RedHanded - Bonus - Patreon Round-Up: February 2022

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

Are you the try before you buy kind Spooky Bitch? Well great! Because here's a big old taster of everything we did on Patreon last month! We've got a clip from our casual catch up show Under the Duvet, a snippet from our topical crime news show In the News, and a tasty morsel of this month's bonus episode of RedHanded all about hybristophilia. If you like it (which you will...) you can head on over to patreon.com/redhanded today and sign up to a tier of your choice to access a whole load of juicy bonus content!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Welcome to the end of February, which, as the passage of time has dictated, since we decided the Gregorian calendar comes before March. So what we've done for you is we've put all of our best bits from our Patreon content for the month of February together for you. And what we've got for you is one've put all of our best bits from our Patreon content for the month of February together for you. And what we've got for you is one of our ITN stories in the news, our headline segment of two twins who looked so alike. One of them got away with murder and the other one absolutely fucking did not. If you are wondering what the fuck is going on in Ukraine, we've done our absolute best to put that together for you.

So that's in here as well and our patreon bonus full length episode for february for the month of love was on high bristophilia where people are attracted to people who do bad things we've worked this together for you hope you enjoy if you want even more of this sort of stuff you can go over to patreon.com forward slash red handed and sign up to the tier of your choice for more red-handed goodness. So, regardless of whether you thought it was going to happen or not, Russia has invaded Ukraine and now there is a full-blown war in continental Europe. I never thought we would see this happen in our generation but here we go here we are and as a few days ago just to add some more fun to the fire um we're now in a second cold war because

putin has of course been threatening uh not even veiled just threat yeah yeah just outright threats of nuclear destruction uh So that's fun. The ruble is also worth less than a cent. It's one of the biggest economic dives in history. Oh, absolutely. The ruble is... I was trying to think of something funny to say. I can't.

The ruble's dead. It's gone. It's dead and gone. It's gone. Fucking gone. The ruble's rumbled. I don't know. DIY your own joke there.

I'm not sure. But basically, I think, you know, what we're experiencing is one of the biggest geopolitical threats that the world has seen in their generation. And whatever happens now, whatever happens, this is going to be really fucking bad. Yeah. I saw an amazing tweet that was like, despite outstanding odds, 2022 has managed to be worse than 2021. Yeah.

Yeah. COVID what? Yeah, absolutely. managed to be worse than 2021 yeah covid what yeah absolutely so the invasion started almost exactly a week ago we're recording this on the 1st of march which is tuesday and since then to be honest putin's invasion has not been particularly what you would call if you were a putin supporter successful i would say um I don't think it's been as successful as people slash Putin might have thought it would have been it's been a week and I think that I think Putin thought within days he'd have Kiev and everything would be like locked up also I know people pronounce Kiev and some people pronounce it Kiev I know there are

different pronunciations one of the reasons for that will come on to you later I'm going to say kiev because that's what i've always said but i understand there are different ways to pronounce it um they fail to take even a single major city at the time that we're recording this and they haven't even taken maripol which if you look at maripol as a city on the map of ukraine it's basically sandwiched between crimea and the donbass region which is obviously held by and I know a lot of Ukrainians don't like us to say um Ukrainian separate um separatists because they're like it's the Russian army so whatever you want to call it it's Russian occupied Donbass region and then Crimea and then there's Mariupol and they haven't even taken Mariupol like how

that's happened I don't know and we actually don't know what's going on in mario pole because there's like no reporting coming out of there and i think somebody some reporter said this and it was quite like a glib comment but i i can already see it happening is one day they will make hollywood films about whatever the fuck is going yeah yeah in mario right now because definitely somehow i'm sort of leningrad situation yeah because somehow the the the people the military in mariupol have held off attacks from all sides and whatever's going on there must be absolutely remarkable for them to still be in control and i also think that not only is the invasion going unsuccessfully insofar as putin would have expected i also think he wouldn't have expected the international response that has happened since I don't think he would have expected how strong it's been and I know

people might disagree with that and I also don't think he would have expected how unified it's been um not necessarily everybody at once there's been a lot of demonstrations that have pushed some countries like Switzerland and Germany into the fold but it has happened what's China saying what are they doing China today said I think China I don't know if china knew the invasion was going to happen or not right and obviously we we've been seeing a growing axis between um russia china um and india the likes of these countries joining together especially in the in the move of seeing countries western countries saying things like you need to go carbon neutral etc i don't know if china knew or not but they don't seem to be super they seem to be watching and waiting what's going to happen because if i you know one would assume as you know communist allies

socialist allies whatever because if china get boots on the ground it would be over oh it would be over i don't think china would never ever do that china would never do that because china has a lot more to lose than russia russia's like the 86th economy or something in the world like it is not it's like behind bulgaria like it is not a major player economically speaking it is a major player nuclear yeah clearly speaking and um power wise militarily speaking but it is not a may and also because the only reason it has any power it has is because of its oil and gas supplies. Right. But China is much more integrated into world trade on the world stage. Like it is.

China has too much to lose from getting involved in a conflict that they don't give a fuck about. China said they abstained actually from the vote um that there was the un resolution to condemn the invasion uh and india also abstained i thought china would vote in and russia was the only country that voted against it i thought china would do the same but they didn't they just sat out of the vote and also today beijing said quote, we are partners, but not allies. Oh, OK. Burn, burn, sick burn there from Xi. So, yeah, I think that I don't think that Putin expected what has happened to happen.

I really think that Putin thought and who can honestly blame him, given how weak the West's response has been to previous Russian aggression in the past. I think he thought that if he just took Ukraine really quickly, within a couple of days, he was in there, got Kiev, within a couple of days, no bloodshed or minimal bloodshed, and just happened very swiftly, that I think he thought that the West would maybe just slap a few more toothless sanctions on him, but really that nothing would happen. That's what he saw when Crimea happened, and I think he thought it would west would maybe just slap a few more toothless sanctions on him but really that nothing would happen that's what he saw when crimea happened and i think he thought it would be the same thing and like like i said who can blame him after all need i remind you all

that we allowed the russians to invade georgia annexed crimea precipitate violence and division in the ukrainian in the ukrainian cities of donetsk and luhansk which is obviously in the donbass region where i didn't know this but 14,000 people have died in the fighting that's taken place in the Donbass region right so it's not like again they just walked into the Donbass region and people were like hooray you're here to liberate us like that's not what's happened they have been provoking that violence that's been happening there and the reason is because the Donbass region which is obviously the most eastern part of ukraine which directly borders onto russia is the part where there are the most russian speakers it's maybe the part of the country that has the most people that are maybe pro-russian um and the further the further west you go the more people are

pro-eu again that is a huge generalization and actually i think polls were showing that only about five percent of people in ukraine consistently vote for pro-russian political parties so it is an absolute minority of people in that country that are even remotely anything coming towards pro-russian and the only reason we've been talking about this because putin says this is not true he says that the majority of ukians want Russia to come and invade. Obviously, that's ludicrous. We'll go on to talk about it. And the reason is because obviously also Ukraine was part of the USSR.

And then when the USSR fell, they regained their independence. Again, Putin likes to make this claim that somehow Ukraine didn't exist as a nation, as a concept, as a national identity. To be Ukrainian didn't exist before it was given to them after the fall of the Soviet Union. That is categorically not true. the idea of statehood and national identity as ukrainians has existed for decades generations centuries far far far before russia allowed them to exist as ukraine and obviously we can't go into

the full history of ukraine it is incredibly complicated but there is a really good podcast that i would recommend called um oh my god what did i say it was called the rest is history the rest is history i don't know why you're looking at me it's called the rest is history and it is um they have an episode on russia and it is an hour and 20 minutes long and it just delves into how everything putin is saying is completely false in in the sense of this is this is actually russian land and we are just taking back what is ours but i'll come on to that so basically they have done all of this stuff not to mention also um all of the people that they poisoned in uh foreign western countries like we talked about in our two-parter or do

you remember when um russian-backed separatists shot down a malaysian airlines plane and killed almost 300 people 298 people who were on board just killed them all yeah over ukraine yeah just shot them down over ukraine and we were just like um okay look yeah just look over there don't do it again all right um but yeah it's been pathetic and i think that this hasn't been the case this time i think we could still go further but i don't think it's been the case but before we get to that firstly let's talk about why Putin might have thought he could take Ukraine as quickly as he seemed to have thought he could firstly Putin absolutely and I think everybody massively underestimated the Ukrainian army and the Ukrainian people and that president can get it I love him I love him like my friend i am i put on my instagram the my

instagram story when um because biden offered to fly him out yes and he said i need ammunition not a ride yeah and my friend gita who i was in south africa with she replied to my story and she was like is it wrong that my initial response was this? This guy would get it. I think I think this I think there's a lot of people around the world thinking the same thing. Yeah, he's amazing. Vladimir Zelensky, his name. He is the president of Ukraine and he is he's killing it in all honesty. So I think I haven't taken notes on him.

But what I do know about him is he used to be a comedian. He used to be a TV comedian who decided to run for president he won and he's been president for a while but he i think a lot of people are very skeptical about him they were skeptical in the sense of like well you know you're you're doing fine when things are fine but when the real problems start can you really handle it you're not a real statesman you're not a politician you this your first political job he's never even been a mayor or wow man of the people exactly so people were like we don't know and actually when this all kicked off his approval rating was in the toilet he was at minus 36 and 70 of the ukrainian population said that they did not trust their

government and this is i don't know enough about ukrainian politics to make strong comments on zelinsky as a person before this but i would say his corruption about ukrainian politics to make strong comments on zielinski as a person before this but i would say his corruption was rampant but i he had only just come into politics so i'm assuming it wasn't him that was the problem i'm guessing that the the 70 percent distrust in the government was down to massive amounts of corruption that exist in the government but honestly which country can say that they don't they aren't riddled with corruption but it was a big problem in ukraine and i think this was actually one of the reasons that putin did think he could take um take ukraine as easily as he did he saw that zilinski's um approval

ratings were down that is obviously completely different now people people are lauding him as an absolute war hero in the country and around the world rightly so given that he hasn't fled can you imagine boris johnson still being in this country no russians invaded the uk no and my friend was telling me you know the the ukrainian heavyweight champion has stayed to defend kiev that's like anthony joshua defending a tower block in london like you just can't imagine it no you can't and all the mayors the mayor of kiev also another former heavyweight champion their brothers oh are they there you go still there still fighting and also the people the people who are fighting people just lining up making molotov cocktails in their garden

the god the ministry of defense in ukraine making youtube videos and putting them up teaching citizens how to make molotov cocktails like yeah i think in a in a world that was obviously so beleaguered by covid nobody wanted this kind of thing to happen of course not but i think that oddly somehow out of this we have seen a lot of unity in the west again that i didn't i didn't personally expect to see and i don't think putin did so i think because of the um dissatisfaction within the ukrainian public towards their government i think putin thought that he could come in and take over relatively easily but just because you maybe don't like your government very few countries are going to be like yeah sure let's

get invaded by a foreign aggressor yeah yeah to solve the problem let's look at a very very obvious case of high bristophilia so to do that we're going to look into tunnelling Ted Bundy. I always forget about the bit where he loses loads of weight and just escapes from prison. Oh, yeah. And the bit that they never talk about in any of the documentaries where he would go back and rape the dead bodies of his victims. They're like, the necrophilia kind of ruins it. Let's just not talk about that. Not Zac Efron.

While he was in prison not escaping and not raping dead bodies Bundy received countless letters sexy pictures and even marriage proposals and of course who can forget the women who came to his trial dressed as his victims that is such a specific type of sick. Oh god yeah like I've seen these pictures we all have haven't we it's like I remember at the I remember like I was I remember I remember when back in the olden times i remember reading when we were you know doing research for the book etc just generally in the day and day out of true crime world like when ted bundy was on his killing rampage women who were even roughly of that age even roughly looked like the women that he was killing because obviously

he was killing white women young college age with dark brown hair parted down the center that was his whole thing they were like changing their parting dyeing their hair to not get fucking murdered by this guy then as soon as they catch him there's a bunch of women who go to his trial with their hair parted down the middle dyed dark brown it's like what the fuck and it's like yeah this is the kind of thing this is the kind of anecdotal stuff that is hard to ignore because it happens time and time again and this the sort of from a distance hybristophilia is what is called passive hybristophilia and it's when women are attracted to the criminal and they're aroused by their fame the crimes and the reputation of the person slash killer slash bad boy but they're not actually

interested in getting involved with any of the crimes themselves yeah so they might be from a distance but they might also get into a relationship with that person what it is is exactly what you said they don't want to be myra they don't want to they don't want to get their hands dirty they're like i know what you're up to i'm the savior yeah yeah and keep doing but also keep doing it maybe don't stop right don't do it to me because if you stop then maybe I won't fancy you anymore. But I'm not interested in being your literal partner in crime. So looking for the perfect case of passive hybristophilia, a lot of people will, of course, point to Bundy and his eventual wife, Carol Ann Boone. But actually, this example is a little bit murky. You see this a lot in the world of

hyperistophilia chat, because Boone knew Bundy before his crimes came out. They actually struck up a friendship long before she claims to have known who or what he was. So I would say she's not. I don't think you can use her as an example because she had no idea. No, no, no. That's what I'm saying. It's like people use her as an example, but she's not a good example of passive or otherwise. So to find a textbook case of passive hyperistophilia, we think you need to look no further than the infamous relationship between Doreen Loy and Richard Ramirez. In 1985, Doreen was a freelance journalist with good prospects. She was editor of Tiger Beach magazine, and she helped a young John Stamos of Full House up the long and well-greased pole to stardom. Now we don't need to tell you that behind big,

bad, boring Bundy, Richard Ramirez was and of course still is one of America's most infamous criminals. He's not the original Night Stalker but he is the, when you say Night Stalker, he's the one everyone thinks of. So when the Californian police identified the so-called Night Stalker via his fingerprints on the 30th of August 1985, Richard Ramirez's face, complete with his shaggy hair and his gross teeth, were on every single TV screen before he'd even been arrested. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 1996, Leigh described the first time she set her eyes on the man she fell in love with. Here's what she said. Looking back, I see it was a turning point for me.

They showed his mugshot in the middle of Dallas. Dallas, a TV show, not the city. And I saw something in his eyes, something that captivated me. It wasn't as if I knew him, but there was something in his eyes. Maybe the vulnerability. I don't really know. Oh, Doreen. This statement is a brilliant example of the mindset of the hyperistophiliac, so make sure you remember it and we're going to come back to it later on.

Doreen wasn't the only woman who'd been interrupted while watching that particular episode of Dallas. She wasn't the only one who wanted a slice of that sweet, sweet Ramirez pie. And we've all seen the pictures again of his many groupies waiting to see him in the public gallery. In fact, his murderous musk was so intoxicating that even one of the female jurors fell for him and sent him a Valentine's cupcake that she bought at the station but this is the thing you can't this is just so so much repetitive it's not like oh my god this one-off situation and he's gross he's gross but these women are just like oh my god he's so misunderstood he's so vulnerable he raped a child with a fucking baby oil bottle sodomized a child and they're like he's so misunderstood yeah look at those

vulnerable eyes oh there's rotten teeth so despite all of these other suitors that ramirez found himself with it was actually doreen who was in it for the long run. She sent Ramirez over 75 love letters during their courting. And then in 1988, when Doreen was visiting him in San Quentin, he asked her to marry him. For Doreen, this must have felt like a huge win. Out of all of those women who'd been desperate for his affection, she was the one who he'd fallen for. She was the one who had seduced the infamous hottie. She was safe and she was special. Yeah, he picked you.

I mean, this is the thing, isn't it? It's like he would have been all over every newspaper, every magazine, on every news, interrupting Dallas on a daily basis. And he is, in just some gross way, the fucking bachelor du jour. Like, everybody wants this guy. It's like jurors are giving him fucking cupcakes. And he picks you. I think there is no denying how intoxicating that would have been to a woman like Doreen. And she would have felt like, now I would do anything for you.

Also because there's competition. Competition aside, there are actually a few personality traits that motivate someone into maybe wanting to marry a serial killer first on the list is the need for fame and attention that's an obvious pull quite a lot of people fall victim to that we all love the idea of getting our 15 minutes of fame by connecting yourself with someone who's already famous if you can't get famous yourself and then you get a cut of their attention by being by their side that's probably quite a shallow surface level motivation for the majority who'd turned up at Ramirez's trial and sat in the public gallery desperately waiting for him to cast his

eyes upon them, getting their photo in the news and then maybe getting even a wave from Ramirez was enough to make them feel satisfied. Getting a little glimpse of the pentagram on his hand. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, some people left it there some people that was enough kind of like when you see yourself on the big screen at a football game or something like that absolutely i can see that this kind of thing absolutely exists on quite a wide spectrum but this kind of motivation wouldn't be enough to actually find yourself married to a killer so this brings us on to motivation number two the desire to fix someone This personality trait is often called the fixer syndrome. And nine times out of ten, it's just the term used for over-attentive parental figures

and work colleagues who try too hard to be your friend. We all like to try and help. We all like to try and solve problems. It's human nature. But true fixer syndrome is where people like Doreen feel so drawn to help others that they're willing to destroy their own lives to do so I mean this is you don't even need to go to the example of someone like a Doreen like how many people how many times have all of us done it when you just liked somebody like a guy I mean like oh there's these things wrong with him but I can fix it yeah

we can figure it out we can fix figure it out. I'm so great. You'll change. You'll change all those terrible things about yourself that you need to work on for me. And then they're like, well, no, it runs too deep. No, I'm just going to waste your time for a year. Precisely. Ruin your life. Exactly.

That's basically, if you extrapolate that to the most extreme version of it, because Richard Ramirez has murdered a bunch of people. That's what you're getting at. You know, it comes back to that feeling of feeling special, right? Because he'll change for me or he won't do it to me even though he does it to everybody else. Yeah, it's the status game thing. I'm so virtuous.

I'm so brooming with virtue. Absolutely. According to MindTools.com, this feeling of needing to fix other people, particularly people that you're maybe in a romantic relationship with, can come from a feeling that the person themselves felt helpless in the past and feel that by helping others, they're kind of readdressing this wrong. Interesting theory. And this brings us back nicely to Doreen's quote that we told you earlier where she says but there was something in his eyes maybe the vulnerability clearly she thinks there is something in there that she can see deep within the soul of Richard Ramirez that she can save that she can fix and I'm like damage it's yeah yeah yeah doreen what happened to you yeah i don't

know and the fact that doreen had most if not all of the characteristics we just talked about is a bit of a perfect storm and that storm allowed her to go against some quite fundamental and deep rooted things in our human psychology as our home homeboy Dr. Grande puts it, psychopaths and people who show psychopathic traits are, for the majority of people, deeply unattractive. It's like an uncanny valley thing. We don't like it when we can see a shallow effect in someone. Absolutely. And I think people are maybe going to be like, wait a minute, because I thought psychopaths are meant to be quite seductive. But the thing you have to remember is one of the psychopathic traits is glibness, it shallowness it's manipulation the other traits like a lack of empathy and stuff

those are not attractive characteristics in a partner nobody is like i really want a guy who lacks any sort of empathy for me i mean there's plenty out there there's plenty out there but what i mean is that they're using their other psychopathic traits to manipulate to be seductive yeah it isn't the fact that people are actually attracted to the psychopathic traits per se. So actually, despite what Hollywood will tell you, psychopaths are terrible partners. They're even worse parents. They're self-centered. They don't have any remorse.

They don't have any empathy. They have no sense of danger, really. So raising children is a bit of a nightmare. And they'll often sacrifice the people closest to them for their own personal gain. And all of those traits in a potential romantic relationship are red flags. So you have to be some sort of bullfighter to ignore them all. But it does look like for Doreen, through an unfortunate combination of personality traits of her own and possibly circumstances that we don't know about, Doreen was able to look past every single one of Richard Ramirez's red flags. And the ability to look past these red flags,

as we've discussed many times on Empty Handed, goes hand in hand with our final and quite possibly largest personality trait slash motivation for someone like Doreen to find herself with a man like Ramirez. Low self-esteem. Now this might seem obvious, but it's a little bit deeper than someone believing that a murderer is the best that they can get for a life partner. So what we're saying is she's not just like, oh, I'm so awful that the only person who would like me is Richard Ramirez, because obviously not. He's got loads of fucking women throwing themselves at him. What we mean is,

according to, again, our favorite, Dr. Grande, studies show that people with low self-esteem are more likely to be drawn to those with psychopathic tendencies. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history. Presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our latest series, NASA embarks on an ambitious program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into his program to reinvent space exploration with the launch of its first reusable vehicle, the Space Shuttle. And in 1985, they announced they're sending teacher Krista McAuliffe into space aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, along with six other astronauts. But less than two minutes after liftoff, the Challenger explodes. And in the tragedy's aftermath, investigators

uncover a series of preventable failures by NASA and its contractors that led to the disaster. Follow American Scandal on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad-free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the

darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. I'm Jake Warren, and in our first season of Finding, I set out on a very personal quest to find the woman who saved my mum's life. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now, exclusively on Wondery+. In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met.

But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me,

and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. This is a fucking crazy case. Okay. Are you ready this feels like the plot of a

next summer's big thriller okay if no one buys it i think we buy it the butt writes to it okay and we make it okay okay right everybody ready it's i'm not even like overhyping this okay at the age of 36 kevin duggar was sent to prison in chicago illinois oh no sorry he was already in prison he was sat in prison at the age of 36 he was eight years into a 54 year sentence for homicide a crime that he had always insisted from day one that he was innocent of okay in fact he had even refused a plea deal that had been offered to him when he was sentenced that would have reduced his sentence from 54 years to 11 years so he's eight years in he would have basically almost been out right if he had accepted this plea deal but he said he would sooner die than admit to

a crime that he hadn't committed okay so he is like yeah standing by him but standing by his guts and this plea deal he rejected was despite knowing that his girlfriend at the time was pregnant so he had a lot to live for on the outside and he was still like fuck you i didn't do it so he spent those eight years that he was in prison fighting to clear his name but every appeal that he made was denied by the judge kevin had been found guilty of having opened fire on three people and killing a man named antoine taylor and wounding another man in the process so this guy antoine um had been a member of the chicago street gang the blackstones i'm not okay on my chicago street gangs but we're going to talk

a lot about them i haven't heard of that one. So they're called the Blackstones and that's the guy that Kevin murdered. Allegedly murdered. Says he didn't. Is in prison for having murdered. And Kevin had actually been previously a member of a rival gang called the Vice Lords. So it's like it fits the narrative. They're like, you're a former rival gang member.

He is a gang member of course you killed him but the thing that really cinched it was that there was an eyewitness to the murder that pointed the finger squarely at kevin and said this is absolutely the man that did it but the problem is that this eyewitness who pointed the finger at kevin was also a member of the blackstones that antwan was a member of, right? So to be clear, this man, Kevin Duggar, was sentenced to 54 years in prison

based on a rival gang member's eyewitness testimony. So I think we can all agree that that's pretty weak. Shaky ground. Shaky ground. But did you know that around 30% of convictions of innocent people recorded by the National Reg registry of exonerations

so this is strictly speaking only the us and that we're talking about here but 30 of convictions of innocent people were influenced by inaccurate eyewitness ids so a third of people who are who are wrongly convicted are thanks to eyewitness testimony because we've talked many times on this show about how terrible eyewitness testimony is. But despite this, they are of course routinely used in US courts. And in many cases, it can often be the only evidence that's available.

And that was the case in Kevin's case. So despite what we know about the lack of reliability of eyewitness testimony and also human memory, it has a huge impact on the average juror. When stands up in court and says that's the guy who did it but if i was a juror on a murder case or any case for that matter and the prime evidence against a defendant was an eyewitness testimony one thing that would make me maybe pause for even a moment to reconsider if it was valuable is if that defendant had an identical twin.

Oh, for God's sake. And indeed, Mr. Kevin Duggar did in fact have an identical twin brother named Carl. Okay. Carl and Kevin. Right. At this point, Carl was also sitting in a cell in Illinois, but in a different prison. And even though they'd been inseparable growing up, the two twins, the two of them hadn't spoken in years. That was until the autumn of 2013 when Kevin, again pleading his innocence, sat in his prison cell in Illinois, received a letter from his twin brother Carl and it began with some updates about Carl's life but then it moved into an apology for not having

reached out sooner and then the following sentence look Kevin I'm beating around the bush with you on some shit I've been keeping a secret for years and I have to get it off my chest before it kills me I'm the one who shot and killed the Blackstone guy in Sheridan that night. Needless to say, that letter left Kevin pretty shook up. But finally, it all made perfect sense. Growing up, Kevin and Carl had dressed in like matching outfits. They were like identical. They were, they are, they're still alive.

Identical, identical. They could fool teachers, family members, even their parents by by just switching places and by the time they left high school both of them had joined the gang the vice lords and began dealing drugs on the streets they both went by the nickname twin so again wow okay they're basically the same person i often think about i like i've always been quite like interested in twins and like what that life is like in that experience and like my friends who are twins are like that's such a stupid question because i don't know what it's like to not have a twin like why would i have an answer for you yeah yeah but sometimes i wonder when twins are that identical do they know which one they are i know it's very confusing look at them i'll show you a picture

i'll show hannah a picture and we'll post the picture on the social media. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Like, that just looks like a picture taken 10 minutes later of the same person.

Yeah, in like a different light. Yeah. So, very, very identical. Hannah can vouch for that now. So,

yeah, they basically lived this way their entire lives. Their nickname on the street was Twin. But in 2005, Kevin had actually been arrested kevin is a guy who is in prison wrongly convicted kevin was arrested for selling crack and after spending four

years in jail he decided that he needed to leave the gang life behind the only problem was that his parole wouldn't allow him to leave the city and this is actually something i'd never really thought about so he is in chicago he was a member of this gang he wants to get out of the gang but his parole stipulates that he can't leave the city but if he doesn't leave the city how can he leave the gang right because he can't just be like sorry guys i'm not playing that anymore but still hanging around in chicago they're gonna be like what the fuck yeah yeah so the only way he could have got out is if he had left maybe even the state but he can't but what he did do is something that he had done his entire life kevin impersonated his brother carl and used carl's id to make the move out of chicago

meanwhile carl who was still in the gang stayed in chicago and would impersonate kevin on the phone to his parole officer for their weekly check-ins right so it gets kevin out of the gang gets kevin out of chicago but carl's now pretending to be him and this actually went pretty smoothly for a while until one day carl called kevin and told him that the parole officer wanted to meet in person which again could have been fine but the nail in the coffin was that he wanted him to do a drugs test and carl like, Oh no. Kevin, I'm not going to pass that drugs test. You need to get back to Chicago ASAP.

So despite the risk of returning to Chicago, Kevin had to go back. Unlike his brother, Carl was still an active gang member. And one Saturday, he spotted Antoine Taylor going into a corner shop on disputed gang territory. And he decided to shoot him. The only other witness was a blackstone member named ronnie bolden who was also injured in the shooting a month later bolden picked kevin out of a lineup because kevin's now back in chicago and kevin couldn't get his story straight on the alibi because he couldn't reveal to his parole office that he'd actually been living in pennsylvania he was in pennsylvania the day that the shooting had happened but he can't say because then he'll go back to prison anyway and he had been in

pennsylvania he'd like met a girl he was he met a girl called rosa he was like living his life he'd really cleaned himself up rosa was pregnant like he'd sorted himself out but he couldn't use any of this legitimate clean alibi to get him off a murder charge get himself off a murder charge so a jury found him guilty of the killing and the judge sentenced him to 54 years in prison the entire time carl for those eight years that kevin was in prison carl would visit his brother offering support but he never told him the truth carl however however, did feel incredibly guilty. He was spiraling out of control.

He was drinking. He was riddled with paranoia. I mean, I wouldn't be able to live with myself. No, absolutely. And the main reason for the paranoia, though, the guilt is obvious, but the main reason for the paranoia was because another person knew

that he was actually the one who had killed Antoine. And that was his friend gabriel gabriel curill so one night carl broke into curill's home shot him in the shoulder and choked him unconscious because this is the only other guy that can blow his cover but in the chaos curill's six-year-old son was shot fortunately somehow the six-year-old survived and in 2000 but obviously that doesn't matter he's aggravated fucking assault attempted murder so in 2008 carl was sentenced to 99 years in prison so he's gonna die in there and apparently when he went into prison he went on what he calls a spiritual journey and this is when carl wrote the letter to his brother five years later confessing to everything. Kevin was completely shook up obviously when he first got

the letter and it took him a while to even respond but Carl followed up a few weeks later telling him to contact the investigators and also the Innocence Project and he said that he was ready to do whatever it took to clear Kevin's name. but the problem is it wasn't going to be that simple even with carl's confessions kevin's appeals were still repeatedly rejected you've got to think like everyone's obviously gonna be like it's very convenient yeah yeah that now your twin brother is in prison forever he's throwing his hands up and saying like oh actually i did that shooting as well and like let my brother go. Like, obviously, no one's going to believe this. Fortunately, however, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law's Center of Wrongful Conviction took on Kevin's case

and actually got him a new trial. And Carl admitted to the crimes in front of the judge in 2018. So this only happened a couple of years ago. But the judge found it, again, like we said, far too convenient. But Northwestern didn't give up on Kevin. And in April 2021, the judge finally agreed to give him a new trial kevin was granted release pending trial on a signature bond and just last month in january 2022 at the age of 44 kevin duggar walked out of prison after two decades inside and i just thought it's such a crazy crazy story but i thought this book

was not nice but kevin doesn't blame carl at all for what happened he's like that's what life on the streets is like you have to look after yourself and he blames instead the justice system that allowed him to be convicted on such shoddy evidence wow so yeah that is the story of kevin and carl duggar and yeah 20 years of fighting for his freedom he was finally released but a few weeks ago cool isn't it that is cool yeah yeah um it'd almost be too hammy for a movie though yeah yeah it would so there you have it that is our patreon wrap up for the month of february and we will be back in your ear holes with something else very soon and if that tickled your fancy if that did it for you please hop on over to patreon.com forward slash red handed and you can sink your teeth into everything we've done over there for years and years and years now so there's

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