RedHanded - Episode 142 - Johann “Jack” Unterweger: The Poet of Death

Episode Date: April 9, 2020

In Austria in 1974, Johann Unterweger was sentenced to life for the murder of a young woman. From behind bars he was soon writing beautiful poetry and painting a heartbreaking image of a man who had endured a hard childhood, made some mistakes - but who was now the poster boy for rehabilitation.  Johann went in to prison an illiterate murderer, and with the help of his many elite supporters, he came out early - as a bestselling author. But everything wasn’t as it seemed, and this is the story of a serial killer who tricked not only his many victims, but also an entire nation.  Support the show and get access to weekly bonus content on Patreon! References:  https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-06-30-me-10223-story.html https://www.thelocal.at/20160811/murder-victim-identified-by-austrian-police-after-23-years https://allthatsinteresting.com/jack-unterweger https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/jack-unterweger https://www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/crime-files/jack-unterweger-poet-of-death/crimes https://www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/crime-files/jack-unterweger-poet-of-death https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/murderers-final-freedom-the-bizarre-life-of-jack-unterweger-poet-and-killer-of-prostitutes-ends-at-1417861.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/murderers-final-freedom-the-bizarre-life-of-jack-unterweger-poet-and-killer-of-prostitutes-ends-at-1417861.html https://www.ranker.com/list/facts-about-austrian-jack-unterweger/cat-mcauliffe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOoosALzZFM https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3i3zac https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/may/04/michael-fassbender-play-killer-jack-unterweger-entering-hades https://peoplepill.com/people/jack-unterweger/ https://the-line-up.com/jack-unterweger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOoosALzZFM See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Saruti. And welcome to this week's Red Handed. Not that weeks mean anything anymore. No, nothing means anything. It's just one endless expanse of being trapped in my house. Though I'm not complaining, it's the right thing to do and all that. But how is everyone doing? I mean, if you're anything like us, probably not doing so great. I am starting to question my judgments, Hannah. And here is a prime example of why maybe I'm not to be trusted anymore, because I may well be losing it. On Friday night, I drunk probably two very large glasses of wine and then had a shower and then stood in front of my bathroom mirror just stared at myself

for about five minutes and then honestly contemplated the idea of cutting myself a fringe I was close I was close I have hair scissors I can't imagine you with a fringe I mean have you ever had one I have maybe for like a little Maybe for like a few months and then it took me like fucking 10 years to grow it out. It's not a look for me. That's for sure. But it almost happened. My housemate Adam was like lying on the living room floor and he was like, Hannah, have you ever bleached your hair?

And I was like, yes, Adam. Why? He was like, well, I kind of want, you know, Eminem in like the early 2000s. Adam's hair is so dark as well. I was like, you have to understand that if we do that, we are running the big risk that it's going to be orange and it's going to burn. And he was like, it's definitely going to go orange. I don't know, you probably have already seen this, but I'm in just like you very much a space of BBC rolling news and murder research right now so to break it up I've just started watching on YouTube those hairdresser reacts

videos they are the funniest thing I was like actually crying with laughter like it's just this hairdresser who watches people doing like DIY at home bleaches and is just like what are you doing what are you doing what are you doing that's that's that's what's gonna happen you're gonna end up with orange hair I've learned so much about bleaching that I didn't need to know no I think he's gone off the idea now because his playstation arrived this morning so we'll never see him again that's that's it that's it that's what you need you need a distraction everyone does I'm still knitting I haven't done my knitty day fiance update on IGTV yet purely because I just look like shit basically all the time so that is the biggest impeding factor not my lack of knitting

progress let that be clear to everybody we literally just had a zoom meeting and Saruti just flat out did not turn her camera on. It was just a black box that said Saruti over it. I can't. I couldn't. I couldn't. It's fine with you, but I don't know that man. I'm not coming on Zoom. Oh my God. I was a bit surprised that he left his camera on because I was like, oh no, a person. I hate it. I came in last and I was like, oh God, they've both got their videos on.

I'm just going to be silent for a bit and hope no one notices. It's just too much. It's too much. But we hope that you guys are doing well, probably from the general aura of our quite frantic voices. You can probably tell that we're not doing too well, but we have got you. Quite the case. Yeah. Have we not? Actually, how did the german go how did the whole german thing go with this what you mean everything being in german and me not being able to understand it even that thing sure yeah yeah that thing that little minor thing honestly we'll find out we will i'm excited i'm amazed that this guy is not more well known because it's

bonkers but we've got for you today for your listening your listening pleasure for your listening pleasure also hannah's just got this tiny little doll hand on a fucking stick in the recording box with her and it's so wait i'm gonna screenshot that wait let me put it on the right because Because you guys need to see it. That is the best thing. Okay, right. Guys. I have taken a screenshot of us recording via WhatsApp chat. So you can see what I'm currently having to deal with while we're recording.

I think it's so funny. I'm going to go try find one. And next week, I will have the same. Double hands. Fine. Double hands. Double tiny hands. So today, before we get any more off track into our own absolute I just have to tell you one thing about doll hands before we move on it just reminds me

of my friend when we were growing up we were like probably 11 her parents have got like a big old barn in the back of their garden we're just hanging out in the barn and we found this little plastic like baby doll and its hands had been chewed off by rats oh my god never it's an image that has never left me imagine just a fucking plastic little naked baby doll and its hands have just been eaten by rats it's horrific how did you know it was rats not tiny people i mean the borrowers just gone on an absolute rampage on that note if you haven't yet sent us a ghost story for our ghost story mini-sodes we'll be doing, please send them to redhandedpatreon at gmail.com.

It's not going to be just for patrons. It's going to be for everybody. But please use that email address because I just spent an hour cleaning out our current email. I saw you did. I was like, fuck, this is so great. I know. I was just like, you know what? I've had a lot of coffee.

I've had a Coke Zero. And I've had three Mau Ams. I'm clearing out this inbox. Today is so great. I know. I was just like, you know what? I've had a lot of coffee. I've had a Coke Zero and I've had three Mau Ams. I'm clearing out this inbox. Today is the day it's happening. So send it to redhandedpatreon at Gmail. We're going to do mini-sode on that. And I love people's suggestions. It's called Red Haunted, I reckon.

Oh, duh. How did I not think of that? I'm so stupid. There you go. Red Haunted coming to you soon. Send us your stories. They don't even need to be real because we'll never know. Right.

Right. It's happening. Cue the slurry of complaints about not getting to the story. We have got for you today a narcissist charmer that puts everyone's inexplicable favourite Ted Bundy to absolute shame. Bundy convinced and for some reason still convinces people that he was a charismatic love machine. Well, Teddy hasn't got shit on our killer this week. Because the killer we're dealing with this week didn't just convince vulnerable women that he was misunderstood. This murderer convinced an entire nation that he should be released from his life sentence for murder.

And then he went on to kill again. A lot. As you might have guessed from our German chat at the beginning, we are going to Austria. And I don't think we've actually been to Austria with the show before. And as we often see with serial killers with high body counts, today we're dealing with the deaths of sex workers and how long it takes for their deaths to be noticed, let alone connected. The murders that we're talking about in this episode of these women span from the 70s all the way through to the early 90s. And we found two problems with the research on this case. Firstly, because all of the action happens primarily in Austria,

the materials out there on this case in English are what we call in the industry, floofy. Like there's just no, they're not hard. I don't even know how to describe it. Like it just, they're just not good because you can't read the contemporary news reports because they're all in German. And then the stuff you can find,

people have had trouble as well. So it's all just very vague. Yeah, it's just like there's no real weight to any of the stuff. And also, unfortunately, they're kind of riddled with inconsistencies. So we're hesitant to confirm that our subject this week was in fact Austria's first ever serial killer, because we don't really have much faith in the particular source that cites that. The second issue we also ran into is that the documentaries

on this case that are in fact in English are made by Biography and one is made by BBC Two. And these were made in the 90s. So of course, as you can imagine, the word prostitute is used quite a lot. And some of the victims aren't even named in these documentaries. It's literally just like, and then another sex worker died. And then it's never, and there is no, in any of the timelines of this case, which is usually something that you can find relatively easily in a newspaper about a case. It's something you can come across without trying that hard. But even the timelines I found for this one are literally just about him coming in and out of prison.

There is nothing about like, and this woman was found on this day in this place, and this is how old she was. It's been a very weird one research wise, that's for sure. But because it is, of course, super important, we have found the names of the victims. It wasn't easy because there's just almost, as we said, no information out there on not only their names, but of course, what they were actually like as people. To give you an idea of what we're dealing with, the BBC documentary opens with the line, this is a quote, my mouth was hanging open when I watched this. They said, American police officers have learnt that with prostitute murders, the list of suspects is

endless. Is it? Is it? What a thing to say. Is it just an endless list that it's impossible or do people just not give a shit and like bother to figure it out? It just smacks of like, well, what could we do? What could we possibly do? I don't know. It could have been anybody. No, it couldn't. It could have been like a certain type of person that you should look for.

Yeah, exactly. Especially in this case because it is pretty fucking specific. The potential dangers of sex work are not news to anyone. But in this documentary, it is presented like it's this revelatory information. They go into some detail about sex work being dangerous. And in 2004, this is an article that I read, in the US, the murder rate for sex workers was found to be 204 per 100,000 people. And the next most dangerous profession was found to be a female liquor store worker, and their murder rate was four in every 100,000 workers.

So unsurprisingly, it is a significant jump. But I just really don't feel like it's shocking information. I don't know. No, it's not at all shocking information. But you're right. It's like, if you discount the importance of that type of victim and then you suddenly look at it in a documentary then you're like oh my god shit has this been going on yeah who knew that sex work was really dangerous for women who knew that so in the

early 90s dr ernst geiger an investigator with the austrian federal police started to see a string of deaths within the viennese sex work industry that he had never seen before. Four sex workers vanished, all in the space of a month. Their names were, and please forgive me any Austrians listening, I love your country, but I'm going to butcher these names, Sylvia Zagler, Sabine Moitzi, Regina Prem and Corinne Orglu. No one knew where they had gone and no one had seen them with their last customer. The Viennese police were of course used to dealing with sexual violence and the odd murder of sex workers, but they had never seen this many sex workers disappear in such a short space of time.

In May 1992, a group of hikers discovered the body of Sabine Moitzi. She was found in a wooded area, lying on her front, with her legs spread wide. She was naked from the waist down, and Sabine had been strangled with her own bra. Her bra had been tied in a very specific knot that allowed for both loosening and tightening. Just a few days later, a lone hiker came across a very similar scene. This time the body was identified to be that of Karin Erglu. She had also been dumped in the woods outside of Vienna. She had been strangled with her bra too, with the exact same knot.

In July, another body was found. She had been strangled with her own clothing, and a year later, another body was discovered. We don't know which woman was found. She had been strangled with her own clothing. And a year later, another body was discovered. We don't know which woman was found first, but we do know that their names were Regina Prem and Sylvia Zagler. We also don't know which items of clothing they were strangled with. It's been so difficult to find information on these women. Everything we've come across, they're just treated like numbers.

To the point where you don't even know the circumstances in which they were found, some of them. This wasn't just going on in Vienna. A very similar chain of events was unfolding in Graz, which is Austria's second biggest city, just over a two-hour drive from the capital. At the end of the summer of 1990, a sex worker called Brunhilde Masser was reported missing. Yet again, no one had seen her with her last client. In December, Heidi Marie, a hammerer, went missing too. And

Heidi Marie worked in the sex industry as well. She was discovered on New Year's Eve. She was found lying on her back. She was clothed and looked as if she'd been dragged through the forest. Her legs were bare and a piece of her slip was found inside her mouth. Heidi Marie had not been strangled with her bra, but with her tights. The very same knot had been used to secure the ligature found on all of the other corpses that had been discovered in Vienna and in Graz. Heidi Marie had bruises on her wrists as if she had been restrained. Several red fibres were also found on her clothes that didn't seem to match anything that she had been wearing on the last night of her life.

They were squirreled away for forensic testing. And although they couldn't help in the DNA department, they did become quite important later on. Brunhild Massa was found a few days later. She had been missing since the end of the summer and her body was badly decomposed. But it was clear that just like the other women, she had also been strangled with an item of her own clothing.

The Austrian police started to think that they might have a serial killer on their hands. The MO was too specific for this to be the work of multiple perpetrators. Killings like this are rare. Serial killers generally don't leave such an obvious calling card, like strangulation with bras or tights, because it obviously makes the deaths easier to connect and in turn the killer easier to profile and, in the end, catch. And there is a lot said in the documentaries about how the Austrian police were really scratching their heads about the lack of motive,

as, like, none of the women had been robbed or anything. But I think it's pretty obvious that our serial killer did have an extremely common motive. He hated women. I think Hannah and I, when we were talking about this case before, weren't really sure as to why the Austrian police found that so difficult to get their heads around. I don't either.

Like, they kind of present it in a way of, oh, like Austria has a super low crime rate and this had never happened before, which, fine. But I don't believe that no one was killing sex workers ever before. Why is the only motive for killing a sex worker robbery? It just it seemed really bizarre. It is weird because like I think the fact that they have seen obviously sexual violence, the murder of sex workers occasionally, just not a huge spate of them like this in one go.

The fact is they know that that is a motivation for some killers. This is just taking that to the extreme where one person is continuously doing that. So I don't understand why they don't see that as a realistic motivation. It is quite odd. It is quite odd. And the serial killer suspicions that the Austrian police had were confirmed in March of 1991 when another woman disappeared. But there was something a little bit different about this time. Elfriede Schrempf disappeared from Graz on the 7th of March. She was a sex worker like all of the other victims,

and her parents informed police that in the weeks leading up to her disappearance, they had been receiving phone calls from a strange man, and this man taunted them about their daughter's work. And this was particularly sinister because Elfrida's parents' phone number wasn't listed anywhere. So it couldn't have been a random prank caller. It had to be someone connected with Elfrida in some way, which meant the man making the phone calls was more than likely to be Elfrida's abductor.

Her remains were discovered on the 5th of October in the woods outside of Graz, and there were only bones left of her. You'll read a lot of places that, oh, and her body was discovered covered with leaves. She's been in a forest for months. I really don't think the killer is making any attempt to hide what they've done. No, I mean the fact that her remains have decomposed to the point that she's just bones, and the fact that she's found on the 5th of October. So by that point, at least you're into autumn at that point.

She's been there for at least five, six weeks if she's just bones. I think the leaves are the least of everyone's worries, to be honest. It would be weirder if there weren't leaves all over her. In 1993, yet another body was discovered. This time, it was in a paddock near the city of Eisenstadt, which is just about a 45-minute drive outside of Vienna. We don't know, again here, what this victim's real name was. What we do know is that she was a sex worker,

originally from the Dominican Republic, and she used the name Rossi in her work. So that is what we'll have to call her. The officers who investigated her murder also never knew her real name. Rossi worked in several brothels all over Upper Austria, and her body was discovered wrapped up in plastic. She had been strangled to death. Her thigh bone had been sawn through, and her arm had been broken. Quite a few people, us included, don't think that Rossi was a victim of the serial killer that we're discussing today.

In fact, she is very rarely included in the list of victims. But the timing is interesting, and it's not impossible that Rossi was also a victim of this killer. But the MO is different. I mean, yes, she was strangled, but none of the other victims had any broken bones. And because we know so little about the case, we again actually don't know if Rossi was strangled with an item of clothing like her bra or a pair of tights like the other women.

It's an interesting one. You really don't come across this part of the story very often. And I understand why people bundle it in with the other ones we've been talking about but it's just because we know so little about it it's just impossible to say but I'm erring on the side of it's not connected just because he wasn't breaking anyone else's bones. Yeah and the plastic as well is something. Exactly but even if Rossi is not one of the victims of this particular killer the string of other victims found in incredibly similar circumstances

in Austria's extremely low crime environment was difficult to ignore. It even got the attention of 70-year-old retired detective August Schenner. This cluster of murders in the 90s reminded him of a case he had worked all the way back in the 70s. A woman called Marcia Horvath, who worked in a factory and was from what was back then called Yugoslavia, was found dead in a lake near Salzburg in 1973. She was half naked and had been bound with her own tights. Her tights had been secured with a very familiar knot. August Schenner was fairly certain that he knew who killed Marcia. He built a case against a very well-known reprobate

who had a history of petty theft and violence, especially violence against women. By the time August had tracked this guy down, he was told that his chosen suspect was already serving a life sentence for the murder of another woman who had died in a very similar way. Even still, August requested an interview with the incarcerated man, but he was told by his superior to give up. The suspect was already serving life. There was no point in giving him another life sentence. The circumstances of Marcia's death and those of the sex workers that were showing up dead all over Austria

were just too similar to be a coincidence. So August couldn't shake the feeling that they were all connected. August's prime suspect was a man named Johann Unterweger. But he liked everyone to call him Jack. August told himself that there was no way that Jack Unterweger could be personally responsible for the killings occurring in the 90s, as he was serving life in prison. But he was wrong.

Jack Unterweger was released after serving just 15 years of his murder sentence in pretty extraordinary circumstances. Jack Unterweger was born in 1950 in a place called Styria in Austria. He was a product of a short-lived affair between his mother and an American soldier who was stationed in Austria during the war and the 10 years of post-war occupation by the American army. His father, however, ran off before young Jack was born. Some people will tell you that Jack's mum was a sex worker,

and some others will tell you that she was actually a waitress. Jack seems pretty convinced that she was definitely a sex worker. But sex worker or not, Jack's mum definitely did have her run-ins with the law. When she was pregnant with Jack, she was sent to prison for fraud and only released when she gave birth. And when he was still little, Jack's mother sent him off to live with his grandfather. This man was an abusive alcoholic

and his house only had one room. And that meant that little Jack Unterweger was witness to his grandfather shagging a whole bunch of women. Or so he claimed once he grew up. There is several schools of thought on how much he lies about his childhood. I think one of his aunties came forward saying none of it's true.

But we don't know. We have no way of knowing. And whether that particular detail is true, Jack's early years were undoubtedly a real shit show. And we know this because of court records. Jack's aunt, so his mother's sister, was definitely a sex worker and she was murdered by one of her clients when Jack was little. And after seven years of living with his grandfather, Jack was taken by the state and

bounced from foster home to foster home. Jack would grow up to be an extremely charismatic man who loved to tell stories, but he never spoke about his childhood. By the age of five, he was drinking. And by the time he was a teenager, he was a full-blown criminal. He really reminds me of the childhood of Gary Heidnik. Mmm, yeah. Like, abusive alcoholic grandfather, God knows what happened, alcoholism from a very young age. Like, it's the classic.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. When he becomes this full-bl Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. When he becomes this full-blown criminal, Jack stole, he pimped, he whacked people with giant metal poles, he assaulted sex workers, and the list goes on and on. Between 1966 and 1975, Jack was convicted of 16 offences, most of which were sexual assault. And he spent most of his time incarcerated in juvenile detention centres. And when he wasn't incarcerated, Jack moved around all over the German-speaking states in Europe. As he put it, quote, I wielded my steel rod among prostitutes in Hamburg, Munich and Marseille. I had enemies and I'd conquer them through my inner hatred.

He's quite the wordsmith. Yeah, and I do know that Marseille is in France. That's what he put in the quote. Oh, I am aware that Marseille is not a German-speaking city. But that's what he just sort of bounced all over, really. I'm not sure if he even went to France. I think he's just like flowering up the sentence. Marseille is a very nice word written down and said out loud. I think he's just like flowering up the sentence. Marseille is a very nice word, written down and said out loud.

I think he just put it in there. And in December 1974, when Jack was 24 years old and out in the world, he and his girlfriend Barbara Schultz were out one night driving around. As usual, Jack was low on money and looking for someone to rob. The young couple decided on Barbara's friend, 18-year-old Margaret Schaefer. They saw her wandering through the streets alone. The original plan was to rob Margaret for whatever she had on her, then drive to her parents' house and take whatever they had to offer. But as soon as Margaret was in the car,

it became pretty obvious pretty quickly that Jack had other ideas. He drove Margaret and Barbara out to the woods, and when they got there, he ordered Margaret to strip naked and bludgeoned her with his favourite iron bar. Then Jack took her bra and strangled her with it. Jack and Barbara fled the scene, leaving Margaret tied up in the woods to die. Barbara told the police everything she had seen,

and soon after Margaret's body was discovered, Jack Unterweger was arrested for her murder. When he stood trial for his crimes, he claimed that he had seen his mother's face reflected in Margaret Schaefer's and he was so overcome with rage that he suffered a psychotic break and killed her. He was not awarded any sympathy by the court, quite rightly, I think, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 15 years. And that was the reason that our mate August Scherer

was told to leave him alone. No one was ever charged with the murder of Marcia Horvath, the lady who was found in the lake in Salzburg in the 70s. And August never made his peace with that fact. And his sort of mental disquiet over this Marcia's death going completely without justice was made much worse by how Jack Unterweger handled his time in prison. Because Jack was practically illiterate when he went into prison, but he would emerge as quite the literary star. Once he had got to grips with the alphabet, Jack started reading

non-stop. And then he started writing. He wrote plays, books and poems, and people started calling him the poet of death. Despite this ominous moniker, the stories that Jack wrote were for children, and these were broadcast on Austrian radio stations. And the poems that he wrote were adjudicated to be so beautiful that they were taught in Austrian schools. His most famous work was his autobiography, released in 1984. They must have had different rules in Austria about making money while incarcerated because, yeah, it seems that he definitely profited.

No, well, it's crazy that you are able to publish something from inside, but they definitely did, and that's how he became so famous. And this book that he wrote, so his autobiography, was, of course, written in German. But the English translation of the title is Purgatory or The Trip to Jail, Report of a Guilty Man. God, he's so pretentious. Oh, it gets worse. It gets so much worse. And this book told the tragic tale of his childhood and his urge to kill. He wrote about these hideous things so beautifully that people actually seemed to forget that he was a convicted killer.

Quite how they forgot that is frankly beyond me, considering that he wrote, quote, no theme is more poetic than the death of a beautiful woman. And also, quote, there is an age at which a woman must be beautiful in order to be loved. And there is an age in which a woman must be loved in order to be beautiful. I hate it. I hate it so much. And obviously, we're going to go on to find out that he gets quite a lot of very important people supporting him. If someone is writing that and they have already killed someone, leave them in there, I think.

I don't think this guy needs to be near any women ever again. Nope. Doesn't scream of remorse to me. And certainly not of rehabilitation. No, no, it's definitely not a signal of a rehabilitated mind, I don't think. It's just, I mean, it's distinctly misogynistic, really. Jack's catalogue of musings became a national bestseller. Jack Unterweger was the talk of the entirety of Austria. Mainly, Jack became the topic of conversation for Austria's literary elite.

They saw in Jack a criminal totally rehabilitated by the arts and a campaign for his release began. Resocialization was a big deal at the time in Austria. There was a real movement behind the redemptive power of the arts and the literati used Jack as their poster boy. He convinced almost everyone that he was a sensitive soul who was just a victim of his circumstances and mental health issues. He persuaded a great deal of important people that he deserved to be free. He was proof that art could heal even the most tortured of souls. Enormous academic giants put their support behind Unterweger,

including Nobel Prize winners Gunter Grass and Alfredi Jelinic, I think. And this, okay, hold on to your hats because I'm about to make a comparison between Jack Unterweger and Billie Eilish. Mate, I'm holding on. My hat is firmly in my hands. Okay, great. So I listened to, basically the thing with Jack Unterweger is like the upper echelons of Austrian society

need him to succeed. Like they need this poster child of the arts can do anything, fund us, basically. And where that ties into Billie Eilish is I love her I think she's incredibly talented I listened to a beyond today podcast about her the other day that was called did Billie Eilish save the music industry and basically they interview this guy and he explains that you know of course she's incredibly talented nobody's saying that she isn't but the music industry needed her to be a huge success so people would think that streaming worked that like you can get

famous through streaming so that's when she was picked up by platoon and then it was it was like an intern apple that found her and then they just put millions and millions of dollars behind her so she can be this streaming success story so i think it's an okay comparison mate i support it i'm here for it um thesis upcoming by hannah m Maguire. Jack Unterweger and, you know, Billie Eilish, a modern day Jack Unterweger. A modern day musical Jack Unterweger. Oh, yeah. You'll make your millions. Well, possibly. Or just slowly descend into madness like I already am.

Or both. Both of those are real possibilities right now. We've got so much time. It's a really interesting point because that's exactly what's unveiling, unraveling here. And I know we will go on to discuss this more throughout this case because it is like an overarching theme of the entire story. But this idea of like rehabilitation, how he's able to manipulate these people by stroking their egos, by pointing out this fact that he's been cured. It's the ideal scenario because if anybody listens to the show you know that hannah and i are proponents of rehabilitation we believe that that is a main pillar of what the prison industry prison industry no the prison system is there to do but like this guy just fucking plays everybody by using that notion yeah and they want to believe him so they they just see through it 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 Plus. 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+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire

and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment, charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm rock bottom. I made no excuses.

I'm disgusted. I'm so sorry. Until you're wearing an orange jumpsuit, it's not real. Now it's real. From his meteoric rise to his shocking fall from grace, from law and crime,

this is the rise and fall of Diddy. Listen to the rise and fall of Diddy exclusively with Wondery Plus. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. When TV producer Roy Radin was found dead in a canyon near L.A. in 1983, there were many questions surrounding his death. The last person seen with him was Lainey Jacobs, a seductive cocaine dealer who desperately wanted to be part of the Hollywood elite. Together, they were trying to break into the movie industry.

But things took a dark turn when a million dollars worth of cocaine and cash went missing. From Wondery comes a new season of the hit show Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of The Cotton Club Murder early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. The first formal campaign for Unterweger's release came to a head in 1985, but the Austrian president refused the petition, insisting that Jack had to serve his minimum sentence of 15 years. And serve it he did. Five years later, in 1990, the prison governor declared that, quote, we will never find a prisoner so well prepared for freedom, obviously referring to Jack.

And with that, he was released. And at this time, he was in his 40s and already a household name. Immediately after his release, he started appearing as a guest on television shows. He kept writing. He did live appearances and readings from his books all over the country. And he made good money. And he also, at this point in his life, started to wear white silk suits, which is such a look. Never trust a man in a white suit, I don't think. No, don't do it. Don't do it. Unless he is giving you fried chicken. And even then, Colonel Sanders was probably a racist, right? I don't know. Good chicken, though. And to, like, sort of finish off this white suit, white silk suit, should I say, he would wear, like, loads of rings and bracelets and necklaces.

Like, it's a look. Oh, it's a strong look. I don't know, Jack. I'm just going to give you some advice. Was it Coco Chanel who said, when you're accessorizing, always take the last thing you put on off? Probably should have taken that advice. Yeah, she was a Nazi though, so. So if there's anyone who's going to give advice to a serial killer, it can be her.

I also don't follow that advice, so it's fine. And as if the flashy clothes and jewelry weren't enough, Jack also bought himself a fleet of cars, including a Mustang and a BMW. He also had an incredibly obnoxious personalised number plate that read Jack 1, just so everyone knew who was arriving. Perfect in every way, but they have a personalised number plate of their name. No, I hate it. I hate it so much. I hate it. it absolutely hate it what i do find really bizarre obviously here you can have personalized number plates but in the u.s you can just have like a fucking vanity plate that just says whatever the fuck you want that's wild jack is living his best life he's you know got all these extra clothes extra cars so this is just sort of like apart from showing his level of like eccentricity and attention-seeking nature,

it also shows you just how much money he was making at this point. So in between the TV shows and high society parties, Jack found the time to also do several topless photo shoots, in which he could show off all of his prison tattoos. What the fuck? All he needs is a fucking wind machine and he could look like a still from a Westlife video. What is going on? Honestly, it is unsettling is the only word I can use to describe it.

Can we make a comparison at this point between Jack Unterweger and Vladimir Putin? What is it with all of these strongmen and the topless photo shoots? It is very weird. It's very weird. Like murder erotica. I don very weird. It's very weird. Like murder erotica. I don't know.

I don't like it. And as if all of this wasn't enough, all of this money he's got, all of this work he's getting, Jack also worked as a journalist specialising in, wait for it, documenting the sex work industry in Austria and beyond. What is happening? It's Unbelievable. It's unbelievable. He literally is just laughing in everyone's face like the whole of Austria like united to get him out of prison

and he's like okay guys thanks for that but watch this. Peace out. Yeah I'm gonna be so good at this none of you will have any idea and you'll still have me on TV and I'll still get invited to every party and I'll just kill nine women. you're so right though that is the added that is just like the little the little like you on top of this little murder party he's got going on because it's not only am i running around killing all these sex workers which is what i really want to do i'm also going to trick the entire country that is how I am. That is how much of a genius I am. He's not just imagining it, he's actually doing it. And as we already discussed at the top of the show, we already know that in the early 90s, the disappearance of sex workers and the subsequent

discovery of their bound bodies in the woods was on everybody's mind. And Jack Unterweger wanted to be the star reporter on this particularly juicy case. After the first three women went missing in Vienna, Jack contacted the police to interview them about the serial killer on the loose that the press had inexplicably, we thought, named the Courier. What? What? Try harder, be better. Come on. Like, that is, what even? He's strangling women with their own bras and leaving them in the woods and the best you could do was the courier

get a new job does it just sound more menacing in german does it mean something else in german quite possibly i don't know i mean everything sounds a bit more sinister in german but oh i don't know it's it's not it's not enough. No, it's not. The recordings of this interview still exist, and in them you can hear Detective Max Adelbecker telling Jack that the police were greatly concerned by the string of killings. But that wasn't enough for Jack's journalistic itching, so he took himself off to the Red Light District in Vienna and recorded interviews with sex workers.

He asked one woman how she was planning on protecting herself from the courier killer and she replied, quote, you can't protect yourself because something can always happen to you on the street,

whether it's the killer or not. Something can always happen. He has the brass fucking neck to go and be like, so if you were trying to not get killed, what would you do?

It really is just, it's getting him off so much. Running around, being a journalist, interviewing these police officers, and now going to speak to sex, like he's doing his own fucking market research. That's exactly it. That's what he's going to be doing. And while Jack and DeVeca were sniffing around sex workers, at least one bright spark in the police department

was not taken in by his reformed Tortured Artist Act. The similarities between the way Jack had killed Margaret Schaeffer and how the missing sex workers were being discovered was just too much to ignore. So the newly released journalist and literary superstar was placed under surveillance by the police. In the beginning, nothing was found, and some seemed unconvinced that reformed killer Jack

would be capable of such a heinous string of serial murders. He had a nice house now and a girlfriend, after all. And this resistance within the police department, similarly to them being like, well, there's no motive, like, it honestly baffles me. He's literally done the exact same thing before. And, like, sure, like, Margaret wasn't a sex worker, but, like, it's so specific. It's so specific.

I don't feel like this is a fucking newsflash, but the power of celebrity doesn't erase people's deviance. Jack and DeVega had been handed a poetic license to kill by the entirety of the Austrian people. It is mad that they're just like, oh, but not the guy on TV. He can't be, even though he's done the exact same thing before, it can't be him. He's got a white suit.

Exactly. Look at his shiny suit and also he wrote that lovely book where he only kind of talked about women being murdered when he described the death of a beautiful woman being the best thing ever in his absolute fave and they're like oh no but he wouldn't do it though come on they just scroll to the back of his book and it's just like a list of things he loves that he scribbled in there. It's like murdered women. Like, no, no. But look at him.

He writes those lovely children's books they put out on the wireless. Wireless. I know it's the 90s, like, but still. It's like so stupid that it feels like a way old and time-ier case than it is. Yeah, you're right. So the more the police watched Unterweger, the more obvious it became that Jack was up to no good. By following his movements, law enforcement figured out that whenever a sex worker went missing, Jack Unterweger could be placed in the town they went missing from on the night that

they disappeared. Every single one. Jack was pretty certain that the police were hot on his trail. So he started writing articles on the hunt for the killer in the ultimate double bluff. It's like a movie plot. Yeah. For a shit movie. That's what this feels like. To keep going with this story, we have to leave Austria for a moment and hop on over to the Czech Republic. Where on the 15th of September 1990, the body of Blanka Blokova was discovered on the bank of the Vlatava River.

She bore all the trademarks of the Austrian courier killer. She was naked, lying on her back with a pair of tights tied around her neck, in again an all-too-familiar knot. But there was one major difference. Blanka was not a sex worker. The night she went missing, she was last seen by her boyfriend in a bar on Wenceslas Square. The couple had had an argument, so Blanca left her boyfriend and went her own way at 11.45pm. She was last seen talking to a man in his 40s. And guess what? Jack Unterweger was in

Prague the night that Blanca died. He had been sent to write an article about the sex industry. Once news of Blanca's murder reached Vienna, the police had all they needed for a search warrant. So they headed to Jacunda Vega's apartment. We should probably just say here, like, I know we are sort of jumping around in the chronology of this, but that's only because it takes a while for Blanca's death to be recognized in Austria, because obviously it's different countries, different police departments, etc, etc. So that's why we're jumping around a little bit in the timeline. And when the police arrived at Jack's apartment,

they realised that he had already fled. He had been tipped off about the investigation, perhaps by one of his supporters within the police department. And as he'd run off, he'd even taken his 18-year-old girlfriend, Bianca Mrak, with him, and they'd run off, he'd even taken his 18-year-old girlfriend, Bianca Mrak, with him. And they'd run off to Switzerland together. Remember, he's like well into his 40s at this point and he's got an 18-year-old girlfriend. Yeah, that screams of normal functioning human being, doesn't it?

Yeah. Definitely no problems with women. Nope. None. Not at all. Not a sausage. So when the police searched his apartment, they turned up some interesting items. There was a photograph of Jack posing threateningly with a noose. Photographs of Jack with members of the LAPD. A red scarf that would later be matched to the fibres found on Heidi Marie Hammer's remains. They also found a menu and a number of receipts from restaurants in California.

And this got the detectives thinking, if Jack Unterweger was killing in Prague, he'd probably been killing in the United States too. So they got on the dog to the LAPD to ask if they had any unsolved cases of women being strangled with their own clothing and being left in wooded areas outside the city, to which the LAPD replied, of course we do, This is LA. And as the photos discovered in Unterweger's apartment suggested, the LAPD were already familiar with Austria's literary marvel. Jack Unterweger had been sent to LA again by a magazine to write an article on sex work in the city in June of 1991. And while Jack was there, he had contacted the LAPD and even gone for a ride in a police car, which apparently was pretty standard practice for journalists at the time.

You might have just woken up to the LAPD, but can I come in your car, please? I'd like to have a look. And they'd just be like, sure, come on in. I mean, how? Firstly, how is he getting all of these pieces commissioned? No one gave a fuck that all these sex workers were dying. And now he's just getting pieces left, right and centre to go off and write about the sex work industry in all these various countries suspect

and then also just this fucking casual ride along i hate it what the fuck during jack unto waker's three week trip in los angeles there were no murders in austria fitting the description the police were looking for but there were three cases in la oh Oh my God. All within spitting distance of where Jack Unterweger was staying. In fact, Unterweger stayed at the infamous and now non-existent Cecil Hotel. If you want more information on that hellhole, please check out our episode on Elisa Lam. And following on from our theme from last week

with America, oh, not last week, from the Madame Delphine Lullery bonus episode on Patreon. Again, American Horror Story. He's in that, isn't he? He is. He's in Hotel and he's got like, he just sort of sits in the bar a bit with a camera and just looks weird. There's basically that, I think. I liked Hotel though.

And here is another Cecil titbit that I didn't put in the Elisa Lam episode. Apparently in 1944, a 19-year-old woman by the name of Dorothy Jean Purcell delivered her own baby and she thought it was dead, so she threw it out the window. And she was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity. So that's just another fun thing that happened there for you. I don't know anything more about that, much about that story really, apart from that. Why is that your first thought to chuck it out?

I think is it like her husband or her boyfriend is asleep in the room as well? Yeah, that's it. Like her husband, who's like significantly older than her, is asleep and she doesn't want to wake him up. So she's just like, oh, out the window with you, baby. I mean, you've already done the hard, loud bit of giving birth. A dead baby's not going to make any noise. Well, they don't know whether it was dead when it was born or whether she killed it.

She claims that she thought it, she at least thought it was dead. But I don't know. Because sometimes they don't cry straight away, do they? Oh dear. No, that's when you got to give them a little slap. Not throw them out the window. Not on the face. Not throw them out the window. So obviously, we could happily talk about this easel all day long. But that is not this episode. So let's get back to the murdered sex workers that were abducted just a stone's throw away from this easel. Their names were Shannon Exley, Irene Rodriguez and Sherry Long. They were all found either naked or partially clothed in remote areas outside of the city and they had all been strangled with their own bras and every bra had been tied with the exact same knot. The

bras were sent off to a crime lab that dealt with everything except DNA and it was discovered that the elastic had been ripped out of the bras to form the knot. The elastic was so tight that the loop that was around these women's necks was only seven inches in circumference. That is incredibly tight. Like, fucking hell, seven inches around your neck? Ugh. And they also found that the bras were dismantled in the exact same way. And on this basis, the crime lab recommended that the police look

for one suspect for all three murders. The LAPD searched their database for similar circumstances and they found nothing in the entirety of the United States. So that tells you all you need to know about how rare this kind of thing is. The only other thing I can even remotely think of that's quite similar, and I actually don't know when this happened, I don't know if it was, I think it was before this, was the Boston Stranglers. So like Ken Bianchi, blah, blah, blah.

But obviously that was in Boston. And I think they used tights and stockings. So the LAPD now knew that it had to be one guy. And it looked like he was about to slip through their fingers. But back in Switzerland, the cracks were starting to show for Jack. He periodically contacted the Austrian press to tell them the police were on the wrong track and that he was an innocent man. You have to wonder though why this innocent man would be on

the run. Jack argued that he was running because he would rather die than go back into a jail cell. Bianca wasn't doing much better than Jack. She's only 18 for God's sake and she was afraid and desperately unhappy. Jack was a control maniac. He got up at 6am every day because of the institutionalisation he still dealt with from his years inside. Bianca wasn't allowed to drink or smoke and she realised quickly that Jack was not as loaded as he pretended to be. He just lived off the women in his life. And with that in mind, Jack insisted that Bianca get a job with an escort agency. She went to the interview on the understanding that she would just have to go for dinner with men and then she would get to go home. Once she realized that she would be expected to sleep with her clients, she refused to ever go back. So Jack sent her off to work at a

festival, a Mardi Gras festival somewhere in Switzerland. And it wasn't long before Jack broke down completely and told Bianca that he was a serial killer, that the police were after him and they had to leave Europe because he simply could not go back to prison. And with that, they drove to Paris, got on a flight to New York, and from there made their way to Miami. Jack had always been a big fan of Miami Vice. And when they arrived, Jack sent Bianca off to work as a stripper earning $100 a night, and he used that money to rent an unfurnished apartment in South Beach. While they were attempting to start their new Floridian life, in Austria, the evidence collection was growing.

All the police had were circumstantial. They had all the similarities in the ways that the bodies were found. They had Jack at all of the locations. And they had the red scar fibres found on Heidi Marie's body. But they were about to get some cold, hard DNA. Over his albeit short career as the King of Vienna's literary scene, Jack treated himself to six different cars in just two years. The police found all six, and all but one had been professionally cleaned, and gave them no evidence at all. But Jack had sold his BMW for scrap and the police managed to track down

the car seats. When the seats were forensically examined, they yielded a hair complete with a root, perfect for DNA testing. Three tests were run on this singular root, which had only a nine billionth of a gram's worth of DNA in it. The first test proved that the hair was a match to one in 13 women. The second test was a match to one in 2,500 women. The third and final test, using two billionth of a gram of DNA, proved that this hair belonged to Blanka Blakova. The certainty was one in 2.1 million women so that's pretty certain that's a pretty sure shot i was fascinated by this like i did i realized that i actually had no idea how dna testing worked

at all and yeah they have to run because they only have one hair that's their problem so they're like every test we do we're losing more and more of this dna so they had to be like incredibly careful and yeah it took them three goes to to figure out that it could be with a reasonable amount of certainty belong to Blanca. Good on them for continuing to keep going until they got to that point. I wonder if it would have held up any longer if they hadn't had got it on the third test, which is horrifying to think about. So with all the CSI evidence that they now needed, Interpol issued an international arrest warrant for Jack Unterweger. He was apprehended in the car park of a Western Union. He was there to pick up money sent to him by his ex-girlfriend.

He wept as he was handcuffed. Unterweger was then extradited to Austria on the 28th of May 1992, just two years after he had been released from prison by popular demand. Jack was charged with 11 counts of murder and stood trial in Graz. just two years after he had been released from prison by popular demand. Jack was charged with 11 counts of murder and stood trial and grass in June of 1994. The entire trial hung on a single hair. Jack Intervejka's defence was simple. He admitted that he was a bad person

and that he'd lived his life in a bad way, but that he was no longer a murderer. He was an arsehole, but a reformed one. And I don't know enough about the Austrian legal system to know if this is true, but he does seem to, if he wasn't defending himself, he definitely was addressing the court a lot. And he claimed that he just couldn't explain the evidence against him.

He doesn't even try. He's just like, I don't know. I can't explain it. Magic. Oh, come on, Jack. You're such a storyteller. You can't think of a better way than that. Also, the whole addressing the court himself, again, very Ted Bundy-esque.

Definitely. And he tells the court that he, this is such a ridiculous defense, but this is what he says. He says that he had the perfect sexually fulfilled life with his 18-year-old girlfriend in his nice apartment. So he had no need to be running around strangling sex workers. My God. I mean, obviously, we don't need to tell you guys listening people who run around strangling sex workers doing all that it's about the power it's about the control him to argue that is just again it feels so old and timey like where is this from he also threw in that since his release from prison he had had

sexual relations with well over 150 women. What a lad. Lads never hurt anyone. And throughout the trial, Jack addressed the court in such a calm and collected fashion, it was hard to think that he wasn't actually enjoying himself. But of course, the prosecution explained, the kind of urges to kill experienced by a serial murderer don't just vanish because you buy yourself a nice car and get a girlfriend. It's such an outrageous argument.

FBI profiler Greg McGrary wasn't having any of it either. He testified in court that the jury didn't really need any more evidence than the MO being so specific and the fact that Jack Wintervaker could be placed at every single murder scene, even though they were in three different countries. Circumstantial evidence is evidence. He knows it. After two and a half months the trial came to a close and the jury were not deceived by jack's charms they found him guilty on nine counts of murder he was acquitted on the two murders where there were only skeletal remains found and the jury was split six to two jack and was sentenced to life in prison as As a sentencing was read,

thunder crashed outside, apparently. And we don't know if this is actually true. I kind of have a feeling that it's a bit of a pathetic fallacy swooshed into the storyline by all of the kind of literature nerds who feel so incredibly guilty for giving Jack and Tavega the benefit of the doubt. If they can sort of build up this picture of like, thunder crashing, he's some sort of other, he's like a monster, he's like a demon, then it excuses them of why they were so stupidly and naively fooled by this man, who was clearly a fucking killer. Quite obviously, the arts hadn't fixed him,

and the celebrity manufactured by his release had made him much worse. The point that, Hannah, you said earlier that celebrity doesn't erase deviance. No, it just masks it and allows it a place to hide. And that's exactly what happened here. And rather interestingly, in Austria at the time, a guilty verdict was not legally binding until the appeals process had been exhausted. Throughout the trial, Jack told his lawyer that he thought he had a good shot of being acquitted on appeal, but if he lost the appeal, then he would kill himself. After his sentencing, he was taken to a cell. The prison staff were informed of his suicide threats, but

they didn't take enough precautions. At 3.40am, just 10 hours after he had been handed the second life sentence of his lifetime, 43-year-old Jack Unterweger was found hanging in his cell. He had used the string from his tracksuit bottoms to hang himself and he used the same knot that he had tied around the neck of each one of his victims. And because he never went through the appeals process, he died, technically speaking, a not guilty man. And even though he's now dead, his lives on in 2008 john malkovich of

all people played jack in an opera about his life and this show was later developed into a full stage production called the infernal comedy which toured through europe and the americas and there's a 2015 film directed by someone called elizabeth schnarrang what a name and that film is just called jack, apparently. And in 2016, it was announced that none other than big dick swinging Michael Fassbender would be playing Antovica in a new film called Entering Hades.

So there's a lot. There's a lot. Is that out already, Entering Hades, then? I don't think so, no. I assume. Or maybe. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

Well, have a look. I'm looking for horrible films to watch every evening so maybe that will be that'll make its way up the list for me god yeah like I don't know it feels the whole thing feels like such a fake made-up movie plot line but it's all true and it's mad so yeah thank you guys so much for listening that is the story of Jacques Unterweger also I would love anyone who is Austrian or maybe even German, how common is it for people to shorten their names from Johann to Jack? Or is this guy like riffing a bit off like Jack the Ripper, killing the sex workers?

I don't know. Oh, maybe. Why is he so keen for it? Let us know because we don't know. Other than that, quick update. So we obviously are releasing a bonus episode every Saturday for everybody in the main feed. I did slightly mess up. There was a technical issue.

I only uploaded half of the episode and then tried to fix it. It is now fixed and most of you have got the episode. If you are still experiencing difficulties, what you need to do is unsubscribe from us, delete it, resubscribe. And if you still can't see it in your feed then just search red handed lockdown red handed lockdown and you'll find it and uh i did test it it works we will be releasing another episode this saturday to keep you guys going we're also adding some other fun stuff into the mix uh like we're going to do a quiz we're going to do some fun stuff we'll continue to post stuff on

instagram facebook blah blah blah come follow us all the red-handed all the red-handed all the social medias at red-handed the pod patrons you are going to get even more fun stuff so hold on to your hats and other than that just gonna go into the thank yous i think yeah anything else hannah no i've got absolutely nothing else to say no we've done a lot of talking today this is going to be a tag team situation. So you jump in whenever you feel you see me starting to die. Thank you so much. Lucy Goldup, Emma Louise Mason, Samela Reed, Mike Van Duyveert, Carlos Alva, Jennifer Talmadge, Paula Green, Ashley Lacey, Annette Blackwell, Hayley Dalton, Ignatius Henshell, Heidi Jones, Alison Fisher, Danielle Speck, Hananal Noling, Dawn Day, Sonia Singh, Selena Joseph, Amanda Tabor, Amber James, Stephanie McGregor, Selena, Janine Payne, Amanda Dodge, Erica, Julia Glazer,

Caitlin Tracy, Hayley, Rachel Cox, Ashley Brandy Shelton, Daphne Puerto, Jannie, Mercedes Schreiner, Yuriko, Dalia Salmon, Kai Boyd, Jill Ostro, Patricia Reeves, Emily Landau, Lucy, Lisa Marie Nathan. Rachel Millie. Brittany Pennywoodside. Nick Sellers. Emma Priester. C Evans.

T Jennifer Riff. Caitlin Ziska. Nidhi Acharya. Courtney Walter. Tha... Ooh. Thalia Lowen. Megan Bailey.

Danica Lamphere. Lamphere? That's a difficult one. Hannah Shepherd. Samantha Lloyd Ashley Morin Maisie Fiedler oh come on

Sneha Sneha again fuck I fucked that one up last time too shit Maria Friedman Emma Nechorian

Julie Adie Patience Handle Amber Spence Amanda Sharkey Tanya Zederbauer Demi Fitzpatrick Brooke Wallace, Pine Loppy, Aris Anton, I don't know.

Antonio. I'm really having to fucking sound these out, man. I've literally gone back to like year three reading level. Diana Tran, Leanne Taylor, Nina, Avery Yanova, Kristen Gardner, Selina Millington, Natalie M. Smith, Betty, Sarah Nilsson-Sparks, Helen O'Neill, Christine, Alicia Driggers, Holly Banner, Fran Copping, Caroline Gobble, Anthony Locke,

Charlie O'Neill, Sharni Sharn, Renee Dembowski, Katie, Gemma Credland, Victoria Johnson, Maeve Roach. I'll finish off if you want. Okay, tag. Kia Nicole, Isabel Colicott, Talia McAuliffe, Didi, Gia Samara, Tracy Camp, Alana Starwalt, Elle Kassin, Alison McCarthy, Kat E, Rebecca Tesburd, Oh, God, what? see just lucy eh cole tassia brown oh god what uh why lime teluge i don't know that's not a name corinne jen sanchez sarah hannah jackson sabrina coley holbrook stacy coles mina farrow hayley Thank you. tiffany gorman joke lynn storm tessa swanson alexandra blatteri d bence spring monday wise

hope d jenkins ashley dorian medwig erin ford megan thomas tia marie kathy beth sims molly dealy brady ali baber sonia krakow stephanie hoyer ben z Zed, depending on where you're from, Suzanne Ochoa, Anne, Sophie Linman, Lineman, Amber, Kelly Glazebrook, Emma McCarthy, Devin Nugent, Kayla Frank, Alice Woods, Anita Ahmed, Lindsay Porchass, yeah, Katrina Ashworth, Emily Eskridge, Rebecca Brown, Com Follan, Emma Saunders, Abby Woodhouse, Connie Sejodin, Chloe Nicole, Vicky Armstrong, Faye Wilkinson, Teresa, Jack Adams, Kaz, Lola, Tyler Mills, Joe Wagner, Leona Jack and Amanda Unruh. Thank you so much. Well done. That was a good run.

God, all my brain started thinking during that was, isn't it so weird that we just look at these random symbols and it's like a word that I know and I'm reading it out loud and people would read it the same way. I don't know. I need to go have a lie down, I think. I got really worried that I couldn't actually read, that I just memorized a lot of words. Do you remember when we went for drinks with my friend Johnny and he told you about a girl we went to uni with who was like he was convinced was illiterate

he spent the entire time he just whispered to me in the lecture hall he'd be like I think I swear she's illiterate she just copied down every word that was being said and I'd be like yeah I don't know if she actually knows what's being said. Don't know. Don't know. It's a mystery. The mystery remains. Though I did find out really sadly on Friday that my very favorite lecturer from uni got

COVID-19 and died. Stop. Yeah. I was really, really fucking gutted about it. Sorry to end on a bum note, but like, fuck, I was so shocked. He was just the fucking best lecturer ever. He was like best mates with Mervyn King, who was the old head of the Bank of England. He used to be David Cameron's tutor at Oxford. Like he was just fucking knew everybody. And he'd come into a lecture hall, just talk for two hours. He would never use slideshow. He would never use like a PowerPoint presentation. Sometimes on the odd occasion, he'd bring out the overhead projector.

And that was it. And he just was a fucking amazing lecturer. People used to call him the David Attenborough of economics at Birmingham University. He was just such a cool guy. But yeah, I found out from our university that um he got COVID-19 spent two weeks in ICU and uh sadly passed away so that was really tragic so yeah everybody stay safe stay inside if you can and uh we'll see you guys next week or like tomorrow yeah see you very soon. Bye. Bye.

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. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudian Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts.