RedHanded - Episode 19 - Halloween Special Part 1

Episode Date: October 31, 2017

For Halloween, the girls bring you the most disturbing cases they could find for their very own treehouse of horror, filled with kiddnapping, a Buffallo Bill copy cat and shivers for days. G...et cosy and grab the dog as Hannah & Suruthi take you through 2 harrowing cases, told to each other for the first time.    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.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 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.
Starting point is 00:00:48 I'm Saruti. And welcome to Red Handed, and I'm sorry about my voice. I have the death flu, as it's commonly known. The death flu. Like, no, seriously, the temperature's dropped quite considerably. And not to be super boring and very British and talk about the weather, but I'm so cold. Like, my hands are freezing. And, like, you know the bit between the top gum above your front teeth
Starting point is 00:01:12 and your outer lip? That bit is cold, like, inside of my mouth. Like, I'm so cold. I'm going to Iceland next week. How am I going to survive? It's going to be tough. But, yeah, I'm going to buy some thermals and take my hot water bottle. You have to. No, to warm us up, we have got quite the episode. We have. Actually, I don't know. Your case might be shit. How dare you? We don't know. So we are
Starting point is 00:01:37 trying a different format today just for our Halloween special, which is going to be a two-parter, which is exciting. where I don't know what Hannah's case is and she doesn't know what my case is and we're going to tell each other the most horrifying cases that we could find that were also real because this is true crime and you'd be surprised at how many out there we like hear about and then we're like oh that sounds really interesting and then you dig into it and that's just not what happened at all one Daily Mail journalist got hold of it and turned it into something what happened at all. One Daily Mail journalist got hold of it and turned it into something that it absolutely isn't.
Starting point is 00:02:08 Definitely, definitely. And also this was a good opportunity for us to find the cases that we were fascinated by but there's not enough information to do a full episode. We've got more five-star review thank yous to do. So we've got something beginning with W that I just can't say that name, so I'm not going to. Voila, bye, Bernard.
Starting point is 00:02:28 Don't I? But just so you get a little thank you, why Bernard? Bernard dead. They say they love the profanities and are stoked to have found us. Quite a lot of people talk about our colourful language, begging us never to stop doing it, and we absolutely won't, so don't sweat it. And then also thank you to Peculiar, spelt with a Y, who says that they haven't
Starting point is 00:02:50 been able to stop listening and even their kids are getting in the way. Definitely keep the kids out of the room. Especially, I'm gonna say for this episode. Yes. And then we've got Random Person who tried this app. I do find it quite funny guys when people have like we had a review
Starting point is 00:03:06 nickname 16 or something the other day and I just, they tickle me. I think they're funny. So congratulations. They said brilliant commentary, witty comments and considered debates which I think if I had to do like an elevator pitch that's what I'd say. Yes. That's what I'd like to say about us, yeah.
Starting point is 00:03:22 And then also thank you to Liddy Laurie who says that, probably a lady She loves that we pick cases That she's never heard of And also Leesraw Who thinks our dark humour Makes this a fab and unique show Someone gave us a five star review
Starting point is 00:03:39 On the UK iTunes app And they said It was a lovely review review but they also said not sure how it fits into comedy because it's true crime. I saw that. There is no true crime category I swear to god if there was one we would be so there
Starting point is 00:03:55 so we're shoehorning ourselves into comedy doing the best we can Absolutely, only because it gives us the freedom to not have to adhere to any other rules In other categories, perhaps people that wouldn't be into our particular flavour might find us And then not appreciate us And that has happened actually
Starting point is 00:04:16 Let's stay here, that has happened, yeah We're glad that the right people are finding us because you guys are clearly enjoying it So thank you for listening And with that I'd quite like to issue an apology if you listen to our spy in the bag episode this has really been
Starting point is 00:04:34 playing in Hannah's mind guys so hear her out we spoke about a man who is called Peter Folder who is a small spaces expert and I will genuinely never forgive myself that I missed the gag that his name is folder and his job is to fold himself into small spaces so I am so sorry his name was folding no that's even better yeah yeah I know it's all right Hannah you've said it now you've got it out
Starting point is 00:05:02 there it's far too late and now you're the only one laughing but but you are laughing everyone Hannah's laughing and I've had to listen to multiple conversations about this where she has rude the fact that she didn't get to say it in the original episode so everyone just a round of applause for Hannah's joke and the determination to get it out there so with that good joke a that... Good joke. A little bit of levity. A little bit of levity. I like that. Before we jump into what is, I assume, not going to be a fun... No, it will be fun, but in a terrifying way.
Starting point is 00:05:33 Yeah. I'm, like, really nervous. We've never done this before, guys. No, it's because it's, like, it's all solo now. All right. So I'm going to go first. So seriously, guys, I have to be totally honest that no case I've ever researched before gave me nightmares like this one has. I genuinely lost an entire night's sleep because of researching this case.
Starting point is 00:05:54 I was home alone last night while I was finishing things up and I genuinely had to stop because I started to get so freaked out. And fair warning, I don't know what Hannah's doing this episode, but if you're not feeling up for a true horror show of a case, and you know, if you have children, if you want to have children, if you know any children, if you ever were children, maybe just skip me today. So with that, I guess I better jump right in. Sit back, get comfortable, crack open a drink, grab the dog, and here we go. So it's Halloween night, 1977, in Lawton, Oklahoma, and George and Rose Carter, parents of 19-month-old Nima Louise Carter, placed her in her crib and went off to enjoy their evening in front of the TV. Later, they wouldn't remember what time they fell asleep, but only that at some
Starting point is 00:06:45 point during the night, baby Nima had cried. But the couple, who understandably didn't want to spoil her by running in to soothe her every time she stirred, didn't go in to check on her. But this would sadly go on to be a decision that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. Because the next morning, when Rose went to check in on Nima, she found the crib was empty. Nima was gone. But how? The parents had been asleep, just in the living room, and all the windows in Nima's bedroom were all locked. Whoever had abducted Nima, and this is horrifying, must therefore have already been hiding in the cupboard in Nima's room.
Starting point is 00:07:23 Oh my god. And carried her out of the house. Yeah. been hiding in the cupboard in Nima's room and carried her out of the house. Yeah, while her parents were asleep, boldly walking straight past the living room. Now, of course, a search took place. But initially, a lot of suspicion was, you know, understandably put on George and Rose themselves. But there was nothing, no leads, no motive, no evidence, nothing. Nothing that was until a month later when a group of young boys playing in an abandoned house just four blocks away from the car to home made a horrifying discovery. No, I'm not ready. No, to get ready now. Exploring the house, they found a discarded fridge and they opened the. And this is when they were met with what is maybe the most horrifying shock.
Starting point is 00:08:09 The decomposing body of a tiny baby came tumbling out. I know. When I started to research this and read about this, I didn't think this case was true. But it's very, very true. I don't want it to be true. I'm sorry, it's going to get worse. Now, understandably, the terrified boys legged it, and they didn't report what had happened or what they'd found to anyone.
Starting point is 00:08:35 But luckily, or unluckily for him, the same day a soldier from nearby Fort Hill came across the horrifying scene, and he called the police. Now, when the detectives arrived arrived they found Nima's tiny body lying beside the fridge and they were able to conclude that Nima had been placed inside the fridge by whoever had kidnapped her very soon after her abduction
Starting point is 00:08:54 and just been left to suffocate. She was alive? She was alive when she was put inside the fridge because she died. They were able to conclude that she died of suffocation. It's horrifying. She was 18, 19 months. That is absolutely horrendous. Now Lawton was, and still is, a stronghold for the military community.
Starting point is 00:09:14 But it's always been a pretty rough town, where like drunken brawling, stabbings and shootings were not a rare occurrence. But child abduction, leave alone child murder, was basically unheard of in Lawton until 1976, the year before Nima Carter was murdered. And what's even more shocking is how similar the child killing of 1976 was to that of Nima. The town was now terrified as they collectively recalled the horror of the previous year. So in April 1976
Starting point is 00:09:48 a pair of three and a half year old twin girls Mary and Tina Carpitcher were at their grandmother's house watching TV when a young woman opened the living room door and whispered to them to follow her outside. This reminds me of like the
Starting point is 00:10:05 witches yeah like the child catcher yeah or like you know rolled out the witches when she like lures them away that's what this reminds me of so this woman comes in she whispers them to them to follow her and the girls know her so they went with her without question but the girls then become scared and we know this because there was a witness. Thelma Craig, a woman who lived in the neighbourhood, saw a teenage girl dragging two little girls along the road by their wrists. She would later tell the police that she didn't report it because, I guess like most people, I didn't want to get involved. But Thelma, you should have. And I wonder if it had been a man or a boy she would have.
Starting point is 00:10:46 It's because it was a 16-year-old girl. That's interesting, isn't it? Like, when you see... We profile what we see in cases like that, don't we? And we definitely would make a split-second decision as to how much danger we thought that person was likely to cause. Yeah, exactly, and you do see, like, kids can be fucking little shits. Like, you know, it could be their sister.
Starting point is 00:11:02 Yeah. She doesn't report it, but Thelma, Thelma, mate, you should have. Because the girl who had stolen Mary and Tina away in broad daylight now took them to an abandoned house near the railroad tracks on the outskirts of town. She dragged the girls inside where there was an abandoned fridge. She opened the filthy fridge and forced the girls inside. Ignoring their scream, she told the girls that their aunt would be along soon to take them for ice cream. And with that, she left the two three and a half year old twin girls locked inside this filthy fridge in an abandoned house. Two days later, a group of children were playing in the abandoned
Starting point is 00:11:46 house when they heard cries coming from the disused fridge. Now, I'm not going to lie, I would have run as fast as I could out of that house. But these children, they bravely go and open the fridge door. And to their horror, three and a half year old tina carpiccia fell out alive somehow tina had managed to survive this insane ordeal by breathing through a tiny hole in the fridge but the true horror was that her twin sister mary had suffocated to death how do you know do you know so yeah no we don't we don't know it i reckon maybe she could have survived a day. So for probably at least a day, maybe at least a day and a half, like half a day,
Starting point is 00:12:33 Tina was in there with her dead sister, locked in a fridge. Oh, my God. That poor girl. It would have been pitch black. I mean, how do you even get over something like that? So Tina was questioned immediately on who had abducted her and her sister. And all she could tell them was it was Jackie Boo or Jackie Burr. She meant Jacqueline Robidoux, who was a friend of her aunt's and Tina and Mary's 16-year-old babysitter.
Starting point is 00:13:04 So with that, Robidoux instantly became the target of the police investigation. But there was a serious lack of physical evidence. Couple that with how young Tina was. She was only three and a half. The investigation just stalled and Robidoux was never charged with anything. So having been set free, Robidoux keeps a low profile, holding a quiet and shy demeanour in public. She even continued to work as a babysitter. Fuck off. Oh yeah. And by 1977, she was babysitting for a young American Indian couple. You guessed it. George and Rose Carter, who employed her to watch their baby girl, Nima. This can't be real. It's real. It's real.
Starting point is 00:13:47 So when Nima was murdered, police detective Cecil Davidson was tipped off that the year before, Robidoux had been linked with another child abduction and murder, a case almost identical in circumstance. So Davidson brings Robidoux in to question her about Nima's abduction and murder, but she told the police that she was playing bingo the night Nima was murdered. And interviewing Jacqueline Robidoux was not an easy or productive task. Davidson described her as very quiet, and found it frustrating that throughout the interview she never looked him in the eyes.
Starting point is 00:14:18 He said, She would always get close, right close to telling you something critical, and then she'd back off. And despite hours of questioning, Davidson could not get her to confess. But the real issue, the real frustrating part, was that they just had no physical evidence. There were no fingerprints, no footprints, no hair, no blood, nothing. Davidson, though, just couldn't forget this case, and remained convinced that Jacqueline Robideau had murdered Nima, but they just didn't have enough to prosecute. But that didn't mean that anyone was giving up.
Starting point is 00:14:51 Detective Ray Anderson took over the case and in 1979, so three years after the murder of Mary Carpitcher and so two years after the murder of Nima Carter, he decided that he'd had enough. He figured he'd confront Jackie Robideau one last time, take one last shot at her. He knew that he'd had enough. He figured he'd confront Jackie Robidoux one last time, take one last shot at her. He knew that he needed a confession because there was just no forensics to link her to this. So they brought her down to the local Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation office and Anderson got what he needed.
Starting point is 00:15:19 He just says, and it's hard to know what he did get because he just says, she never really came out and admitted to sticking the Carpitcher twins in that fridge. But she said enough. She confirmed things that we already knew and she told us some things that we didn't. That was all he needed. It was enough to implicate her in the murder of Mary Carpitcher. But Robidoux remained completely silent about Nima's murder. But on October the 19th, 1979, Robidoux was charged with the first-degree murder of Mary Carpitcher.
Starting point is 00:15:51 And finally, in 1982, she stood trial for murder. And it was a strong case the prosecution had built against Robidoux. More than 75 witnesses would be called to testify, with the star witness being Tinaina carpenter herself now 10 years old she would be made to recount her ordeal in that fridge 13 times over the course of that trial this is quite weird i found the judge even allowed nema's murder to become part of the trial record despite the fact that jackie robito had never been charged for that crime. That is weird. That is weird and then the lawyer afterwards tried to use this as a reason to like get the ruling overturned but they can't because Robidoux was eventually convicted and her attorneys like I
Starting point is 00:16:36 said they tried to get this overturned by saying that the Nima Carter murder she'd never have been brought into this because it had nothing to do with this. She'd never been charged with it. And it had influenced the jury. But to no avail. She was convicted. And she was found guilty. And good. She was charged with Mary Carpitch's murder.
Starting point is 00:16:55 And she was given a life sentence. You know, I don't know. To what expense was justice done? Because Jacqueline Robideau died in prison of liver cancer in 2005 never having admitted to the still unsolved murder of Nima Louise Carter it has to have been her it's such a specific mo like I don't feel like there are multiple people in a small town sticking small children in fridges like that has it has to have been her it's so strange though isn't it because firstly when it's a woman hurting children hurting babies they were
Starting point is 00:17:25 babies that's already weird enough to get your head around secondly she was so young that she was 16 that's crazy something really fucked must have happened to her i tried to do a bit of research into kind of what makes women kill children that are not related to them and it's actually a very very very rare occurrence like this is not common at all the closest thing that i could find to any of this is like she probably suffered abuse at someone's hands but this is such an exaggerated version of that and so specific like i feel like my immediate reaction is like somebody has locked that girl in a fridge for multiple, multiple times and she's copying it. Like that was my immediate reaction.
Starting point is 00:18:12 It's horrifying. And I do wonder, you do also get this kind of like angel of mercy mentality with some female serial killers, which is definitely what she was she was turning into which is this idea of maybe she was being abused and she was babysitting these children got into her head that some abuse was happening even though there is absolutely no evidence of that and she thought i'm saving these children from abuse i'm putting them out of their misery you know what with fish and terrapins and turtles and stuff like that the kindest way to kill them is to put them in the freezer because they just fall asleep. So maybe, and I remember that because someone told me that when I was a kid. So maybe it's that, maybe it's that's the kindest way to kill a small animal, which is how she saw the children. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of
Starting point is 00:19:02 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 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.
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Starting point is 00:22:03 or they are frequently kind of angels of what is it angels of death yeah it's like mercy killings like nurses who will kill people because they think i'm doing you a service i'm setting you free from this so the closest thing i can get to understanding this the limited information there is out there about this case, is possibly that was the closest thing to what was going on in Jacqueline Robiteau's mind. But to see that in a 16-year-old is beyond alarming. That's basically everything I could find about this case. It's absolutely shocking. That is... I'm not quite sure how I'm going to follow that, to be honest.
Starting point is 00:22:40 Horrifying. Well, I'm sure you will kill it. Over to you, Hannah. Okay, so I'm going to take you to poland yay let me get comfortable and warm up a bit okay so similarly to your nema carter case there isn't that much on this case i wanted to do a full episode on it but there's just not that much that's in english all of the documentaries were in polish i could only find a few articles that were in english and i'm too scared to ask my Polish college
Starting point is 00:23:05 to translate them for me because she's really scary and it's an unusual request exactly and she's from where this happened as well so like I don't want her to like I don't want to set her I don't know
Starting point is 00:23:17 also I have tried to like look up how to pronounce these Polish words but I'm sure I will fail so forgive me Katarzyna Zawada was 23, and she was a religion student in, I'm just going to say a university in Krakow, I do know the name, but I just, there's no way I'm going to be able to pronounce it, so it's a big university in Krakow. Katarzyna was, she was a quiet girl, she lived with her mum, she found university quite difficult, she swapped courses multiple times before settling on religious
Starting point is 00:23:45 studies and she kept to herself and just she sat on her own during lectures. On the 12th of November 1998 Katarzyna Zawada vanished without a trace. Two weeks before her disappearance she had stopped attending classes and university starts in October in Poland so really she'd only attended about a month's worth of classes before she totally gave up. And this is what she had done with the previous courses that she had dropped out of. Her mum was under the impression that she was still attending class but it wasn't until the 12th of November when Katarzyna failed to meet her mother at a doctor's surgery prior to an appointment that the alarm was raised at 6pm. The Krakow police had nothing to go on and the
Starting point is 00:24:25 case went cold. Katarzyna's mother and her classmates had absolutely no idea where she had been going instead of class for the two weeks in the lead up to her disappearance. But they did suspect that she may have been depressed and I do wonder whether that's what the doctor's appointment was about. Maybe her mum was just like, come on, let's go sort you out, let's go to the doctor. Katarzyna's dad had died two years previously in 1996. He had gone on a trip to the mountains with Katarzyna and he had slipped, fallen and injured the base of his spine, which actually led to his death a few months later.
Starting point is 00:24:57 Kind of understandably, Katarzyna blamed herself utterly for this, for his death, basically. She forced him to go on this trip with her. She was the one that wanted to go out in the mountains and she really struggled to get over it and i do also think that expecting someone no matter what the circumstances are but to expect someone to be completely fine two years after their dad has died is just a bit much if she was depressed i can see that might have been a reason for it and And from what I've read, it does seem like she was quite a depressed person and was really struggling. I also read that she had attempted suicide
Starting point is 00:25:31 at least once before. Oh dear. Yeah. Also, quick disclaimer before we get into it. Polish privacy laws are really, really strict. So for some of the people that I'm going to mention, I only have their first name and their initials. And with that
Starting point is 00:25:45 strap in because this is where it gets pretty fucked up. So on January the 7th 1999, so this is three months after Katarzyna has just vanished and Miroslaw M, a tugboat operator, noticed that something was stuck in the propeller of his
Starting point is 00:26:01 barge on the Vistula River, which is the largest river in Poland. He opened the hatch to have a look and he couldn't really make out what it was that was blocking his propeller. It sort of looked like a sack, but it didn't really seem to have any shape to it at all. What do you think it was? No. What? It was her body. I can hear the people who know this case like screaming into their phones. So Mirosol M leaned in to get a closer look. And that's when he noticed this really foul smell coming from the propeller. And whatever the object was that was blocking his propeller had a human ear.
Starting point is 00:26:43 Of course, crime scene investigation were on the scene in a heartbeat. Initially, the police thought it was a whole body in the propeller. And then they had a closer look and they thought, oh, the skin has been separated from the body by the propeller. But no, there was no body. It was just skin. What? The skin they found had been neatly cut away at the thighs and neck, reaching all the way up to the left ear.
Starting point is 00:27:10 The face and arms had been removed, as well as the nipples, and there was a seam that ran from under the right breast to the left shoulder, so someone had sewed it together like they were going to fucking wear it. What? So there's no face? The face has been cut off? Face has been cut off. Yeah, it's just like, it's literally like a vest oh my god what the fuck so it's just so it's just done until her waist
Starting point is 00:27:34 oh like from her thighs down to her thighs and someone has skinned her and sewn it together oh my god what the fuck so this skin as you might have already guessed, was identified as Katarzyna Zawada. So yeah, someone had skinned her like an animal and sewed it back together like they were going to wear it like a jumper. Oh my fucking god, what? And the coroner said that the body had been in the water for about two or three weeks before she was found. And we know about slippage, don't we? Oh my God. Good.
Starting point is 00:28:07 Pieces of her sweater that she was last seen in were also found in the water and some of her clothes were found much later on. Pieces of her jeans and a flannel shirt that had a square cut out. And a week later, Katarzyna's leg was found near a hydroelectric dam on the Vistula River, just sort of floating among some branches.
Starting point is 00:28:24 Nothing else has ever been found. So it's literally one of her legs and her skin torso is all they have. Fucking hell. How did Katarzyna Zawada's skin end up in the propeller of a tugboat on the Vistula River? Ed Gein fashions. Nobody knows. Nobody knows jack shit. Nobody knows anything. There anything there are however some theories
Starting point is 00:28:47 but it is quite hard to know how much i was going to say how much water they can hold but i'm not oh my god were the stitches hand stitches before we go into theories or was it like machine i mean could you run skin through a machine i mean i don't think you could run skin through a sewing machine. Get the right needle on it, maybe. Oh my god. Yeah, like a darning needle, maybe. Like a thick one. You need a big one. You're gonna snap that right off. But that is fucking horrifying.
Starting point is 00:29:16 Somebody sat with that skin in their laps and sewed it together like some fucking horrendous who's a designer who sewed it together. Yeah. Like some fucking horrendous. Who's a designer who sewed shit together? I can't even think. I can't even think of a joke.
Starting point is 00:29:30 What? A designer who sewed shit together. Like, who's the designer? Vivienne Westwood. Yeah. No, she's quite freaky. I like, I've got a lot of time for Vivienne, but. So, oh my God.
Starting point is 00:29:41 Just, what the fuck? When we talk about like killings, I can kind of be like, oh, okay, this person did it for whatever reason. You know, they're fucked up, like, sexual release, whatever. Not that it ever excuses it, but you can understand the mentality. When they start playing around with the dead bodies, that's when they, I, really freak out. So there are some theories, but, as I I said there's not a lot of material in English and also Polish privacy laws they're really not very helpful
Starting point is 00:30:09 because everything is... My god it's like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre like leather face but leather vest. Gilet Oh my god Skin Gilet Don't. There's some speculation that Katarzyna had met a stranger somewhere in public and become infatuated with him.
Starting point is 00:30:28 And that's the reason she started ditching classes so she could see him. And, you know, maybe he murdered her. I don't think. That's such a fabricated theory. That's just, there's nothing to back that up at all. Where did that even come from? Also, it's not the first time she started ditching class. Do you know what I mean?
Starting point is 00:30:43 So I don't think it's anything to do with that and also her friends said that she had one male friend who was a fellow grateful dead fan apparently who um they met each other at an event where people sell and swap cds with each other but he had a concrete alibi and was totally dismissed by the investigation theory number two i lean to a bit more, is that Katarzyna died accidentally or committed suicide somewhere remote and a person stumbled upon her body, took it and had their ridiculous way with it. Actually there's some evidence that might support that because according to the chief medical examiner there are marks on Katarzyna's skin that could only appear due to a fall from a great height being hit by a car going over 80 miles an hour and this is the one I don't really agree with
Starting point is 00:31:31 and getting shot in the mouth like surely those are quite disparate things like I can see how falling from a great height and being hit by a car at 80 miles an hour would probably have a similar impact that would present itself in a similar way on someone's skin. But getting shot in the mouth, that seems very different to me. Yeah, I don't understand. Would getting shot in the mouth cause some sort of reflex in your sternum to pop out? I don't know. I don't get that. Maybe that's why her head can't be found anywhere because it's in a million pieces.
Starting point is 00:32:08 But that seems crazy to me. I mean, so she kills herself or dies, meets her death in an accident, and then just so happens some freaky person who was into dead bodies and making clothes out of them happens to find a dead body. That seems a bit too... that seems crazy to me. Yeah, it's a stretch. If you had to think of a film that this reminded you of, not the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, what would it be?
Starting point is 00:32:39 Buffalo Bill from Hannibal. Yeah. Silence of the Lambs. Silence of the Lambs. That's exactly what I wanted you to say yes exactly silence of the lambs and that is what the police thought they thought could this be a buffalo bill-esque silence of the lamb copycat killing surely if this was the case this would be the first in a series of murders and lo and behold no yes oh yes on may 31st around one o'clock in the afternoon the krakow police receive a phone call from an elderly man again polish privacy laws i don't
Starting point is 00:33:17 have his name he claimed that his grandson had committed a murder in his house. What? The police dispatched a team immediately. Yep. And what they found in the house was truly horrifying. If you're eating, maybe don't. In the basement of this house, which is in quite a rural area, it's not in the middle of the city. In the basement, they found a corpse that was hanging upside down from the ceiling. The victim was a 50-year-old man who had been beheaded.
Starting point is 00:33:56 The skin of his head and his face had been sewn into a mask. Oh, what the fuck? His head was found outside the house. And the murderer was a Russian immigrant called Vladimir W. And the victim was his father. When Vladimir was interrogated by the police, he stated that he had worn his father's face and pretended to be him for an entire day and his grandfather had believed him because his eyesight was so poor yeah i mean
Starting point is 00:34:26 that's not gonna fly outside the house no oh my god exactly oh vladimir put his crime down to the hatred of his father because he had left his mother in russia so can these cases be connected i feel like they're similar in the way of like the skinning and the sewing together and the making of the mask. They also happen really quite close together. Sorry, which happened first? Katarzyna happened first. Oh, okay. God, what? Yeah, exactly. And guess which university Vladimir went to? The massive Krakow university that Katarzyna went to. Exactly, they went to the same university and Vladimir studied psychology, which is one of university that Katarzyna went to. Exactly, they went to the same university. And Vladimir studied psychology, which was one of the courses Katarzyna had tried and dropped out of before settling on religious studies.
Starting point is 00:35:11 Oh, man. They wouldn't have been in the same class because Vladimir started the year before Katarzyna, but it's not beyond the realms of possibility that they might have known each other. What? Vladimir has never confessed to the murder of Katarzyna and he's currently serving only 25 years,
Starting point is 00:35:27 which seems a little light, in a Russian prison. There's also been another case of murder victims being skinned in Krakow, which actually was in 1983 by someone called Jan N, and he murdered his wife and his teenage son. He skinned them, cut them up into small pieces, and tossed them into the Vistula River. He was arrested, confessed, and was committed to a mental institution. But due to his ill health, he was released on parole right around the time of Katarzyna's death.
Starting point is 00:35:54 But the police did not consider him as a serious suspect in the investigation because he was so ill. And I do kind of feel like if you're ill enough to get out of prison, you're basically dead. Yeah, that's true. Surely. That's true surely that's true but maybe he had like an apprentice maybe do you know what this really reminds me of as well yes buffalo bill but there is a horror film that i watched that disturbed me the most and this is quite similar have you ever watched martyrs you've told me about it and no i haven't because of what you told me about it yeah so anybody out there happy halloween maybe you're listening to this as like a little aperitif little amuse bouche for your real
Starting point is 00:36:37 horror for what you're gonna watch for the rest of the evening maybe can i suggest that you watch, if you can handle yourself, watch this French film, The Martyrs. I watched it and I had to stop it several times and wonder why I was watching it and why I should continue or stop watching it. And I decided that I should watch it all the way to the end just to give myself closure around what was happening I think that's important when you're watching a scary film like that it is absolutely horrifying and if you've watched it let me know let us know on the Facebook group just how traumatized you were by it because I was anyway back to what you were saying I also read that in 2000 DNA found on Katarina's, remember they never actually found her actual body, was tested against suspects and sex offenders known in Krakow but offered no conclusive results. But how the fuck is skin that has been in the water for two to three weeks yielding any DNA at all?
Starting point is 00:37:42 No way. I don't buy that for a second. But yeah, that's all I got. That is horrendous. It is, isn't it? And terrifying that it's unsolved. Because I think it's reasons like this, like, it is so specific. And it's also, I think the reasons that I'm really freaked out by product killers is because what they want from the body is so bizarre and abstract and like I just can't wrap my head around it as opposed to like a process killer wants to see the fear in your eyes we're all very familiar with that they get off on the sadism side of it but a product killer like they just want to fuck around with a dead body like
Starting point is 00:38:21 it's just so bizarre it's horrible this one is like particularly stuck with me yeah i mean i really feel like i'm not gonna sleep that well tonight happy halloween guys and this is the best season i love autumn i feel like my my wardrobe and my sensibilities are much more closely aligned with this and this is the best season i love fucking halloween so we're gonna draw it out as long as we can. So we're going to bring you part two of our Halloween special next week. We will. Just to keep the fun going.
Starting point is 00:38:52 Yeah, I'm always sad when Halloween's over, so it will never be over. Not with us. Not with us at Red Handed. You know what to do by now. Please go rate, review, and subscribe. Come chat with us on the Facebook group, because loads of you are, and it's super fun and also very excitingly we are finally getting a patreon like you've been asking
Starting point is 00:39:11 thank you to everyone who's made us yeah yes so we will be launching our patreon on the 10th of november 2017 i assume you'll be able to reach it by going to patreon.com forward slash red handed. So wait and see with that one. Absolutely. And we are also going to be running some polls because we're really new to this. We never even planned to have a Patreon, but you guys have been so kind to out us publicly on social media to tweet at us telling us,
Starting point is 00:39:40 I've tried looking for your Patreon and you don't have one. So can you sort it out? So we are sorting it out. But what we don't know is what you guys want from us. Obviously, we'll continue to do these episodes. But what other rewards can we give our Patreon subscribers? We'll do a couple of polls.
Starting point is 00:39:55 Tweet at us. Facebook us. Tell us what you want. You know, is it stickers? Is it extra episodes? What is it? And then we can start putting this together. And aside from that, watch out.
Starting point is 00:40:04 Sounds like I'm going to attack you. you watch out she's coming for you she knows where you live she knows your ip address but with that goodbye see you next time for halloween part two 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. 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.
Starting point is 00:41:07 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.
Starting point is 00:41:43 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 in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

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