RedHanded - Episode 197 - Ezra McCandless: Killer Girlfriend

Episode Date: May 13, 2021

On 22 March 2018, 19 year old Ezra McCandless stood barefoot, covered in blood banging on the door of a remote Wisconsin farmhouse. She was hysterical and claimed that she’d been attacked by her ex-boyfriend, but the scene police found in the woods told a very different story... Book! (Including limited signed copies): https://linktr.ee/RedHanded_Book Subscribe to our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7dovjXDB69lhDjASbAgnwA  Patreon: patreon.com/redhanded Sources: redhandedpodcast.com   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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And welcome to episode Who the Fuck Knows of Red Handed. I can't keep up. I have no idea. No. Well, almost 200. Because in like two, three weeks' time, it's the 200th episode. Very good maths from you. Well done. So that's all I know. You guys work it out. But yeah, welcome. Welcome, welcome. If you listened last week, you'll know we have a new segment

called The Red Hot Minute on The Red Handed Book. So it's my turn, and I'm going to tell you about chapter one so you have to time me I'm excited wait let me put my coffee down and get my timer out I wish I was like not so tone deaf that I could like hum countdown theme tune but I can't I won't I'll just quietly get my timer out okay okay okay okay you're gonna count me in oh well I'll count you in yeah i'll count you in okay that's the rule one two three okay so i'm telling you all about chapter one which is all about genetics and it's all about brain science unsurprisingly but it's not scary and unintelligible it's really informative and funny also do you know what your amygdala does probably not do you know what your prefrontal cortex looks probably not and neither do we until we wrote the book but now

we do and we're ready to implant it into your brains like aliens laying edge. So, chapter one looks at how and if genetics can turn someone into a killer. There's actually a gene that's been specifically linked to aggression, but it turns out it isn't actually that significant because loads of people have it. You're halfway. Oh no, okay, I can do it. But that hasn't stopped a guy called Bradley Wardrop literally getting away with murder because of his genome gaffes.

But it turns out the psychopath brains are structurally different and psychopathy is understood by some experts to be almost entirely hereditary are psychopaths really what we think they are how can you spot a psychopath are you a psychopath is your boss a psychopath turns out fucking probably 10 seconds can you stop a psychopath from being a really horrible bastard no but can you make them less likely to be criminals by being really nice to them yes also we talked about that guy who had a giant metal rod fly through his brain and his personality changed it's all connected make loads of sense well done well done i feel like i just relived that chapter through your one minute rendition of it so congratulations yeah please pre-order the book it will make a big difference to

our lives and yours yep so pre-order links are in the episode description below they're also literally all over social media so you have absolutely no excuse please, so pre-order links are in the episode description below. They're also literally all over social media, so you have absolutely no excuse. Please go and pre-order the book. We'd love you forever for doing so. And we'll be back with another Red Hot Minute on the Red-Handed book next week, when we'll be talking about childhood and adolescence. But enough book chat, let's talk about something else. Let's talk about a killer. This one is absolutely bloody everywhere. But it's one of those ones where like, what happens quite a lot in the true crime space as a true crime professional it's like a lot of like especially recent cases sometimes it will feel like there's loads of coverage on a thing and then when you actually read it it's like it's all the same stuff that sprouts from the same

place and this is very much one of those cases also the killer in this story looks exactly like someone I went to university with. Like, exactly. And also their characteristics are similar in certain ways. So I'm just haunted by the specter of this person. I like the idea that this person is like an archetype of a human being that exists. Like, almost kind of, you know. Also, archetypes is something we can get into because there's a lot of philosophy happens here, but not in any real sense, just people pretending they know about stuff. So without further ado, here we go.

Sometimes things are exactly as they appear. Sometimes they aren't. And sometimes people write philosophical essays about cannibalism in coffee shops in Wisconsin. And that particular activity is how this story starts. 22-year-old Alex Woodworth was sat quietly minding his own business, writing away in Racy's Coffee Shop in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Eau Claire is a funny old place, and Racy's Coffee Shop takes itself extremely seriously. I think its proper name is like Racy Delane's or something like that, but everyone seems to call it Racy's. You can hop on over to their website to get a flavor of what this coffee situation is like. For a start, it boasts about being once filled with cigarette smoke, which seems like a weird flex to me. Like, I, obviously we've not been to Racy's, neither of us have even been to Wisconsin, but it really reminds me of, have you ever been into the Starbucks in Old Street? No.

Honest to God, this is so cringe. Prepare yourself to cringe to death. Starbucks, they generally look the same everywhere they are, right? This one has exposed brickwork throughout the entirety of the store and they have a plaque on the wall that says we decided to have exposed brickwork to match the edgy creative atmosphere of old street get in the fucking bin starbucks the fact that you have compared racy's to a starbucks will have made them turn themselves inside out so i'm gonna let you have that for that pure reason I love it I was like stop drawing attention to it you dicks who made this plaque anyway I just find places like that very very entertaining we don't really have a coffee shop culture here really in the same kind of way

they're trying people are trying oh yeah for sure sure sure I am just never gonna go in somewhere that looks like there is even an outside chance it might have an open mic night exactly and I feel like racy's is that kind of place oh I bet they've got like poetry slams and all sorts the copy on the racy's website describes itself as being a place for artists and literaries which I found particularly hilarious as there is a spelling mistake in the copy on their website and I'm not going to say what it is because I'm vindictive. Less funnily I thought Racy's have a peppermint flavoured iced coffee called the Frigid Girl Scout which like I know why you think that's funny but you're winning absolutely no points because like why are you sexualising children? Can we just not do that please?

That's horrible. I hate it. So, as far as we can tell, Racy's Coffee Shop's entire vibe is based on the coffee shops of revolutionary France, where people gathered to talk philosophy, politics, class, and sometimes they even managed a revolution. But this is not that. It is a coffee shop in Eau Claire, Wisconsin,

where in 2017, Alex Woodworth was writing about people eating people. And during his cannibalistic composition, he was approached by a 19-year-old Ezra McCandless. Ezra, who had briefly used male pronouns but currently uses female ones, asked Alex what he was writing. And instead of being embarrassed and making up that, I don't know, he was writing a reimagining of Catcher in the Rye. Alex was honest.

And I quite like that. I quite like that he just told this random 19-year-old who had just walked up to him, which in and of itself is terrifying to me. The idea that somebody would come and start talking to me in a coffee shop while I was just minding my own business is completely North American and absolutely terrifying to me as a little British person. I can't cope with it. Yeah, there's no positive outcome for me in that situation,

being approached by a stranger. I could literally feel my eyes widening with fear at the thought of somebody approaching me in that situation. The man that would come and speak to you in a bar in London is the drunkest, weirdest friend. And you don't want to talk to him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Or at least that's the prejudice in my head. And maybe that's why I'm still single. I don't know. So Ezra goes over to Alex and he's just casually like, hey, what are you writing about? And he's just like, I'm writing about cannibals, which I enjoy as an interaction, even though it absolutely terrifies me.

So he tells her all about how he's writing down his theory about how cannibalism is not unlike the honeymoon phase of a love affair and he qualifies this because he feels that lovers consume each other like cannibals feel like we've been very cannibal heavy on the show recently and i'll give him that i felt like i went down many a cannibal rabbit hole last week for the liberian warlord and i have also been talking about the Liberian cannibal warlord and all the research that I did in there to random men I met on Hinge. So I think I am equally to be questioned if anyone is going to question anybody for bringing up cannibalism

in romantic situations. So anyway, they struck up a conversation. They start hanging out. They were both young. They were both interesting to each other. Ezra was a college dropout, a wannabe artist. And Alex was an aspiring PhD student with his sights set on a philosophy doctorate. Soon the two of them were holding hands. Then they were getting off. And then they started a sexual relationship. We don't know for sure if they ever had the boyfriend-girlfriend conversation or not, but it seems obvious that they were into each other. However, for reasons that will become clear very shortly, there are some aspects of Ezra and Alex's relationship that we only have one side of the story for,

and one of those aspects was their sex life. According to Ezra, Alex was into BDSM. She assumed the submissive role, and although Alex's cannibalism essays would indicate that he was into the darker side of the bedroom Ezra really, maybe I'm outing myself here but like Ezra really never describes anything like is that outlandish

she talks about like some blindfolding and some very like vague allusions to like cutting of clothes. As far as like violence goes that's all she sort of talks about but there is one thing that she talks about that is quite off-putting according to Ezra Alex liked to read his cannibalism essays out loud while they were shagging which would put anyone off to be honest I mean I assume it would turn

some people on not me but sure whatever you wanted to you, you know. That's intense. Yeah, pretty intense. But as we said, we don't know if that's the truth. And we will go on to find out that our Ezra McCandless may be a college dropout but she has a master's in making shit up. The first made-up fact from her that we're going to deal with is the fact that she was in any position

to be in a relationship with Alex Woodworth at all. Ezra already had a boyfriend. He was an army medic called Jason Mengel and the couple already lived together. And here is the real kicker, which in our opinion is oddly not given nearly enough attention in any of the discussions that we really found about this case. And it's quite weird because Jason Mengel in 2017 was 33 whole adult human years old. Ezra, his live-in girlfriend, was just 19. 19. He's 33. Nobody, nobody examines this. It's just like, oh, there was an age gap, but everyone was fine with it. I'm like, no to be discussed I'm sorry like that's not normal it's not normal no I feel like 33 is like the prime age of men that I currently date as a 31 year old woman you're 19 that feels like too much of a life experience age gap for me that's the thing like I'm not bothered about age

gaps in themselves. I'm bothered that she is a teenager and he is in his 30s. If she was in her 20s and he was in her 40s, different kettle of fish. But that's not the case. She's 19. And this is the thing.

Like, we're not here to shame age gap relationships or anything, but the dynamic that this creates, the fact that he is a 33-year-old man and she's a 19-year-old, technically woman, in my opinion, girl, it is worth examining as part of this story. So Jason and Ezra had also met at the coffee shop Racy's. And like we said earlier, during some part of their relationship, Ezra had used male pronouns

and sometimes Ezra hadn't. Is Ezra gender fluid now? Some say yes, some say no. We're not going to say anything because it's none of our business. All we know is that Ezra uses female pronouns currently, so that's what we're going to be doing throughout this episode. So Jason and Ezra had met earlier in 2017 and Jason wasted absolutely no time in moving a teenage Ezra out of her mum's house and into his. The pair were very much in love apparently. Jason claims that Ezra out of her mum's house and into his. The pair were very much in love, apparently.

Jason claims that Ezra kept him energised, which just fucking... She's 19. I fucking bet she did. A friend of mine dated a 20-year-old for six months and he has never lived it down. Literally, five years later, he was still like, oh, new child bride, anything on the cards for you? I just don't understand who is looking at this situation

and being like, that's completely normal and fine. Yeah, I mean, say I went on a date with a 33-year-old guy now and he told me that his ex-girlfriend was 19, I would run away. Red flag, red flag, yeah. All day long. But, you know, whatever we think of this relationship, maybe because of the age gap, who knows, Ezra was desperately in love with Jason Mengel.

Borderline obsessed, as I suppose most 19-year-olds when they've fallen in love tend to be. That's the thing. Like, at this stage, obviously, things get a bit more complicated and murdery as we go on. But, like, at this stage, I'm like, yeah, it's super annoying and gross, but, like, she's 19.

If I was 19 and a 33-year-old man who's got a proper real person job was like, I think you're the best, of course I would be obsessed with him. Of course. Totally. And Ezra is completely obsessed. She actually describes her relationship with Jason as, this is, I'm going to really struggle to say this.

She described it as an ancient love so powerful that it scared them both. Which does make me want to vomit, but it is just like first proper boyfriend stuff. An extreme version of it. And she takes herself extremely seriously. But like, it's kind of within the realms of like first love stuff. Yeah, I think it's first love. And also, we will go on to obviously discover that Ezra has quite an extreme personality. And we have found during the course of writing the Red Handed book

that people with extreme personalities do love in a very extreme way. So I think that it's her age plus her general personality type that leads to this, I think. Oh, totally. And also Jason's influence, which I will get into later on. Let's deal with Ezra first. So she takes herself extremely seriously. She doesn't strike me as someone I would be particularly friends with. I think I would find her insufferable. She journals, she talks about philosophy. She claims to be related to the autumn. It's like something she wrote. It's like a personal essay about herself. And she just talks about how she's related to the autumn, which like Americans

don't say autumn, they say fall. And like you see, she does this a lot, where she'll use a British English word for something to make herself sound like more fancy or whatever. And it just doesn't really work. It's like Tumblr writings. Oh, she's the queen of Tumblr. Yeah, she's like the archetypical Tumblist. I guess you're 19, you're discovering yourself,

you're learning about the world. Everyone's an asshole at 19 I was an absolute nightmare I look back at like some of the diaries I used to keep and I'm like you are a giant twat so I think it is just yeah it's that time in your life isn't it when you do take yourself incredibly seriously and you're, every single way in which I market myself is very hyper important. And she's also 19, like much later in the noughties than we were when social media and everything is so much more prevalent, which is just like, I can't even imagine growing up being a teenager today. I think I would just not cope. It's like a perfect storm of crazy shit that happens.

Yeah. And like, to be honest, her gender identity just kind of really doesn't come into it for me. Like a lot of people point to it as this like incredibly turbulent thing and like, oh, like she must be mental because of like switching between gender pronouns and stuff. Like I just really think it's irrelevant. And like I'm only putting it in so people aren't just like, why are you ignoring this important thing?

Like I just think it's not the crux of the thing for me. Like how she identifies gender-wise is neither here nor there, really. It's just a part of who she is, but it's not the reason she does what she does. Exactly. What she does do is talk about philosophy quite a lot, which, like, at 19, nobody's going to have a grasp on. But I do think a warning to our lovely listeners out there, generally people who often talk about philosophy in social settings are only doing it

to make themselves seem smart. They choose philosophy to go off about because it's an arena where it's very difficult for someone to tell you that you're wrong. So you can just, like, if you're just, like, want to pretend that you're a philosopher, you can just chat utter shit and no one can say anything because everyone assumes that they don't really

understand philosophy. It's a complete, like, power dynamic play to just be like, oh, well, Aristotle, like you don't fucking know. Anyway, so if Ezra was so desperately and so anciently in love with Jameson Mengel, why did she strike up a relationship with Alex Woodworth? You may be thinking that this was some sort of ethical non-monogamy situation, which would be very on brand for both Ezra and Alex, but it's not. Just months after Jason moved Ezra into his home, she got pregnant. And when she told him and presented him with a positive test,

he wanted additional proof. So they went to the doctor. The doctor confirmed that Ezra's ego was indeed prego and Ezra decided not to keep it. We don't know whose decision that was, whether it was a joint one or not. After the pregnancy termination, their relationship never really felt the same. Ezra had had a bad time and Jason doesn't seem to have done a great job at supporting her. So when Ezra ran into Alex Woodworth, Jason actively encouraged Ezra to spend time with Alex. They were similar ages and they seemed to get on. Jason knew that Alex was also an emotional person and he thought that this guy that his girlfriend had just met in a coffee shop could handle the emotions of Ezra that he couldn't deal with. Alex was really a very kind person. According to his dad, he loved helping people. He was one of four siblings and he loved

being an older brother and he especially loved bugs, spiders and all sorts of creepy crawlies. Apparently, according to Alex's family, he loved things that no one else did and wanted to make sure that the unloved were okay. Jason admitted to pushing the pair together because Ezra was, quote, going through emotional things. So it seems pretty obvious from this why 19-year-old Ezra, who was so desperately in love with Jason, would still have taken solace in Alex. And this, my friends, is the end of our sympathy for Ezra McCandless. Ezra was born with a different, much more feminine name. And we've gone back and forth on whether to tell you what it was or not,

and we've decided not to. And also, like, it just doesn't really matter. Like, the name she was born with is completely irrelevant. If you want to find out what it is, you can very easily. Ezra's mum was just 14 when she gave birth to her daughter. And then Ezra was adopted by her mum's partner, not her biological father, when she was four years old. This has led to some confused misreporting that Ezra was given up for adoption

and raised in a foster home with two adoptive parents. That's not true. Ezra lived with her biological mum all the way up until she moved in with Jason Mengel at 19. Although it doesn't seem like it was an idyllic upbringing, her adoptive dad did not stay living with them for particularly long. But when he was living with Ezra and her mum,

Ezra described it as living with two tornadoes. Which again, I mean, obviously that is just implying massively like emotional instability or some form of volatility, which again can definitely lead to people developing quite extreme personalities and dependence, like over-dependence, which is what we see in Ezra. So you kind of start to connect the dots a little bit with just quotes like that, I guess. Ezra's mum had an extremely strong personality and her dad would

take her hunting. He taught her how to use guns and knives and apparently he insulted her quite a lot, which led to Ezra developing an introverted and passive personality. Or so she says. Introverted Ezra may be, but annoying she certainly is. An artist at heart, she constantly needed to be the centre of attention, literally all day long. She's like a caricature of an art school student who never actually made it to art school. The type of person who claims they got into St Martin's but didn't go because it's too elitist,

but actually they never even applied. It's like that vibe. She'd break into abandoned buildings to take photographs and worst of all, the roof of her car had a bird riding a bike on it or something like that so Ezra she wanted you to know that she was coming and I you know have come across people like this but I think I didn't really understand the Eau Claire vibe until I figured out that it's where Bon Iver are from like well at least like the front guy like what Jason what's his tits

he's from there and maybe I am being hugely unfair, but I just get this vibe, and it's based entirely on this coffee shop, but like the, like, oh, like I just feel things on a different level and you couldn't possibly understand, but please sit down for two hours while I tell you all about it. Like it's that vibe to me. So while she was developing her artistry, Ezra was also questioning, like we said said her gender identity. She used various different names and also male pronouns for a while and Jason Mengel still refers to Ezra as he sometimes and his friends also recall that they were aware that he was dating someone who identified as male for a period of time. It's all pretty murky but Ezra eventually decided on their chosen name which is

as we already know Ezra McCandless. She went with Ezra because she felt like it was the perfect balance between masculinity and femininity. And she went with McCandless because of how much she identified with Alexander Supertramp, aka Christopher McCandless, central character and real life person of the book and film Into the Wild. I haven't actually seen it. Oh my God, I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I think you would really like it. So Into the Wild, which I'll make you watch it next week, is one of, in my humble opinion, one of the best films of all time. I watch it to go to sleep. It's like complete and total isolation slash wilderness porn. Okay. Yeah.

Like my brother raves about it all the time and I haven't seen it. Why you hate good films so much is so confusing to me. I don't know. I don't know. So I'm not going to be able to do Into the Wild justice,

but essentially here is what happens. Christopher McCandless leaves a privileged life of money and a well-to-do family and hitchhikes across North America. Eventually he ends up in Alaska where he lives in a school bus and shoots a moose that he doesn't get around to eating. We do not do spoilers in this house. It's not even close to the actual plot, but I can't ruin it because it's too good. So essentially, it's a story of wanting a simple life living off the land without money or being

a cog in the machine. But at the same time, it's also the story of someone who thinks they know better. Someone who thinks they know better. Someone who thinks that we've all got it wrong and that they are above it all. And my money is on Ezra McCandless identifying with that particular part of Into the Wild rather than anything else. Which is fine. I feel like everyone at 19 is a total nightmare. Racy's coffee shop was very much the centre of this love triangle. Jason and Alex were actively friends. They hung out together a lot. But after a while of all three hanging out together and Ezra carrying on with both of them, Alex had had enough. He wanted him and Ezra to be

together properly. Ezra wasn't done with her ancient love and wanted to work it out with Jason. But neither were to be, and both relationships ended. One by Jason founding out that Ezra had been cheating on him, and the other by Ezra dumping Alex. And as if that wasn't complicated enough, enter Jason's friend, John Hansen. Jason went away with work for two weeks after he and Ezra had split up. When he returned, Ezra told him that John Hansen had sexually assaulted her. Jason took Ezra to the police to report the attack on the 1st of March 2018. Ezra told the present officers that she and John had been drinking and then she had blacked out.

She described the whole experience as, quote, really scary. She didn't remember anything specifically about what happened, but she knew that John had been telling her to be quiet and that when she came to, he was on top of her. And if you read about this case anywhere, there's a lot written about a suggestive text conversation between John and Ezra. And the insinuation by authorities about that text conversation is that the encounter was not assault at all, but rather consensual sex because of this conversation had by text, which is bullshit. Consent can be withdrawn at any time. And just because you've had a flirty or even explicitly sexual text conversation with someone, you are under no circumstances required to sleep with

them. You don't owe them anything. Consent is continuous, has to be. That's the only way it works. There's no situation on this planet where anyone owes sex to someone else the only way that text conversation is in any way relevant to the conversation around consent is if they had been texting each other those messages while they were having sex the way it's worded in the articles is like oh well there was this text conversation though where like she was being really flirty blah blah blah blah, blah. But like they haven't been released. Nobody knows what they explicitly said, but it doesn't matter. With that said, there is a much more damning text conversation that we need to talk about. And it was between Ezra and Alex. Ezra told Alex that

the sex with John Hansen had been consensual, but that she had regretted it afterward. The assault case was then dropped and Ezra retracted her statement. With all of her relationships now in tatters, Ezra moved back in with her mum, but she still stayed in frequent contact with both Jason Mengel and Alex Woodworth. Jason in particular was in almost constant contact with Ezra, and Ezra's mum was not particularly happy about this. So, Ezra moved into her dad's house, the one with all the knives and guns in it. And although her dad wasn't super jazzed about her relationship slash non-relationship with Jason this much older man, he seems to have left her to it a little bit more than her mum had.

According to Jason, his contact with Ezra at this time revolved around Ezra telling him that she was surrounded by manipulative, vindictive men who had tried to take her away from him and that it all wasn't really her fault at all. And so yes, there is no doubt that Ezra McCandless is an incredibly manipulative person. I just don't think, though, that she's very good at it. As we will go on to see, all of her lies are just so terrible. She's not a good liar at all,

although she is a prolific one and she's always caught out. So I just find it hard to believe that 33-year-old Jason was tricked by it all. I'm not at all saying that she's not a toxic person that was in his life, but I just find it hard to believe with such a big age gap and maturity gap that he was tricked by her lies and by her manipulation. There's literally no doubt that Ezra is now, and was then, deeply troubled. Some go as far to call her a sociopath, which might well be true, but she's certainly on a mission to get Jason back.

And her plan began in earnest on the 22nd of March, 2018, less than a month after she'd been found out for lying about John Hansen assaulting her, which I also think was a ploy to get Jason back. It was a, please feel sorry for me. This horrible thing has happened to me. You have to take me back. Look how broken I am.

Which is manipulative. That's a manipulative thing to do. Oh, absolutely. That's why she did it. She's so manipulative. And I think this incident in particular really sets up what happens next in this story. The idea that Ezra is willing to throw

other people under the bus, destroy lives, say whatever she wants, do whatever in order to get Jason back. And that kind of callous disregard that she has for other people and the lengths that she's willing to go to to get what she wants, is what makes her so terrifying. So on the 22nd of March, Ezra showed up in Eau Claire, in Racy's coffee shop, where it all began. Jason had no idea that she was coming to town, which is strange considering the pair had been in contact 600 times the day before.

That doesn't scream ex-girlfriend to me. Oh my God. When I read 600 times, I thought it was like, you know, just like they had been in touch a thousand times. No, it's like the actual number of times they had been in contact. Yeah, specifically 600 contact points the day before she shows up in Eau Claire. We don't know what those messages said, but it's difficult for me to imagine a world where those text messages did not influence

what she does on the 22nd of March. So Ezra shows up at the coffee shop claiming that she wanted to show some of her writings to Alex, and many suspect that her real intention was to end things with him for good. Other people at the coffee shop noticed that Ezra didn't really seem like her usual self. She wasn't dressed up and she wasn't wearing any makeup which was unusual enough for her to be noted. She tracked Alex down and the pair then drove to Alex's house. Jason's spidey senses must have been tingling or he must have known more than he was letting on because he managed to follow Alex and Ezra on his bike. This is unclear.

I've seen this reported lots of different ways. I'm not sure whether he was at the coffee shop when Ezra shows up and he follows them or he just knew that they were going to Alex's house. Like that bit is not particularly clear. But what definitely happened is Alex, Ezra and Jason all end up at Alex's house. And when Jason gets there,

he immediately felt like something wasn't right. He described it as like Ezra and Alex were wearing masks, like there was quite clearly something horribly wrong, but they didn't want anyone else to see it. And Jason was worried enough by this to call the police. And they arrive on the scene and there's dash cam footage of police getting there and a recording of Jason telling officers that, quote, something feels wrong. His wrong feeling wasn't enough for the police to stick around and Ezra and Alex assured the police that there was no problem and the cops left. And then Jason left Ezra and Alex alone, a move he must have thought about many times since. This part of the story is very odd. The fact that he is there at all, the fact that he calls the police when nothing's happened, and then the fact that he leaves.

I mean, maybe Jason knew that Ezra was going to do something completely wild. After all, she had form with like the fake assault allegation. Maybe Jason didn't know exactly what, but maybe he just suspected and he tried to stop her by calling the police. But when he can't get anything to happen because the police are like, there's nothing weird going on here, why are you calling us? Maybe he just leaves and hopes for the best. I don't know. Like we said, we haven't actually got a clear cut thing of what happened. We only have Jason's version of events and Ezra's version of events, but it still doesn't really make any sense. So three hours later, after Jason had left,

Ezra McCandless was banging on the door of a remote farmhouse, crying out for help. She was barefoot, her clothes were torn, there was mud all the way up to her knees, she had a red mark on her neck and what looked like dried blood around her mouth. Farmer Don Sipple opened the door to the distressed young woman who couldn't tell him anything other than she had been attacked

and that she needed a doctor. So Don Sipple rang 911. Ezra didn't give away anything else until the police arrived. When they did, all she said was that she was hurt everywhere and that she couldn't remember what had happened. And she just repeatedly kept asking for one person, Jason Mengel. Ezra was then taken to the local hospital, where she was questioned further. At this stage, she told investigators that she remembered feeling afraid of Alex Woodworth.

But that was it. She didn't give any details of location, what they were doing, or what sort of time it was. But she placed herself with Alex Woodworth, alluding to the fact that he was the one who had attacked her. But still, she wasn't able to provide the police with many details. She said, quote, I'm trying so hard. I'm trying to get things to come to me, but it's like it just keeps getting blocked out. So the police began piecing together a story in which Alex Woodworth had assaulted Ezra in a violent attack. And meanwhile, Alex was being reported missing by his family. With no other leads but Ezra, the police returned to Don Sipple's

farm the next day and followed Ezra's footprints away from the farmhouse. This extremely low-tech detectiving actually led to an unbelievable discovery that we will tell you about after we take a very quick break. New format, Klaxon. If you find ads super annoying, you no longer have to. For just $5 a month, you can enjoy Red Handed totally ad-free and an entire day early. And all you have to do is bop on over to brettetron.com forward slash red handed. And if content is what you're after, we are about to try our hand at a whole nother platform. Because why the hell not? We've just got so much time on our hands. And the platform is YouTube. We're not going to post anything, however,

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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 favourite podcasts. Right, let's get back to those footprints, shall we? The very clear Ezra-sized footprints in the mud led to a track. And the track led to Ezra's car.

And hanging out the back of Ezra's car was Alex Woodworth. He had been stabbed in the head, neck, chest and groin a total of 16 times. Alex wasn't missing, he was dead. Andrea Noddolph, who would eventually be the prosecutor on this case, claims that in her 17 years in the criminal justice game, she had never seen anything this violent. Back at the hospital, Ezra was starting to remember more and more. She told police that she and Alex had been in the car together when he attacked her and that he had carved the word boy into her arm. There are pictures of this injury almost everywhere. It's not pleasant to look at, so don't go hunting for it

if it's something you're going to find difficult to think about. But it is very clearly the word boy carved into Ezra's arm with a bunch of additional scratches and cuts. Ezra explained to investigators that although she no longer identified as male, Alex Woodworth often called her boy and that is why he had cut it into her arm with a knife. Ezra said that during this engraving she grabbed the knife by the blade to get it off Alex and then in self-defence stabbed him anywhere and everywhere she could to get away. A reasonable story, but unfortunately for Ezra, there are two major flaws in this tale.

Firstly, her hands displayed very minimal wounds. There were no deep gashes that would have been present on the hands of someone who had grabbed a hunting knife by the blade during a struggle with an adult man. And it is a knife too. Like it's one of those like flicky out ones. It's not like a penknife. Secondly, and arguably more importantly,

the word boy was carved into her arm, but it was carved facing Ezra herself. Meaning that if Alex had done it, he would have had to do it upside down to his own eye, which in a struggle doesn't make much sense. I would find that difficult to do with a pen and paper in 15 minutes. I mean, okay, it's impossible. I'm going to say it, right? I'm just like, if you were going to cut a pejorative word into somebody's arm to humiliate them like that with a big fucking knife

you're not doing it in like some theatrically like poignant way so you're doing it in a way that they're always going to have to look at it and see what it means it's just not physically possible you're gonna write it facing you no and not when you're holding them down it's just oh Ezra and also what is he holding her down with? I'm with you. It's impossible. So obviously, as you can tell from our tone, it seems much more likely that Ezra had carved the word into her own skin, which obviously opens a real Pandora's box of questions. Like, why would someone fearing for their life take the time to cut their own arm? And not just like once or twice to carve the word boy into their arm. And there's like a lot of additional like damage as well.

Like it's a lot to look at. I would wonder if possibly the other additional damage are hesitation marks, which I would assume would be less likely to be there had somebody else been doing it. Maybe more likely to be there if you're doing it to yourself. Again, don't know. Just saying. Good point. Also, apart from just the fact that if you were so scared,

why would you take the time to carve this into your own arm if we go with the theory that she did do it to herself, unless it was to mislead the police? When challenged by investigators, Ezra freely admitted that, yes, she had actually carved the word into her own arm. I think she probably knew, there was no way I can lie about this. It's too obvious. It's so weird. It's like almost

instant as well. Like the police officer's like, you just did that to yourself, didn't you? And she's like, yes. And then this happened. Like she doesn't even miss a beat, really. But then she continued to tell the story of her being attacked and then running away. Like the revelation of her own self-inflicted injury wouldn't change anything. And this is the thing about Ezra I really feel like, and this isn't excusing anything, this is just an observation about her as a person. She doesn't really connect the dots up or think about the consequences of what she's saying. She'll lie and then when she gets caught lying, she'll admit to that lie but continue with the rest of the lie because she doesn't realize that admitting to that one lie

brought down everything. Now none of it makes sense, because she doesn't realise that admitting to that one lie brought down everything. Now none of it makes sense, but she doesn't see it that way. So Ezra later claimed that she had carved the word into her arm so that she could remember what had happened to her. Which again, doesn't really make heaps of sense because she had the boy injury when she arrived at the hospital after being picked up from Don Simple's farm. So it's not like it happened after and she's done it retrospectively

or anything like that. No, no, it's so bizarre. She's like, oh, like, I did it to myself so I could remember what happened. But when? On the way to the hospital in the ambulance? What the fuck? And she doesn't remember things for days after what she says. You know, it takes her days to like, to cock this other story. I don't even think it's like a master manipulator thing of like,

oh, well, I can just talk things into existence. I genuinely think she doesn't think about the consequences of what she says. No, absolutely not. So yeah, like Hannah says, Ezra's never really clear. She never really admits to exactly when she carved the word into her arm. But I think we have a good idea since she arrives at the hospital with it already there. So we think that the most obvious turn of events

is that Ezra, in a desperate and super manipulative attempt to win Jason back, killed Alex and then injured herself to bolster her story of self-defense. If you're wondering why killing Alex might get Jason back, the only thing we can say, it is that sort of damsel in distress role that she kind of wants to play. She wants to play like, you know,

I'm surrounded by these vindictive men who are trying to tear me away from you, Jason. I don't want that. I want to be with you. This guy Alex attacked me. I had to kill him. Please get back together with me because I need you. Exactly.

So the police came to the same conclusion as we have fairly quickly, where Nezra couldn't keep her story straight. And so two weeks after the fateful farm fit, Ezra McCandless was arrested for the first-degree intentional homicide of Alex Woodworth. Once at trial, Ezra's story changed once again. And here is her version of what happened that day that Alex Woodworth died. She says that she had come back

to Eau Claire to tell Alex that there was nothing more between them, that Jason was the one that she wanted. After their initial meeting, her and Alex were driving and the car got stuck in a remote area near Don Sipple's farm. Her car was stuck in the mud, she couldn't get it out and Alex wasn't helping. After the car got stuck, Alex told Ezra to go and lie down in the back of the car. When she did that, he got on top of her, declaring that he was going to have her one last time, that he deserved one last time. And then he started to cut her trousers off with a knife.

Which, can I also just say, doesn't match up with literally anything we know about Alex. Like this sudden change in behaviour. Exactly. Obviously, Ezra tells this story in court and like Alex's family are like, is it not bad enough that he's dead? Do you have to do this as well?

Exactly. Do you also have to make him sound like a fucking rapist? Like that doesn't match up with anything that we know about Alex. She's just such a horrendous lying piece of shit. And again, it's that behaviour of, I'll shit on anyone, even an innocent man I murdered, to make myself look better, to look like the victim.

Ezra claimed that afraid for her life, she kneed Alex in the groin, which made him drop the knife, which she then grabbed, and then she starts wildly stabbing. Note that her original story of grabbing the knife by the blade has now totally disappeared because she's realised she doesn't have the injuries to back it up. Which I'm just like, Ezra, you knew that before you said it. You knew your hands weren't cut up. She's a fantasist. Like she's a fantasist. Ezra told the judge and jury that she never meant to kill Alex, that she was just trying to get away. But that story gets quite difficult to believe when you consider that the first stab she makes is in the back of Alex's head.

And the story gets more unbelievable because suddenly, in Ezra's story, the pair are outside the car. She never really explains how they get there, but she's still stabbing Alex anywhere she could. And then she runs, taking Alex's phone with her. She claims that she was going to call for help, but then she accidentally dropped the phone with such force that it broke, so she couldn't call 911. I can understand dropping your phone on a pavement and it breaking,

so it's unusable. Not in a muddy wood. I don't think there's anything that you could drop it on that would, like, break it. No. I mean, apart from a rock, I guess, but, like, even still, what are the chances? So in court, as Ezra sits in the stand, she is presenting as extremely feminine. Her hair is very precisely curled and she's wearing a lot of patterns and a lot of pink. Underneath a pink blazer, she wore a green jumper that Jason Mengel had given her

while she was in hospital after she had alleged that Alex attacked her. I mean, that's no accident, is it? She's relentless. After everything, it's like she's still trying to appeal to Jason in some weird way, sat in court on trial for murder. It's like she's sending him some secret message in the courtroom, or at least trying to. And that's also very much what Jason thinks he says that seeing her wear that top was an attempt to manipulate him and that quote it was just more of the emotional manipulation I had been put through and yes like age gap aside being lied to that your friend raped

your ex-girlfriend and then also having that ex murder somebody to try and get back with you. Well, that's just as fucking batshit manipulative as it gets, age gap or no age gap. And there are several problems with her story. The upside down boy carved into her arm is the least of her problems, really. She had an extremely hard time convincing the jury that she was not the instigator of the attack because here were her real problems. There was actually very little blood in the car, which doesn't fit with her story of the stabbing starting in the back seat. Also, if she really was so terrified of Alex,

why didn't she say so when the police arrived at his house? But the real nail in her coffin was the fact that the knife used to murder Alex Woodworth belonged to Ezra's dad. It's not looking good for Ezra, and the prosecution led by Andrea presented this alternate version of events, which, to be honest, seems a lot more believable. This is the prosecution's case. Ezra headed to Eau Claire that day with the express intention of killing Alex Woodworth.

That's why she took the knife with her and drove to Racy's. After the brief hiccup of Jason following them to Alex's house and then calling the police, Ezra drove Alex to a remote part of the woods where she stabbed him to death 16 times. Because she wanted him out of the way, she wanted to be with Jason, the same Jason who had contacted her 600 times just the day before.

After this vicious and intense stabbing frenzy, Ezra then took the time to cut her clothes and cut herself to make it look like the murder had been in self-defence. While she's doing this, Alex tried to climb back into the car to get away, but he either died mid-attempt or Ezra pulled him back out, which is why Alex was found hanging out of the back of the car. And this is the thing that is like genuinely terrifying about this case is the level of premeditation that I do think was involved with Ezra. I completely agree. I think when we talk

about this all the time about like, especially with the Derek Chauvin stuff of like, what is premeditation? But I really do think that Ezra woke up that morning thinking she was going to kill Alex Woodworth. I really do. Absolutely. Absolutely. up that morning thinking she was going to kill Alex Woodworth. I really do. Absolutely. Absolutely. And just the fact that, you know, cutting her clothes, getting all that ready, it is sick. There is no getting away from the fact that, fucking hell, it is really depraved. Like this part of it.

Alex was also found with a scarf around his neck as if he had been trying to stop the bleeding. And that means that Ezra probably knew that Alex was still alive when she left the scene. So if she'd called for help, he could have been saved. He could have lived. But Ezra chose not to do that. She took Alex's phone and deliberately smashed it. The prosecution reckoned there is no way she just dropped it. And we have to agree, it's difficult to think of a world in which she

didn't leave Alex Woodworth to die. Definitely. And the thing I have the hardest time with is I really think that Alex was still alive when she left and she knew. I really think that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She may have had some of her own mental health challenges. None of that equates to or excuses what happened in this case with Ezra. She is not a sympathetic character as far as I'm concerned. The only person I feel sorry for in this is Alex. So of course at trial, Ezra's changing stories didn't help her case either. Trauma can cause people difficulty in recovering memories, but it very rarely causes a fabrication of events. Also, Andrea Noddolph says, I'm not Andrea's biggest fan, to be honest. Like, I think she's

very much a like pitbull prosecutor, which is fine. Like, that's fine. And I think her opinion, well, not even her opinions, her doing a good job has like coloured a lot of the press around Ezra McCandless she says in the documentary she's like oh like trauma doesn't make people lie and I'm like well it sometimes it does though Andrea like come on well I don't know I feel like Ezra could just say I don't remember but she says things that are like factually incorrect like I grab the knife and it's like where's your hands are fucking fine she doesn't help herself at all and And she obviously also did it. So I'm kind of like, whatever about Andrea. Yeah, yeah, I agree.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when Azra is sat in the dock, she showed absolutely no emotion. She gave a very stoic play by play, using a lot of big words in an attempt to possibly sound intelligent. But it's quite obvious when you listen to her, she really probably doesn't know the actual meaning of the things that she's saying for example she called college secondary school possibly in an attempt to again sound more fancy but literally nowhere not even in the most

fancy twiest town in all of the kingdom calls university secondary school i don't know unless she's calling it like how we have like sixth form colleges here. I don't know. I mean, it feels like she's read it somewhere and has misunderstood. They're like, because she's talking about like what we would say university.

I can see where she would have read the word college here and confused it with secondary school, but it's just not what it is. I have a few friends who like consistently use words wrongly, but you can't really correct them because I'm like, it kind of means that. You're kind of close. Yeah, I'm like, I get what you're saying. That's good enough. Yeah, exactly. I understand what you mean. And that's the main thing. Apart from that one guy

I saw on Hinge who was like, abscond from the city and amalgamate with me through the fields. You don't know what amalgamate means, James. You just don't know what that means. Stop. Stop. Oh, amalgamation, James, you just don't know what that means. Stop. Stop. Oh, amalgamation, James. Whatever happened to him? So it's clear that there are some serious mental health issues going on with Ezra. And actually, her legal team's initial plan was to try for an insanity defence. So Ezra was assessed and found to be suffering with a chronic major depressive disorder. But this disorder wasn't deemed enough for a sound insanity plea,

although it can share a lot of the same symptoms of major personality disorders like BPD. So the insanity defence plan was changed. We've talked about it before on this show, especially in our episode on Andrew Yates, like what the insanity defence actually means. We're not going to get on to this in our red hot minute of the red-handed book for a few weeks but there is an entire chapter in the new book on what the insanity defense actually means where we compare the cases of andrea yates and everybody's favorite fucking horrible dick susan smith so if you're interested in that go pre-order the book one of the things that amazed me when we were researching the book the the lake that Susan Smith drove her children into, named after a Ku Klux Klan member,

and nobody has a problem with that, and it's still just allowed to be called that. Yeah, but it was in, like, one of the Carolinas, wasn't it? It always is. North, I think. So, Ezra may not have been diagnosed with a personality disorder, but she definitely had significant problems controlling her emotions when it came to romantic relationships coming back to this sort of manipulation situation I understand why Andrea

goes after this angle she goes after this like feminine presentation of Ezra in the courtroom like her floral outfits are used as an example of her manipulative nature because they're like oh she's presenting herself as this like little innocent girl and she's making herself look small and unintimidating and blah blah blah they like accuse her of trying to appeal to the jury as this like young woman who was overpowered and feared for her life not a cold and calculated killer which like okay but if I was on trial for murder I would probably wear what I thought the jury wanted just like you wear a suit to a job interview. But that's exactly what Ezra is trying to do, though. So Andrea's not wrong. Ezra murdered Alex, in my opinion, in cold blood, and then sat in court trying to say that she was an innocent little girl who was attacked by this man who was trying to rape her. And so she killed

him in self-defence. And I just think that the pink suits and the curly hair is just the physical embodiment of that defense and of that lie. And the prosecution know that Ezra is going to turn up dressed up like a little girl. This is classic tactics that any good defense attorney would instruct their client to do. We saw it with people like Casey Anthony. We saw it with the Menendez brothers. You always want to try and make your horrible client look as unintimidating and innocent as possible. So I understand from the prosecution's point of view that we've got to address it. We've just got to tackle it so that the best thing to do is look, she's trying to

manipulate you. So everyone's just got to say their bit really at this point, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And I think like, I think Andrea Nolotov is a good prosecution lawyer to be honest like I think she just is good at her job. Absolutely I think she's doing a very very good job. And if Ezra's intention was to manipulate the jury by her dress code and her time in the stand it didn't work. The jury returned a guilty verdict and Ezra looked as if she was going to faint. The other thing about Ezra's trial is the whole damn thing is on Court TV. Court TV is mental. It's like a sport. What the fuck have we become? It really is. It really is. The first time I watched it, I was shocked. I was like, I think the first time I ever watched it was on the, oh God, I've forgotten his name, Joel, Sausage Joel

case that we covered over on Patreon. Yes, if you become a $10 and up patron, you get a full bonus length episode every single month over at Handed. And we covered the case of Joel Guy Jr. That was his name a couple of months ago, the guy who killed his entire family. And I watched a bit of it on Court TV. And during the breaks, they would like cut back to the studio where they would have like a group of experts sat around like discussing what just happened in the last segment. and then at the bottom right hand corner of the screen they had a countdown like how long the jury had been out for deliberation I was like this is so weird I've like never I'm like kind of hypnotized by it now like quite a lot of it is super boring because court for let's face it is super boring but like it's just like sprinkled with this like incredibly commercial fit.

It's crazy. It's like sprinkled with sports commentary kind of feeling. Exactly. Exactly. It's like a mix between sports commentary and like daytime TV, but like underpinned by a horrible murder case. It's very weird. So you can watch the second Ezra finds out that she's been found guilty.

And it is kind of the only time she looks like she's expressing any emotion at all. She does look like she's going to faint. It's like she can't really believe that it's happened. One juror told 48 Hours that the moment they personally decided Ezra was a murderer rather than a self-defense accidental manslaughter possibly, was when she described stabbing Alex in the head for the first time. The juror felt like that act was just far too deliberate to be self-defense. Ezra didn't really do herself any favors in the stand because she was so matter-of-fact, unemotional and void of remorse.

And I don't know, I guess it's quite a complicated case because often we find with true crime, especially we found when we were writing the book, for example, the female criminality is almost always looked at through a male lens. I think often we have a very hard time imagining a woman killing for entirely her own reasons. You see this especially with like couple killers and how the woman's agency and why she was involved that is almost entirely always like dissolved and it's always just well she just did it because a man told her to. I think we're very used to the narrative that murderous women are just usually influenced by the men in their lives. Women killers are so rare that when one does crop up, especially when they kill a man, comparisons will always be made between these female killers. And Jodie Arias, who we have covered in a previous episode, if you haven't listened to it, go find it,

is one that most people want to throw around. I haven't really looked into this, but I would be interested to see if they also make comparisons to Michelle. What was her name? Eyebrow Michelle? Michelle Carter. Michelle Carter. I have been thinking about Michelle Carter. It's completely different, in my opinion. I just wondered if people made that comparison. I think they kind of have because it's like the teenage angst angle. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So yeah, on the internet, it does seem that most people seem to be trying to compare Jodie Arias with Ezra McCandless. I don't know.

The key difference for us, at least, is that Jodie killed a man she wanted. Ezra killed a man who was in her way. And Ezra's motives with both the John Hansen assault allegation and the murder of Alex Woodworth both seem to have been solely focused around the need to get Jason Mengel back. So I think the Jodie Arias comparison is just a bit toothless. Like it's just like, oh, it's just a woman that killed a man, like the end. Like I don't think there's anything about it that is similar, really. No, they're completely, completely different. Jodie Arias does it in a way of like, well, if I can can't have you no one can and I'm going to kill you

Ezra McCandless is doing it much more from the play of like it's not even that he was in the way it was more of a way to victimize herself in Jason's eyes and get him back it's a very different motive yes exactly it's like creating this like sympathetic version of herself so he can't help but take her under his wing again because she's so vulnerable and helpless. So when Ezra returned to court for sentencing, all the curls were gone and she looked a lot more masculine than she had at trial. She also looks tired and dejected. The judge sentenced her to life in prison with parole after 50 years. That means that Ezra McCandless will be 72 years old when she even stands a chance of getting out.

Again, I'm not saying that she doesn't deserve that. She fucking stabbed Alex Woodworth to death and she lied about it through her teeth. But it is shocking to read that. I think she's probably 22 now. Wow. Just an enormous amount of time. I mean, that's no meaningful release.

72 years old. But if I put myself in Alex's family's position, I'm like, yeah, fucking damn right. At sentencing, Ezra apologised to Alex's family for their loss, but reminded them that she too had also suffered a great loss, which feels like a really weird move for you to make Ezra. Shut up. And no one including the judge thought this apology was sincere but it was nonetheless accepted by Alex's dad who told the press that Ezra is forgiven because of his faith in Jesus. He feels no need for vengeance. Which is nice. I wish I was that like nice. I know I always

just like that's the thing that always makes me tear up is when the victim's families forgive the killers. I saw this, I don't think it was this year that he said it, but I saw it this year on Stephen Lawrence's day, which was just, like, a couple of weeks ago, when Stephen Lawrence's father went on the BBC and said that he had forgiven all of his son's killers, and I was just like, oh, my God, stop, I can't cope.

I don't forgive them. I want vengeance. But even after all of that, Ezra is refusing to back down. Straight after the trial, she released a statement condemning the, quote, prejudicial media. And this is what she says. I mean, she fancies herself a writer, let's remember, so prepare yourself. It says, if you breathe, it will be used against you. If you cry too hard or too much, she is a fake. If you don't cry enough, she is heartless. If you smile, she's not taking this seriously. If you breathe, it will be used against you. If you cry too hard or too much, she is a fake. If you don't cry enough, she is heartless. If you smile, she's not taking this seriously. If you keep your face calm, she is unfeeling.

Smile, but not too much. It's okay to cry, but not too much. Don't react, but make sure that you show who you are. Which, like, fine. Like, we've talked at length multiple times about how people's reactions are often not what you perceive them to be. And I do think that Ezra McCandless is very Amanda Knox.

Like, I think she is just a weird person. But unlike Amanda Knox, I definitely do think she did it in cold blood, for sure. Yeah. When we say, like, she's like Amanda Knox, we mean only in that she's kind of an odd person, not in that she was unfairly accused of a murder that she didn't do. Exactly. And this is the thing, the whole little bit that she goes off on about how the media was judging her.

I'm like, yes, I hate that kind of bullshit when people do it to people like the Peter Falconeo case, when they do it to Joanne Lees, when they did it to Amanda Knox. We've seen so many cases where they've done it to a person. At least there's no obvious answer for whether they deserved it or not. Obviously, most of those cases, they didn't do anything. But in this, I'm like, I don't care, Ezra, that they did that to you because you fucking killed somebody. So no one cares. I let the media be prejudicial. I literally couldn't give a shit. Just it pisses me off when they do it to people

because there is no other story, like because there isn't an answer about whether they did it or not. But anyway, Ezra closed her statement with, quote, the battle for justice has only just begun. And it seems that our family are backing her up on that. There was briefly even a GoFundMe set up to cover her legal fees. The page is still actually live, but it doesn't seem like you can donate to it anymore. Even when you could, only $50 had been raised. And the copy on this

GoFundMe just read, support an artist. I would say maybe fill it with how you feel like you've been unjustly prosecuted for a crime you definitely committed. I don't know. Maybe it did say that and now it's been changed. Like, I mean, I don't, I honestly don't know. But all it says currently is support an artist. And Ezra's Instagram is also still running. We think her mother is probably keeping it going now. I was so confused when I first found it. I was like, there are posts from like two weeks ago. And I was like, she's been in prison for years. Like, how is this possible? It just must be her mum. Like it has to be. I don't know. This bit is just utterly bizarre. Her bio on the Instagram reads, word for word, quote, I am the fox, the tricky one.

So this is the problem that I think Ezra McCandless faces in her self-marketing because it seems that she always has seen herself as a bit of a manipulator. And she is, don't get me wrong. The problem is she just never really truly pulled it off because it never really worked. If people know they're being manipulated, it's not working. Or if they don't care about your manipulation, it doesn't work. I also just hate when people like present themselves as like, oh, well, like you're going to keep an eye on me because I'm a trickster.

I'm like, that's not a nice thing thing that's not a nice quality in a person like I'm not actively trying to hang out with people who are trying to trick me like what but again the kind of people who say things like that and have that persona are so deeply insecure that's absolutely the word of this episode insecurity runs rabid through this story absolutely insecurity and instability and you know we're not going to sit here and like try and psychologically evaluate Ezra it's an incredibly complicated thing and especially you know the intersection of mental health and personality disorders and criminality it's not really something you know we're not qualified to do that but I think we can safely say there is 100% some sort of personality disorder going on with Ezra. That's not the reason she killed, but it is definitely there and definitely, you know,

plays a part in that insecurity and instability. So there you have it. There's Ezra McCandless. I hope in a way that you have not necessarily seen it presented before. I hope you enjoyed it. Please go over to our socials. You can follow us at Red Handed The Pod on basically everything apart from TikTok because we're old. So go and do that. And also, if you'd like to support the show with cold hard cash, you can go over to patreon.com forward slash red handed. And for some love of God reason, we are still on October. And here are some of our wonderful supporters of the show so we've got jess perrin tilly hissy wesim sylvia simons amy gretti m biel melissa bielowowski you're taking the

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It means the absolute world to us. If you would like a little break from all the true crime and you'd like to come hang out with us under the duvet, if you're a $5 or not patron, you can do so immediately. For a $10 and up patron, you can even do it via video. And over there, we'll be talking about

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Bye. 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. You can listen to Finding Natasha right now exclusively on Wondery+.

In season two, I found myself caught up in a new journey to help someone I've never even met. But a couple of years ago, I came across a social media post by a person named Loti. It read in part, Three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him.

This is a story that I came across purely by chance, but it instantly moved me. And it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.