The Lets Read Podcast - 306: THE STORY OF THE MOST DEPRAVED MAN IN HISTORY | 10 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories | EP 292

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about living off the grid & terrifying predators HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT? [e-mail] FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ♫ Music & Cover art: INEKT https://www.youtube.com/@inekt Today's episode is sponsored by Betterhelp

I don't know. Warning. This next story is deeply, deeply disturbing. Forty-five minutes away from midnight, on January 16th of 1936, the chaplain of New York's Sing-Sing Maximum Security Prison walked down a long, quiet corridor toward a stark, isolated cell. inside a condemned prisoner bound for the electric chair is being shaved a guard gently rakes a razor blade over the final few patches of stubble on his scalp then unceremoniously repeats the process on the prisoner's legs when it's time the prisoner is led from his cell to his execution chamber the grim silence broken only by the whispered prayers of the prison chaplain inside the chamber the dark silhouette of the iconic electric chair is suddenly illuminated as a guard flicks on the lights. The condemned is then guided to the chair. Its leather straps tightened around their arms, legs, and chest. A moistened sponge is placed under a metal skull cap on their shaved head. Another electrode is secured to

the bare patch of flesh on their freshly shaven leg. Once he's secured, the guard pulls back a pair of dark curtains, revealing an observation room filled with journalists, officials, and relatives of the Condem's departed victims. Their faces are a mix of steely resolve and silent dread. When asked if he has any last words, the Condemmes simply mutters, I don't even know why I'm here. The guards, who by that point had spent almost a year ensuring his continual imprisonment, were somewhat underwhelmed by their charge's final limp statement.

One of them turns to the condemn's attorney, a man named James Dempsey. He is in possession of several pages of handwritten notes penned by his client in the final few hours before his execution. The guard asked Dempsey to reveal the contents of the notes, and Dempsey's reply is, Kurt. I will never show those letters to anyone, he says, that the most filthy, stomach-churning string of obscenities I have ever read. You see, the man in the electric chair is no ordinary. prisoner. In fact, he is one of the most frighteningly deranged serial predators in American history. The media has dubbed him the gray man, the werewolf of Wisteria, and the Brooklyn vampire. But his real name is Albert Fish. Fish was born Hamilton Howard Fish in Washington, D.C.

on May 19th of 1870. He was his parents' younger. He was his parents' young. his child, conceived when his father was 74 years old, and was born into a family plague by serious mental illness. His uncle suffered from mania. One of his brothers was confined to a state mental hospital, while his sister Annie was diagnosed with a mental affliction at a young age. Three other relatives were eventually diagnosed with mental illnesses, while his own mother was said to suffer auditory and or visual hallucinations. Tragically on October 16th, of 1875, Albert's father suffered a fatal heart attack while at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station. Randolphish was the glue which held the family together, so believing herself

unfit to care for him, little Albert's mother sent him to D.C.'s St. John's orphanage. Corporal punishment was rife at the orphanage, and it was here that a young Albert first began to develop an intense parapheria associated with pain and suffering. Whenever a child erred or stepped out of line, one of the orphanage's staff would beat them mercilessly. Many adapted by becoming disturbingly institutionalized. Others lost their minds completely. Little Albert, on the other hand, adapted his psyche to the point that he enjoyed the pain induced by the corrective beatings. He lived that way for five long years, and then following a successful course of psychiatric treatment, Albert's mother landed herself a job working for the federal government and was able to remove him from care.

But in 1880, when she finally retrieved her now 10-year-old son, he was not how she remembered him. Growing up, Albert's mother called him ham, while his friends affectionately referred to him as ham and eggs. But upon his release from St. John's orphanage, he informed his mother that he wished to be known as Albert. In this seemingly innocuous declaration might seem insignificant at first, but it chilled little Albert's mother to her core. Her son had not picked the name Albert at random. In fact, it had belonged to a brother of his that had passed away during infancy. The desire to be named after his deceased sibling was probably the most profound

manifestation of young Albert's deep-seated mental illness. But as he grew older, his symptoms would grow considerably more disturbing. In 1882, a 12-year-old Albert made friends with a local telegraph boy, who apparently was just as disturbed. After realizing Albert was easily manipulated, or perhaps due to a predilection of his own, the young boy introduced young Albert to the practice of drinking one's own urine and consuming one's own feces. It's believed such hideous acts are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to their stomach churning. recreation. And over the years that followed, Albert sank deeper and deeper into depravity.

By the time he was a teenager, Albert had taken to visiting public bathhouses. But instead of spending his time bathing, spritzing, or lounging in the steam room, Albert would linger in the changing area, watching as the other boys undressed. The ritual remained a lingering preoccupation for Albert, who spent most weekends haunting bathhouse changing areas and drawn. showing suspicious stairs. But over time, he began partaking in other hobbies, such as anonymously writing threatening or obscene correspondence to women whose names and addresses he acquired from newspaper ads. Albert continued living in D.C. until early 1890, when he made one of the most significant decisions of his entire life. He packed his bags, said goodbye to his mother and siblings,

and then bought a one-way ticket to New York City. Upon his arrival in the Big Apple, a now-20-year-old Albert quickly exhausted his meager savings. He began engaging in prostitution and is believed to have groomed and molested several neighborhood children, mostly boys under the age of six. He stayed in touch with his mother, Ellen, who doted on her youngest child,

but she was nevertheless concerned over her son's financial and matrimonial stagnation. So in 1898, when Albert was in his late 20s, his mother arranged his marriage to 19-year-old Anna Hoffman, a friend's daughter. And they went on to have six children over the course of five years. But the financial strain forced Albert into criminality to make ends meet. It proved unsustainable, and in 1903,

Albert was arrested, convicted of grand larceny, and incarcerated in Sing Sing Prison. Upon his release, Fish was a changed man. His interest in family life dwindled, and he spent considerably more time pursuing acts of wanton debauchery. In one instance, he and a male lover attended a waxwork exhibition at a New York museum, and it was here that Fish became obsessed with mutilation following an encounter with a wax bisection of a human penis. He became entranced with the biomechanical marvel that constitutes the human body, But unlike many of us, whose interests sparked joy or constitute a positive intellectual pursuit,

Albert's new fixation was far from healthy. Several years later, around the year in 1910, Fish was working in Wilmington, Delaware, when he met 19-year-old Thomas Beddon. Having deduced that Bedden was a homosexual, Fish began pursuing him. But rather than fostering a romantic relationship, theirs was based in a deeply unsettling variety of, violent sadomasochism. And once he'd fully gained his trust, Fish invited Beddon to join him in an old farmhouse, the implication being that they'd have a quiet, secluded spot in which to make love. But in meeting him there, and allowing Fish to bind and restrain him, Thomas Bedden made

the last and largest mistake of his life. Over the next two weeks, Albert Fish relentlessly tortured his hapless young captive, who apparently suffered from some variety of mental disability. Bedden was beaten, burned, flayed, and starved, before finally Fish took a sharpened straight razor and castrated his screaming prisoner. I shall never forget his scream or the look he gave me, he later said. Having harbored an initial desire to murder Beddon once he was done with him, it appears that when it came time to do the deed, fish had a sudden change of heart.

Since it was high summer, he feared the stench of Bedden's decomposing corpse would draw attention to him during its transportation, but it's also possible that Fish simply felt merciful toward a young man he'd already subjected to unimaginable anguish. And so instead of killing him, fish poured peroxide over the wound where Bedden's genitals used to be

and then wrapped it in a Vaseline-covered handkerchief. Fish then slipped a $10 bill in Tibetan's clothes, gave him one final kiss, and then slipped out of the barn and departed. I took the first train I could to get back home, Fish later said, but I never heard what became of that boy and I never tried to find out. In January of 1917, Fish's wife finally grew tired of his bizarre and secretive lifestyle and divorced him before moving in with a local handyman. Fish later claimed that she took every possession the family owned, and while it's unclear if this is true, we know for certain that the divorce had a devastating effect on his psyche. He began to suffer the same auditory hallucinations his mother once had, and, once found walking down a New York street wrapped in a carpet, while loudly declaring himself an acolyte of John the Baptist. It was also around this time that fish began driving steel needles into the flesh of his groin and abdomen. It's unclear if he considered this a form of religious flagellation, but following his eventual

arrest, X-rays revealed that Fish had at least 29 needles embedded in his pelvic region. Fish would also hit himself repeatedly with a nail-studded paddle, and inserted wool doused with lighter fluid into the cavities of his body before setting it to light. Following the mental breakdown caused by the failure of his marriage, Fish's mental health continued to slowly deteriorate. He became increasingly erratic and violent. Until one day, while on a visit to Georgetown in the year 1919, Fish found himself gripped by the overwhelming urge to stab a complete stranger. The person he chose at random turned out to be an intellectually disabled boy. Fish walked up to him, drove a knife into his chest again and again and again,

then simply walked back to his car and drove away. It marked the first time Fish had attacked someone with the intention of ending their life, and although the fate of his victim remains unknown, the incident proved a watershed moment in Albert's lifelong pursuit of depravity. On July 11th of 1921, Fish spotted eight-year-old Beatrice Keel playing alone at her parents' farm on Staten Island, New York. He approached the girl, offering her money in exchange. for her help picking rhubarb. The girl accepted his invitation

and was just about to depart with him before her mother caught wind of what was happening and chased fish away. Incredibly, fish later returned to the keel's farm and attempted to sleep overnight in their barn. But thankfully, he was quickly discovered by the family patriarch, Hans Keel, who ordered him to leave under pain of death.

Yet fish remain undeterred. And by 1924, he was, suffering from a deeply deranged form of psychosis and believe none other than God Almighty was commanding him to commit unspeakable acts of violence and cruelty against children. In 1928, a 58-year-old Albert Fish began to assemble what he referred to as his ten implements of hell. These consisted of a meat cleaver, a butcher's knife, a small hand saw, thumb screws, needles, a whip, a studded paddle, razor blades, a hammer, and a length of rope. It was essentially a murder kit, with each item having been selected for a very specific purpose.

The cleaver and handsaw, for example, were used for dismemberment, while the thumb screws, whip and studded paddle were tools of torture. The needles, on the other hand, well, they were for Fish's own personal satisfaction, and the method of insertion was one he could use to terrify his hapless victims. It said, if I'll do this to myself, imagine what I'm going to do to you. Sometime in the spring of 1928, Fish attempted to test his ten implements on 10-year-old Cyril Quinn. Fish had been grooming and molesting little Cyril and sadly had managed to firmly win the boy's trust. So when Fish discovered Cyril and a friend of his playing boxball on the sidewalk one day

and asked if they'd like to join him at his apartment for sandwiches, they followed without question. As Fish prepared their lunch, the two boys were supposedly wrestling on his bed when suddenly, one of them dislodged his mattress, revealing several sharp tools which comprised Fish's ten implements of hell. frightened and confused as to why Fish had such implements concealed under his bed, Cyril and his friend ran from the apartment. And it was only much later that they discovered just how lucky they'd really been. Just months later, on May 25th of 1928, Fish saw an advertisement in the Sunday edition of the New York World.

It read, Young Man, 18, wishes for a position in country. Edward Budd, 406 West 15th Street. Three days later, Fish paid a visit to the Bud family's Manhattan home under the pretense of hiring young Edward as a farm laborer. After introducing himself as Frank Howard, a farmer from upstate New York, he offered work to both Edward and a neighborhood friend of his, then said he'd return in a few days to collect them.

Fish stayed true to his word, but upon his return, he met another member of the Bud family. and his bloodthirsty scheme changed significantly. Fish's original plan was to drive 18-year-old Edward out into the middle of nowhere, where he would blind, torture, and murder him. But after returning to the Bud family home and knocking on the door, it was answered by Ed's younger sister, 10-year-old Gracie. Fish was instantly and uncontrollably obsessed with the girl,

and somehow he managed to convince Gracie's parents to grant him permission to take her to a children's birthday party that was supposedly taking place that afternoon. Unbelievably, Albert and Delia Budd handed over their daughter to an almost total stranger, one who would go on to rank among the most sadistic serial murderers of the 20th century. And needless to say, they never saw her again. Fish subsequently drove Gracie to an abandoned house he had previously scouted, located at 359 Mountain Road in the neighborhood of Irvington, Wisteria Cottage had been falling down for quite some time.

Fish led Gracie into the house, assuring her the party was inside, and when she became upset, he strangled her unconscious, cut off her head, then butchered her body much in the way a hunter would a deer. He drained the girl's blood, skinned her, then courted her corpse before dividing individual portions into cuts, such as steaks and roast. Fish then wrapped each piece of Little Gracie's butchered body, froze them, and consumed them over the course of the next several weeks.

Just over three months later, on September 5th of 1930, fish watched with glee as police announced the arrest of 66-year-old Charles Edward Pope on suspicion of Gracie's murder. In the aftermath of the child's disappearance, Pope's estranged wife had approached law enforcement claiming her husband was the guilty party. She gave a detailed account of strange new behaviors, along with nocturnal outings that went unexplained, and it was a complete fabrication. Pope was arrested, then prior to his eventual trial in December of 1930, he spent more than a hundred days remanded in jail

before being found not guilty. There hadn't been a single shred of evidence deemed worthy of convicting Charles Pope, while the real killer remained at large. Four years later, Gracie Budd's mother, who by then was living as Delia Flanagan, found a letter in her family's mailbox. Since Delia was functionally illiterate, she opened the letter, gave it to her son, then asked him to read it aloud to her. And with only minor changes for the purpose of clarity and decency, the letter read as follows. My dear Mrs. Bud, in 1894, a friend of mine shipped as a deckhand on a man.

the steamer to coma. His name was Captain John Davis. He sailed from San Francisco for Hong Kong China. On arriving there, he and two others went to shore and got drunk, and when they returned, the boat was gone. At that time, there was famine in China. Meat of any kind cost anywhere from one to three dollars a pound, and so great was the suffering among the very poor that all children under 12 were sold for food in order to keep others from starving. A boy or girl under 14 was not safe in the street, and you could go in any shop and ask for steak, chops, or stew meat. Part of the naked body of a boy or girl would be brought out and they would give you what you wanted cut from it. A boy or girl's behind, which is the sweetest part of the body, and sold as veal cutlet

brought the highest price. Captain John stayed there so long that he acquired a taste for human flesh. Then on his return to New York, he stole two boys, one aged seven and the other aged 11. He took them to his home, stripped them naked, and tied them up before throwing them in a closet. He burned everything they were wearing, and then several times a day he spanked them, tortured them, to make their meat good and tender. First, he killed the 11-year-old. boy because he had the fattest behind and, of course, the most meat on it. Every part of his body was cooked and eaten except the head, bones, and guts. He was roasted in the oven, boiled, broiled, fried, and stewed. The smaller boy was next. He went the same way. At that time, I was living at 409

East 100 streets, and when Captain John told me so often how good human flesh was, I made up my mind to taste it. On Sunday, June 3rd of 1928, I called on you at 406 West 15th Street. I brought you pot cheese and strawberries. We had lunch, but when Grace sat in my lap and kissed me, I made up my mind to eat her. On the pretense of taking her to a party, you said yes, she can go, remember? I took her to an empty house in Westchester I had already picked out. When we got there, I told her to remain outside. She picked wildflowers while I went upstairs and stripped all of my clothes off. I knew if I did not, I would get her blood on them.

And when all was ready, I went to the window and called her, and then hid in a closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked, she began to cry and tried to run down the stairs. I grabbed her. She said she would tell her mama. First, I stripped her naked. how she did kick, bite, and scratch. I then choked her to death and cut her into small pieces so I could cook and eat the meat.

How sweet and tender she was after being roasted in the oven. It took me nine whole days to eat her entire body. I did not do anything terrible to her, though. I could have, have I wished. She did die a virgin. It's unlikely that Gracie's brother ever made it through the entire letter. But what's certain is that it caused unimaginable heartache for her still grieving family. Police quickly determined that although the story concerning the cannibal captain and the famine in Hong Kong could not be verified,

the section of the letter concerning the murder of Gracie was found to be accurate in both its description of the kidnapping, as well as the events which followed. Whether or not her corpse had been cannibalized remained to be seen. But when police announced that the letter was genuine, they did so with a chilling degree of certainty. It was a knife in the gut for the bud family, but in a poetic twist, Fish's attempt to mock the heartbroken mother of his young victim sowed the seeds of his eventual undoing. The letter was delivered in an envelope bearing a small hexagonal symbol along with the letter's NYPCBA. The acronym stood for the New York private chauffeur's benevolent association,

and following a public plea for information, police were approached by one of the company's janitors. This janitor, sheepishly admitted that he'd taken some of the company's stationary home, but had left it at his 52nd Street rooming house when he moved out. Police then approached the property's landlady and asked her to provide the name of the room's current tenant. She told them the room was now vacant, but that its former occupant had moved out just a few days earlier. his name was Albert Fish. After learning that Fish had said to return to the 52nd Street rooming house, Detective William King, the chief investigator on the case, waited outside the room.

When she showed up, Fish seemed innocently surprised at the presence of law enforcement and agreed to a voluntary interview if he could only deposit his bags in his room. King obliged him, and Fish repaid him by attempting to take a razor blade to the detective. throat, following a brief but violent struggle. Fish was subdued by the furious detective who ordered uniformed officers to drag him off to police headquarters. There, Fish made no attempt to deny the murder of Gracie Budd and stated that he originally intended to kill her brother, Edward. After being remanded in custody, Fish was accused of several other similarly bloodthirsty crimes, including the murder of nine-year-old Francis McDonnell.

Francis was reported missing on the night of July 14, 1924, after he failed to return home after playing catch with friends in Port Richmond, Staten Island. A search was organized, with both police and civilian volunteers scouring the surrounding area for any sign of the missing Francis. It wasn't long before they found him. In a wooded area, just a few hundred yards from his childhood bedroom, little Francis McDonnell was found hanging from a tree branch, having been violated, and then strangled with his own suspenders. Francis had also suffered extensive lacerations to his legs and abdomen, and his left hamstring

had been almost entirely stripped of flesh. When confronted, Fish vehemently denied any involvement in Francis' murder. He admitted to being in the area of Port Richmond on the date in question, he even admitted having considered Francis a potential victim. But according to fish, when he suddenly felt the urge to violate the boy, he claimed a stranger approached and he was forced to flee the area. He couldn't explain why Francis's friends claimed he'd been taken by and, I quote, an elderly man with a gray mustache, and they weren't the only ones to spot a man fitting fish's description. When questioned, Francis's mother claimed she'd spotted a man fitting fish's description on the day her son was murdered. She told reporters,

He came shuffling down the street mumbling to himself and making strange motions with his hands. I saw his thick gray hair and his drooping gray mustache. Everything about him seemed faded and gray. And this is when the media began circulating Fish's chilling moniker of the gray man. Shortly after Anna made her statements to the press, none other than Staten Island farmer Hans Keel, who, if you remember, had once chased fish out of his family barn, approached law enforcement to give a full and frank statement regarding Fish's historical

criminality. He had no doubt in his mind that Fish was the guilty party, and his staunch conviction inspired the Richmond County District Attorney to seek an indictment against Fish for Francis' murder. And finally, in March of 1935, just 10 months before the date of his execution, Albert Fish confess to nine-year-old Francis McDonald's violation and murder, prompting the New York Daily Mirror to dub him the most vicious child slayer in criminal history. Following the McDonnell confession, Fish was questioned in connection with the disappearance of a child named Billy Gaffney. Eight years prior, in February of 1927, four-year-old Gaffney had been playing with his older brother in the hall, hallway outside their parents' apartment. A third boy, three-year-old Billy Beaton, had also been playing

with the Gaffney boys, but after the older of the two boys returned from a bathroom trip, he discovered both younger boys had disappeared. After alerting his parents, a search was mounted, and then after one of the Gaffney's neighbors thought to explore the apartment building's roof, he discovered a terrified Billy Beaton hiding in an alcove. The discovery made for the for a brief moment of relief, as initially the neighbor feared one of the boys might have fallen after playing too close to the edge. But then when he asked where little Billy Gaffney was, Billy Beaton gave a terrifying response. The boogeyman took him, he said.

Much like in the aftermath of the Gracie Bud murder, Fish delighted in the terror and confusion his malice had wrought. Police quickly announced convicted serial killer Peter Kuzonovsky, as a suspect, on account of him murdering two children back in 1928. But it wasn't long before a motor man on a Brooklyn trolley saw a picture of fish in a newspaper and identified him as the creepy old man he saw back in February of 27. The man had been quietly trying to silence the wailing of a young boy sitting next to him, one who was relentlessly crying for his mother.

And then, rather than exhibiting perpetual patience or lovingly scolding the boy for disturbing his fellow passengers, the creepy old man became frighteningly frustrated with the boy before dragging him from the trolley so violently that observers professed deep alarm. The trolley man's description of the creepy old man matched Billy Beaton's description of the boogie man to a tea. Detectives from New York's Missing Persons Bureau were able to determine that at the time of Gaffney's disappearance, Fish had been employed as a house painter at a Brooklyn real estate company. Lo and behold, on the date in question, Fish had been working at a location a few miles from

where the boy was abducted. Gaffney's mother, Elizabeth, accompanied Detective King on a visit to Sing Sing just days after Albert Fish was named as a suspect. She wanted to ask him about her son's death. Fish refused to speak with her. And for a while, it seemed Fish was not involved in Billy Gaffney's disappearance and that his proximity to the location was mere coincidence. However, one morning, Fish's attorney found himself being summoned to Sing Sing. Then during a meeting with his client, he was handed a letter which read

as follows. I brought him to the Riker Avenue dumps. There is a house that stands alone, not far from where I took him. I took the Gaffney boy there, stripped him naked, and tied his hands and feet and gagged him with a piece of dirty rag I picked out of the dump. Then I burned his clothes, threw his shoes in the dump, and then I walked back and took the trolley to 59th Street at 2 a.m., and then walked home from there. The next day at about 2 p.m., I brought a heavy cat of nine tails, homemade with a short handle.

I made it by cutting one of my belts in half before slitting six-half-inch strips into it, each about eight inches long. I whipped his bear behind till the blood ran from his legs. I cut off his ears, then his nose, then slit his mouth from ear to ear. By the time I gouged out his eyes, he was dead. Then I stuck the knife in his belly, held my mouth to his body, and drank his blood. I picked up four old potato sacks and gathered a pile of stones.

Then I cut him up. I cut him through the middle of his body, just below his belly button. Then threw his legs about two inches below his behind. I cut off the head, feet, arms, hands, and the legs below the knee. Then I put it in sacks weighed with stones. I tied the ends and threw them into the pools of slimy water you will see along the road going to North Beach. The water is around three to four feet deep. They sank at once, and I came home with my meat.

I like the front of his body best. His monkey and pee-wees and a nice little fat behind to roast in the oven and eat. I made his stew out of his ears, nose, pieces of his face and belly. I put onions, carrots, turnips, celery, salt and pepper. It was good. Then I split the cheeks of his behind open. Cut off his monkey and pee-wees and washed them first. I put strips of bacon on each cheek of his behind and put it in the oven.

Then I picked four onions and when the meat had roasted about a quarter of a quarter of a of an hour, I poured a pint of water over it for gravy and put in the onions. At frequent intervals, I basted his behind with a wooden spoon so the meat would be nice and juicy. After about two hours, it was nice and brown, cooked through. I never ate any roast turkey that tasted half as good as his sweet fat little behind did. I had every bit of the meat in about four days. His little monkey was as sweet as a nut, but his pee-wees, I could not chew. I threw them in the toilet. On March 11th of 1935,

Albert Fish was tried for murder in White Plains, New York. The trial lasted for just ten days, with Fish claiming insanity by explaining that God Almighty had been commanding him to murder children. Several psychiatrists testified about Fish's paraphealic fixations, which included sadism, masochism, flagellation, exhibitionism,

voyeurism, cannibalism, urophilia and necrophilia. Fish was also said to be obsessed with what's known as peakerism, which refers to a carnal interest in penetrating the skin of another person with sharp objects such as pins, razors, or knives. He also had a deeply carnal interest in blood, expressed a fascination with female genital mutilation and confessed to a habit of eating his own fecal matter. His defense attorney's summation noted that Fish was a

psychiatric phenomenon and that nowhere in legal or medical records was there another individual who possessed so many psychological abnormalities. Essentially, Fish was a special case, meaning he was a lot more valuable to the state as a research subject than a corpse. The defense's chief expert witness was Frederick Wortham, a psychiatrist specializing in child development who conducted psychiatric examinations on behalf of the New York criminal courts. During two days of testimony, Wortham explained Fish's obsession with religion, specifically as preoccupation with the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. Wortham said that Fish believed that similarly sacrificing a boy would be penance for his own sins,

and that even if the act itself was wrong, angels would prevent it if God did not approve. Wortham then detailed Fish's cannibalism, which in his mind he associated with the Holy Communion. When Dempsey asked the doctor his opinion of Fish's mental condition based on what he's heard about his life, Wertham simply replied, he is insane. Reportedly, not a single one of the trials jurors doubted that Fish was clinically insane, but as one later explained, they felt he should be executed regardless. They declared him sane and guilty, before the judge sentenced him to death by electrocution. Fish arrived at Sing Sing in March of 1935, then after several months languishing on the prison's death row, he was executed on a cold Thursday night in January.

Fish is said to have helped the executioner position the electrodes on his body. It then took a full three minutes for him to die, considerably longer than the average death row prisoner. Fish is a case study in how not to rear a child. From the ages of 5 to 10 years old, young Albert's life was characterized by pain, violence, and social isolation. Then when he emerged from that dark and terrible chrysalis, he adopted the name of his departed brother. Perhaps as a rather profound form of acceptance that he was already dead.

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health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Talk it out with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash read. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P-com slash read I went to school with two guys who killed my sister's best friend I know that's rough but it's hard to explain what they were like they didn't seem dangerous or strange

they were just normal quiet mostly. They were in ROTC with her, so they spent a lot of time together. Nobody would have thought they were capable of what they did. One night after a party, they invited her to go mudding in one of their trucks. She'd always been the kind of person who said yes to those things, and she liked being out with friends and having a good time, and so she went with them.

The details of what happened next are chilling. They drove out to a remote spot in the woods, somewhere the ground was soft and wet. They stopped the truck, and she got out to check the ground, probably to see if it was a good spot for the truck to drive through. And that's when one of them pulled a gun. He shot her in the back of the head, just like that. No warning, no argument, nothing. She never saw it coming.

They didn't panic. They didn't run. They acted like it was just another part of the night. And they dug a shallow grave right there in the mud, put her body in it. and left. Then they drove to an eye-hop and sat there, eating and talking like nothing had happened. When they finished their meal, they went back to the grave. I guess they thought that it didn't look well enough hidden, so they covered her body up better,

packed up and left again. They might have gotten away with it, but they made a mistake. They tried to cross the Canadian border, and that's when they were caught. The police found evidence linking them to the murder, and it didn't take long for everything to out, the truck, the gun, the grave. And at the trial, people wanted to know why. Why would they do something so terrible to someone they knew, someone who trusted them? One of them, the one who pulled the trigger, gave an answer that still makes my skin crawl. He only said, morbid curiosity. And that was it. No remorse, no deeper reason, just those two words.

I think about her sometimes, about how quickly everything changed for her. One minute she was out with people that she thought were friends, laughing and enjoying herself. The next, she was gone, just because someone wanted to see what it was like to kill. It doesn't make sense to me, and it never will. My father-in-law was a U.S. Marshal back in the day. I sometimes joke that he used to hunt people for a living. But as he's corrected me on more than one occasion, it's more like he used to hunt the people who hunt people.

the people hunter hunter if you will and he's told me some pretty wild stories especially around christmas and thanksgiving the kind he only tells late at night after a few bottles of beer and when all those with more sensitive ears have retired upstairs to go to sleep and most of them are war stories pretty great ones make no mistake but a lot of drive drive shoot shoot arrests the bad guys than home in time for pot roast and pie as they say but there was one story he told me that I haven't really been able to shake, and I'd like to share it with you. They've been tracking this one fugitive for months, all across the country, when they suddenly got an eyewitness sighting of the guy at a Bible school out in rural Ohio.

Under the assumption that he was living under a false identity, my father-in-law and his partner drove out to a place to talk to the school's principal. They seemed like real nice folks out there, a little naive, but warm enough, and at first it seemed like they were doing their best to cooperate. But as time went by, it became more and more obvious that not only were the Bible school staff and principal elaborately stonewalling them, but the place was much, much more than just a Bible school. The reason why an Ohio Bible school was so focused to shield a violent fugitive

is that it was a cult. And I used the word cult very loosely because I feel like that suggests a bunch of weird naked rituals involving black magic where maybe Tom Cruise makes an appearance or something. I don't know. That's an eyes wide shut reference. You can't sue me for that. But what this place was was just very close-knit, a Christian community that believed in absolute forgiveness and were willing to put themselves on the line for each other. They were smart enough not to make it obvious that they were aiding and abetting a criminal, but at the same time, it's no coincidence that their person of interest was never around whether the marshals stopped by. Things got more and more tense as time

went by too. My father-in-law and his partner kept on coming back day after day, making it clear that they weren't going anywhere until they got a sit-down interview with the man they believed was their fugitive. Eventually, the school's principal snaps at the marshals and tells them to come back with a warrant or not at all. Well, they went and got themselves a warrant, and then they came back with uniformed officers, too, just in case the students put up any resistance. And according to my father-in-law, the school was set up as four buildings, with a field and meeting square in the center of them. Then as the marshals and their uniformed accompaniment walk onto the property, students start walking out of the building to give them death stairs,

including the principal. My father-in-law and the uniforms are walking slightly behind, and they see the kid before his partner does. So as soon as you, this 18 or 19 year old kid starts to approach with a face like thunder, everyone starts telling him to stay where he is and to not come any closer. Seeing as this kid appears to be unarmed and looks to be about a buck in change soaking wet, they're all very casual about their commands. But as soon as he gets closer and closer, they start taking out their weapons and issuing the commands more seriously. But then the second they do, the kid just rushes them. He's sprinting. towards my father-in-law's partner, but no one's shooting him because they don't want a scandal on

their hands and they're not really sure what to do in that moment. My father-in-law said that he could see the headlines already, feds raid Bible school, or an innocent student slain, and things of that nature. He knew pulling the trigger might kill his career before it had ever really started, so he chose not to. But he then spent the rest of his career wishing he had. I guess his partner ended up wishing that he shot the kid too. but he didn't and instead he got ready to receive his weak tackle so he could wrestle him to the dirt and put him in cuffs but the kid didn't try and tackle him so much as he just walked up and hugged him with his big old smile on his face instead of a frown the kid must have been much stronger than

he looked because when he clamped himself on to my father-in-law's partner he started legitimately struggling to get him off now my father-in-law in the uniform start walking over to lend a hand lowering their weapons because the kid's got a screw loose but he doesn't seem dangerous but he was he was dangerous they just didn't realize it until they saw what he had in his hands my father-in-law's partner didn't see it because obviously the kid's hands were way around his back but the others did and when they saw it they practically threw themselves backwards in an attempt to put whatever distance they could between my father-in-law's partner the kid and what the kid had in his hands which to their absolute shock and horror was a god-damned hand grenade.

And it must have only been a matter of seconds between the time they spotted the grenade and when it actually exploded. And when it did, it tore both men apart. And what followed was pure chaos, everyone pointing guns at the students standing by the buildings, all the while backing up toward the way they came in. Because of the layout of the buildings at the school, they were in the perfect place for an ambush, after a bunch of backup arrived, the cops turned the whole place inside out, looking for weapons, drugs, anything they could use to start locking

people up. But they didn't find their fugitive. And it took another year before the marshals were able to track him down again, and when they did, he'd set himself up in yet another Bible school, only this one was up in the middle of nowhere, Alaska. The guy was halfway into talking the students into defending him with their lives again when the marshals finally got their hands on him. In that time, their play was a lot smarter and a lot more subtle. My father-in-law got to question him at one point. It was little more than a favor granted after losing his partner in such a way. But when he did, he said he got chills from just maintaining eye contact with the guy.

He said he was the most charming, personable individual he'd ever come across, the kind of guy that could sell sand to the Arabs and snow to the Eskimos. He said after talking to the guy for more than 10 to 15 minutes, he understood how he might be able to convince someone to blow themselves up, just to defend him. He said he felt that he was reading him, not like a book either. Those take time. My father-in-law said the guy read him like a stop sign.

One look and he knew all he needed to know. One look and he knew exactly how to talk to my father-in-law to get him to lower his defenses, so to speak. He said he never fell under that guy's spell or anything like that. He knew the fugitive was a master manipulator just from the interviews they'd conducted with the Bible school students, so he had it in the front of his mind the whole time that the guy was trying to win him over. But he also said that by the time 10 to 15 minutes had elapsed, he'd never felt so uncomfortable sitting in the same room as a suspect than he did that day. He'd sat in the same room as mass murderers, people who hurt children, people smugglers, all kinds of hardcore scumbags.

But sitting across from those guys, you knew what they were, because they couldn't hide what they were. Whereas with the Bible school fugitive, it was like he could change his face depending on who he was talking to. My father-in-law said the guy ended up going to federal prison for his original crime, which I guess was some kind of financial fraud. I'm not sure of exactly what it was. But even combined with all the charges relating to him absconding from the law, his sentence didn't even top 15 years. My father-in-law knew the guy would probably get out of there before that too, and the idea of having someone like that back on the street was terrifying to him. He said he was the scariest son of a bitch he'd ever had the displeasure of coming across,

and what scared him the most is that it was only a matter of time before he was back out there, getting up to his old tricks again. And when that happened, he had no doubt that people were going to die. During the spring of 1987, I had myself a job working in the forests of Northern California, real middle of nowhere off-the-grid kind of place where we stayed on-site instead of driving home every night. I've been working as a sawmill operator for a few years by then, proud to be providing for my family and proud to be doing my part in an industry that kept the local economy alive. The days were long.

The air smelled a fresh pine and sawdust, then when we were done, we'd sink some cold ones and then hit the hay, and then do it all again the next day. But then came one morning when everything changed, not just for me, but for everyone who worked in those woods. I showed up at the mill at dawn, just as the morning sun was beginning to peek over the hills. The air was cool, the mill was quiet, and I drank a cup of coffee with my co-workers before heading out to my head rig. My machine, a head rig, was a massive saw designed to cut through logs like butter, and I knew that thing inside and out. I checked everything over, as I always did, making sure the blades were sharp and the mechanisms were running smoothly, and then when the first log started to roll in, it was business as usual. My job required a lot of focus, a heavy amount of precision,

and a healthy respect for the power of the large machinery. It wasn't uncommon for a piece of wood to jump or splinter if something was off, but generally speaking we knew the wrists and trusted our equipment. The log looked ordinary, a straight Douglas fir, no different from the hundreds of others I'd cut that month. But as I fed it into the saw, something happened that will be with me for as long as I live. There was a deafening sound, a metallic screech that set my teeth on edge, and before I knew what was happening. The sawblade exploded. Shards of metal went flying, and the force of the impact knocked me off my feet. It felt like an earthquake had hit the mill. I didn't realize that I was injured at first. An adrenaline has a way of masking the pain, but I looked down and I saw the blood.

My face, arms, and chests were covered in it. The jagged pieces of the sawblade had torn into me like shrapnel, my right hand, the hand I'd used to guide those logs every day was mangled beyond recognition. I felt a sharp burning pain in my eye and then realized that I couldn't see out of it. And after the bang, the mill erupted into shouts and yells. My coworkers tried to help, but their voices sounded distant, like they were coming from underwater. Someone called for an air ambulance while another co-worker tried to stop the bleeding. I remember staring at the log now split open to reveal a gleaming metal spike embedded deep within the wood, and that's when it hit me.

This wasn't an accident. Someone had deliberately put that spike there to try and kill me. The hospital stay was a blur of surgeries and bandages, and I'd later learned that my right hand couldn't be saved and the damage to my eye was permanent. But the physical injuries were only part of the story. The mental scars were just as bad. I trusted that my workplace was safe, that the only dangers were the ones that we were trained to handle.

But this, this was something altogether different. This was sabotage. For those unfamiliar with the practice, tree spiking is a tactic used by nut job environmental groups to try and prevent logging. By driving long metal spikes into trees, they present a huge danger to logging. because if their blades come into contact with the metal spikes, and as we've already covered here, the freaking blades can explode. But the consequences of their actions aren't just mechanical.

They're very human. That spike could have killed me. It could have killed someone else. And that doesn't win me over to their cause, not one bit. The weeks that followed were a whirlwind of pain and confusion, but primarily anger. The media got a hold of the this story and reporters swarmed the mill eager to paint me as a victim of an environmental war. I wasn't interested in their narratives. I just wanted to understand why someone would risk my life to make some statement. And did they even once stop to think about the consequences? My co-workers were pretty badly shaken up by what had happened to me, and the incident cast a very strong shadow over the entire mill. Every log that came in was inspected with more

scrutiny than ever before, and I heard everyone was very jumpy for a long time after. The company installed metal detectors at great expense, but that didn't do much for people's peace of mind. It wasn't even like everyone was just scared. They were angry, hateful even. They wanted to hang whoever spiked that tree. And recovery, it was a long road. I had to learn how to navigate the world with one hand, how to adjust the loss of vision in one eye. My wife and kids were my rock, but I'd be lying if I said it was easy. I struggled with depression, with the weight of feeling targeted, even if I wasn't personally the reason for the spike. It was a weird feeling, and it took a long time before I could even think about putting it behind me. In the years

since, I've thought a lot about the people who spike that tree. I've wondered if they ever thought about me and about the damage they caused to my life. I understand their anger at the logging industry. I've seen firsthand the impact of clear-cutting on the environment, but there has to be a better way to make a point than putting lives at risk. Protests should bring actual change, not cause harm to innocent people and turn them off to the cause. Today I'm no longer in the logging industry.

I've moved on to other work, something much safer, but the office isn't nearly as exciting or satisfying a work environment as the forests up in NorCal. But every now and then, whenever I hear the hum of machinery, I feel like I'm transported all the way back to that day in May, 1987. It still makes me angry sometimes, because no cause, no cause, no matter how righteous it is, is worth the cost of a single human life. I remember it being very late, and the rain had started coming down hard as I walked home. It was cold, the kind of rain that soaks through your clothes and chills you to the bone.

My hood had barely helped me keep warm, and I wished I'd check the weather before leaving. As I trudged along, a car slowed beside me, and the passenger window rolled down, and the driver leaned over. He was offering me a ride. His voice was smooth, overly friendly, and full of insistence, and he kept saying how I'd catch a cold if I stayed out in the rain and that he didn't mind helping me out. He looked older, maybe in his late 30s or 40s, but his smile just didn't reach. reach his eyes, I guess. I shook my head, refusing politely but very firmly and kept walking. The car crept along beside me and the man continued to talk. His tone shifted slightly, becoming more insistent, almost scolding me and he sounded irritated as though I was being

unreasonable by not accepting his offer. But when I still refused, his friendliness vanished completely and his voice turned cold and sharp, like he was full of anger. He, made it clear that he thought that I was being stupid. And my heart was pounding as I turned down a side street, not daring to look back. And for a moment I thought I heard the car hesitate before it sped off, splashing water as it went. I stood there, drenched and shaking before hurrying the rest of the way home. And at the time I brushed it off as just a strange unsettling encounter. But a few days later, his face ended up on the news. The report said that he'd been arrested for assaulting a young woman, and according to that story, his method was to drive around while it was raining,

looking for people walking alone. He would offer them a ride, and if they accepted, he'd lock the door and take control. And I couldn't stop replaying that night in my head. I thought about how close I'd come to accepting. If the rain had been just a little colder, or if I'd been more tired, I might have climbed into that car. And even now, the sound of rain hitting the pavement makes me uneasy. I'll never forget that feeling of his eyes on me or the way his voice shifted from kindness to something much darker. Some people are kind, but he was a predator. On a freezing December morning in the year 2001, three men climbed into a Soviet-made pickup truck

in a rural Georgian village named Leah. It had been a bitter winter in the cost of keeping warm and skyrocketed. So instead of paying exorbitant prices for coal or gas, gas cylinders, the three men came up with a very shrewd but very illegal method of heating their homes. They would drive off the grid into a huge patch of untamed woodland and gather firewood. And their plan was simple. Departing at dawn, they'd drive 30 miles east to a secluded and heavily forested area on the banks of the Inguri River. There, they'd fell trees and chopped them into firewood until they were exhausted. But then instead of driving home along rough

and unlit roads in the pitch darkness, the men made the decision to camp out by the river and then drive back home at dawn. Their decision was a practical one. Driving home at night meant running the risk of a police traffic stop and at the officer found a metric ton of firewood in their truck bed, they'd have some serious explaining to do. The four southeast of Laya constitutes an area known as the Colquetti National Park. Colquetti National Park is known for its vibrant wetlands, along with its diverse flora and fauna, and is considered a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The oldest trees in the park are typically hornbeams and oak species, and due to the region's favorable climate and stable ecosystem, some of them are believed to be more than a thousand years old. Its status as a world heritage site meant logging in the forest, forest was very much illegal, and if caught, the men could expect heavy fines, or maybe even jail time if a judge decided an example should be made. And this is what motivated them to camp overnight and forego the risk of a perilous nocturnal journey. After spending all day sawing down trees and chopping them into logs, the men were exhausted and ready to make camp.

With clear skies and no promise of additional snow, the men hadn't bothered to bring any kind of tent with them. Instead, they were content to melt a patch of snow by lighting a campfire before sleeping on a series of thin, waterproof ground sheets. However, despite having enough logs to make an entire winter's worth of firewood, it was no good to them. To light a campfire, they need to head out into the forest again to find tinder, kindling, and enough dry deadfall of a suitable enough size to feed the flames once they've been summoned. But in the snowy, colchic rainforests of northern Georgia. It was slim pickens. The men searched for more than an hour, walking back and forth in all directions, gathering as much usable firewood as they possibly could. And by six in the

evening, they gathered a respectable amount. But just to be safe, they decided to head out on one last run before getting to work on the campfire. As the three men walked side by side through the trees, the ground before them appeared carpeted by the bright, ethereal white of frost and fresh snow. They talked back and forth, their laughter, turning to steam in the evening winter's air, when suddenly they spotted something strange. Ahead of them, a patch of the forest floor, around one meter in diameter and forming an almost perfect circle, was completely devoid of snow, almost as if something had covered that patch of Earth for the entirety of the recent snowfalls. With their attention transfixed by the solitary blemish on an otherwise untouched snow-scape,

the three men started to approach, and that's when they noticed that not only was the meter-wide circle free of frost and snow, but there appeared to be steam rising from the forest floor. As the men crept closer, the cause of the strange anomaly seemed obvious, lying in the center of the frostless patch of earth, were a pair of small metal cylinders. One of the men leaned down to pick one up with his bare hand, but no sooner than he did, he dropped it, letting out a laugh of surprise as he did so. His companions asked him what it was. It's heavy, he replied, and it's warm.

The three men couldn't agree on what the two small objects were, but what they could agree on was that they most likely had some value to them. For example, if they were batteries so powerful that they got to, warm and fully charged, they most likely came from some expensive and highly specialized piece of equipment. Whoever left them there might pay handsomely for their return, and if not, they'd find someone who would. And what's more, if the charge in the small but curiously heavy metal cylinders held, they would help keep them warm throughout the night. The first of the two cylinders was stashed in the woods behind a large rock. The second was brought back to camp with them. The men

made dinner, drank some vodka, then settled down to catch a few hours of sleep under a canopy of twinkling stars. Yet before long, they began to feel nauseous. They tossed and turned, unable to drift off to sleep, and then shortly afterward, each man realized that his companions were suffering from the exact same affliction. And at first, they suspected that it might have been the vodka they consumed. When improperly filtered, cheap vodka may contain excess fuel oils, used during the distillation process. Such oils can cause headaches, nausea, and other symptoms if they remain high enough quantities. Cheap vodka can also be contaminated with methanol, a substance which can either cause blindness or death depending on the amount

consumed. At the time, this was considered the main culprit. It hadn't been the first time cheap vodka had had such an effect on them, and doubtless it would not be the last. But even after repeated bouts of vomiting emptied their stomachs. The men continued to wretch and heave until bile stained the snow a sickly yellow. The nausea headaches and vomiting continued for around three to four hours until finally the men decided it was time to drive home. They began loading up their pickup truck with the logs they'd felt, but around halfway through the job, they began to feel unusually and excessively exhausted. The men made the decision to return at a later date to load up their remaining firewood, and then began the 30-mile drive

back to Laya. When they arrived back at their home village, the men were greeted warmly by those they had sought to provide for. They were pleased that the firewood would offset some of their winter costs, but the three men were subjected to a somewhat playful scolding for returning after a night of heavy drinking. However, the three men insisted they had not been drinking heavily, but their claim was waved away and laughed off by their fellow villagers. If they hadn't drank themselves into a stupor, would explain their sickly condition. But what they'd eventually discover, would horrify them. Following their return from Colhetti Forest, the three men retired to their beds to catch up on some well-deserved rest. They slept all day. Then in the early

evening, one of the men woke up and began rushing to the bathroom. He started. suffered from prolonged bouts of diarrhea, and noticed with some alarm that there appeared to be blood in his stool. At the insistence of his wife, he visited the village doctor the following morning, but when he did so, the man completely failed to mention his encounter with the heavy metallic cylinders, as well as the Eldridge warmth they exuded. Describing exactly what happened would no doubt reveal his illegal activities, and fearing he might also lose out on a strange but valuable find, the man chose to keep the strange objects a secret. Lacking a complete picture on what could have caused the man's symptoms, the village doctor assumed that he

was suffering some kind of severe allergic reaction. He administered a shot of powerful antihistamine, designed to counteract the man's unpleasant symptoms. Within just a few hours, the man's condition had improved dramatically, but so had those of his companions who received no such antihistamine shot. Choosing not to question an improvement to their health, the men went about their business as usual for the next week or so, until one day, when they began exhibiting a host of new and painful symptoms. At work, one man complained of a soreness on the skin of his back. He asked a co-worker to take a look for him, then pulled up his shirt, revealing a series of painful blisters that ran parallel with his spine. The blisters were surrounded by

patches of swollen, tender flesh, as if caused by some kind of intense surface burn. Fearing their illegal logging activities would be uncovered. It took the men three whole weeks to report to the hospital in the nearby city of Zagdidi, and when they did, their conditions were dire. They could barely stand up straight by the time they walked through the doors, and initially, despite doctors being unable to determine what was wrong with them, they remained tight-lift about the small metal cylinders. Only when medical staff explained that their transparency might mean the difference between life and an unimaginably painful death, did the men relent and explain what they'd found. After that, their diagnosis was relatively simple. Each man was quite clearly suffering from extreme

and highly advanced cases of radiation poisoning. With Zogdadi General Hospital being woefully under-equipped to deal with such an emergency, the men were transferred via helicopter to the emergency medical center in the country's capital, Tbilisi. The EMC set to work making the men more comfortable, while establishing strict quarantine procedures in order to prevent potential contamination. Assuming they were contaminated, their clothes were removed before nurses carefully washed their exposed skin with soap and water. After that, the three men were transferred to Tbilisi's Institute of Fematology and Transfusion, where they were isolated and assessed, while being given heavy doses of painkillers to dull their intolerable agony. Seeing as radiation weakens the immune

system, the open sores on the men's backs had started to become dangerously infected, and upon examination, doctors noticed the telltale inky black of rotten necrotic tissue. The men were quickly given doses of powerful antivirals and antibiotics, and then staff said about organizing blood transfusions to replace the white blood cells killed by the radiation. And then lastly, nurses began to treat the surface burns on the skin of their backs and hands, cleaning them carefully before applying a plethora of lotions, creams, and balms. Once their pain had somewhat subsided, the men were able to talk, and they were interviewed by members of Georgian State Security services. It was then that they gave a much more detailed account of their seemingly innocuous

misadventure, including the exact locations of the mysterious metal cylinders. Soldiers from the Georgian army were dispatched, a colquetti forest, and thanks to the detailed description given by the afflicted men, they were able to quickly track the cylinders down. Equipped with highly protective clothing, and using robots to handle the cylinders, the soldiers transferred them and two specifically built containers, which limited the direction in which they could emit radiation. They were then transported to a secure facility for analysis by officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency. It took less than 24 hours for scientists to determine that the two heavy cylinders were made of a substance known as Strontium 90. They'd been part of a radioisotope thermoelectric

generator, or RTG, a kind of electrical generator which converts heat released by radioactive decay into electricity. They're often used to power things in remote locations, such as satellites, space probes, or a secluded radio relay in rural Georgia. Many years earlier, the construction of the Houdini Hydroelectric Station began. Its engineers had hoped that while it was being built, they could coordinate with the distant and gurry hydroelectric station in order to seek their advice and ensure a smooth construction process. It was just one problem. The distance between the two stations was so vast that not one,

before radio relays, would have to be constructed in order for them to communicate. And since this area consisted of vast, untouched woodland, it was considered unethical and impractical to carve out a long strip of it to erect nothing but power lines. There was, however, an alternative solution. Hook the radio relays up with a couple of RTGs, and safe and secure containers, of course, and they could power the radio relays for the next 28 years

without chopping down a single tree. And once the construction of the Houdini hydroelectric station was finished, the strontium-powered relay systems became redundant. Then, by the end of the 1990s, the generators were disassociated. assembled in the radioactive materials were safely disposed of. At least, that's what people were led to believe. Of the eight radioactive sources originally installed, only six were found.

Two of them were missing. Shockingly, the small atomic fo'paw was kept secret from the wider nuclear community, with the officials who swept it under the carpet simply hoping the missing strontium would show up again. that just a few years later, three friends out looking for firewood would suffer the incalculable misfortune of simply stumbling across them. The first man, referred to in the IAEA inquest document as Patient 3MB, was the most fortunate of the three. He received radiation burns to his hands and isolated patches of his legs, but since he didn't

hold or touch the strontium cylinders for any prolonged amount of time, he was discharged from the hospital just a few weeks after presenting himself. The second man, patient 2M.G, was not so fortunate. The large rotting sores on his back, from where he'd lain on the strontium cylinder to keep warm, had become dangerously infected. And in early 2002, he was transferred to a French hospital to receive more advanced forms of treatment. His ordeal was agonizing, and he received multiple skin grafts, but ultimately, he made

made a full recovery and was able to leave the hospital on April 18th of 2003. However, the third man, known by the inquest as Patient 1D., was indisputably the most unfortunate of the three men. He too had used the strontium cylinders to keep warm, but after leaning on it much more heavily than patient 2MG, he received much more concentrated doses of its deadly radiation. While the blisters and ulcers on the back of 2MG were relatively spread out, those in the back of 1DN were much more concentrated and were located on his left shoulder blade. This meant that a series of dangerous infections took hold directly behind the patient's heart and left lung.

The patient underwent numerous operations and skin grafts to try and prevent additional necrosis and reverse that which had already occurred. Yet in April of 2004, his condition began to rapidly deteriorate. deteriorate. On the surface of his open wound, there was a large amount of pus secretion, and then following a more thorough inspection, doctors discovered a great deal of secondary necrosis in his muscles, ribs, shoulder bones, and vertebrae. Repeated samples taken from the wound identified poly-resistant microbes, such as blue pus bacillus as being present among the decaying flesh. Polyresistant microbes are named such because they developed a resistance to commonly

antibiotics, and as you can imagine, this presented a dangerous challenge to those charged with patient 1DN's care. Hospitals staff did all they could to fight the infection, but despite a large amount of antibiotic therapy, multi-organ failure loomed large on the metaphorical horizon. On May 12th of 2004, his temperature increased to 39 degrees Celsius, and then the following days, arterial pressure decreased dramatically on account of severe septic shock. And just hours later, Patient 1D.N. suffered a cardiac arrest and was pronounced dead at 10.55 p.m. on May 13th of 2004. 893 days after his initial exposure to Strontium 90. Patient 1D.N.'s death marked a tragic end to a brutal but wholly avoidable ordeal, and his loved ones mourned his loss bitterly.

Yet the question remained, how could such a horrible thing happen in the first place? Following an inquest into the events, the International Atomic Energy Association claimed that the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to a loss of oversight and maintenance for many radioactive devices and installations in the region. Then, without adequate records, security, or a transfer of responsibilities, these devices were left to deteriorate. Seeing as the sources in question were located in a forested and mountainous area in Georgia, their remote placement made them difficult to monitor,

and given the secrecy surrounding Soviet manufactured atomic, it's possible that the newly independent Georgians simply didn't know it was there. Yet perhaps the most concerning aspect is the fact that the strontium-90 cylinders had already been removed from the radio relay. The commonly agreed upon scenarios that after, After happening across the radio relays in the chaos of post-Sovia, Georgia, a scavenger believed that they were a high-tech variety of battery, quite possibly with a high resale value.

He broke into the relay, removed the cylinders, then at some point on his journey home realized that they were killing him. It's quite possible the man expired before giving a full frank account of what he'd found, leaving those cylinders simply lying there on the forest floor, waiting to seal the doom of their next unfortunate victim. The winter of 87 or 88 was a relatively mild one. The Wasatch Mountains still got their usual dusting of snow, but for us lowlanders, I remember there being a lot less snow that winter.

We got some snow here in Marion around the holidays, which was nice because it wouldn't have felt quite the same without it. But other than that, it was one of the mildest I can remember. I was a deputy in the sheriff's office at the time, so we all welcomed the less hazardous driving conditions. and I remember thinking that we might have just gotten off easy that winter. But boy, was I wrong about that? The first sign of trouble came in January when early on the morning of the 16th,

a bomb ripped through Marion's LDS Mormon Chapel and caused over a million dollars in damages. Since the bomb was rigged to explode at 3 a.m. No one was around when it went off, but it shocked everyone in town. Only about 600 people lived there, by the way, because who the hell would want to blow up a church like that? Well, it wasn't long before detectives started to form a pretty solid picture of who was to blame, and strangely, it involved a man who had been dead for the last nine years. And to tell the story of why the Mormon chapel got blown up,

you got to tell the story of a guy named John Singer. He was born in New York City, but since his parents were from Dresden, they returned to World War II Germany when he was still a bit. baby so his dad could join the SS. Singer himself was said to have been in the Hitler youth when he was a kid. And then after the war, his mom divorced his dad and she brought little Johnny back to the states to be raised as Mormon. They moved to Utah. He got married in his late 20s. Then he and his wife ended up settling on a farm in Marion. He was an active member of the church until the early 70s when he was suddenly excommunicated. But the church never explained exactly what,

why they'd had him removed, and neither did Singer. A few years later, he's openly practicing polygamy, removing his kids from the public school system, then saying a bunch of racist crap to reporters when they went to ask him why. As he can imagine, this makes him a national hate figure, and when his wife decides that she wants to leave him, he decides he's going to hold his kids hostage. And a cop show up, a standoff begins,

and then when Singer points a gun at one of them, A sniper watching from a nearby roof decided to compromise Singer to a more permanent degree, as they say. Singer was dead, but he wasn't some lone kook. He was an influential man and certain more extreme Mormon circles. And when that police sniper shot him down, his followers were pissed. And none more so than a guy named Adam Swap. Swap was 17 when he first heard about John Singer's fight against the feds and it made him huge fan. And a few months after he turned 18, Swap decided that he wanted to meet Singer,

but his idol was killed before he had the chance. He ended up hanging around the Singer family until he was introduced to John's daughter, Heidi, who he married not long after. But only after gaining the approval of Heidi's mom, Vicky, who he got very close with over the years. The whole family ended up moving into some isolated off-the-grid compound out near Hurricane, where they lived as something of a local curiosity. But then, in early 88, some real strange stuff started happening down there near the Virgin River. The story goes that in early January, Adam Swap approached Vicky Singer, who was still very much the head of the family, and told her God had been talking to him. He said he'd been instructed to place a spear with nine feathers tied to it, representing the

nine years since Singer's death, into the ground near the LDS Church. Then, If he blew it up, the act would actually resurrect the late John Singer. Since the bomb went off on the ninth anniversary of John's shooting and supposedly at a similar time, too, law enforcement was quick to suspect that the occupants of the Singer Swap compound were to blame. Vicky Singer's son-in-law was then sent into the compound, basically to ask if they had any involvement, and when he returned, he had bad news. Not only did Swap and Singer admit to planting the bomb, but they had no intention of surrendering peacefully. And that is where we came in.

When we arrived at the Singer compound, we knew that we were facing something big. The property was a collection of trailers and makeshift buildings, surrounded on all sides by snow-covered fields, meaning we had to keep our distance and stay behind our vehicles to keep ourselves from being exposed. word was that the singers were heavily armed and that they hated anyone with a badge and a gun so we were very careful not to put ourselves in the firing line we weren't deputies to them we were the hand of the oppressor and they called us modern-day Pharisees pretenders and tyrants agents of a corrupt system they'd long since rejected we knew swap had told followers to never surrender and based on the info we'd gotten we figured that they were fanatical enough to die trying to defend him.

Our first goal was to establish a line of communication with the folks in the compound. Negotiators were brought in to try to de-escalate the situation, and over the next few days, we used every tool at our disposal to talk with them. We gave them a cell phone, nothing like he got today, but it worked for a while, until it didn't. We don't know if it ran out of battery or someone got mad, broke it, and then lied about breaking it, but we were forced to use bullhorns and even handwritten, hand-delivered messages at one point. And because no one had died in the LDS Chapel bombing, no one was looking at any serious jail time for just blowing up a building.

So to us, that meant someone would eventually see sense, come out with their hands up and not risk getting shot when a good enough attorney could whittle down their sentence to just maybe two or three years. We were apprehensive but optimistic, and that all changed when we started talking to them. Like I said, they were fanatical on every communication the negotiators got was filled with all this grand religious talk. They said that they were carrying out God's will, that the U.S. government was on its knees

and that when John Singer rose from his grave, it would signal the coming rapture. In reply, the negotiators asked them to consider the safety of their children, but that only prompted more of that crazy. tinfoil hat talk about the end of days, and that was truly scary, because if they were willing to use their own kids as human shields, what else were they prepared to do? The standoff stretched on, each day colder and more tense than the last. Surveillance showed little movement outside of the compound, though we occasionally saw children's faces pressed against the frosted windows, and at some points the snow was relentless, and the temperatures dropped way below.

freezing come nightfall. We took shifts, a mix of local deputies and state cops all huddling behind vehicles and makeshift barricades, divided by agency, but were united in our attempts to keep from freezing our asses off. And at times the compound was eerily quiet, and every shadow in a window or rustle in the snow put us on edge. And like I said earlier, the singers were heavily armed, and at the time, we had no idea how many folks were actually in there, so our biggest fear was them rushing us during the night, or having some wannabe snipers start taking pot shots at us. We still had hope, but by day four, that hope was starting to dwindle. Day four was when they called the negotiators back and cut off the power to the compound. It didn't do much at first,

because they had all kinds of generators and supplies stockpiled for an event such as that one, but it meant a shift from a negotiation mentality to a siege mentality. It also meant that it was only a matter of time before the singers were forced to do something, be that surrender, or come out fighting. Word of the standoff spread quickly, and soon the area was swarming with reporters. Helicopters buzzed overhead and TV trucks lined the nearby roads. Everyone wanted to ask us questions whenever we walk past the tape, and we've been instructed not to say anything.

to anybody. Whenever I caught the news when I was off duty, it was crazy to see how divided the public was over the issue. Some saw the singers as extremists and criminals, while others saw them as victims of government overreach. It added another layer of pressure to an already volatile situation. The eyes of the nation were on us, and any misstep could turn the standoff into a goddamn bloodbath, which, as you can imagine, was hell on our nerves. Negotiations continued on and off for more than a week and by the 10th day, we were exhausted. Nights were sleepless, and the tension weighed heavy on all of us. Then, on January 28th, after nearly two weeks of watching and waiting, the situation came

to a head. Adam Swap finally agreed to a surrender, but apparently his fanatical followers didn't get the message. Then as officers moved in to take him into custody, some of them opened fire. Shots were fired from inside the compound and in the gunfight that followed. Lieutenant House, a veteran officer and close personal friend to many of us, was wounded and killed. The loss hit us like a punch to the gut. Swap was eventually subdued and arrested along with Vicky Singer and others. The children were removed from the compound. They were terrified, but thankfully unharmed. The standoff was over, but it cost us dearly. Looking good, looking back, it felt more like a clash between law enforcement and a rogue group of survivalists.

The singers wanted to live off the grid, free from what they saw as government interference with their actions, bombing a church and killing an officer, brought them squarely into the spotlight. They could have lived the life they wanted, but they chose not to. And when they kicked out at the world, the world kicked back. And for me, that's what it's all about. Bad choices leading to bad outcomes. not just for the person making them, but for the people around them, the ones who'd never have been dragged into things otherwise. The children huddled inside that compound didn't choose that life, and Fred House didn't

deserve to die like that, neither. Yet here we are, running around in the bitter cold of a Utah winner all because some dumbass lost his goddamn mind. I'll never forget the faces, the tension, and the weight of the decisions we had to make, and as much as I'd like to leave that standoff behind, I know that it'll stay with me to the day that I meet my own maker. What feels like many, many years ago, I was enjoying a short vacation in my family's cabin up in Maine. The cabin was tucked away on the edge of North Pond, and while it was only a few rooms, it was very homely and no neighbors for miles in all directions.

My parents would take me and my sisters back when I was just a little boy, and although I didn't much enjoyed at the time, it was a place that I gravitated back towards later on in life. At first, I'd drive up there just to clear my head, but after a while, I started heading out on solo hikes and reliving some of those childhood vacations. So, I was up at the cabin, I'd been hiking all day, and after dinner I was just about ready to sleep. It'd have been a quiet night, save for the occasional creek of the wooden beams as they settled into the cool main air, and I'd fallen asleep early, but then around midnight I woke up startled, my senses prickling with the unmistakable feeling that something was very wrong.

And at first I thought that it might have just been the wind blowing through the trees outside. But what I heard next didn't quite match the rhythm of the swaying trees. I listened harder, hearing my own heartbeat in my ears as the noise shifted to something more distinct, the unmistakable creak of a floorboard. Someone was inside the cabin with me. I remember just freezing and lying totally motionless in the bed while I listened and tried to figure out what to do. The thought of another person inside sent to chill down my spine and I knew that I had to do something. So I slowly slipped out of bed, careful to keep the mattress from squeaking. And after putting on my pants and boots, I reached for the flashlight that I kept on the bedside table and I remember seeing my own hand shaking as I went to grab it.

Clicking on it felt like too great of a risk, so I kept it off, grabbing it tightly as I moved toward the door. I'd use it if I really needed it, but until then, I needed to not be seen. The sound of rummaging came from the kitchen. Pots clinked together softly, drawers open and closed, and whoever it was, they weren't in a hurry, but they also didn't sound like they were afraid of being caught either. My car was outside, so it's not like they could have made a mistake and assumed the place was empty, in which case, were they crazy? Was I safe? Or what were they looking for? My pulse pounded in my ears as I crept down that hall, each step louder in my head than the last as it seemed to go on and on forever.

When I reached the corner where the hall opened into the kitchen, I paused and took a deep breath. I then leaned forward just enough to peek around the edge of the wall, and then I saw him. A man stood in the dark kitchen, and his back was to me. He moved quickly but carefully, inspecting the contents of my cabinets and setting aside items that he probably deemed worthy of taking. It was dark, but there was enough moonlight coming through the window for me to see that he wore layers of these tattered clothes and that his hair was very unethical. Kempt and his beard was wild.

He was also very skinny, like he was sick or didn't eat much, and his movements were eerily calm for someone shifting through a stranger's home. I wanted to say something, to demand that he leave, but the words just got caught in my throat. There was something about him, this overwhelming sense that he wasn't normal, that made him feel less like a person and more like, I don't know, a creature. If there's a black bear eating chicken bones out of your trash, you can't just ask it to leave, and if you approach it, it might just eat your damn face off. And that's exactly what it felt like looking at this guy in my kitchen.

I tightened my grip around this heavy flashlight until my knuckles ached from the force. I'm not even joking. And I told myself, if he comes from me when I yell at him, I'm going to hit him with this. And I was just in the process of coming up with something very scary to yell at him when he turned and for a brief terrifying moment we made eye contact his eyes were piercing but he didn't seem angry or scared he just looked tired like he didn't have a single f left to give he didn't speak he didn't try and attack me he didn't even seem startled to see me standing there instead he just looked at me in a way that i found completely unreadable and i froze again my heart

was absolutely hammering against my ribs by then, and I braced myself for him to do something, anything aggressive or threatening, but he didn't. He just turned back to his task and selected a few more items, stuff like a jar of peanut butter, a loaf of bread and a half-eaten pack of crackers. And then when he was finished, he kind of scooped everything into a bag that he had with him and walked towards the back door of the cabin, which I guess was how he got in there in the first place. He opened the door and slipped silently into the night, disappearing into the dark as if though I'd never even seen him in the first place. I stood there for what felt like hours, the flashlight feeling heavy in my hand as my breathing and heart rate returned to

normal. The house was creepily still, and the only evidence that he'd even been there was the disarray in my kitchen and the open door swinging gently in the breeze. The next morning, after a sleepless night spent securing the cabin and wandering if he'd returned, I learned his name, or rather, the name he'd been given by the locals, the North Pond Hermit. I only found out later that his real name was Christopher Thomas Knight, and for nearly three decades, he'd lived in the woods around North Pond surviving off what he could scavenge and steal. He disappeared into the main wilderness in the mid-80s sometime, turning his back on society entirely, I guess, but no one really ever knew why. Some people talked about him trying to

escape something, like a traumatic event or something of that nature. Others believe that he just wanted to be left alone, so he could live out his days in peace away from a society he never understood and who never really understood him either. Over the years, he became something of a local legend. He'd slip into cabins and campsites, taking only what he'd needed. Food, clothing, tools, and stuff, but he never caused harm and he never left a trace beyond what he'd taken. People spoke of him with a mix of fear and fascination, unable to figure him out, but somehow understanding of him. And he kept on living that life of raiding cabins and homes until he finally got caught sometime in 2013. I heard he told the cops that he'd managed to survive 27 years

without lighting a single fire and did all his cooking on stolen propane tanks. His arrest made headlines and everyone was talking about him, but all I could think when I saw his picture was holy crap, it's you. When I think back to that night, I'm haunted not by what he did, but what he looked like. I saw what I think was a great emptiness in his eyes, like all the humanity was drained out of him. But at the same time, he wasn't there to hurt me. He was simply trying to survive. And even now, years later, I sometimes wake in the middle of the night, convince that I've heard the creak of a floorboard or the rustle of a cabinet door. I'll get up, check the locks, and peer out into the night, wondering if he's still out there, moving

silently through the trees, like a ghost in the darkness. It all started with a simple act of kindness. There was an elderly man than I knew from a community group. He had lost his wife and was struggling financially. When I heard about a situation I wanted to help, it wasn't much, I baked to cake for him while I was already cooking for my father. And at first he was grateful. He thanked me and was polite, but then things changed. He started waiting for me at the group meetings, always wanting my attention. He would interrupt my conversations and monopolize my time, and at first I didn't

think much of it. I tried to point him towards others who could help him, but he didn't seem interested in help, just in me. Then he started waiting outside after meetings, walking me to my car. I tried to spend more time with other people, hoping he'd get the hint, but one day he showed up at my house. He said he wanted to drop off a thank you card, and after that I noticed his car parked on the street more and more. He claimed he was walking in the area, but he would always find a reason to stop by, and I started avoiding him.

If I saw his car, I'd drive away. I changed my routine, coming and going at different times, and at first I didn't think of it as stalking. It was just annoying, but I didn't feel threatened. Other people brushed it off, too. They said things like it's harmless, or there's no fool like an old fool. Some even thought he was funny because he was twice my age, but it didn't feel funny to me. His behavior escalated. If I avoided him, he'd get angry and demand to know why. Leaders in our community group stepped in and warned him to leave me alone, but he became angry at them. And for a while, he backed off. He would still stare at me during meetings, and eventually it all started back up again.

He began showing up everywhere I went. At the hospital with my daughter, he was there. At my sports games, he was there, and it felt like he was always watching me. I went to the police, but because he had threatened me, they said there really wasn't much they could do. I stopped going to my regular group and joined another, and eventually the group leaders warned him again, this time making it clear that he'd be reported for stalking if he contacted me, and for a year I lived differently because of him. I changed my schedule, avoided certain places, and felt on edge all the time.

This wasn't flattery, it wasn't harmless. It was obsessive, irrational, and scary. I wish I called it out sooner. I wish I'd told him from the beginning that his behavior was making me uncomfortable and needed to stop. stalking isn't about affection or attraction it's abuse if someone's attention makes you feel unsafe or forces you to change your life speak up name it for what it is and take action quickly unlike i did I used to do a lot of wilderness hiking in real remote and accessible locations, and this is the story of the weirdest, most unsettling thing I'd ever come across.

The woods have been quiet that day. I've been hiking alone for three days, and the sense of isolation was starting to feel heavy. The trail was overgrown. with trees pressing in close, and the further I went, the less it felt like a trail at all. I liked the feeling, though. It was the reason I visited places like that in the first place to feel like I was stepping into a world untouched by anyone else. Around mid-afternoon, I came across what looked like a clearing, and then as the trees started to thin out, I saw it. It stood in a small clearing, perfectly centered as if someone

had placed it there with care, maybe eight feet tall and, and made of dark, weathered wood. It wasn't just a piece of wood, though. It was carved, roughly, but with purpose. Faces were etched into its surface, crude and uneven, some long and narrow and others wide and round. They stacked on top of one another, staring out into all directions,

and as I stared at them, I figured out what it was. It was a totem pole. But what caught my attention most, were the teeth. The totem was covered in them, jammed into the wood like little pieces of decoration. At first, I thought that they were all animal teeth. There were long, curved ones like from a deer, sharp ones that might have been from a dog or a wolf. But then I saw others, smaller and straighter, ones that looked almost human. They were yellowed and cracked and some still rooted in fragments of jawbone. and my stomach turned and I stepped back on instinct.

I didn't stay long. The thing felt wrong, like all those carved eyes were watching me, and I wanted to forget what I'd seen, but it stayed in my mind with me as I walked. The forest didn't seem the same after that, though. The air was heavier. The shadows felt longer and darker, and I decided to cut the day short and set up camp further from the clearing, maybe a mile away. But even then, I couldn't shake the way.

the feeling that something was wrong. That night I couldn't sleep. Every sound made me sit up, and as much as I told myself, it was just animals moving through the underbrush or the wind stirring the trees, I couldn't help feeling like something was out there, watching me. I didn't light a fire. It felt safer to stay in the dark, even though I was freezing, and I thought that I might not sleep a wink that night, but eventually exhaustion took over and I drifted off.

and I dreamed about teeth and in the morning I packed up and left as quickly as I could I didn't go near the clearing again I didn't even look back I've done a lot of solo hikes but that was the first time that I felt like I wasn't alone and I didn't like it and a year later curiosity got the better of me the memory of that totem had stuck with me but I started feeling like maybe I'd been overthinking the whole thing and started to wonder if I'd imagined parts of it or

blown them out of proportion. And so I went back. That time, I brought a disposable camera with me, one of those cheap ones that you wind up by hand, and I wasn't expecting to find the totem again, but I figured if I did, I'd want proof to send to you. And the forest felt different on the second trip. The overgrowth wasn't as dense as I remembered, and the trail was easier to follow, less wild, and I reached the clearing by late afternoon, but the totem wasn't there. The spot was empty, just a patch of dirt and grass where it should have been, and I walked in circles around the area looking for signs that it had been moved, but there was nothing. No drag marks, no holes where it might have been anchored, and it was as if it had never been

there at all. But I know what I saw. The teeth, the carvings, the faces, it wasn't something you'd forget, but there was no trace of it. I took pictures of the clearing anyway just to prove myself that I'd gone back, and when I got the photos developed, they showed really nothing but trees and grass. No shadows or odd shapes in the background, just an ordinary patch of forest. And I stopped telling people about it after that, and the few times I tried, I could see it in their faces, the disbelief, the very polite

nods, the way their eyes shifted as they looked for a way to change the subject, and I get it. If someone told me a crazy story like that, I'd probably think that they were making it up too. But I know what I saw. I know how it felt to stand in front of that thing and how the air seemed to just sort of hum with something I couldn't explain. And I know the fear that kept me awake that night, the sense that something was out there in the dark. And even now, I can't think about it for too long without feeling a chill run down my spine. I haven't been back to that part of the forest since then. and I still hike, but I stick to trails that I know.

Places where other people go, and I don't like to be too far from civilization anymore. It's not the wilderness that scares me. It's the things that you can't explain, the things that shouldn't be there, but are. Hey, friends, thanks for listening. Don't forget to hit that follow button to be alerted of our weekly episodes every Tuesday at 1 p.m. EST. And if you haven't already, check out Let's Read on YouTube, where you can catch all my new video releases every Monday and Thursday at 9 p.m. EST.

Thanks so much, friends. And I'll see you in my next. next episode.