shoots him 10 times. And this, unfortunately, unalives Ronald almost instantly. And so all the hospital staff outside the room, they're like, what the fuck was that? And they run

into the room and they see Stanwood standing there, armed, and Stanwood looks at them. And the only thing he says is, I'm insane, call the police. Those were his exact words. And so the police come and bam, they arrest him. Here's his mugshot. And so he goes to trial, and he's found guilty, and he gets life in prison. And thank you to leonardo.a.i for sponsoring this video. If you want to make badass art for your videos like this or like this or like this,

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