RedHanded - Episode 218 - Halloween Special Part 1: How Would You Make a Human Vagina?

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

It's Halloween time, that means at RedHanded - it's story swap time! This week Suruthi takes us to a TB ward in the 1930s for some "sexy" body-stealing, while Hannah shares the tale of the Kurim cult that was cracked thanks to a terrifying baby monitor... UK TOUR 2021 - new dates added! Get your tickets here: https://linktr.ee/RedHandedthepod Become a patron: Patreon UK TOUR 2021 - new dates added! Get your tickets here: https://linktr.ee/RedHandedthepod MERCH: redhandedshop.com Subscribe to our new YouTube Channel: YouTube - Subscribe Pre-order a copy of the book here (US & Canada): Signed copies - US & Canada Pre-order on Wellesley Books Pre-order on Amazon.com Pre-order a copy of the book here (UK, Ireland, Europe, NZ, Aus): Signed copies - UK, Ireland, Europe, NZ, Aus Pre-order on Amazon.co.uk Pre-order on Foyles Follow us on social media: Instagram Twitter Facebook Visit our website: Website Contact us: Contact See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

I'm Hannah. And welcome to a very special episode of Red Handed. It is, of course, the first of this year's annual Halloween story swap. I can't even remember doing last year's. Nope. I feel like that happened to a different human being. What's last year? We've all been through a lot since then. We've all changed. We've all grown. We've all shifted. We've all made some more skin cells. But yeah, I have absolutely no memory of what we did last year couldn't tell you no that long pause was me thinking I also can't tell you but it doesn't matter because the only thing I know for certain is that it wasn't the case I'm about to tell you

well that is I mean how sure can we really be though if we can't remember how embarrassing would that be if we just do you know what maybe we'll just get complete amnesia and just start repeating cases no don't because some people message us they're like i swear you've covered this case for i'm like no we haven't and i'm like don't get in my brain like that don't fuck me up stop fucking trying to um i can't even remember the what the word is for it stop trying to black magic us stop it we've got a spreadsheet all right yeah exactly it can't happen because the spreadsheet will tell us if we start to type the same name out again. Anyway, that's how I've checked and that's how I know that we haven't covered this particular case.

Okay, I trust you implicitly. Shall I go first? I actually would really love it if you went first. Oh, excellent. I'm very happy to do so. So, in case you are a new red-handed listener and are working your way through the back catalogue in some sort of arbitrary fashion and haven't yet come across one of our Halloween Story swap episodes. Which is illegal by the way and you should be in prison if you're not listening in order. It's highly highly unacceptable. So stop that right now. I don't really know where to tell you to start to be honest but. Criminals.

I also suspect and this is just a suspicion I have no like basis for this. I suspect that some people skip the Halloween story swaps because they probably look at it in the feed and think they're not going to be very good because they look like a bonus and that upsets me because I actually think the very first year that we did Halloween story swaps which would have been got like 2017 2017 yeah would have been they are maybe two of my favorite episodes ever they are just so unpredictably funny and horrifying so if you are that person that has been thinking oh no it doesn't look meaty enough you are incorrect it is a brisket of an episode so go listen to all of them from the not beef eater

from the not beef eater um good hindu yeah just culturally sometimes but no basically what we do once a year when it gets to halloween the last two weeks of halloween the last two weeks of october i should say hannah and i instead of doing what we usually do which is just one case per episode we do a story swap where we tell each other a secret story that we've been writing in our own time without sharing it. Yeah, we share most things. Since we've moved into this office, quite literally the air we breathe every day is shared, which is why we always get ill at the same time. But yes, usually we know what's coming. And for the Halloween story swaps, we don't. So let's kick off. The one I've got today for my Halloween story swap. I think it's very timely because it has a bit of an empty-handed feel about it. Because it's about a man who just couldn't quite let go of the love of his life.

But before you feel too sorry for him, don't. Because this isn't some sort of sad gothic tale of lost love like Poe's Annabelle Lee poem or something which incidentally is it quite morbid to say I think it might be my favorite poem Annabelle Lee is your favorite poem it's such a good poem well the fall of the house of usher is one of my favorite stories so well there you go clearly we're meant to be absolutely for my birthday last year my friends got me like this really amazing huge like bound copy of all of Poe's works but it's the kind of you can't read it because it doesn't even open all the way up because it's so fucking massive yeah and it's also not really something you can display in your house without looking like such a dick it's out

in the house I know it I'm sure I'm sure I'm not surprised but if I see the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe in someone's house I leave it's there it's there I'm sure it's there that's why I'm never coming to your house oh god actually I quit you're on your own now oh no but no this case isn't like i said some like long lost love affair it's much more of a scary obsessive death stalking body stealing silk stitching to skin now you're talking kind of story that's my kind of guy this is what we're trying to do guys we try to go and find the scariest stories we can we have become somewhat desensitized so we're not really sure what is scary anymore but this did make me feel all sorts of uncomfortable okay i could at the least and it's also i think scary in a bit of an abstract way too because this story is a bit of an allegory

for how little women have any control over their bodies. Oh goody. So you know double threat that's right it might be a pasto case because we are going back to the 1930s. Oh wow okay. But the themes are still scarily relevant today. Texas I'm talking to you. Everyone ready? Like I said we're heading back to the 1930s and fittingly to a tuberculosis ward in Key West, Florida. Okay. Which feels like it should be the setting for the next American Horror Story. Stop making the weird ones, make good ones again, please. Yeah, can we get back to asylum, please?

I know, right. My granddad was in a TB asylum. It was some sort of like farm situation. Sounds like a commune. But yeah, he had TB for ages and then he had to go and like live in this like reservation away from everyone else he made stools little wicker stools yeah my dad's dad so my paternal granddad had tb he survived though my maternal grandfather who's still alive had typhoid wow so there you go there you go the joys of rural indian living

sponsored by the tourist board for india the one woman tourist board for india so yeah back in this 1930s tv ward in florida it is here that we meet a man named count carl von kosel never trust a count especially not one who's lying to you because that's not his name oh right okay how foolish of me i will come on to that in a second but count carl von kosel worked in this tv ward as a radiologic technician is he a german is he a what a german yes he is he is a german so the new i know we have a lot of bake offers that listen so the new series right has started i have only watched episode one i only watched episode one last night oh okay good we're on the same but the german guy's so german he's so german he

sounds like augustus gloop he's like and also gunther from the simpsons so i'm too full of chocolate don't make me run i'm too full of chocolate that's exactly how he talks i like made my sister sit down and watch it but like listen to the german man be german i love him i love him and i love him even more because on episode one he just goes straight and makes a black forest gato and he's like I'm from the black forest and I'm like oh I love you marry me but anyway so yes count count count Carl von Kossel that's not even a very good German accent I'm sorry I'll stop was from Germany but like I said for Hannah and the more suspicious minded amongst you you might notice that the name and the title sound a little bit fake. And you'd be very correct in thinking so, because they are fake.

Karl was in fact born Karl Tanzler. And actually, sorry, I lied. He's not German. He was born in Austria. Ah, the classic. Don't say that. There's confusion. Some places say, this is a past okay, spare with us.

Some places say- Wouldn't have been annexed. In 1877? No. I don't. Definitely Austria. So some places say he was born in Austria. Some places say he was born in dresden germany i don't know he's born in one of these two places problem with these pasto cases guys very poor record keeping it truly is and it's

like reputable sources are saying both things so i haven't got a clue but he was born on the 8th of february in 1877 in that part of the, we're going to go very broad strokes on this one. And often when you see this case, and if you know anything about this case, because some of you probably already do, you'll see him referred to as Dr. Carl Tanzler, or Dr. Tanzler, or Dr. Silk. Incorrect, he was not a doctor, despite the fact that he would often refer to himself as one. And like I said, we don't know much about Carl's childhood.

Like I said, I don't even know where he was exactly born. But what we do know is that he was a smart child, but he was reported as having been a bit weird and a bit arrogant. And Carl also had a strange reoccurring dream as a child, which was like happened enough that like people remember him for being the child that had the strange reoccurring dream. And in this dream, basically, he said that he would see dead family members come to him and tell him that the love of his life would be a dark haired,

exotic woman. And Carl really held on to this, this particular dream in his childhood goes on to shape quite a lot of his odd behavior in the future as we'll go on to see it's kind of like when kids have dreams and they're like when I lived before yeah when I lived before I had some sheep and I was married to a dark-haired exotic woman it's also the thing about the like dead relatives coming to speak to him it's like all I was thinking when I was writing that was like is this Mulan he's just like Exotic woman. It's also the thing about the like dead relatives coming to speak to him. It's like all I was thinking when I was writing that was like, is this Mulan? He's just like ancestors. I'm like, why is this creepy little fucking kid talking about dead family members coming to him and telling him who he's going to marry?

That's abnormal child dreaming. It is, even without TV. So in 1920, Carl did get married to a woman named Doris Schaefer. And Doris was neither dark haired nor exotic. But I guess in 1920s Germany, I don't know, I'm guessing the dating scene maybe wasn't totally like popping. No, quite arranged marriagey, I would imagine. And as was the style at the time, Doris and Carl got married very quickly. And very quickly after that, they also had two children. And after a few years, the whole family moved from Germany slash Austria to the US. And they moved to Florida and specifically to a

town named Zephyrhills. There are some hysterical place names in Florida. It's very like Edward Scissorhands-y, isn't it? Yes, yes, a hundred times yes. Which, as idyllic as it sounds, possibly, it actually spelled the end of Carl and Doris's marriage. Which I thought was quite unusual, because it's like the mid-twenties and they're getting divorced. And I was like, was that a thing?

I mean, I don't actually know if they got divorced, to be fair. What I do know happened is within the year of them moving there, Carl abandoned his wife and his kids and he ran off to start his own American dream, landing himself a job on the TB ward of the Marine Hospital in Key West. So he doesn't even run that far from them. No, he just runs off, leaves them, leaves them to it. And maybe knowing, possibly, how much the Americans love a bit of European royalty,

because they really bloody do, I spent quite a lot of my time hanging out in Hudson's newsagents in various American airports. Just rails and rails and shelves and shelves full of magazines covered in pictures of Princess Diana still. Really? I'm not even lying to you used to be one of mine and my old colleague's favorite thing was to just immediately get to the airport and go to a hudson news just to look at all of the weird magazines that still have princess diana on

the front cover speaking of princess diana i'm still in sense that fucking christian stewart is playing her in that film don't i was talking to my friend about it who used to be a hollywood assistant and she was like but Hannah name one person who is famous enough and British and I'm like there are tons of people who are famous in Britain

just because they're not famous in America and I was like why does it need to be a famous person why couldn't it just be a just box office but Diana's the pull

anyway whatever I just don't like Kristen Stewart no I'm I'm no I'm upset it should be a British actor there are loads of them

and just not Kristen Stewart and just yeah never her no hi I'm upset. It should be a British actor. There are loads of them. And just not Kristen Stewart. And just, yeah, never her. No. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to light some of the biggest controversies in US 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.

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Start your free trial today. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it. Lots of people don't. I didn't either until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses,

hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Anyway, back to this. Like I said, knowing maybe how much the americans loved a bit of european royalty maybe this is what made carl tanzler change his name to the highly subtle count carl von kosel he also did like to pretend that he was related to this countess so countess kosel who i don't really know anything about her she's like minor she was like arist this countess, like Countess Cosell, who I don't really know anything about her.

She's like minor. She was like aristocracy slash, she was like the mistress of somebody in France or something. And she was all like excommunicated. And he used to say later in life that she was the one who used to come to him in his dreams and tell him about the exotic dark head woman he was going to fall in love with.

Okay. I can kind of see how in 20s america in key west you can say whatever the fuck you want everyone is you know i'm irish because i have a half a grandparent three generations ago you know everyone's at it so i'm not surprised he got away with it oh he absolutely did because he fully gets this job and he's like you know pretty much he's like laying low there as much as you can with a name like count carl von kosel until that is one day in 1931 when a 22 year old cuban-american woman named maria elena melegro oh sorry her full name she's got a fucking long name maria eleno melegro de hoyas who was brought into the hospital by her mother with TB enters his life and we're going to call her Elena because that is how she referred to herself while she was alive and she wasn't

doing very well TB was not treating her particularly okay would you like to know a fun fact Hannah about TB and also about the 1918 influenza epidemic and how they had a fun little intersection love would love to I I mean, it's not really that fun. I also try to read quite a lot about this and there's not that much more to it. But basically, the influenza epidemic of 20, of 19, of 2018, that everyone likes to call the Spanish flu, but it's quite inaccurate. Actually, maybe it's quite interesting to say why they call it the Spanish flu. Didn't start in Spain, nothing to do with spain it was only because at that time in 1918 spain was one of the only countries in europe that didn't have a massive like censorship on its media and so the spanish media were basically the only ones

reporting this global pandemic that was killing literally millions of people and no one else was reporting it so the only records we have are from Spanish sources so everyone just calls it the Spanish flu that is interesting isn't it but it had nothing to do with Spain it makes it sound like it originated there because I spoke to my grandma about it because her mom would have been like an adult in the 1912 pandemic so I asked her I was like oh you know did your mom ever talk about the Spanish flu and my grandma was like no she's like I'd never heard the word pandemic until two years ago so yeah I think everyone was just like we just won't tell people about this that's fine so there you go that is the reason it's called the Spanish flu but that wasn't the fun fact I had the fact I had was that the

influenza epidemic of 1918 killed so many people that it actually significantly brought down death rates and transmission rates of TB because it killed everybody that there weren't enough people to pass TB onto each other. Well, there you go. There you go. Anyway, the fact that the 1918 influenza epidemic had really significantly slowed down the rates of transmission and death for TB probably wouldn't have meant very much to Elena because the doctors at the hospital soon realized that although most people at this point weren't dying of TB any longer the prognosis for

Elena was not looking so good. This terrible prognosis however didn't stop our man Count Carl von Kossel from falling head over heels in love with Elena but it wasn't in a sort of tragic, like young adult novel kind of way, a la like the fucking The Fault in Our Stars or whatever shit. Because firstly, Maria was 21, 22 and Carl was in his 50s. Ah, no. Yes.

And even if you could look past that. Which I can't. Which you can't. Even if you could. The bigger problem here is not only the fact that Carl didn't really get to know Elena before he decided he was in love with her. Rather his infatuation for Elena was based on the series of visions slash dreams that he used to have when he was a child. Because when he saw Elena, the Cuban-American woman with her dark hair and exotic

looks, that she was the woman that his ancestors had been telling him was the love of his life those exotic women they will get you they will get you and maybe give you tb the bigger bigger issue aside from just those two is also the fact that elena was totally not into it in the slightest so carl's quote-unquote love for elena seems to have been mainly rooted like i said in these childhood visions of this exotic beauty. And it must have been this woman in front of him now, tragically dying of consumption. So Carl became convinced that he was the only one who could save her. Seeing the arrogance back again. Yes.

Yeah. There is a lot of like heavy narcissism from Carl throughout this entire episode. Firstly, there's that kind of the idea of the ideal love, like how there is this one woman destined to be with him because he is special and she must be special, etc. And also this idea, as we'll go on to see, that he becomes convinced that he can save her and we'll go on to talk about the rest later. But Carl not being a TB doctor, or in fact any form of doctor, or a doctor at all, wasn't exactly the best placed person

to take on this role of curing a woman who the doctors had said couldn't be cured. Regardless though, he spent his time whipping up various potions and lotions to try and shake off the sickness, killing his young Elena. Hold up. I believe that they had antibiotics by this period they're like it's too late but he is like but he's like I

I am antibiotics with this dick something like that something a better constructed sentence like that but that's the gist that's what he wanted uh-huh that's what he wanted but up until this point he's keeping it pretty pure apart from thinking he's in love with her he's just like making up these things and he's trying to you know he she's still in the hospital at this point he turns up every day he tells her he loves her he's like buying her gifts he's like bringing her all this medication that he is making and her family for some reason going along with it which i don't really particularly understand elena's not having it but also she's very sick right eventually the hospital actually send elena home presumably so that she can die in peace in her own house rather than on a hospital ward this still doesn't stop our carl he started visiting elena daily taking more of his weird and wonderful remedies

along with stolen drugs and hospital equipment that he was stealing from work. That's the whole point of working in a hospital, isn't it? I mean, he's making the most of it. And also he continues his professions of undying love for her. But nothing he tried worked and within months, Elena was dead,

never having requited his love. Carl was devastated and he actually commissioned an expensive mausoleum to be built for Elena. Like, I know her parents don't seem that bothered, but I really think a mausoleum is a line that should not be crossed. I do not understand why her family go along with this. Again, it's a pasto case. It's very hard to like get an actual profile or an actual read on anybody that's involved in this. But Elena's family weren't poor.

They were like quite rich. Her father owned like a cigar factory. And they weren't like, they couldn't afford to bury their daughter or anything like that. So I don't really know why they go along with it, but they do. But maybe they wouldn't have gone along with it if they had known A, what was about to go down. And B, if they had known that Carl was the only one with a set of keys to the mausoleum. I'm getting some Jimmy Zappel vibes from this guy.

Oh yeah, it's coming. And you can probably guess, like Hannah is, as to where this is going. But hold up, because it's so much weirder than you think. For the next two years, Carl visited Elena's embalmed body because he also had her embalmed. Of course.

And paid for it. Can't have her rotting away. Oh, no, no, no. You would hate that. And he visited her every single night. You can contract TB from dead bodies, can't you? Probably. It seems like the sort of thing

that you'd be able to contract from a dead body. I mean, it feels like it is. But then maybe if he's a dude who's been hanging out on a TB ward for for a while maybe he's like maybe he's already had it maybe he's had it maybe he's immune now maybe he's fine but yeah he has her embalmed and he visits her every single night for two years which really when i read that i was like this is just further take away from this ladies that if he's not putting in the effort he's not worth your time because this guy went and visited a dead woman that he thought he was in love with every night for two years so if he's not texting you back

probably just leave it yeah yeah i will stand by it my friends what i've said 101 times welcome to 102 if someone's not texting you it's because they don't want to there's literally not more complicated than that that is what it is exactly especially when count carl von kosel found enough time in his day to go visit the dead embalmed body of a woman who died of tb who didn't even like him so the ultimate nice guy and also okay let's talk about the embalming because this is quite interesting i didn't know this my google search history is now forever marred with this curiosity that I had. But apparently, embalming only gives you, if you're lucky, an additional two weeks of corpse time. Yeah, it doesn't surprise me.

Because I thought, oh, he embalms her and then he goes and visits her every night for two years. I was like, oh, so was it just like holding up for two years? No, no, no. It would have only lasted about two weeks and then it would have rotted anyway and I also thought it was quite interesting because additional two weeks hardly seems worth it to go through with an embalming for a procedure described in time magazine of all places as a violent process and I was like okay excellent I love that when you google how long does a embalming like keep a body fresh yes i did google that that's when the times article pops up and it's just like yeah embalming is quite the violent

process and it only gives you two weeks but about a week is all you need because not for carl i mean not for carl but generally speaking even in a morbid catholicism where you have the dead body in your house and everyone goes and looks at it it's sort of like sort of best practice is to bury the person within a week of them dying so two weeks is fine yeah loads of time not for carl obviously depending on your purposes two weeks may or may not be enough but interestingly hindu is very similar body dies body dies person dies body dies soul stays forever you bring the body into your house and then everybody comes and said goodbye and you have the morning and all of that but only like two days absolute tops like a day a two days absolute tops like when my grandmother died sorry it's just so morbid like

my dad had to fly from here to there and they were like we can't keep even for his own mum because they were just like it's wrong it's wrong to like let this body decay and we obviously don't bury we burn that shit morbid cool let's get back to this so you might think after two weeks then since that's all the time the embalming will give you that carl might have stopped but no like we said he kept going for two years and how did he keep up this two years of this body decaying you you might be wondering. Well, during his nightly visits, he would take with him a cheeky little bottle of formaldehyde. Yep. Which makes you hungry.

Yes, you said that. Maybe he also had a little candle at dinner with her every night as well. Who knows? And again, this is what I'm saying, ladies. If he's not making an effort, kick him to the curb because Carl would go every night, sit with Elena, inject her with formaldehyde, and talk to her about everything and anything yeah and this is this is this is where it gets even better he had a phone put into the mausoleum

so that he could call her during the day now that i understand because i quite often wish i could bring my dog i might get one of those like pet cams yes that would be a good idea that's what you branch out to the necrophiles the tomb cam the coffin cam the coffin phone the coffin caller god i'm a i'm not i'm gonna roll i'm on fire so yeah just weirdness Weirdness upon weirdness. Now, unsurprisingly, after two years of hanging out in this mausoleum with the decaying body of his dead patient, Carl said that Elena started talking to him.

Took her two years. To be honest, I think anybody who spent that much time in the dark might think that they were talking. That's what I'm saying. He's been in there for a long time and now she's talking to him. Apparently, when she spoke to him, she asked him to remove her from the mausoleum and take her back to his.

Oh, that's convenient. Isn't it convenient that she wasn't like, fuck off, you fucking weirdo. Can I go and see my family, please? Now I've risen from the dead. The only place I want to go is your bedroom. Yeah, she really made him work for it. Two years of

dates and then she's finally like all right should we go back to yours then so in april 1933 carl loaded elena's two-year-old corpse into a toy wagon and wheeled her out by this point elena was not looking her best so carl was forced to do a bit of corrective surgery. Forced? Forced by his love. I see. For her to fix it. Would you like to know what he did? Of course you would. He tied her bones back together with piano

wire. He replaced Elena's rotten skin with silk and plaster. So he kind of does a bit of like Pepe Mache job. Oh no. But with silk and plaster. So he kind of does a bit of like pappe-mache job. Oh no. But with silk. Silk-mache all over her.

And then he gave her a beautiful pair of glass eyes because their old ones are gone. Her beautiful dark eyes, they're gone. And then he really wanted to fix her hairline situation. So he gave her, a wig gave her,

he put on her head a wig made out of his dead mom's hair no no okay many questions first question why did he have his mom's hair i wish that i could tell you you probably can't answer this one anyway but i'm gonna say it so it's not in my head anymore was the wig specially made or did the second his mum died, he was like, thanks, Gladys. I'll take this down to the wig maker. And then he had like a spare wig just in case. Okay.

For emergencies. I'll be honest. In some places it says a wig made of his dead mum's hair. In some places it says his dead mum's wig. So maybe his mum just wore a wig. That's very funny. And I don't know. It's technically her hair if she bought it.

Exactly. Do you remember that when Amy Winehouse was on Buzzcocks? Yeah. And so I was, is that all your hair? She was like, yeah, I bought it. Yeah, it's mine now. So yeah, he puts on Elena, well, Elena's corpse, either his dead mum's wig or a wig made of his dead mum's hair.

Both could be true. And then, because he really, he felt quite sad about poor Elena losing all of her, her figure, shall we say. So he stuffed her chest with rags. I'm guessing prior to the silk mache. And then he even dressed Elena up in her own clothes. I wondered how he had managed to get his hands on her clothes but he was spending a lot of time hanging out the family's house and they don't really seem to have a fucking clue what was going on they seem to be unbothered so I think he just stole some of her clothes from there but I think what's important is that for Carl the like

authenticity of it is very important to him. Like he sees himself like recreate, not just like recreating this doll of her. I think that his illness, like whatever is wrong with him is so deep that I think he thinks that this really is Elena and that she really is basically alive and talking to him, et cetera. So he dresses her up in her clothes and then he doused Elena in various perfumes

and scented oils to try and mask the smell which i'm guessing again a corpse he lives in a shack as well what because what kind of count doctor lives in a shack well this is a fake one obviously a fake one who isn't a count but also one who pissed away all of his time on a dead woman didn't get to keep his job very long ah yeah you're not going to be doing much curing of tb if you're hanging out with a corpse infected with tb and then when you're not hanging out with her you're on the phone on your fucking corpse caller the ghost line yeah and also i think they caught him for stealing all those drugs and that equipment

ah okay that would do it yeah so he lost his job but carl doesn't care because you know he has this newfound desire in life. So he's taking her back to the shack, not even to her house. I'd stay in the mausoleum, mate. Yeah, I know. It's probably drier. That's why I don't believe. Yeah, he should have stayed there.

And I think what his shack consisted of was like part of an airline. What? Like part of an aeroplane, like the cabin of an aeroplane. I know, it's all very confusing. I don't know, guys. I've tried very hard on the research, but it's very complicated and very confusing. But anyway, bottom line is he's living essentially in a shack with definitely no air conditioning, with definitely a corpse, definitely in Florida, which is definitely hot.

In my head, this is all in Germany, but it's not. It's in Florida. My God. It's in Florida. Hot, humid, alligators nipping at your ankles. And a dead woman in your bed. Because Carl kept Elena in his own bed for seven years. What?

I don't know. And if you're wondering, was there any funny business between these two? Well. Because what has gone thus far is completely normal business. Yes. Apart from all this very normal business of the corpse caller and the silk mache etc was there any wink wink funny business well again it's very hard to know for sure but what i will tell you is that carl inserted a cardboard

tube into elena's vagina what like the inside of a kitchen roll? Mm-hmm. And I can't really think what other purpose that would serve. He could have tried a bit harder. I know. A cardboard tube doesn't... Is that nice? It doesn't sound like it, to be honest.

Doesn't sound particularly authentic. It's not the vagina experience you would want. If you were going to make a vagina, Hannah... If I was going to make a vagina? If you were going to make a vagina hannah if you're going to if i was going to make a vagina if you were going to make a vagina out of household objects you can't use anything that you wouldn't find in a house and i won't say it's got to be a shack in the 1930s let's say a modern day house your house how would you make a vagina okay i'm really embarrassed about how quickly i'm going to answer this excellent you looked like you had an answer before i even

finished asking so i actually do so are you aware of the podcast ear hustle I am so in ear hustle they explain how men make pretend vaginas in prison oh and they do it with a flannel baby oil and then they put it in the microwave and that's how you do it allegedly and I think they probably know yeah I mean if anyone is going to spend vast amounts of time thinking about it i'm guessing it is uh yes okay yeah sure sure i mean for household items well prison commissary items no less it doesn't sound like it's gonna be better than a cardboard tube and i i fully agree i fully agree that is. Okay, no more need for the flashlight, men. Fleshlight? Flashlight?

Fleshlight. I think that's what it's called. You can just do this instead. Unless Fleshlight want to sponsor us, in which case I will completely get on board with that. So back to this. For Carl, I think at this point, he realized that having Elena with him

was better than having nothing, but that it wasn't perfect. He realizes that as much as he wants to believe that she is the real person, that she isn't actually moving, and she's probably continuing to decay, regardless of his best attempts. He wanted her back, alive and moving. So, Carl started work on a plan to launch Elena's body into space. What? Because he was convinced that the radiation from outer space would bring her back to life, like a sci-fi Frankenstein's monster. Okay, so he most certainly is not a doctor in any way, shape or form. Most definitely not.

He's definitely not a count doctor. If you're thinking, you know, this was just like a harebrained scheme that he, you know, was spitballing. No, no, he went as far as to build a launch pad. Like, are there no people in Florida at this point? Is he the only one? I don't know what's happening. I really, I think there are, but they're all just keeping away from him. I mean, you would, but I'm astonished that he managed to keep her for seven years and build a launch pad, which I'm assuming he did outside. don't think it was like a wallace and gromit basement operation and no one was like how you doing big k do you need some help well eventually people turn up people turn up okay so that brings us nicely on to the next part of the story because you're welcome thank you he never

got the chance to fire elena's corpse into space thankfully. Because in 1940, Elena's sister, Florinda, which is a lovely name, was tipped off that all was not right at Casa Count Carp. Apparently, people were tipped off or starting to become suspicious because he had spent quite a lot of his time buying women's clothes. And he'd also stopped visiting Elena's grave every single night like he'd been doing for two years. Okay, so they are paying some attention. They are paying some attention.

I would argue that if you are the town weirdo who visits a mausoleum every night for two years, people are paying attention and that's what they were doing. So when he stopped abruptly, they were like, why is that then? And why does he keep buying women's clothing? And I love that they weren't like, maybe he met a nice, nice normal real woman and he's just buying her clothes they were like no something's going on yeah he's got to be doing something a local boy apparently spotted count carl von kossel dancing with a figure late at night one day oh jesus christ he's not even trying yeah he's like just fully dancing around like ed gein style. Yeah, he's lost it. He's lost it. And everyone

thought that this was suspicious because everyone knew that Count Carl lived alone and that he never had visitors. So who's he dancing with? Now, I'm not sure what Florinda thought she was going to find at Carl's place. But she waited until he was out one day and broke it. And there

she found what she thought was a doll of her dead sister so he's done a good job then if she can recognize oh he's silk macheted to fucking shit expert level mashing absolutely she apparently only calls the police because of some of the other weird things that she finds there and also because the doll is wearing her dead sister's clothes oh okay fine right so she calls the police. And then when the police arrive and an autopsy was done, thankfully, because like, I also was like,

why did they do an autopsy if they thought it was a doll? But they do do the autopsy. There's a lot of holes in the story, guys. But it is true. That is the main thing I can tell you. It was only then that they discovered the true horror of what they had come across. Because it was, of course, the body of Elena,

who had been dead by this point for almost a decade. Jesus. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul, the man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Cone. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so. Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was f***ed up.

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So Carl was arrested and psychologically assessed and he was actually deemed sane. So he was charged with maliciously destroying a grave and removing a body without authorisation. But the statute of limitations on both of these charges had already expired. And so Carl Tanzler was released with no charge. When he was released from the police station, after they were like, there's nothing we can do, he actually asked for Elena back. Yep.

Thankfully, this request wasn't granted. But arguably, something almost as perverse did happen to Elena's body and this is again where I come on to the segment about how little control women seem to have over their bodies dead or alive especially back then and still especially now because they didn't just do the decent thing and like bury Elena you know after this it all happened she's been fucking dry humped by this pervert for almost a decade after she's been dead. She's been bloody paper mashed up to the hilt.

She's had a cardboard tube and rags stuffed inside of her. And then at this point, she was put on display. No! At a funeral home in Florida, so people could go and see the weird corpse bride they'd heard so much about. Why? I mean, at least it wasn't a Ripley's, believe it or not. That's where they usually go.

I'm surprised it's not there. But I'm like, why? Why? Why is this happening? I don't know. Just leave her the fuck alone. Yeah, man. Leave her.

Leave her be. Seriously. Thankfully now, Elena's body has been buried in an unmarked grave and hopefully she's been left alone since interestingly I thought there was quite a lot of public sympathy for Carl at the time now don't get me wrong like he clearly has a lot of issues clearly he's not very well but people really made it seem and I'm not exaggerating people at the time really made it seem like it was not exaggerating people at the time really made it seem like it was one of the most romantic things in the world are you fucking joking no

they really did and this is where i really have to draw a line on this because maybe it would have been different if they had been married for years and years and they were in love and you know it was this really sad love story and then it was his husband driven mad by grief and then he couldn't let go of his wife who he had been with for 50 years or something maybe it could have been different then because i feel like that is sad it's a man who can't move on from the love of his life this guy fucking elena didn't even like him yeah that's the real crisis point i think i think it would still be extremely sad and violating if it was his wife but at least there would have been you know if they were married and desperately in but at least there would have been you know if

they were married and desperately in love at least there was living consent this is what i mean at least then you could have been like look marriage is all about compromise once i'm dead if you really can't let me go and you're gonna stuff my body and keep me in the fucking front room so you can wheel me around then maybe you know that's okay elena didn't even fucking like this guy they weren't married they certainly weren't in love he was just obsessed with her so really all that's happened here he was just like a creepy old dude who worked at the hospital that this woman was at harassed her endlessly while she was alive and then yeah fucking humped her corpse for the best part of a decade

after she was dead while plastering her back together and dressing her up like a fucking doll don't tell me this is romantic no absolutely not and also and maybe this is like you know presumptuous on my part but really after doing this for four and a half years i hardly think it's a leap i think it's not a stretch to say that if elena had lived so she'd recovered from the tb and count car von kossel had continued to pursue her and she'd continue to reject him. Oh, he would have killed her. He would have killed her. Because I think what's safe to say is that he definitely wanted above everything else to possess her. And I think he couldn't have her in this life because she didn't want him to and because she was dying of TB.

So he took ultimate control over her body once she was gone. Again, it comes back to that thing of obsession with the ultimate love like it's very very narcissistic and the possession of it is very controlling and so anybody who's like even remotely i don't think people would do this now but back then they definitely were saying it was romantic it's absolutely fucking not no it's horrendous and yeah there you go i'll just leave you with the image in your mind of a man just pouring formaldehyde onto a dead body as he fucks it in his bed in a shack in key west in a cardboard tube in a cardboard tube for seven years lovely yeah there you go

that's the story of carl tanzler and the sorry state of affairs that elena found herself in never trust a german count that's what we've learned. That's what we've learned. Fake or otherwise. And even if he might be from Austria. Right. Mine is also extremely gross. Oh, good. And it's actually been on the list for many moons. But I didn't think it was real. But it turns out it is.

Yeah. You're right to squeak like a dream barking dog. So we're staying. well, actually, no, we are floating back from Florida, back to continental Europe. And we are beginning in the town of Kurim in, it says here Czech Republic, but I think we say Czechia now. I think, I think there has been a shift. Oh my God, I know which one it is.

I'm excited. I'm going to take my shoes off. Ru one it is i'm excited i'm gonna take my shoes ruined it sorry but no i don't know the details okay okay i don't know the details i'm excited this is straight out of a horror movie guys so um pin back your ears and empty your bladders not where you are no no please pause this take yourself off to a toilet or take us with you i don't mind unless you're listening to us on the toilet so it's the 7th of may 2007 and a guy called edward turdy was setting up a baby monitor in his home in the small town of currim his wife had just given birth and the new father was making sure that everything was perfectly set up at home to welcome their new child you know what first time parents are like

paranoid i mean rightfully so i think if i'm ever in that position I will just I don't know strap a fucking all sorts of heart monitors to myself and the baby bouncing mine against the wall I know I will be scared as most parents are yeah no I just I don't really have that I don't know I just don't really have that instinct I know how to baby I'm very good with them I understand how they work but if they get dropped on their head, it's not the end of the world. They just bounce back, kids. I think the thing is, is that babies are designed for new parents. Like, they're fine. Do whatever you want.

They'll be fine. Good. Here you go, guys. A little excerpt from our parenting podcast, Don't. Or Hannah shouldn't, probably. Well, we will be propagating a lifestyle of very casual parenting. So, this is not casual parenting. This is the classic paranoid parent. And Edward takes his new baby monitor, which is a video one, a fancy one. And he switched on the screen, expecting to see a video feed of

his shiny new baby. But no, what appeared instead was a grainy black and white video of a young boy, about seven years old, in a small, dimly lit room. The boy was naked and his hands were bound behind his back. Edward sat there watching the disturbing feed for about 15 minutes as the boy struggled to eat something off the floor. And then suddenly, a woman's hand appeared and fed him. It slowly dawned on Edward that something sinister was taking place somewhere just a few doors away from his own, and that his baby monitor was picking up a signal that it shouldn't have been. I hate her. This is the thing that would actually scare me about baby monitors, video or just audio.

They've made too many appearances in too many horror films where they are just picking up interference from other places and just listening to other babies, ghosts, demons, whatever. I don't want to look at that. Clown statues. I know, I hate it. Edward rang the police and he explained the situation and officers quickly arrived at his house to investigate and then one by one they knocked on the doors of Edward's immediate neighbours but all of them denied having a small boy in their house. Luckily for the police, Edward had stayed glued to the baby monitor whilst they were away and he even started to record the video in case they lost the signal. When the officers returned, Edward told them that he could faintly hear talking in the background of the feed whilst they were away.

He played the recording for them and the police quickly realised which house the video signal had to be coming from and this was all because they could hear music in the back of the video, the same music that had been playing on the radio in one of the houses. The house belonged to a reclusive 29 year old woman named Clara. She lived there with her daughter, Anika, and they'd lived there since 2006, so only the year before. This time, despite her protests, the officers pushed their way inside her house and searched the property. Apart from it being a bit of a shit pit, nothing seemed too out of the ordinary. It was just a bit messy. Except one one thing a padlocked door on the ground floor that clara insisted had been locked since the day she'd moved in claiming that she didn't even know what was

behind it and the landlord had refused to give her a key sure all right mrs secret room in the basement i mean i haven't got trial tied up in there which i presumably guess this is where this is going well you'll just have to wait find out and how do you know you haven't seen in there i didn't put it there if there is one keeping their cool the police called the fire department to break the lock on the door but as quickly as the fireman turned up so did someone else clara's older sister katarina so once katarina turned up her clara and anika sat themselves down in front of the padlock door and refused to let the firemen in but that wasn't going to stop them potentially rescuing a child in peril and they forcibly moved them out of the way and the firefighters broke

through the heavy lock and the heavy door and opened it immediately they were hit in the face with the unmistakable stench of human shit that flooded out of the room and up the stairs to them. It was summer. It was warm. It was unbearable. Oh, good.

I'm surprised a door kept all that at bay. Maybe it was a steel door. Maybe. My house has started to smell like... When I first looked around it, I was like, oh, it smells a bit funny. And then the smell went away, and now the smell is back.

What does it smell like? I don't know know it's so difficult to describe like a bad smell no I just don't I don't know but like I don't like obviously like you don't like everyone sort of gets nose blind to their own house but like I noticed it when I came home yesterday and I was like I don't want my house to smell I don't want my house to like feel like you noticeably smell it when you walk in. No. I think no smell is the ideal smell. I think maybe it's damp. Oh.

Because, obviously, it's been summer, it's been dry, but it's been pissing with rain for, like, two weeks. Yeah, it has. Oh, that's annoying. Back to the warm poop. So, covering their noses, the officers and the firemen tentatively made their way into the dark room. The concrete floor was smothered in vomit and urine and of course warm poop and sitting huddled up in a ball in the middle of the room was a pale-skinned naked little boy with his hands bound behind his back. It was the very

same boy that Edward had seen on his baby monitor and at this point Clara is crying hysterically, very Sylvia Likens this one, Clara's crying hysterically. Very Sylvia Likens, this one. Clara's crying hysterically and told officers that the boy was her son and that his name was Andre. Why are you immediately admitting? I'd be like, how did this child get into this house? What's happening here? What a surprise. Oh, it's my son, actually, officers.

Thank God you found him. It's been the longest game of hide and seek on record. The only other remotely coherent thing that Clara said was that they couldn't possibly understand why she had been keeping her son like this. I see. That makes total sense. No, I'm sure they can't because you sound mental. Andre was taken to hospital and examined by doctors who were left horrified by the signs of abuse on the boy's body.

He had long scars running along his arms and his back that looked like they were caused with a blade. There were strange welts around his groin and a large circular scar on his buttock. Police then discovered that Andre had a younger brother who was not being kept in the poop basement. He was at school and his name was Jakob. And Jakob had similar scars to his brother, apart from the circular one on his buttocks. So Clara and Katrina were obviously now in police custody. And Jakob and Anika were taken to a children's institution. Because Anika is like teeny.

She's like a teenage person. Oh, it makes me think of like orphan. What's that case? Gypsy Rose Blanchard yes yes it's very reminiscent of both of those things yes i say teeny maybe not so clara and caterina refused to cooperate with police so the officers had no choice but to try and get some answers from the children they started with yakub who initially told the officers that the scars were actually the result of scratches from a pet gerbil and that the welts on his groin were from wasp stings. Of course nobody

was buying that and after a few days Jakob revealed that the scars were caused by, no surprises, his mum. Shocker. Shock horror. The police never got the chance to interview Anika because three days after the raid on their house she somehow escaped out of an open window and we don't know whether she escaped on her own or whether she was abducted. I know what I think. So this is actually quite difficult to follow and it becomes really convoluted so let's try very hard to stay together. Let's hold hands like we're going on a bear hunt. So just a few years before Edward turned on that baby monitor Clara was a happily married excellent mother looking after her two young sons andre and jacob she got pregnant at 18 and in 1996 she married her boyfriend jacob was born in 97 and andre followed after in 99

despite being young parents which is a tough gig the pair were happy and stable clara was able to get herself an economics degree and she began working in a sector this is literally the third week in a row where someone who's done really fucked up shit had an economics degree is it like how we talk about on our new show sinister societies over exclusively on spotify how we talk about like every serial killer was like a virgo is it that they also happen to be a virgo and have an economics degree i mean quite possibly maybe economics degrees are just breeding grounds for horrible psychopaths it is weird I'll give you that we've come across too many now that have got economics degrees I mean it's a trend you could probably make a pie chart about it you could you could make a bar chart show you the trend I reckon

I reckon top three this is my bold statement with no evidence whatsoever my bold statement is the top three most common like psychopathic degrees that you will come across with killers it's clearly economics i can't deny it now because we've seen it too much psychology and law law i'm with you psychology i'm convinced because i feel like people who study psychology study psychology because they're like what's wrong with me i'm gonna go study psychology to find out no I don't know what my top three are I think I'm with you in economics and law I'm not sold on psychology politics maybe maybe I'm sticking with psychology I feel like they're on the hunt for answers for themselves and they can't find it so they end up killing it's like why Jimmy Savile spent so much time at Broadmoor exactly where were

we oh yeah Clara being a pretty good parent, but unfortunately getting an economics degree, which is just the path to destruction. So the young family were leading a very good life and they went on frequent family holidays. Every year, the boys went to a summer camp that they loved. They also had an excellent education. They spent lots of time playing outdoors

and they even learned multiple languages, which for continental Europe is pretty standard. It's only us that let the side down this is true but so far so good so far so good so far you know guest star case study on the parenting podcast don't but it's about to go downhill some point in about 2003 clara and her husband's marriage began to break down it ended ended in an amicable divorce, but a divorce nonetheless, and they both went their separate ways. Clara got full custody of the boys and her husband was pretty pleased about that because she'd always been a more than capable mother.

So the divorce aside, everything was going pretty well. Until Clara's older sister, Katrina, came out of the woodwork. Katrina worked in childcare and she came to visit Clara with the 13-year-old girl named Anika, who she said had been rescued from a child sex trafficking ring in Norway. She explained to Clara that Anika was autistic and suffered from

a number of illnesses including leukaemia, kidney failure, and she was slowly going deaf and blind. This is where the Gypsy Rose things come in. Hello. Hello, Gypsy Rose Blanchard. Yeah.ara was so touched by this sad story of the young orphan's plight that she agreed to take annika in as one of her own being a single mother of two sons meant that she already had her hands quite full so katarina out of the kindness of her heart offered to help out by taking annika to and from her frequent hospital visits, where she was treated by

a specialist Norwegian doctor. This is so convoluted. I know. Katerina would always insist that Clara didn't need to go to these visits. She could handle it, even though she was nowhere near this child's legal guardian. And Clara never spoke to Anika's specialist doctor

in person, but she did speak to him via text and email text yeah no no facetime no skype nothing like that just text exactly the doctor the catfish doctor texting the doctor about my adopted child's leukemia just texting i mean that seems full enough for me yeah i haven't got time i'm very busy could you just send it in a text? Could you just ping me? Could you just ping that over? I fucking hate when people say that. I'm just going to throw it in

because it is a nightmare and this is a Halloween episode. Don't tell me to ping you. So apparently this doctor was the only person who could possibly treat Anika. Is it Count Carl? Maybe it is a reincarnation of Count Carl. So weeks passed

and Anika began telling Clara horrific stories of the abuse she had suffered at the hands of the Norwegian child traffickers. Although it never dawned on Clara why this Norwegian orphan spoke absolutely perfect Czech with absolutely no hint of a Norwegian accent at all. Look, guys, I'm going to say it again. Let's be somewhat sceptical. Not endlessly, but somewhat s but somewhat yeah especially when someone just shows up with a child and they're like you want this one right here here's the number to text for her doctor yeah it's uh it's bad news bears and clara gets progressively more obsessed with anika over the course of the year and she actually completely started to neglect her own children

andre and Jakob. Watching this from afar, Clara's parents stepped in to take care of the boys, understanding that Clara had adopted a very sickly and traumatized young girl who needed a lot of her attention. So that's top-tier parenting. That's pretty good. But the adoption process is long and difficult. But by the end of 2006, it was very, very close to the end. Clara had very, very nearly legally adopted anika until suddenly

the mysterious norwegian doctor phoned clara not text her phoned her on a real phone and spoke with his real voice he phoned to tell her that she would be unable to adopt anika because anika had made a complaint to him that andre and and Jakob were bullying her incessantly. Oh, for God's sake. Also, can I ask, does this Norwegian doctor have a Norwegian accent? If he does, I don't know how to do one. No, God, nor do I. I can't even hear what Norwegian accents sound like in my head.

No, I can't either. And I have Norwegian friends, but they all have such perfect British accents or like slightly american twangs i don't know and my swedish accent is offensive so yeah i know i can hear my swedish accent in my head and it's not acceptable not ideal we'll just save ourselves we're popular with the scandies we don't want to ruin it so the solution to this adoption dilemma the doctor obviously had a norwegian solution he told clara that the doctor obviously had a Norwegian solution. He told Clara that the only way she would be able to get out of this was if she rid the evil spirits from her sons with his own brand of therapy.

I see. So we've jumped from bullying allegations to them being infested with evil spirits. So we've also gone from Gypsy Rose Blanchard straight into Candice Newmaker. Yes, quite. So the therapy involved hard discipline, physical punishments, and for Clara to stop acting like a mother figure and more like a tutor. A pedagogue, if you will. Oh, good.

That won't fucking ruin your children. I think, yes, I think they've got bigger worries, these kids. But Clara, so obsessed with not losing Annika decided that she would do whatever this mystery Norwegian doctor said and she started to beat Andrea and Jakob using belt buckles wooden spoons and she locked them in a cupboard under the stairs she'd lock them in the bathroom and sometimes she'd make them spend the entire night in the bathroom until they had quote learned their lesson whatever that is a few months later in august the mystery norwegian doctor informed clara that he felt the therapy wasn't working

and he told her that it was time for shock therapy oh good yeah i'm glad you've got a plan here mr norwegian doctor he's a man with a plan so clara took her two young sons from their home to a cottage in the middle of nowhere okay Okay. Where nothing good ever happens. No. Here, they were met by a man called Jan Skala, who Clara hadn't met before. But there was someone else there called Jan Torek, who she did know. He actually ran summer camps that the boys used to go to. And there was also another lady there called Hanna Basova, who worked as a supervisor at the camps as well.

And, of course, Katarina a supervisor at the camps as well and of course katarina was waiting for them there as well her and this norwegian doctor are tight they obviously have do your parents ever do that really annoying thing where they tell your sibling something and assume that you know no but i assume they probably do it to my sibling yeah i'm on the other end of it as As instructed, Clara left the boys with these strangers, and she was told she was not allowed to visit them until she was given permission. So when the boys went inside the cottage without their mum, waiting for them was a pair of dog cages,

and they were just big enough for the boys to kneel inside. And the boys were stuffed inside these cages, and they were told that they were absolutely not allowed to communicate with each other or anybody else. They were forced to eat from dog bowls, and they had to defecate in these cages, and they were only allowed out to be tortured at the hands of the strangers and their aunt, Katerina. What the fuck? Yeah, it's fucking, it's fucking it's rough over the course of a week the boys had bags placed over their head whilst being beaten with belt buckles again bamboo poles their skin was scratched with sharp forks which seems that sounds like a translation a sharp fork that sounds like a trident maybe

lightly brushed with a sharp fork like in little mermaid where she like brushes her hair with a fork it's like something like that. Oh, their groins were burnt with cigarette stubs. We're going to get this through this together, guys. We're nearly there. And they had boiling hot water poured all over their chests. For fuck's sake. What the fuck?

And they were also, this for me is the worst bit, were forced to listen to deafening industrial music 24 hours a day so they could never sleep. What's industrial music? You know, in like German sex clubs okay yeah if i i'm like oh that like very heavy bass strobe lights okay okay okay got it not sleepy nighttime music for sure no not sleepy nighttime music probably like the score for every french extreme horror film it's interesting and you probably know more about this than i do but like some because all of my german sex club experience i was gonna say there's a film called i think it's called irreversible uh which is a french extreme horror

film i would not recommend i would not recommend don't watch it it has got the most horrendously awful rape scene possibly in any like you know I wouldn't say it's irreversible as like mainstream but like in any like official movie probably and it goes on for fucking ages and it's horrendous and it's basically this woman gets raped and then her ex-boyfriend and her current boyfriend go to find the man who did it she's walking home through like a subway like an underground subway pass to get to the other side of the road without crossing the street overground and it's when she enters in there and then they start playing this music and it's like this I can't do it because I'm so tone deaf but you know

what I mean like that heavy bass I was watching an interview with the director and they were saying that that school had been designed in a way because that music actually induces anxiety in people so even if they were playing it over not a terrifying scene it would have still induced anxiety in people because of the pitch and the tone and the way that the music is playing which i thought was interesting that is interesting like infrasound yeah yeah yeah and it's like apparently it's like quite a common thing that they do in good horror films where they have actually put some fucking time and thought into it and not like bloody you know paranormal activity 17 or whatever where they do actually create scores that are

meant to induce that feeling of panic and anxiety in you is it the same film where i've only seen photos of it i haven't seen where she's like in a subway and she's like screaming she's not in a subway she's in like the walkway okay underneath do you know what i mean like the subway walkway yes yeah so she's in one of those and it's like very like readily lit and she's leaving a party and she's wearing a dress and it's this man and he's like beating up a sex worker. And then she. No, I don't think I have seen that. She like walks past him beating up this sex worker and she doesn't interview.

She's just kind of like panics and tries to get away from the situation. And then he lets the sex worker goes and then attacks her. Okay. Okay. No, I don't think I have seen that. Like I said, I wouldn't think I have seen that. Like I said, I wouldn't recommend. It's like Marta's fucked me up, but this in a different way

because it's very supernatural. But this fucks you up and just like the sheer like brutality of it and like the realness of it, which is just absolutely nightmarish. So don't watch it. But I just thought it was interesting about the music. Interesting.

So right, yes, a few little more tiny, tiny bits of child abuse and then we'll move on, I promise. The boys were also one night taken outside and they were forced to dig shallow graves and then lie in them while repeatedly being told that they were actually dead and in the afterlife. Oh, good. You don't want to just do physical abuse. No, no, really, really awful stuff.

And one day, Andre, who the group in the cottage decided they particularly disliked, was taken out in the middle of the night, pinned to the ground with a bag on his head. And then when the bag was taken off, he discovered to his horror that his mother, Clara, was the one standing over him, holding a knife. And then she cut out a chunk of flesh from his buttocks. What? And then this circular piece of flesh was passed around the people in the cottage

and they ate it. No. Yes, they did. No. They did. I'm sorry. Okay, this reminds me of like 2017 Ripper Crew of Chicago.

Yeah. And this also makes me think of like, obviously we talk about satanic panic all the time and kids being like this kind of ritualistic abuse happened to them. And everyone's like, no, it didn't. Obviously we know that that kind of thing didn't actually happen.

But this is the closest that I have come across. Absolutely. So the cannibalism rounded off the summer of abuse. And after eight days of torture, Andre and Jakob were allowed to go home. But they had to go home with Clara and Anika. And that's when they ended up in Currim. Under doctor's orders, Jakob returned to school

after being thoroughly trained on what to tell teachers if he was questioned. But Andre, he was going to have to be homeschooled, it was decided, because of his partial deafness that was totally made up and not real at all. And that is when he was locked in the concrete room, most days, naked, bound, beaten and dehydrated. So that takes us back to where we started, where the adoption process for Anika was finally coming to a close. And in contrast to the concrete room where the boys lived, Anika was kept in a brightly

painted warm bedroom full of stuffed toys. Like, you know, the typical sort of young girl room. Katerina would regularly visit the boys and tortured them almost daily. She did it especially badly when Anika said that they had been bullying her. And life continued this way right up until the day

that Edward Turdy turned on his baby monitor. This is so weird. This whole story is so strange because it's like she's pretty normal like for the most part Carla is pretty normal. I think Carla's a really good example of how you know how we always say like oh like someone had a pretty normal childhood apart from like their dad left or like whatever and then you're like well that happens to a lot of people and they don't go south as quickly I think Clara is a really classic example of someone who only needs a few things to happen to her for it to be like full-blown personality disorder town because people are triggered by different things yeah and I think

that's an interesting point to make isn't it because often like we thought about this a lot when we were writing the book like there are obviously cases of killers who have had absolutely abominable childhoods and like absolute nightmare stuff but obviously that also happened to a bunch of people who didn't go and do anything but then there are also killers where nothing bad happened to them and I think they're the ones that are the most mysterious and they're the ones that maybe make us reach for that monster description because we don't understand where it came from so we're not quite done i'm afraid so we've done sylvia likens we've done candace newmaker we've done a little bit of gypsy rose and now we're gonna plunge straight into orphan shit what so if you cast your mind back to about 20 minutes ago when

we were talking about anika escaping from the children's home out of a window well it's about to get m night sharmalan up in this bitch. Turns out, after a lot of police work, there were no official documents in existence about a 13-year-old Norwegian sex traffic girl called Anika. But after her photo was circulated, quite a few people came forward claiming that they recognised her to be a 33-year-old woman.

Shut fucking words, wait. How, how, I would like to know, as a woman who is imminently about to turn 32, how a 33 year old woman managed to look like a 13 year old child. Well, we would try to get in the pub the other day and Saru got mistaken for a 17 year old. Yep. It is 18 is the legal age of drinking here in jolly old England. And I just didn't even think about it because I am almost 32 like in three weeks time I will be 32 years old just walked into a pub didn't even think about it and the pubs like took my arm and was like can I see some ID and I didn't have any ID because I'm 31 and I just looked at him and said I'm 31 years old and then he was like okay and then let me go he was like whatever you're doing, keep doing it.

It's because you had tracksuit bottoms on. That's why. I did. You're wearing like a sweatsuit. I was. I was wearing like sweatshirt and joggers. And I was just like stomping around London. And he was like, no, child.

So maybe you're not that far off older. Barbara Sklova is her name. Oh, oh. Investigators then realized there was actually a connection between auntie katarina and this barbora character they went to the same university and barbora had the most sinister degree of all was economics it was performing arts there there you go that's number three that's number three anyone who calls himself a performance artist stay away away from me. I don't want to be anywhere near you. I don't want to be a part of your mime. I don't want to be in your flash mob. I don't want

to watch you smear a Big Mac over your leotard. I just want absolutely nothing to do with it, I'm afraid. No, I don't think I've ever even come in spitting distance of a performance artist well when we go to enderborough my friend you'll be surrounded oh i can't wait it's all right i'll only take you to the good one so not only was barbara a performance artist but she was also a member of the czech branch of a religious sect known as the grail movement oh here we go and it's believed that barbara inducted katarina into this group and they targeted clara because they knew she was simple and trusting easy target and the head of this sect was none other than yang sclara the guy from the cottage so the grail movement is an organization

from the late 40s which started in germany which obviously like not the best time to be a german and it's based on books written by oscar erntz burnhart whose pen name is actually abdreshin and he was the classic self-proclaimed messiah classic okay this is reminding me of another film that stems from a video game and i know it's not very popular but i happen to love this film or this series of films might get some hate for it but the silent hill films you do love silent hill i do love the Silent Hill films I think people are gonna be like oh they're so shut up they're really good and do you want to know a fun fact about it yes so the people that made the video game Silent Hill I've forgotten what they're

called like Tanami Takami or something it's like a Japanese game production company that made it and they had had for years people asking to make Silent Hill films and they'd always said no and then I can't remember the name of the director that actually made the Silent Hill films but he was so obsessed with the video games he was determined to make these movies that he created this whole long like video essay of him talking about why he wanted to make it and he sent it to them and they gave him the rights well there you go so never give up on your dreams everyone especially if your dreams are to make a film about silent hill maybe i don't know i really like it i enjoy it i do like that as well it's fun it's fun films and in that they've obviously got that weird like cult movement and the girl and you know i'll be honest i haven't

seen it for years it's i mean yeah i was gonna be like you haven't seen it but if you haven't seen it for years that is more than acceptable no I was going to be like, you haven't seen it. But if you haven't seen it for years, that is more than acceptable. No, and I also get it confused with the Hillside Eyes. Oh, no, very different. This one's the one with Pyramid Head. Oh, maybe I haven't seen it then. It's a guy who's like really muscly and he's got a pyramid for a head and he grabs this woman in one scene.

Basically, there's like a klaxon that goes off and every time the klaxon goes off, you have to get outside of the real world and get into the church for salvation. And that's when all the monsters come out, blah, blah, blah. Oh, no, I haven't seen it. And then when the klaxon stops, you can come back outside. And this woman is like running to get into the church for salvation and that's when all the monsters come out blah blah blah and then when the klaxon stops you can come back outside and this woman is like running to get into the church and the first time we hear the klaxon go off and pyramid head makes his first appearance and he grabs her and just tears her skin off okay and that was my reaction i was like okay film no i haven't seen it i will i will watch it this weekend and i'll talk to you about it on monday oh my god i will also watch it okay re rewatch it just watch the first one the rest are not okay the grail movement

actually claims to boast around 10 000 members all over the world so in countries like the uk and in america as well we should say that the official leaders of the grail movement have denied the people in this story having any association with them. Because of course they do. And they've actually sued a number of Czech newspapers who claim that the Grail movement is a cult of child abusing cannibals. Because there's nothing like convincing people you're innocent with aggressive legal action. The Grail movement distanced themselves from this whole case but investigators didn't stop looking for barbara and eventually they found her

in denmark going by the name adam this is a very pan-european case it really is and adam isn't a danish name for a girl's name it's a boy's's name in Denmark too. Barbora had gained 30 kilos. She'd undergone a breast reduction surgery and was currently passing herself off as a 13-year-old boy. She's a chameleon, this one. Yes, or sociopath. And this Adam, in inverted commas, had found himself a place in an emergency children's shelter

after claiming he had escaped from an abusive father. But they were quite quickly shipped back to the Czech Republic. Do you remember that case that came out a couple of years ago of that little girl and then the parents had adopted her from Romania in the US or in Canada in Canada and then they abandoned her and said that it was because she was actually an adult woman? Yes. Whatever happened with that? I don't know and i really tried to look but it's kind of just vanished oh like you tried to look like in relation to this case and there was just nothing what the fuck how did that just vanish there was like there was like a whole dr phil

like two-part episode about it but like it just seemed that all the tests they did at the end of it were just like inconclusive and it didn't really prove anything no i think that was the thing it was like it's actually very difficult to age someone like you can't just like chop someone's leg off and count the rings like it's very difficult actually it's a big problem with um refugees um because obviously if you're under 16 and you're claiming asylum you have a lot more rights than someone who doesn't and a lot of like I've just heard a lot of stories of girls saying that they're 14 and no one believing them because of how old they look and then they're like I've been trafficked yeah like obviously i look older than i am yeah some fucking horrible shit's happened to me that's

why i'm not flouncing around london in a fucking tracksuit getting mistaken for being 17 quite seen a lot of life maybe i could change my instagram bio to that what stomping around in a tracksuit still gets mistaken for 17. That would be even worse, I'm afraid. That would push the bio over the edge. 32 going on 17. No. I won't allow it, I'm afraid.

It's a step too far. I bought you a bunch of Korean skincare for your birthday. If you fucking did, I'll be a baby by next week. You'll come back and you'll look like... Okay. I don't know why we just keep talking about films in this because why not the horrible twilight films yeah so the horrible twilight film where edward and bella have a baby the face of the baby is one of the most troubling things i've ever seen i haven't seen it don't don't watch it don't watch it it is basically i just watched it one christmas just like trash tv i don't know why i watched it and i didn't watch it in order and I didn't really know what was going on.

So it was like all sorts of extra confusing. But I suspect what happened is they didn't want to have a baby in the actual, like didn't want to have a baby on set. So what it looks like they have is just like a doll that they've CGI'd a baby's face onto it. I don't like it. But there's loads of parts of the film where the cgi baby's face isn't like they haven't even bothered to animate it so it's like everyone else is moving but that's just holding a baby and its face is just like that's what's gonna happen to me the rest of my body is gonna stay exactly the same but my head is just gonna get really really small

and i'll just turn into a cgi baby your face will just look like a cgi baby perfect excellent and then i'll get married you're welcome be irresistible to the fellas then right so let's get back on track shall we after a very long confusing and boring trial that we're not going to bore you with we'll just skip straight on to the sentencing clara was sentenced to nine years katarina was sentenced to 10. Barbora was given just five. And Jan was sentenced to seven years. And the other Jan also got seven years. I feel like Barbora needs more.

Well, Barbora is problematic. All of the people were analysed by psychiatrists. And Clara was found to have histrionic personality disorder. So, you know, characterised by an extreme desire for external recognition and admiration and a tendency for emotional displays and she also showed signs of a dependent personality so essentially the inability to make decisions without the approval of an authority figure katarina on the other hand was found to be a very intelligent ambitious authoritative which i mean that's sort of a unfair pairing isn't it yeah Katerina was also found to have sadistic and paedophilic sexual tendencies,

which were extremely apparent in her treatment of Andre and Jakob. Barbora was found to have many traits indicating psychopathy, with her incredible propensity for deceitfulness and ability to manipulate. During her evaluation, she'd act infantile and vulnerable when it suited her, but when faced with something she strongly disagreed with, she would become aggressive and argue back in a very adult manner, demonstrating an incredibly high level of intelligence.

We don't know what the motivation was for these actions, but we do know that Barbora was only given five years. That's outrageous. Which means that this psychopathic master of disguise... Oh my God, she's out. ...is out. She lives amongst us. You might even know her.

You might have adopted her. You might have adopted her, and you wouldn't know any better. What if she was that Romanian orphan? What if she's me? Oh my God. And you've CGI babied your face. Maybe I have.

You only met me in 2017, mate. I could have lived a whole other life before then. Oh my God. On that bombshell. Tis I, I'm Barbara. There we go. Plot twist, plot twist. I was like on that bombshell and then I just stopped talking.

Just on that bombshell, silence. I didn't know where I was going with that. But on that bombshell, Hannah is none other than Barbara withara with cgi babyface so that is it guys that is it for your first dose of red-handed at halloween with a story swap we're gonna be back next week with another story swap where i've forgotten what oh no i remember what i'm doing oh yes oh yes it's gonna be tense i think mine's mine's kids again i think mine is sorry guys we've really really done a number on you this year sorry mine is kids again um one is also kids again. Fuck, we've really done a number on you this year. Sorry, mine is kids again.

One out of four wasn't. So there you go. That's true, that's true. You can take that to the bank. Three kids, one pretend doctor. There you go. We're doing our best. A cardboard vagina.

So take what you will from this episode. Don't join a cult. If you're feeling lonely, get the flannel and the baby oil. And have yourself a great time. We'll see you again next week for part two. Bye. Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. Thank you. 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.

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