Stuff You Should Know - 10 Cases of Mistaken Identity

Episode Date: October 13, 2022

There’s a lot that can go wrong when your identity is at question. Charged with abandoning a baby? Check. Years in prison? That too. Accused of assassinating the head of Hamas? Why not. Learn about the travails of some unlucky saps in this episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, it's Josh and Chuck is here in spirit too. And we just wanted to drop a casual reminder that we are going to have a swing in Pacific Northwest swing this coming February and tickets are now on sale. February 1st will be at the Moore Theater in Seattle.

February 2nd will be at Revolution Hall in Portland. And on February 3rd for SF Sketchfest will be at the Sydney Goldstein Theater. Go check out all of our social medias for more information and links to tickets and we'll see you in February. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's hanging out too, so that makes this a good old-fashioned Stuff You Should Know episode. Old school top 10 of dish. Yeah, do you think we'll actually make it through 10 of these? I might not. Maybe you'll do all 10. I'll keep going after you log off. How about that?

Yeah, we could probably get through all 10 of these. They're pretty contained. We'll see. Let's just start at the beginning. I just want to make sure that we hit the last one, number one for sure, okay? Let's do it then. All right. What are we talking about even? Well, we're talking today about cases of mistaken identity. Is anyone who read the title of this episode or maybe even the synopsis could tell you. Right. And we talked a lot, Chuck, in our doppelganger episode, which hopefully came out before this episode or else people won't know what we're talking about. We talked a lot about some of this stuff, which is like terrible things can happen if somebody mistakes you for somebody else and that even in the age of facial recognition

technology and genetic testing, that stuff can still happen. And because of our faith in things like facial recognition programs and DNA testing, if you do come up with a mistaken identity case, it makes it much harder to be believed when you're like, I swear to God, it wasn't me. Because people say, we've got your DNA, man. And it's a match. It was you. You're just fibbing. Yeah. And I think it gets a lot more interesting when you're talking about mistaken identity for a crime that has been committed. Yeah, totally. So I already want to skip this first one. Can we? Sure, let's do it. And we'll go instead to

Grand Old Israel, where there was an Australian expat named Nicole McCabe, who'd been living there for years, was married. She was six months pregnant at the time that this happened in 2010. Yes. And apparently she was watching the news, the local news in Israel and saw that there was an assassination of one of the Hamas chiefs, Mahmoud al-Mabu. That's what I'm going with. Sure. Mahmoud? Yeah, Mahmoud. M-A-B-H-O-U-H. How else are you going to say that? That's how I would say it. So he was assassinated in Dubai, and the Dubai authorities were looking for 26 people. And

one of them was Nicole McCabe. And she knew they were looking for it because they showed her passport on television. That's right. So she was like, what is going on? WTF? So it turns out that if you are in Israeli intelligence agency, and it's called Mossad, you can say, hey, I want to use real identities as a cover. So instead of like making up a false identity as a cover for their agents, they use real identities. And they basically use the identities of foreigners living in Israel. And all 26 of these Westerners, evidently, and this is why they were suspected, is because they were real identities used by Mossad as cover that were real people. And they just basically lifted their information from government databases. It's not like she lost her license

in her passport and stuff like that. They just took it basically, and sorry, except they didn't say sorry. They didn't even say sorry. They just did it. That's so insidious that apparently some of the 26 expats living in Israel were Brits. And the UK expelled the highest ranking Mossad agent from the Israeli embassy as a result of this. It's just like you don't do that. And apparently, that was like standard procedure for the Mossad. So Nicole McCabe, being an Australian, was expecting that Australia would help her out of like this legal jam that she had been gotten into. And they were like, how about we just give you another passport? And she said, is that it? And they said, yeah, that's it. But you should probably take it because you're going to be on every single

watch list in the world now using your old passport. Just go with the new one. Do the smart thing, McCabe. And she said, crikey, let's go. Now this is in 2010. I wonder if they've stopped using real identities because that just seems like a recipe for trouble. It definitely does. And it's one of those things that was like super reported on and then never reported on. So I didn't see any follow up stuff, but it was widely reported on in different outlets about it. And it wasn't just the same story over and over again. It was it was investigated, but there wasn't a lot of follow up. Yeah. All right, moving on to the next one, number eight or number two, depending on how you want to number these. Sure. This was a case of mistaken identity that also was the case of someone else

having that same name as well, which is we talked a little bit about this. Someone else, I think, in the, oh no, I don't think that anyone had the same name in the doppelganger episode, did they? No. I don't think so. But that was the case with Will West in New York about the turn of the 20th century. Yeah. He was brought up on charges of manslaughter and taken to Leavenworth prison to be, what's it called when they induct you? It's not inducting. Like identify you? I guess when they book you, process you. Yeah. Procedurally check you in? Sure. That's what we'll go with. It's better than induction. I'll tell you that. And he said, I've never been here before. I've never been in trouble with the law before. And as part of standard

procedure, they followed the Bertillion process of measuring your head, your face, the distance between your eyes, the length of your nose, the width from ear to ear, all this different stuff. It's a form of what's called anthropometry. Anthropometry. No, I'm going with anthropometry. And we talked about before, I think, in the forensics episode, probably the fingerprinting episode, it was the way that you distinguished one person from another, usually criminals, before we relied on fingerprints. And apparently it worked really well because it was so granular and so detailed. And so they took Will West's measurements and they said, you know what? We found somebody with the exact same measurements as you. Right. So you have the same name.

You have nearly identical measurements, according to this French police procedure of identifying people. You look like them in the photograph. It's not just that your head measures out the same. And so we think we've got you, buddy. And he's like, it's not me. I promise you. And as it turns out, the real William West was already in Leavenworth, already serving a life sentence for murder. And even though fingerprinting wasn't widespread, they were able to use in the early days of fingerprinting their fingerprints to write this wrong. Yeah. And some people have speculated that these guys were actually like related somehow, maybe even twins that were pulling a scam. But as far as anyone officially knows, they were essentially doppelgangers that

happened to have the same name. And they look so much alike. If you look at pictures of them, like they were clearly doppelgangers that Will West, when he was being booked, they showed him the pictures from the past booking. And he said, yeah, that's me, but I don't know where you got that photo. Like how much it looked like him. He thought it was a photo of himself. So they ended up moving to fingerprints. I think the warden of Leavenworth stopped using the Bertelon process, like the next day, essentially, fingerprints instead. Because yeah, because everyone thought the Bertelon process was like unassailable. And then it showed, no, there's a problem. And fingerprints got got us out of this jam. So let's just all move to fingerprints from that

point on. Yeah, the headline headline the next day said Bertelon process, assailable, exclamation point. Right. Clark says fingerprints rule. Oh, yeah, you're Clark. I got that now. It took me. It was Clark. All right. And now we can move on to the case of, well, three gentlemen, there was a bad guy who committed crimes under the names John Smith and a much more fancy pants name, Lord Wilton de Willoughby. Nice. And it seemed like this guy and for about, geez, for almost 20 years was bilking women out of their jewelry by, I guess, writing bad checks. He was a con man and a thief and a man named Adolf Beck was mistaken for this man. And it wasn't just the case of, oh, you look like him. Oh, we booked you, but hey, we cleared it up.

This guy did hard time, seven years in prison. Yeah. So apparently Lord Wilton de Willoughby's scam was he would find a woman, say that he was looking for a mistress and I think he'll just find you like me. I like you. And hey, that jewelry you're wearing is kind of shabby. Why don't you give it to me and I will take it and use it for size to give you some very nice jewelry. And then he just wouldn't return the jewelry. And it was such a petty crime. This wasn't nice jewelry. Like he must have taken tens of dollars worth of jewelry, but he did it very frequently. He was convicted and put in prison in 1877. The exact same crime was carried out in 1896 by him, but it just so happened that Adolf Beck was fingered for that crime. And they were like,

you were the same man who was convicted in 1877 and we know it. And he said, no, it wasn't me. It wasn't me. And they didn't listen to him. Like you said, he did hard time like for years. Yeah. For seven years. And he had a lot of evidence to prove that it wasn't him. He was like, hey, I was in Peru during this initial crime and I can prove that. Right. And he said, also, I'm not circumcised. Take a look at this. Hey, no, no, no, no. He said, this is important. Stop being childish. Well, but that's true. He was not circumcised apparently. I mean, who was the real name? I think maybe Frederick Meier. I saw that. I saw William Thomas, William Wyatt. I'm not sure. Most people just refer to him as John Smith. John old circumcised Smith. So 15 convictions,

seven years in prison, and it gets worse. He finally gets out of prison for a crime he didn't commit. He's in his, I think he's 60 at this point. And old Lord Willoughby was still going to work and this guy got convicted again for the same guy's crime. Yeah. So somebody, luckily a journalist at the Daily Mail had taken an interest in this and was like, this is a gross miscarriage of justice. Like it's been documented. This is not the same guy for years and they're going after him again. So he turned public opinion against the crown and basically pointed to the prosecutor and said, this man is penis. He said, this man is not only incompetent. He's almost a fraud. He's such a bad lawyer and we should release this guy. So

not only did they release him, the crown gave him a $5,000 compensation, I'm sorry, 5,000 pound compensation. Chuck, not only did I do the inflation calculator for pounds, I converted it to dollars. All right, let's hear it. So in 1900, 5,000 pounds was worth about 683,000 pounds today. And if you convert that to dollars today, he got $787,000. Hey, that's about a hundred grand a year for being in prison. I get the impression he wasn't a bad guy from what I saw, but he was not a magnet for money. Apparently he did not die with any money. I'm going to just say it. I know how much you hate it. He died penniless. But one of the upshots of this is a direct result of this miscarriage of justice from just

mistaken identity. The British court of appeals was established like three years after he was convicted the last time. Well, and it became sort of a, hey, eyewitness, because I think 16 people identified him and it sort of became a, hey, this reliability of eyewitnesses is not something we could really lean into all the time. Yeah, 16 people. He really did look a lot like him, but I mean, come on. There's got to be something like, you can't read a genuine protestation from an innocent person. Let's open our eyes a little bit here, people, okay? Yeah, and open your pants and just check out the penis. That would have solved that once and for all. They were just so prude, I guess. They wouldn't even look at that very clear evidence.

I mean, they were Victorian Chuck. All right, should we take a break? Yeah, I got to say, I'm having a lot of fun here, but I do think we should take a break at this point. Okay, let's do it. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear.

And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael, and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangeh Shatikler. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India,

it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart

Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. This one is a little sad on a lot of levels. This was a medical identity theft. And by the way, this, we want to thank our old, if we're doing a top 10, chances are it's from our old friends at HowStuffWorks.com, because we used to write a lot of those. This one specifically is by Nicholas Gerbis or Gerbis. I don't know how you pronounce his name, but I think you did a bang-up job on this one. Bang-up job. So this is a case of Ann Duree Sacks, who lived in Salt Lake City, Utah, was a mom, had four kids. And all of a sudden was reported that her newborn child, under her name, tested positive for illegal drugs, which is a problem for that mom. She's like,

Hey, listen, I got four kids, but I don't have a newborn. And I certainly don't have a newborn that tested positive for drugs. Myth, no less. So not only was the newborn tested positive for meth, the newborn had been abandoned by the mother, who had also split with a $10,000 medical bill. Dix or baby to meth, abandons the baby, doesn't pay a $10,000 bill. So of course, the hospital's like, you're a crook and we're not going to listen to anything you said. The woman's like, no, I swear to God, it was not me. And finally turned out that a drug addicted woman had broken into Ann Duree Sacks's car, got her ID, which is a lesson, never leave your license in your car. That's just a bad idea all around. Got her medical records and then went and gave birth

as Ann Duree Sacks. And ultimately apparently amended Ann Duree Sacks medical history with this information that may or may not have been purged. Yeah. So, you know, who knows what this imposter reported about their medical history, but Sacks can't find out because there are laws, privacy laws that prevent the records from being shown even to her. So basically she has always sort of be on the lookout for this. She has in real life a clotting disorder in her blood. And if she's given the wrong blood type, she could die. So she doesn't really even know what's in there for what kind of blood type she has on her medical records. So now Ann Duree Sacks has to be just really careful and I guess proactive

anytime she goes to the hospital or doctor. Yeah. The whole thing's called medical identity theft. This happened in I think 2010-ish and it was like a super scary 2010 thing to happen. But apparently it was happening at the time fairly frequently enough that they interviewed a couple other people and they were like, man, if this happens to you, you are on your own because not only is the hospital not helping you, they sick, basically billing investigators to find out what's going on and they interviewed Ann Duree Sacks's like children to find out had mommy been pregnant recently. They would not believe her. They just, they did not take her word for it. And it wasn't until she took a DNA test to prove like, this is not my child. They finally

served her back off. Yeah, exactly. I wonder if you could like demand that first rather than putting your family through all that, you know? I think so. You just show up with a ziplock bag of blood at the investigators office and be like, test this. You just plunk it down on the desk in front of them. Or just spit at them and say, collect this. There you go. Oh boy, check that. Turn dark pretty fast, but I liked it. Well, that whole story was dark. It's very just heartbreaking situation all the way around. I've got a little positive spin for you then. Oh, okay. At the end of the article I read, you know, this is a different article. Apparently, the mother, the actual like biological mom who had abandoned her kid got let out of jail because

she played guilty to some other stuff and did some time and like did her time. But Ann Duree Sacks was interviewed and when asked how she felt about it, she said, if the use of my ideas would allow that baby a chance to survive, then it's worth it to me. Wow. I thought you're going to say that, you know, the biological mom turned her life around and reclaim the baby. No, don't be naive. That's a good one. How about this? Number five, or we skipped one. So number four. Six. Six. How can we be this bad at this? I don't know, math has never been our friend. In 2003, the cops in Britain said that we would very much like to arrest you, Peter Hamkin, and that's how we do things over here for cops because we think you've murdered someone. We're

not going to pull a gun on you, but we're just going to ask you very kindly to come with us. We think you murdered a woman in Italy last year. In 2002, you matched the description of the person and you're coming with me, but this bartender was like, I never been to Italy. They're like, you sound like you have been. As a matter of fact, you sound like you're from Italy, friend. He said, but it's not a true. So this bartender, what was his name? Peter Hamkin, I believe. Yeah, Hamkin. He was like, you guys have never been to Italy. I certainly wasn't there when this murder happened. They said, okay, not only do you look just like the description of the guy that we're looking for, we're going to take your blood and oh yeah, you're a match,

my friend. You're a match to this, I guess the evidence that had been found on the scene. Peter Hamkin was suddenly in a lot of trouble despite the fact that it was not him. This is where we reached the beginnings of the true dystopian mistaken identity stuff. Yeah, this one, I don't understand it in a way, but here's how it works. If you are using DNA databases to match someone, it is going to compare subsites on the strand that are called locus or together they're called Loki. And that's just like, I've seen it described as showing like the gene's neighborhood is the physical location of the gene on a chromosome. And depending on where you are and what lab you are and where you are in the world, you might use a different, a certain

amount of these Loki as identifiers. In the States, I think the FBI uses 13. In the UK, it is 10. And apparently that you can like make mistakes. Like I thought DNA was the gold standard. And reading this, it seems like if you're just looking at as low as six Loki for a match, then that can be a real problem. It certainly can. I think they thought before that nine gave you a one in 113 billion chance of a false positive. But apparently people looked into and they're like, where did you get that evidence FBI? And they're like, we don't have to tell you, be quiet. So no one's entirely certain what the actual chance is. But the basis you said DNA was the gold standard, it totally is for forensics. And the chances are really, really small that

there would be a false match using standard search procedures. Because they're looking at, I think you said 13. I believe they've upped it to 20. In America. Yeah. They've upped it to 20. There's 20 sites that they say these Loki are going to be the ones that we check. And you can have a minimum when you, like if you arrest somebody and you take their blood, you work up a DNA profile of that person. You have to have at least a minimum of those 20 covered, preferably up to 20 for your profile. And then the more you have and the more you match the 20 loci, the less of a chance you have of a false positive, but it can happen. And I think the point of the people who are saying like, we need to talk about this, that there can be false positives is because

if you are on a jury, especially if you watch a lot of CSI or law and order, you're like, you got DNA evidence, it's over for you pal. And the idea that it could be wrong is just out the window. And they're like, we need to train the public in juries better than this because they think it's, it's again, unassailable. Right. But the idea is you can always get way more granular with your DNA peekaloo and, and, and really find out the truth though, right? Well, that's how Peter Hampkin finally got off that bartender that kicked this whole thing off. He, they did a further DNA profile of them and they're like, okay, it's not you because the chances of somebody having those same mutations, they look at short tandem repeating snippets, which are non-protein coding

sequences, which means like it doesn't matter if they mutate a lot. So they mutate a lot. So the chances of you having the same mutation in all 20 of those is vanishingly small. And even in all eight of them is pretty small enough that it is still the gold standard. It's just, if you get caught and you have money for a good lawyer, you can be like, you need to do a better profile. And then they'll find that it's not actually you. Right. And of course I use peekaloo. That's not the official language they use for looking at DNA. That's peekaboo. Right. I use this line. Okay. All right. I think we do one more and then we take our other break. How about that? Oh, okay. I'm still having a lot of fun here, Chuck.

Okay. Good. All right. So I guess we're on either number four or number three, and number five or number 17. There was a interesting case of mistaken identity in, which turned out to be a sibling in Alaska. Police had a sexual assault case and it was, they had a semen sample. They had usable DNA. They had a DNA match. This guy was already in the system. So they thought like, all right, this is an open and shut case, except one problem. This guy was in jail already when the crime was committed. So what are we going to do? Yeah. This one was incredibly fascinating. I think this Alaskan DNA analyst or forensic analyst like went around the country giving talks on this case and really opened people's eyes,

because it turned out that the guy who was in prison, whose DNA matched the semen on the crime scene, I guess, had gotten a bone marrow transplant from his brother. And because of that, he was carrying around his brother's DNA in his blood because when you get a bone marrow transplant, you're getting like a red blood cell, stem cell transplant, and those things turn into red blood cells and they test your blood. So whatever DNA your blood has is what they come back with on the DNA profile. I wonder if the other brother immediately was like, you're looking for my brother. It sounds like the other brother was not a good guy, obviously. I mean, clearly if he committed sexual assault, but if he was already in jail for something else, then it sounds like good

brother, bad brother scenario. No. They were both sexual assaulters. The one was already in jail for it. The one who actually did it had not been caught yet. They thought that the guy who was in jail already was the perp for the outside one. And it turned out, no, there was a whole family of sexual assaulters. This makes a lot more sense now. Yeah. I get it. Okay. All right. I mean, it made sense before, but this makes such glorious sense that I feel like the blinders are off. So this really is enough of a thing that forensic analysts from Alaska who discovered this, because at first they were like, well, the lab obviously made a mess up and they looked in and they were like, what is going on here? They started looking into it more and they're like,

this could be a thing actually. We need to let the law enforcement know. There's a thing that happens when you get a bone marrow transplant. Your DNA changes. And there was a guy named Chris Long on a, I read about an IFL science article, and they tested him four years after he'd gotten a transplant from a donor in Germany who he'd never met, I don't believe. And his DNA in different parts of his body were entirely the donors, including, get this Chuck, his semen had nothing but his donor's DNA. So if he fathered a child, who's kid would that be? Because the kid would have the same DNA as the donor, not him, his dad. Well, it would be his kid still. Legally, it would be his kid, but biologically,

wouldn't it be the German donor's child? I don't know. I think there's an old saying about that, like whoever smelt it dealt it, but I can't quite work it out. There's a couple of rhymes I'm trying not to say out loud right now. Too bad brothers, man, I just, that was sitting there right in front of my face. Well, so they both went to jail, right? Yeah, I believe the Alaska Forensic analysts got them, nabbed their person. Sweet. Is it time for that break now, you promised? Yeah, I'm going to go ruminate on that justice served and we'll be right back.

me in this situation. If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart

radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangeh Shatikler and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't

look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So I guess we should say, Chuck, if you're out there in podcast land listening to us and you didn't actually have to hear an ad, give us a double toot. Doot, doot. You know, there was an emailer, I think he bothered me several times with his email that trying to convince us that we were in podcast land because we used to say that out there in podcast land. Right. And this guy ruined it. We just quit saying it because he was like,

you infect or in podcast land. I kind of get where that guy's coming from. Was that you, maybe? That's weird. He signed your name as Jean Paul Dusseldorf. 8367 at Hotmail. What? I don't get that one. That was who sent it in. John Paul8367 at Hotmail.com. Yeah, I got you. I got you. That was their email. Can we talk about these twins? Sure. Because apparently in real life, Chuck, twins actually get out of criminal prosecution because they say it wasn't me. It was my identical twin. Yeah. I don't see how this is. I mean, can't they do more work to arrest somebody for a crime when they know it's one of the two? No. All right. Well, this happened in Germany.

A big department store in Europe is the Kalfhaus des Westens. And in January 2009, there were three people who broke into one of these department stores. They were smart. They were masks. They were latex gloves. They sold close to $7 million in jewelry. But one of them left one of their gloves behind and they did a DNA test on the sweat inside the glove gross. And they had two matches of these two identical twins, Hassam and Abbas. In Germany, it doesn't give last name. So their last initial was O. O'Reilly. Yeah, Hassam O'Reilly. And they basically did what you said. These 27-year-old twins were like, wasn't me. And the other one said, wasn't me. And they let them go.

They did. And I just want to give a shout out to this group who I'm not an admirer of criminals or anything like that. But I read Chuck, they did real great muppet caper stuff and slid down ropes coming from the skylights to do this robbery. It wasn't like a smash and grab. They had finesse, at least. Right. Okay. Movie-style robbery. So, yeah, exactly. So in Germany, you can't just lock up both people because one of them might be innocent. And if you have to make that decision under German law and the same thing in America, you can't lock up innocent people. It's better to let a criminal go free than to lock up an innocent person. That's the trade-off that we have. And it's not just happened in Germany

with the O'Reilly brothers. It's happened around the world and other places too. Yeah. I think in Malaysia in 2009, there were identical twins who were narcotics traffickers and they had a death sentence. Yeah. But they couldn't prove who was who. Here's my thing. And I agree with due process. Yeah. But I think if you strong arm them a little bit, smack them around with the rubber hose. No, nothing like that. But like, hey, one of you is going to go to prison and we'll flip a coin. We'll flip a Deutsche Mark. I still got one in my pocket from the old days. Sure. And one of you is going to go to jail. I think they could pressure them into one of them. Like, they got to really be in unison. You know, one of them would eventually crack. The person who didn't do it

or did do it. The thing is, I mean, we're talking about twin siblings here. I mean, if they've got resolved and not rat the other one out, if anybody does, they've got it. Yeah, exactly. So I'm sure if both of them know, heck, both of them might have been there. It was three robbers. So two of them might have been the twins. They just could not say which one that was definitely there. So they said, no. And yeah, I mean, if you have no other evidence, what can you do? What can you do, hotshot? Smack them around with the rubber hose. I guess so. You'd be like, by Dusseldorf, you will crack. All right. So I think we got a couple of more. We just had a brief. This is how the sausage is made. A brief off-mic convo. Yeah. We're going to circle back to

the original one that I wanted to skip at the end. Okay. Because Josh doesn't love with it. I love it. He wants to marry it. He's so in love. I'm already married, Chuck. We're skipping. I wonder if anyone ever goes to see what we skipped. No one cares. I'll bet there's some army members. They're like, listen up, everybody. I'll talk. I got the dirt on the ones I skipped. All right. So we're going to finish or do you want to finish with the one I didn't like? And then because you really wanted to do number one. Yeah, we have to, man. It's the most astounding case of mistaken identity and recent memory. All right. So let's do it right this second. Okay. Go now. So this was a case. Geez. It's both sad and uplifting kind of depending on

whose family you're in. But it was a very tragic day in 2006. I kind of remember this happening. Me too. There was a semi-truck driver who in April of that year, like I said, fell asleep at the wheel, crossed the median and crashed into a university van from Taylor University that had nine people in the van. And it was a very bad crash. It killed five, I think all students, but five people. And it was just, you know, people were flung all over the place. Their stuff was flung all over the place. And it was obviously a mess of a scene, of an accident scene. And two young women got mistaken for one another in a very tragic way. Yeah. So I guess Whitney Sernak had, she was basically bundled up onto a stretcher and medivac'd out by helicopter. But the first

responder who put her on the stretcher had grabbed an ID of another girl who was in the van that looked a lot like her, especially I'm sure at night under crazy circumstances like that. And the ID went to Laura Van Ryn. And while Whitney Sernak was alive, Laura Van Ryn was dead. But people now thought that this person who was bloodied, beat up, whose face was swollen and would soon be bandaged for weeks was Laura Van Ryn, when in fact it was Whitney Sernak. Yeah. So boy, this one is, like I said, a very, very bad news for one family and very good news for another, in that one family thought their daughter was alive and she had passed and the other way around. So it's just, this one's a tough one to even think about how someone gets

through something like this. In true movie fashion, inconsistencies sorted to kind of pile up as she recovered. And people were sort of suspicious of what was going on. And finally, someone asked her to write her name and she wrote down Whitney. It's just, it's a moment like, you know, it's a pretty chilling moment. It's a movie moment for goodness sake. The whole thing is, it's crazy. Because I mean, in the meantime, like Laura's family were the ones who were at Whitney's bedside as she recovered for weeks in the hospital. And like they had had a funeral service for Whitney. So her family was just now coming to terms with her, with the fact that she was dead when they found out that no, she's alive. And Laura's family, who'd been like hoping that

their child was recovering, now found out that their child was dead. Like it's just mind boggling that this actually happened somewhere in Michigan no less. Yeah. Very, very sad case. But we don't want to leave you with a sad case, right? No, that's why we're going looping back to do number one, which is actually number nine. Number 10, which is number nine. Right. Oh boy. This is about Peter Sellers who somehow was mistaken for Woody Allen early in his career, a couple of key times. They're famously doppelgangers. I know they don't look much alike. A couple of things I'll attribute it to is Woody Allen looked, when he was younger, he, you know, he looked different than you might think of him now, first of all. And Peter Sellers was

sort of man of a thousand faces as an actor. He was well known for doing disguises, doing accents. No one ever knew who the real Peter Sellers was. Fascinating dude, very troubled, not too great guy in real life, but I'm a huge Peter Sellers fan and like read biographies on him. But that's what he was known for is, is looking like other people. So it's no surprise that maybe he would get confused with someone else. I'm a David Niven guy by the way. I love David Niven. So apparently on the set of Casino Royale, Leo Jaffe, who's the head of Columbia Pictures, the studio making the movie at the time, which is I think 1967 is when that movie was made. Yeah. Sounds right. And it was based on the Ian Fleming novel, Casino Royale. It was a James Bond movie,

but it was a horror show. It was so poorly conceived and made that they had five directors, each shooting different parts of the movie, each working with different James Bonds, David Niven, Peter Sellers, Woody Allen. I don't know who else was there. And then each of the directors didn't know what the other one was doing. And then they put it together and thought it was going to be a good idea. But even before then, they had bigger problems on their hands because Leo Jaffe was talking to who he thought was Woody Allen when in turn it was actually Peter Sellers. And he started complaining about Peter Sellers to Woody Allen, who was in fact actually Peter Sellers. That's right. And I'm just now looking at a picture of Peter Sellers from the late 60s.

And with the Horn Room Glasses, Ian Woody Allen, I can see it a little bit, I guess. Especially if you're a studio exec who couldn't share less, like all the actors are just like cattle to you or cash registers as well. This happened again on the set of What's a New Pussycat. And at this point, Sellers was pretty annoyed that this kept happening and that he was a big star at that time. And Woody Allen was kind of just getting started. And he had quite an ego, so he was none too pleased. Yeah. So if you read write-ups on Casino Royale, the 1967 version, people are just like, this was a legendary catastrophe, which are some of the most fun movies to read about. Those in Stanley Kubrick films and Lars von Trier films are the most

enjoyable to read about because people are just a gog for one reason or another about what their subject is. A gog? Great word. I think so too, man. I've been peppering really great words throughout this episode, if you ask me. I've noticed. You got anything else? Do you want to talk about some more stolen identity or mistaken identity stuff? Nah. All right, let's not then. If you want to know more about mistaken identities, you can check out this article on How Stuff Works and since Chuck said, nah, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm just going to read the first thing I saw because I didn't have one prepared and this is called Chuck's Rope Drama. Oh yeah. Hey guys, I'm imagining we're going to play this out for years. Hey guys, I'm imagining Chuck at a rough

go at practicing Shibari on himself. I'm sure hoping this is true so we can get a future topic on the art of Shibari. Isn't that like a BDSM thing? I don't know. I'm pretty sure it is. Yeah, I think it's rope binding for sexual pleasure. Oh, Japanese bondage. Yep. Boy, I just know that like in the back of my head apparently. I love it. These pictures are interesting. So Chuck, answer the question. Is that where you got your rope trauma? No, it wasn't Shibari, unfortunately. That seems like a lot more fun than what happened to me. But this is from Ryan, loves his show, listened to every episode and Ryan works in a diesel shop. Diesel like the clothing line? No, for over the road trucks. Okay. Which I don't even know what that means.

Is that like a long haul truck or probably over? No, I think it's like a flying truck. Okay, right. We should leave that in there, hey Momo. Yeah, Mo just barked everybody. It's nice to keep my mind active while I'm mindlessly wrenching on bolts all day and that is from Ryan Schmidt in Waterloo, I.A. Waterloo, Idaho. I.A. Where is that? That's Iowa. Yeah. I just wanted to rip the Iowans and the Idahoans and that was Ryan. That's Ryan. Thanks a lot, Ryan. That was a good question. So Chuck, do you want to share now what the rope trauma was? No, I think I literally think we should play this out for years. Man, so I was talking to one of my friends and neighbors, Wesley, and he just heard the episode about Mallory today and was like, so what was it?

What happened to Chuck? I was like, he won't tell me. He could not believe that you didn't actually tell me. I was like, I don't know any more than anyone else. Oh, we got a genuine internet mystery then. I love it. Yeah, it's a genuine one. If you want to send us a guess at what happened to Chuck with the rope, you can already cross Shibari off of the list. You can send it in an email to stuffpodcastatihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts on my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band or each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Shatigler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in major league baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology

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