The Zac Clark Show - NYT Bestseller Billy Jensen: True Crime Stardom, Fall from Grace, and Redemption Through Sobriety

Episode Date: August 6, 2024

Billy Jensen is an American true crime pioneer and NY Times bestselling author, renowned for using social media to solve unsolved murders and missing persons cases. He has resolved six homicides and helped locate numerous missing individuals, a journey chronicled in his bestselling book, Chase Darkness with Me: How One True Crime Writer Started Solving Murders. As Billy’s career soared, so did his struggle with alcohol. His impressive career includes writing for top publications like Los Angeles Magazine, Rolling Stone, and the New York Times, serving as a senior producer and investigator on Crime Watch Daily, co-hosting Unraveled on Discovery+, and co-creating the successful podcast Jensen & Holes: The Murder Squad. Despite these accomplishments, his alcoholism and long-standing battle with depression worsened, culminating in sexual misconduct allegations that led to the loss of his podcast and tarnished his professional reputation. Billy’s latest book, Killers Amidst Killers, combines his true crime expertise with his personal struggle, exploring how unresolved homicides are often disregarded or misclassified as opioid-related deaths, a critique on the sociopolitical handling of the American opioid crisis.   Now two years sober, Billy candidly shares his journey of redemption and personal growth. In our conversation, he reflects on his career, his battle with alcoholism, and his efforts to make amends while continuing to impact the world of true crime. Please join us for a compelling discussion with a man whose dramatic fall from grace is matched by his newfound dedication to leading an honorable, sober life. Connect with Zac https://www.instagram.com/zwclark/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/zac-c-746b96254/ https://www.tiktok.com/@zacwclark https://www.strava.com/athletes/55697553 https://twitter.com/zacwclark If you or anyone you know is struggling, please do not hesitate to contact Release: [phone] releaserecovery.com @releaserecovery

All right, so this episode of the Zach Clark show, we have Billy Jensen on Billy is a New York Times bestselling author. He also made a career out of solving murders that were unresolved. Prior to the interview, I asked Billy if there was anything off limits for the conversation. He said, no, I'm an open book, which I respect because at the height of his career, Billy found himself drinking alcoholically, which led to some bad decisions that he's not proud of. but he acknowledges. And so I appreciate the fact that Billy is two years sober today and the conversation that we were able to have here on the Zach Clark show. All right. So welcome back to the Zach Clark show. Super excited to chat with today's guest. Billy Jensen, who is most known for being investigative journalists, have solved a bunch of murders, right? Over your kind of true crime

career, but also, and most pointed for this show and the conversations we have just celebrated two years. Two years. I celebrated two years. Thank you so much for having me, Zach. I celebrated two years. I was actually in Germany for the Euros and I was in Cologne. The only meeting that I found was a German speaking meeting. So I actually typed in into my phone in German. Hi, my name is Billy Jensen, today is my two-year birthday. And I tried to say it. The guy didn't know what I was talking about that I showed on the phone and then they were so welcoming to me. So then I did the meeting all in German and you get it. You know, what's going on. And then I got my two-year chip in Germany, yeah. Yeah. I'm just, I'm fascinated by humans and the stories of humans and

yours is, I've obviously been reading up a lot about you and we kind of connected like people connect on social media. Yeah. I think you saw something and liked something and commented, oh, this guy's sober. And then I started looking into it. And there was a lot there. There's a lot to talk about. Yeah.

So I figured we start with just your journey to recovery. And then hopefully we will start to intertwine the books and the podcast and all that stuff. So you, you born and raised in Long Island? Is that? Born and raised on Long Island. And, you know, went to school in Boston University. You know, I was a kid that was, you know, as far as drinking goes, and we'll weave in drinking stories, you know, through this as I'm talking about this. But, you know, I was a, didn't like the beer.

I didn't think I was a beer fan, but it was because the beer was awful as kids. Because you'd get like a really flat keg beer, you know. So I was a vodka kid, you know, and all this kind of artsy new music kids that listen to. Do you remember your first drink? I mean, is that? I remember drinking. Remember the first keg party? Yeah, definitely.

It was at a kid called Peter Coon's house. And we had just one, I think we snapped like a 17-game losing streak in football or something. So that was the first big keg party, and I remember that, yeah. You were an athlete growing up. I was a bad athlete growing up. And then I found hockey. And hockey was like my thing that nobody else was playing because it's not big on Long Island. At least it wasn't then.

And I was a decent hockey player. And then I went on to play club hockey in college, and I played a little, professional roller hockey and things. So that was like the one thing that I was able to do. But yeah, as a kid, I wanted to be a baseball player and a football player and everything. And as a kid growing up, did you feel like you were shy, outgoing, had friends, didn't have friends,

kind of were finding your place in the world? Yeah, my best friend was my dad. And my dad created me because he wanted a best friend. That is good and bad, as I've learned through therapy, just because he really had no limits on what he would tell me. I knew he was a, had been a heroin addict, he would tell me stories about it at age, from age five, you know, tell me stories about how he ran away when he was 15 to California and went to a house of ill repute and lost his virginity and like telling me those stories when I was five or six, you know, just literally bedtime stories. And, you know, driving, we would go to a lot of Mets games and Jets games and he would drink in the car on the way there, you know, and he also did a lot of pills. He did these things called Darvon, kind of like Vicodin.

And I just thought everybody did him, you know. So he wasn't in recovery at all, and he ended up passing away at 50, and the heroin actually killed him. The needles killed him because he died of Hep C. So it was from the needles from back when he was 21. So, and then my mother. Did he put the dope down, or was it? Oh, he put the dope down before. My mother, when he re-met my mother, they met in high school.

But my mother said, you know, he showed up at a. place called Fortunas on Long Island. She was working there, and he had the long hair and the beard. This is probably 1970. And she said, if you're going to be around my kids, because she had two kids, like, you've got to clean yourself up and stop doing that stuff. And my dad, you know, made me promise at a very early age to never do hard drugs. So I, you know, with the way my personality was, and certainly the way I dug into drinking the way I did, but I would I would always refuse hard drugs. That's probably something that saved me. I didn't say anything about pills, so the pills came in. yeah, never do hard

drugs. Never do hard drugs. This is what he made me promised. Never do hard drugs. Never smoke. Always wear your seatbelt. Never drunk drive and always wear a condom. And for a kid, you know, growing up of the 1980s, those are probably like the five biggest

killer, so it was probably a good thing that he made me promise, yeah. Did you hold all those promises? Well, I had kids, so not necessarily. And his mom was around? Yeah, mom was around She eventually, after he passed, she was always, she had started drinking a lot more, probably five years before he passed.

And then she went to Florida, and she realized she had a problem. She got into the program. She was in the program for 13 years. She just passed away last year. But we got, luckily, we were able to share about the program. A year? Yeah. So you had a year of sobriety before.

I had a year of sobriety. So I was able to share with her things that I was learning in the program. and she was always like, make the coffee. Like, she's the person that makes the coffee at the meeting. I think, too, like, that's something they talk about. I remember when I got sober, they were kind of like, you know, buy a black suit because you're going to go to a lot of weddings and a lot of funerals. And I didn't know what they meant.

And then, you know, I haven't had a ton of death in my life. But the funerals I have gone to, it's a different experience because we show up and we're sober and we're able to kind of go into that service mode. Yeah. And also remember, which is well, too. And that's the thing. It's just like, there's so many times right now that I'm looking around when I'm out at an event or something, thing. I'm like, I'm going to remember all of this when I wouldn't have remembered it at all beforehand, you know, before I.

Was she who you called when you need to get sober? No. No, that was really, you know, I was either, I was at a point where I was going to either die by suicide, die by drinking myself to death or go to rehab and then I went to rehab. Okay. Amazing. Well, I'm happy you're here. So living in Long Island, go to Boston University. When does the love of journalism, true crime? I mean, you've had a pretty successful run with some of that stuff. So, I mean, it was a long time coming. You know, I got a, then I got a scholarship to study religious studies in Kansas. So I was studying cults, new religious movements, we call them, and particularly Christian apocalyptic cults that veered into crime. There was a lot of crime there. And I went back to Long Island and was, because my dad had gotten sick with a different condition, a heart condition, but he was a house painter. He had a house painting company.

So I was, you know, this pale kid painting houses when I was, you know, with a master's degree and not knowing what I was going to do. And I needed a creative outlet. So I started a zine. If you remember what zines were. I don't. Zines are basically like little magazines. that you make and then you print out and then you make copies of and then you hand them out where you sell them. And I made a zine about hockey fights. So I would take each hockey fight

and just do a play by play of who won, who lost, that kind of thing. And the Village Voice, which is a newspaper in New York, was starting a paper on Long Island. They saw it. They gave me one story to write and then I just kept on pitching and pitching. That morphed into New York Times. I was looking for stringers. Asked my editor. My editor gave my game to them and you know this the second story I did for the New York Times turned out to be a murder story and from there I you know I just started and I realized early on that was a mystery when I had started it this guy had moved into a house on Jericho in Jericho on Long Island and he found a barrel and inside the barrel there was a woman and called the police and I ended up

speaking to the murderer, who then shot himself in the head after, but, you know, I was the one that basically broke it to him, that his jig was up. I didn't solve it, but it was just like, and everything has been, you know, for that to happen within like a five-hour span, everything has been months and years of working on things after that. But I got a gig at the New York Post, too, and it's just like, I decided very early on I wanted to concentrate on unsolved, which meant I couldn't be a reporter. I had to be an editor and then do my stories because I couldn't say, oh, no, that's solved. The solved stuff just felt very exploitative, so I didn't want to do solve stuff.

So I just did unsolved, and I wrote those stories at night and on the weekends, and then during the day I became an editor. I'm going to jump back to something, and then I have another question about that because you mentioned cult, and I'm just like, this is something that, like, when you think about recovery communities, 12-step, and people call them a cult, what is your response to that? My response is this. Usually in cults, you've thought about this one.

Absolutely. Usually in Colts, there's two things, three things, actually. One, it's give me all your money, or give me some of your money, or give me 10% of your money, which A.A. doesn't do. The second is that there's a leader. A.A. does not have a leader. And the third is in Colts is that at some point, the leader says, God has told me, I need to sleep with your wife. That doesn't happen in AA either.

So you take all of the main things that you see in new religious movements. in cults and take them out and A.A. is the same thing as, you know, I was just at the Manchester City game at Yankee Stadium two nights ago. We do chants there too, you know, so if you're doing a chant, if you're doing the Lord's Prayer or something like that, it's the same thing, you know, you need, it's the, it's the, it's the, what email Durkheim called the collective effervescence. You're there together. You're boosting each other up, but you're, you know, at the end of the day we don't want to be alone. And that's the biggest thing that I think A.A. delivers to you. On top of the fact that it's a great piece of literature, you know, it's a great self-help book,

even if you're not. Right. No, I mean, it's divinely inspired or not, it's unbelievable. The fact that those guys, sorry to cut you off, but the fact that those guys had the wherewithal not to lean into God, you know, a bunch of white guys in the 30s, to not lean into God as the Christian God and just be able to say, you know what, whatever's your higher power, you're okay. Just know that you're not in control. That was a big thing. You're not in control. You're not in Rand, but you just want to, this is, this is, it could be whoever you like,

there has to be a higher power. I thought that is really one of the reasons why it's been able to survive. No, it's been fascinating for me because obviously I have my personal journey and recovery and then my, I work, behavioral health care, and I have for most of my sobriety, and you're seeing a lot of more the refuge recovery, the smart recoveries, all these other kind of like modalities or support groups come online and um you know at the core of of all these is like the community yeah no and and i think like with AI and the apps and like all there's so many ways where you can kind of hide behind the fact that you need to get sober by

cooking or something or whatever like connecting with people was the most important thing for me because i didn't think anyone would ever understand the shit that i felt yeah it turns out I go somewhere and like there's 50 people here and all of them do yeah yeah and there's it's the most non-judgmental place that you could ever walk into yeah uh and it's you're right and there is a danger there with the apps and particularly with AI like your AI sober buddy you know it's just like at the end of the day you need to be able to talk to somebody that is a real person and have that connection but you know I tell people people, you know, I've gotten so many friends within the last two years that I know will

be friends forever, as opposed to the friends that might have had before. Yeah, if you think about it, like, so many people are nervous about making this declaration that they're getting sober or making this declaration that they're an alcoholic, what those people fail to remember is the chaos that they cause while they're drinking. Yeah. Yep. And they also don't want to, you know, there's also a social aspect to that. that they don't want to lose their current friends with you know so anybody that might you know still

drink that's listening or whatever it's just i mean you can't ostracize that person i think we've gotten a lot better about that and um hey you got it you know for rural areas you got a uh you got a designated driver and you also have somebody that is going to sort of be the kind of protector of the group uh which is kind of a cool thing to have yeah you know um i like always it's particularly with the young kids that have to try to tell them. It's like, you don't have to lose those people. Yes, a lot of times you become the people that you're around or whatever, but if you gain other people, you know, you could still be with your, you know, particularly with, you know, I look at sports and how huge sports is and how inundated it is with drinking. And, you know, particularly,

obviously the pub culture with football soccer, you know, and just like tailgating and everything that we've got and it's you don't have to lose that stuff but you just have to have that that firm foundation with some type of program. Yeah, I mean my response to these people that ask all these questions in early

surprise, anything is possible. Anything is possible in recovery. You can still be friends with your, my best friends in life are the guys that I grew up with. And they're also drinking. Yeah. And I have a place in that friend group. We go on the fantasy football trips and I rent the van and I drive the 15 drunk guys around for the weekend and I have a blast doing it you know it's and I've seen it all I mean I've seen people get sober divorce their wife and then remarry them you know down the line like anything is literally possible in recovery and that's where I think that first step in asking for help so many people are held back by this idea that they have to leave this entire life behind you can you can bring along the the good shit yeah absolutely so yeah Okay, so you want to do unsolved mystery.

And so I'm curious, who's paying for you to kind of like travel around? Is that all self-funded? Yeah, you know, the first, one of the first big stories I did was, I would be able to write them for. I was at a paper called The Long Island Press. I was able to write for that. That was mainly Long Island, so it was a car right away. I did a story in Miami called Hardcore and Bleeding about this DJ who was murdered. That was kind of like the first big one that I did that had won a few awards.

What's the time frame of this? This is 2001. Okay. 2002, yeah. I did a story on the only murder other than what happened at the towers on 9-11, which is actually unsolved, a guy named Hendrik Shiawiyak, and we got killed in bedstive. And so it was the only...

The only murder on 9-11, yeah. And he was a Polish immigrant who had gotten a job that morning, to clean supermarkets and he got off at the wrong station and was kind of knocking on doors and people were on edge and somebody freaked out and killed him and still still unsolved yeah and i went around knocking on doors and i remember the cops telling me you really shouldn't have done that was in bed style was still a little rough and uh they said you know you probably talked to somebody who knows knows the guy and the only thing that we know about that murder was that uh it was an they wouldn't tell me the caliber of the gun but it was an odd caliber gun so it was wasn't like

a 38 or a 9 or something so that was it and and in those moments when you're knocking on doors are you just is that the thrill of your work that you're a little kind of fearless in that or it's it's more you're so and this is to my detriment and luckily I'm still here is that it's more just you're trying to fight the good fight and you really just want the answer so you're not really worried that much about it you know there are obviously are stories where you know Daniel Pearl, the journalist who was beheaded by Al-Qaeda, that's what he was doing. He was meeting somebody to get information on the shoe bomber, and he was kidnapped and then killed.

So it's just like, that's the kind of thing. But, you know, as journalists, you're always chasing that story. You're always chasing that next lead, and it can lead to bad things. Unbelievable. And are you drinking during all this? During that time, just, you know, beer, you know, maybe a couple at night. on the weekend, maybe a few more. That was pretty much it, yeah.

So, and I was also in a business that was, you know, I was starting to rise in this business. I was at, on Long Island. I got poached to be the editor of the Boston Phoenix. Then I got poached to be the editor of the Village Voice, and the Village Voice just wasn't, I could tell it was a ship that was sinking. It was going to be not a good situation.

Right. And it was. It was 2005, 2006, when, you know, Craigslist had eaten. 30% of the business. So I got a job. Instead, I said to the company, which owns 17 papers at the time, let me run all of your digital, because digital was becoming really big then, and build apps and do digital, you know, blogs and things. So I moved out to Phoenix. That's where they were headquartered and kind of ran that for five or 60 years. And that's really where it took cold. That was very much a drinking culture. And I never want to blame that on that, but it was just

I can pinpoint it, you know, the pressures of that job, too, where you're building something and actually having a lot of success, but you're on a sinking ship because newspapers are going down. That's where the most revenue was from. And that coupled with, a lot of traveling and a lot of drinking, just that blew the doors off of it. And then on top of that, which I never used to take as a fact, you know, I had been on Prozac for depression and OCD since 95 and those don't you know that doesn't they always say

don't drink with that right they always threw that out the window and your personal life at this time is I had had married with two kids yeah so I had you know my kids were starting to become teenagers around that time so you know there was less to do with you know they didn't want to hang out you know that kind of they never saw I mean like they didn't really experience I was never violent or anything right you know I was never a I might have passed out on the on the hammock you know that kind of thing but uh I remember falling asleep at dark night returns no no the dark night yeah I've actually fell asleep in that movie which is awful when I think about it although the ending is a little long in that

that was for my birthday yeah I was go to Benny Hana on my birthday with the family and then we went to a movie and then just because I had too many vodka so you know they might have seen a little bit of that yeah definitely and so you're in Phoenix now you're kind of the drinking cultures taking off. Are you still on the side doing your... A little bit. I had started a... I got very interested in building a database of unsolved murders.

So there's no Unsolved Murders database, national database, and this drove me nuts. So back then it was... It might have been 200,000 unsolved murder since 1980. It's up to how many? 200,000 in America alone. Now it's up to like 250 of Unsolved Murders. And there's no central database.

Are people getting away with murder today? Absolutely. Someone just got away with murder right now. With everything in the world, I mean, the phones, the cameras. Forget about it. Yeah. 1960, the clearance rate for murders was 90%. Clearance rate, meaning you took somebody to trial.

You arrested somebody and took them to trial. Today, it's around 53%. No shit. Yeah. And there's a lot to do with that. One, you know, they railroaded a lot of people. There's a lot better lawyers now and things. And they beat confessions and that kind of stuff.

So let's put that. side but the main thing is there's a lot more guns obviously that's the biggest thing drugs a transient population where people don't know their neighbors you know and then the distrust of the police no one will if they know something they won't go to the police so those four things have really contributed to a lot of that and obviously the drugs you know is a biggie as well so you've got that going on the murder rate dropped it's nowhere near the way it was in the early 90s which is at its height, but it's still, it's actually gone up, went up since the pandemic. And you've got, so I wanted to build a database where people would be able to search for it.

All this information is living on literally 17,000 different computers, because that's how many law enforcement agencies we have. There's no central database. And it's a problem. So I built that. I only got up to like 10,000 murders to put in there. And but I was working on that. Then I wanted to start writing again.

I dip my toe in. I was like, I can't jump into talking to families. I got really, I discovered while I was driving around with somebody, they put in a tape and somebody had remixed Sufian Stevens's album or something, and it was Donald Glover. So I was like, I want to meet this guy, you know, Childish Gambino. So, and I thought he was just super talented. So I hung out with him for a week, wrote a cover story for the Village Voice with Donald.

That was a lot of fun. I was like, okay, I can still write again. So then I got back into it and started writing. And then I got really, I was trying to sell TV shows while I was working on these cases. And I did, I really got into citizens and how citizens can solve things. So I wrote a story about, what was it? The first one was Mora Murray, who went missing in New Hampshire. She was a college student.

And there was all these people that were using the Internet to try and solve it. So I thought that was interesting. What's cool? She went to Boston, maybe, was she maybe at Amherst, I think? And she went missing, she's still missing. And it was the first, one of the kind of crowd-solving type of things that people were trying to do. I wrote, I did that for Boston Magazine. a story about Luca Magnata

who is the kitten killer don't fuck with cats I don't if anybody's ever seen that documentary that was based on that article that I wrote and but you know that thing won an Emmy

I didn't get any money for that because they you know it's facts are facts I just put it all together I wrote it for Rolling Stone I got like $2,500 and it made you know it cost six months to do so there's no money in it

and then you know I got so I ended up doing people start calling like eventually do you start get a little bit yeah like bill you got we got something here kind of yeah or like it's a lot of family members and it's a lot of yeah and you never want to say no you direct them to the right place i was the uh advisor of a group called parents of murdered children explaining to people how to work with uh the media and uh you know don't wait you know the media loves anniversaries but don't wait until a week before you know just like and the biggest

advice that i give anybody if they have a loved one that's been murdered is be the squeaky wheel Just call every day. You know what I mean? Be such a pain of the ass that they can't say no, and then they have to. Because they're overworked too, but you have to get your file out of the file cabinet and onto the desk. That's the biggest thing. So I was doing that, and I started looking at these, you know, how I could use social media to solve crime. So this is when Facebook was really humming.

And I saw a guy got attacked on the street in Chicago. This is 2016. And I had done, I had gotten on a TV show called Crime Watch Daily. So I was doing a little bit for them. I had gotten, I had done a D.B. Cooper special for History Channel. So that was kind of fun just doing that. And I did a, D.B. Cooper, by the way, do you know that story? No.

Yeah. So he hijacked a plane, asked for money, got the money, and then jumped out of the plane. And it was never heard from again. And his name wasn't D.B. Cooper. actually gave the name Dan Cooper. We don't know who he is. It's a mystery. He's become a folk hero, that kind of thing.

So we did the whole investigation, did a bunch of interviews. They paired me with a former deputy director of the FBI. It was a cool little show that, you know, again, not much money. I think I made $10,000 for four episodes, yeah. So are you thinking this is like service? I'm giving back. You're just passionate about it. I mean, I'm, the service, not so much that.

I guess so the whole entire thing, yeah. Never thought I'd ever make money on it, ever. So I see this video, it's a press conference, of this family talking about their loved one, a guy named Marcus Gaines, who had been murdered on the streets of Chicago. And he gets into a fight with somebody, somebody attacks him, he decides to walk away, which is what you should do. The guy comes up to back up to him, punches him, and Marcus is laid out flat, cold in the crosswalk. then people gather around to try and help him. The guy who attacked him yells at the people because you can see this all on overhead cams.

You can't hear it. They all run away and then a minute later a cab rolls over him and kills him. And I said there's really good security footage of this guy who attacked him. And it's been four months. They don't have him. You know, what's going on here?

So I contacted the police. Chicago police are notorious for never talking to the media. So I said, you know what, I think I could find this guy. So I set up a Facebook page and a Twitter page just for 2016. This is 2016. Yeah. Called the River North Puncher.

I had the picture of him. And then I set up a Twitter page, same thing. And then asked anybody that I could to retweet it. Eventually, a guy in Philadelphia who I knew was a sports guy retweeted it. That was seen by a guy named Barstool Big Cat from Barstool Sports. He retweeted it. and then somebody replied to us with a photo, then it's a front-facing photo,

because the other pictures I had were from up top because it's security, it's from a 7-Eleven, and then from a traffic across the street. But it was a photo, front-facing photo, and I was like, did you make this? Like, this is a photo looks like, you know, like I thought he did something digitally, and he's like, no, my friend was there.

I was like, what? And he's like, he actually shot a video, and he sent me a video. And in the video is Marcus Gaines on the ground, the last photo of him ever taken and then it swings up and then the puncher is walking straight

towards the camera and I'm like holy shit so then I took that now I had front face and I could tell you when you get that is that like sacred

are you holding that are you saying don't send this to anyone or do you no no I would never say that I would just say I just said oh my God you know like

what can I do sent it to the police obviously they did nothing and then I said Cook County which I don't believe this is this is they should do this

but they actually put all of their mug shots online Mugshot shouldn't be put online because you're not convicted yet but in this case it was helpful because I just went to that neighborhood, did a search for everybody

he had a very distinctive widow's peak kind of like Dracula's hair kind of thing. Big guy and I went searching for it I found three guys that I thought could be him and then I went to I had been working on a TV show that we were going to do called CrowdSolve

and then they followed me to to Chicago when I walked around, you know, as they're following me. And I remember having the photo of him, and I went up to two guys. And then the third guy said, yeah, I know that guy. We call him Big Dummy. His real name is Marcus. And sure enough, that was his name, Marcus. And it was another Marcus.

And I was able to find him online, found his Facebook page, gave every, put it together a dossier, gave it to the cops. They just said, thank you. that's it, still didn't catch him, Facebook, he had gone, he was in the wind now, but following his Facebook page, he said he was in Holbrook, New York, which actually I know that town, he wasn't there because he actually said he was in a relationship with a woman, and that woman was from Minneapolis. His brother lives in Minneapolis.

I was like, he's living at his brother's place. I'm sending all this information to them saying he's in Minneapolis. There was a photo of him that he took where behind him, there was a truck, and there was a logo, and the logo was of a Minneapolis city service truck. He's in Minneapolis, just telling them, calling up, you know, alderman in Chicago, calling up the former head of Chicago homicide, can you help? Eventually they got a warrant for him, and then eventually they finally picked him up. And I got a call from his aunt, who really was like his sister,

who called me and said, they got him, you know. And that was an amazing feeling for about five seconds. And then after that, you realize the guy's still dead. You know, you wanted to, he looked like he was a great guy, impeccable dresser. He was a bartender, you know, really great dancer. Look like he was like really fun dude. Yeah. Sucks.

Yeah. So then after that, I was like, I solved my first one. That's the first one you actually. Yeah. So after that, it was like, I'm going to keep going. And then that one, you know, you solve your first one. But then after that, it's like, it was rough going. So, but those, you know, I started.

started buying, I didn't have to, I bought some ads with those, you know, buying geo-targeted advertising, so you're able to buy within a mile radius of a zip code or something, or a particular zip code, and then narrow it down based on who might know this guy. So whenever I see, you know, so what I do is if I see a piece of video, police looking for this, surveillance video, whatever, I save it. Two weeks later, I do a search. Usually they've caught the guy. But after two weeks, if they haven't caught the guy, I'll contact the police and say,

hey here's here's me now I can show them things but back then I couldn't they were just like oh we already have a Facebook page I was like no this is different nobody wants to a I'm not a cop so you know and B I'm doing a Facebook page specifically for this crime so it's going to say you know El Monte Jack in the Box Killer which is another one that I solved it's going to say that and then I'm going to buy ads which you're never going to do you know and eventually I think I've spent like 30 grand on ads so far And I don't ask for it. That's out of your own.

That's out of your own. That's out of my own pocket, yeah. And then I never thought I'd get that much. I was able to write a book and recoup that. Which one was that? That was Chase Darkness with me. That was my first one. And that tells the story of how I got to this place.

And I was very much, you know, and then I was able to use it and saw, but, you know, really on my own that it wouldn't have been solved or at least by that time without me. It was probably about six. overall is probably, you know, just helping with a little bit, it's 10, you know, and then a couple missing people. And then, you know, just have a lot of pages out there. And I still check them all the time. There's one that happened in New York that there was an Owlshead Park in Brooklyn. And there's amazing video of the killer walking with the victim. She was a woman who was found murdered in the park brutally. And there's a really clear video of this guy. walking with her and then walking back.

And one's in color, one's in black and white. I'm just like, I'm going to get this guy in two days. And I'm still looking for him today. And it's one of those things where I have the videos up. And I always tell, I was talking to her brother, but I was always telling, I always tell the family, listen, you're probably going to see this because if you live in the neighborhood,

you're going to see the ad, you know? And I was running the ad so much on Twitter that people were like, can somebody just catch this fool already? I'm so sick of seeing him this ad. And at one point, one night, I got, I got, there was a comment, I read all the comments as soon as they come up, and it said, that was my mom. And it was his, it was her son. And I said, I'm going to be looking for this guy the rest of my life, you know, so.

Nothing. Yeah, nothing. And I was doing, I did the ad in Egyptian, in Farsi, in Spanish. I was thinking, maybe he doesn't live, he's not from here, but he looks very comfortable here. Just the way he walks, the way he ashes his cigarette, almost effeminent. I just thought, I just can't believe I couldn't find. this guy you know and also sport sorry also sportswear wise he was wearing a hat with a logo on it so i was i would go to use reddit and use reddit to try to identify the hat or identify sneakers

like i do that as well yeah he's wearing an adidas track suit but um he's wearing a hat and it almost looks like we kind of narrate it might be at la king's hat the way that the logo looks but i don't know fascinating and and have you come across cases and then i want to kind of get into 16 to 19 the podcast and then getting sober, but have you come across cases where someone is murdered, but they're actually turned up alive many years later? Is that not really a thing? No, that's not really a thing. No, I mean, like, you know, like, it's like I just, I'm always curious. You're watching, you're watching movies there. Yeah. No, and it's never a twin. Right. Right. So that's 16. You solve your first murder. Yeah, 16 solved it. And then

I was trying to make TV about it. And then I said, screw it. I'm just going to write a book. I started writing a book about it. But the drinking is starting to... Oh, yeah, it's ramped. Kids are out of the house. Kids are almost out of the house, but yeah, it's full force. Do you acknowledge it to yourself?

When do you first acknowledge it to your... Oh, I... Yeah, but I would go get tested every six months, checking my liver. Liver's fine, I'm good, you know? Liver was never impacted. Morning? morning drink vodka no no no always had rules so it was five o'clock yeah so I would I would wait until

five I used to never drink alone but then that was really what I did I did break that rule by 2016 definitely but as far as the five o'clock thing I stuck with that up until the very end and then you know for the last month that was out the window so yeah and I was living in in L.A. with nothing to do at night and things so I would just go to Trader and get Tito's vodka for $16. Lonely. Yeah. And, you know, from there, I, you know, a friend of mine who passed away in her sleep named

Michelle McNamara, she was working on a book on the Golden State Killer. Yeah, you finish your book, right? And I helped finish it. And the, that came, they ended up solving that case, right? When the book came out. So my profile got, got leveled up a little bit and started a podcast. In 18. In 19, yeah. We talked about, it took a while for it to start. Murder Squad. That was Murder Squad, yeah. So from there, you know, 18 was amazing in the sense where I can't believe that they solved this thing.

We knew they were going to because they had his DNA. It was just a matter of, you know, there's so many, the reason why they, it, and I was so happy for it too because it was going to open the floodgates for using familial genealogy to solve all these other cases. And it has, mostly. It's white killers because white people love doing DNA tests and love 23 and me and they'll enter their stuff into something called Jedmatch. And that's why you're seeing so many, every killer that they've caught is usually some white guy, you know. And also a lot of the main serial killers back then obviously were white too. So you see that. So was doing that, was doing the, and the reason for that is that just like that's what white people like to do. is they do the DNA stuff. It's not something that the black community

or the Native American community or anything likes to be a part of, potentially rightly so, because who knows what they're going to do with that information. So, yeah, so in 19, you know, in 18, it was just going around, you know, drinking a lot, definitely,

but not as much as it started to happen on. Are you, are you, is your relationships, your circle, is it starting to, like, is your world, while your exterior world seems to be, kind of growing, is your, like, you know, your private life is... Private life is okay, you know, spending a lot of time, a lot more time in L.A., getting a lot of Hollywood people, you know, Hollywood friends, that kind of thing, making a lot of meetings for TV shows.

I'd come out there to try and do TV and had so many failures. Yeah. You know, I originally wanted to do a show called Murder in the Shadows, which was about... Starting with the Henrik-Shiwiat case, which was, you know, ordinary murders on extraordinary days. So, like, when the moon landing happened, there was a, you know, like that kind of thing. When the Sharon Tate murders happened, there was actually a murder 30 miles away of this little girl, you know, that didn't get the press or the investigations that it deserved. That was like, you know, we sold that to T&T, didn't make any money on it.

Sold it to T&T, then somebody leaves, like that kind of thing. Shot a pilot, didn't get picked up. It was just so much crushing stuff. And then it was all coming towards me. So it was a lot of meetings, a lot of, a lot of that kind of thing. And then I went to, you know, the podcast started. My book came out around the same time. That became a New York Times bestseller, was, you know,

and it got really, you know, kind of popular. And then I just was drinking a lot during that time, you know, and really took that towards, you know, that was 2019. Obviously, the pandemic happens. still doing the podcast, went to... Was the podcast, people were listening? I mean, it was... Oh, yeah, yeah, it was very successful, yeah.

Because it was part of my favorite murder family, so it was a lot of those fans, and it was very much... We're trying to solve murders here, so we're not just doing, you know, we're trying to use the crowd to solve murders. And, you know, was doing that up until the, you know, the pandemic happened.

Then the pandemic, obviously, it was a lot of drinking then, a lot of just being at home. Ended up doing a TV show about Long Island serial killer. So came out here for six weeks. During the pandemic. During the pandemic. Yeah, rented a house in Siosit, Long Island.

Worked on that. No, no, no. That was with the whole crew. Got it. Everything, yeah. Did that. That was her ID. And did a bunch of other shows as part of that.

It was a show called Unravelled and a podcast as well. And, you know, just kept, you know, drinking through that you know and at this point are you does your mom know does your family know is your people starting to question your drinking nobody's really questioning it because I was very functional you know I was always I never made I would play hockey on Sunday mornings I would never miss that because I was pride of myself as being a gamer right I always play like with a broken arm

like that's like that's the one thing I can add to the team because I don't have any talent so you know I would I would never miss a thing you know but there are certain moments that there's probably some podcasts you can listen to from this other one I was doing called The First Degree where you can tell I'm drinking in it, you know, and never did a podcast. As far as the podcast that were kind of personality-based podcasts, not the ones that were narrative, but it was always drinking during those, yeah, and then obviously drinking a little bit too much. Right, right. One time I remember saying I got to record that again because I'm slurring my words here.

Right. So if I'm doing the math here, you're two years sober. The podcast seems to kind of leave in 2022 and there's some... No, the podcast, yeah, and I got kicked, you know, because I would, we, right after the pandemic happened, we finally were having a party for everybody, kind of welcomed people back in the pandemic. And then I was completely blackout drunk and I got a complaint that I hugged people uncomfortably. and then I grabbed somebody's butt and these are people that I worked with and worked over me and under me and I remember the hugs I don't remember the butt part but I don't doubt it

you know I don't know and I completely don't just don't remember and the you know there was a there was a investigation and then two months later I got the it happened in August October 31st October 29th was the party I got to call December 20 I remember December 29th, I think, two months later.

So I had no clue what was going on and said that, you know, we want to investigate this or whatever. And then three weeks, they said, you know, you're out. So, yeah, that was the podcast. That was the podcast, yeah. So that was from there, and I had already started, it was so bad the year before that I was getting the drinking and the suicide ideation.

And I had even talked about this on the podcast. for, I think it was our 100th episode I talked about suicide and that my next book was going to be about suicide. Of course, I didn't, everyone was saying at least the books I was reading stopped drinking, but I didn't want to do that. But my next book was going to be about suicide.

Well, the drinking in some ways was probably saving you. I mean, like, when people are having those thoughts, the only thing to stop them is the booze. Because it's turning off your head, especially somebody with clinical OCD where you're constantly thinking about that, you know.

You know, if I tell you to not think about a white elephant, you're going to think about the white elephant or the purple elephant. So, and I had talked about it. And even in, you know, I would do like better help ads and talk about my depression and everything, you know. So and for them, for better help. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And did, you know, trying to go to a lot of therapy, trying a lot of different therapy things. And nothing really was working.

I, but before this. You know, so I just drank more in order to turn my brain off or whatever and that kind of thing. So after that happened, in between that, and I knew the news would come out at some point. Like, I mean, do you call it allegations or do you, like, like, I mean. Yeah, allocate, whatever you want to call it. You know what I mean? I made people uncomfortable. That's the bottom line.

So I just started drinking. That was at a, that was the start of being out of control. So from January, actually February to, because I, I did a, I tried to do a dry, January, but of course I did just did Vicodin and weed, you know what I mean? Dry. Yeah, dry January with Vicodin and weed. Thanks. Thanks. That's great. So then February on to, you know, I was just drinking a lot. Of 22. Of 22. And then really trying to like, oh, you know, trying like mushrooms or trying this

or that and just trying anything. And the news broke. And then, you know, some, you know, like one person said a lie about me, but then it's believable because I, you know, because the other thing, you know what I mean. So that's what's fascinating about this to me is like you spent your entire career trying to solve unsolved murders. And now you are in this position where, you know, obviously it sounds like you acknowledge that there was a bad night and some things happen. And like I made mistakes in my drunken, but now you are in this position where you're almost, I don't know you call it defending yourself or like you go into oh yeah first you go into defensive mode and you go into investigative mode and be like I didn't say this or I didn't do this and here's all

the text messages and here's right and putting it out and hiring a lawyer like a very expensive lawyer just because you're trying to there are certain people that are trying to assassinate you certain people that I worked with that I had helped throughout their careers and things that turned on me yeah whether it was professional jealousy or whatever and not wanting to be associated with me. All in L.A., by the way. Heartbreaking. All in L.A.

Yeah. All my journalism friends throughout my journalism career and everything like that, all were good, you know, and incredibly supportive. But everybody in L.A. and everybody that was part of that scene, they're all trying to save themselves and don't want to be associated with anything. So most of them just scattered. And so, you know, I always got to a point where you're really, really losing your, it felt like you lost, I lost my identity to you, on top of, forget about

the money of, that kind of thing, you know, just like I had a book that was going to come out in a month that was about addiction. And in that book, which is called Killers Amids Killers, it was about, I had realized, you know, because, you know, I would always think about that number, 250,000 unsolved murders. Well, you know what, there's a hundred thousand, 123,000 unsolved murders from opioid use every year. Right. Really.

Yes. At the end of the day. So I started looking at the opioid problem and I wanted to write a book about it, but I wanted it to sell. So I was finding these murders that were happening under the cloak of the opioid epidemic. And that's what killers and its killers is about. It's about these women who were sex workers who got caught with the opioid problem and then were murdered or they went missing or, you know, and it starts in rural Ohio, but it really,

and Columbus, Ohio, but then it really stretches out to everywhere. And, you know, that was coming out because I want, and I wanted to do something to showcase that more people are being murdered by these drugs here than are being killed by, you know, a serial killer or whatever. Right.

But we, nobody wants to talk about it. You know, nobody, it's not as, quite frankly, it's not as sexy. No one's gonna make a, you know, no one's gonna, a two hour special on fentanyl is not going to go go be like tiger king or something you know no and this is not going to know because it's a stigma and like it's just what's a stigma it's boring you know there's no there's no serial killer at the end there's no guy with a mustache that's twirling it that's the bad guy like like

you see and um you know there's no ted bundy at the end of it there's no geoffrey domer or gasey or anything so uh there was a little bit you know like we could blame the sacklers a little bit and try to say that those were the serial killers but it's it's hard you know so that's one of the reasons why do you have an opinion on them with that family and that whole i mean i mean i think definitely they need to pay the piper uh more than that six billion dollars uh as much as they did make because they were they knew things and they weren't um they literally were saying different things about it about how addicted it was and it's so hard with painkillers too because you know people are in pain and you know that they need certain things you know but you also know that human

beings are so fragile and everybody is so, you know, has issues and messed up and they want something to just take the pain away, even if it's a mental pain, that they'll take this drug. But the problem is the drug is so addictive that they get caught into that rut. So, you know, I got to a point there where I was going to, you know, five o'clock was out the window. I was drinking about a, I would never drink a bottle a day because that seemed too crazy, but I would leave like this much in there of bourbon or whatever. whatever. And then I decided, do you want to live or do you want to die? And I chose to live and I went to rehab for a month. And so objectively sitting here with two years sober, knowing the events

that took place leading up to getting sober. Yeah. Do you look back and like find gratitude in that all happening? Like did that, did that accelerate the drinking? Because it sounds like in the blink of an eye, you lose kind of like your life's work, your identity. People are saying, saying things about you that obviously maybe some of it's true and and some of it's obviously you know not um taking your word for it and so i'm just i'm curious what like we always talk about the moment of the moment where this bank teller called my dad instead of instead of the cops yes and so like you know like i'm just i'm fascinated by the end of our stories and how it's like the darkest moments of our existence yet we sit here and look back on it and say like you know

maybe that was god or the the universe kind of intervening I think so to a certain extent I don't necessarily know if I would have been if I hadn't gone to rehab I would have died yes but before that if that would have happened you know if I would have kept going on you know there was a moment where I remember I went to universe I lived right outside universal Studios. So I went to Universal Studios. I drank at the Hogwarts bar. And then I drank

at, by the way, they're laughing in the background. But I went to the Hogwarts Bar, then I went to the Simpsons bar. Moes Tavern, as you know. And there's an irony there that I just thought of that I'll tell you about in a second. But I went to Moes Tavern, got wasted at Moes Tavern, went and played, they have carnival games

outside. One bunch of carnival stuff, and then I walked home, right? So I'm drunk walking home, walking up, Lancash and Boulevard and I dropped something. I dropped one of the stuffed animals, like a crust of the clown, and then I stumbled and I literally went into the road and was on my knees and a car came probably a foot away from my face. And I would have been brained.

It would have been awful. And then I looked up and then I looked at the guy and the guy just shook his head. That should have been the moment, but it wasn't. It took a year and a half after that. like the ridiculousness of that moment. Now, Moe is interesting because the guy that plays Moe

is Hank Azaria. Hank Azaria is sober now. Of course, yeah. And actually just, I was at John Varvados about a month ago, and I saw him in there. Do you know Hank?

Well, I came up to him, I said, hey, Hank, we were just on the Dopee podcast together. Yeah. I was like, yeah, I was just on Dopee too. And it was like, oh, cool, everything like that. And then his wife, like, Googled me. I could see, like, while he was shopping for shirts.

He was shopping for shirts, by the way, he's in this easy street cover band. Yeah, yeah, he came to our gala this show. He's just like, he wants, he is very open about a sobriety. And we need more people like that. Absolutely, yeah. So, and then we talked and exchanged information and things like that. So it's great that the guy that played Mo is sober.

But I think that, yeah, it was just a, you know, that should have been the moment, you know, there should have been a bunch of different moments. But, yeah, I mean, this is, that was my rock bottom. And then I was also, though, in trying to save my career mode. So very much like, you know, do I do this? How do I do this? How do I get the book out? How do I, you know?

And then when all that sort of goes away, and then you're left alone with your thoughts and sober. And yeah, you're going to meetings. And I was going to meetings, but I didn't have. This is after rehab. This is after rehab. I didn't have a sponsor yet. And I realized that, you know what, I was okay, not drinking, but my mental health was awful because you're losing the thing that you used you're losing your medicine that's what

it is yeah yeah so drinking works for a long time and that's what people i think fail to fail to recognize for for many many years it's the only the only thing that works that's why we keep going back to it so i went to this uh so i i was like i got to find somebody and i want to find a guy that looked like he can kick my ass it was like that's what i for some ways i did that and i found this guy he's amazing and um the name is esther wallis he's he's out and uh he actually runs a program in Phoenix, which I didn't know at the time. But, you know, he's, like, really built. He's got a great beard.

He loves sneakers, by the way. I started getting the sneakers, too. But, you know, like, we would smoke cigars after, do fellowship after. And then, you know, he just said, all right, you want to do this? I said, yeah, I was like, listen, the drinking is, has, I think I got under control. Obviously, everybody says that, but it's the mental health stuff. And I need community and everything. And he said, all right.

And I was like, I want what you're selling. He was a great speaker. And he said, all right, you have to do whatever, whatever I say. said okay so I did and was able to you know work through the steps for about four months and went to his meeting and it's a raucous meeting in north Scottsdale it's about 150 guys all sort of shapes and sizes and a lot of Mexican Americans there and just people you would never meet otherwise as like a you know straight white dude and you you know it's one of those things where they'll just pick people out of the crowd and you got to run up like it's the

price is right and if you if you walk up people are like rod yeah it's like I love that it's that kind of thing but um you know and then I have another um I have a meeting with that I'd go online with a lot of people that were in the business and I was just in Europe and I went to you know went to a bunch of meetings in London and Paris and Berlin and Cologne and Hamburg and those were great just meeting so many different people and so many different just stories you know, just going out afterwards, which is really my favorite thing, the fellowship afterwards. Yeah, we're held.

We're held so, so, so beautifully by this community. And I, I just can't imagine, like, if you're two years into this journey, where this thing's going for you. Yeah. You know, it's, it's one of those things where you start to see the, when you step back, and you look at how inundated we are with alcohol in particular. You know, you don't see billboards for heroin, but you do see tons of billboards for beer and liquor and the way that they were able to get around the liquor on things on TV before they change that law with wine coolers and that kind of thing. And back in the day, and specifically targeting women with wine coolers and women with selzer.

But I'm more interested really in young men and what they need to survive and, you know, being a big football, European football fan. Just seeing, like, a real, you know, those kids and being just how much they're surrounded by liquor. And how much we're surrounded by liquor here with sports, which is such a big part of a male's identity. Right. And how to combat that and how to not necessarily, you know, don't be pearl clutching about it. Don't proselytize, but just give people an alternative to that and how we can make, you know, and that's why we're covering out loud is so important. And that's why what you did was so important on the show,

even though I don't know how many young men are watching the Bachelorette. Yeah, but all those women have husbands, boyfriends, brothers. I mean, that's who I hear from, and it's powerful. Yeah. I mean, I watched The Bachelor just because the Bachelorette, the dudes are usually kind of very supportive of each other, which is kind of cool. The Bachelor, it's a lot more catty, and that that's kind of fun.

I like that. You know what I mean, but with your show and you being able to be that, in a realm where drinking is so big, you know, we were talking about this before we got on here, you know, as a kid, as a generation X kid, you know, 50, I'm going to be 52 probably by the time this comes out. So, you know, I grew up with raised on Sesame Street, then MTV in the 80s, you know, then reality TV came with the real world. The real world was actually promoted as you've seen the fake world, which was Beverly Hills and Not a 2-1-0. Right. This is the real world. In the beginning, the real world, there was no drinking.

Right. You know, you don't see those kids drinking in New York, in L.A., in San Francisco, whether you had the Pedro thing, you know. They get to Vegas, and they realize this is going to be a lot more fun if we get everybody drunk. And then it was all just drinking. And you've got, you know, when it comes to reality TV, they realized drinking is going to make more drama. That should be a message to everyone.

everybody that drinking is not a good idea. Right. The, you know, the Jenny Jones murder. I don't know if you know that case. No. So they invited a guy. I have like 15 murders to look up now because I'm fascinated. Yeah, they invited a guy onto the,

it's saying that you have a secret admirer. And they might have said it was a man or a woman, but the guy thought it was going to be a woman. It turns out it was a guy that he knew. He is very uncomfortable on the show. And then two days later, he, it was eating him up so much after the show. came out that he shot the kid in the chest and killed him. And the, sure enough, in the green room, there was a bottle of vodka, in a daytime television

show. This isn't like a party atmosphere, you know, so the people in reality, which that was kind of the original reality shows, knew that alcohol is going to do that. And that is the clearest message that is not a good idea. Now, do I think alcohol is needed for people to mate? Absolutely. I think it's something that, you know, especially these days where there's so much social anxiety, I think having a couple drinks for people that need that. I think the universe, at least in America, would probably end and people wouldn't have kids anymore because it's so hard to meet people. And you're also always meeting at bars and things. But as far as the people that you can't handle it, obviously you don't want to do that. But, you know, I've seen that, and it was great that, you know, with what happened with The Bachelor and The Bachelorette now, where, what is it? You can only have two drinks per hour now.

Yeah, there's some rules in place. I mean, I have a hilarious story, which was when I was on the show, one of the guys, like, I know this guy because I am him, right? He very quickly figured out that, like, oh, you're sober. So you have, like, drinks in your back pocket that you're not using. So at one point, he's like, can you go grab me a beer? I'm like, I don't get a fuck, sure. like so I like walk up to the thing and like because he's like at his limit or whatever

he's at his two minute he's going to use you and they were on that shit like an hour later I had a producer pulling me aside like what's going on here like you have a drink on your like tab or whatever and I had to be honest about it because they thought I drank which they probably would have been pumped about the storyline but like

well you know like I would have gotten more cameras on please say you drank you know like trying to pull focus but you know was this before or after what happened in in Mexico or whatever. What was that show? That wasn't The Bachelor. That was the Warner Brothers show

with Corey Olympios. There was an issue where she was in a pool with somebody and then the people in the control room felt that she was being kind of taken advantage of or something like that and then it became a whole investigation. I was at Warner Brothers

at the time. They made us take a whole course based around that and a lot of the questions were you realized that you know this is part of the show almost like don't step in that seriously that's what it was about yeah yeah and um that was uh you know the idea that that they do stop them at two drinks is very you know it shows that you also don't want people being that especially yeah i think we're making improvements i mean even for me and you to just sit here and have this conversation

so openly like this conversation isn't happening 10 years ago yeah that's the way i think about it right And for two guys to sit down and you talked about your interest in young men and your interest in helping others, I mean, that's really at the crux of this thing. And they, you know, I love a comeback story. Like I love, I love watching someone recover and the miracles that that can happen. Can I ask a tough question? Sure. The allegations or the folks that kind of came out, have you been able to, is there any like a men's process there? Is that a don't, don't touch it?

Or is it like, oh, no, no, I sent the men's, yeah. Okay. Yep. Yep. I sent the men's. Didn't hear back. I heard back from one person, actually. But, you know, I cleaned up my side of the street.

Yeah. And that's the best thing that I can do at some point, you know? Yeah. That's the only thing you can do. Yeah. At the end of the day. Do you feel free today? Free?

A little bit. Yeah. Not as much. You know, I'm still, you know, here's the thing. My dad died at 50. when I was when I hit I always saw that as a ticking clock so I'm living life now without an owner's manual yeah you know the owner's manual stopped at 50 and because of that and because of the fact that I was you know did want to end it at some points I really feel like I'm playing

with house money now so that's the freedom there and that's the freedom of being being able to step back and think, I'm alive, and that's amazing. Yeah. Looking back and thinking that I wish I still had this or that, yeah, that you can go to dark places with that. You know, when my mom, you know, I got hit with another blow when my mom passed away last year, and that, I looked, you know, it was interesting because I just got back from Europe. I was doing 16,000 steps a day for people that count steps. And I look back at my steps for the months, you can tell when I was really bad. It's because there was so low steps, you know. So, you know, my mom, my mother died. And after I got done with that, that set me off into a really bad depression.

Brozac wasn't working. I was trying different things. And I tried, you know, I talked to my sponsor and said, I need something. And I want to try this intravenous ketamine. So I did that. And he said, okay, you know, and I did that for five certain. And that, I think that helped. Yeah. Ketamine's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. A sense where it really does make you think that, you know, this is, don't take everything so seriously at the end of the day. You know, it's all just, we could be living in different timelines, like in the Marvel universe, like it could be, you know, it's different realities. No, I've seen the best and worst of it.

I mean, I've seen guys, girls, whoever, go and get the ketamine treatment that are in recovery and it has really profound effects. There's research out there. You know, I think for me, like, I've always had kind of this hard line of, like, I'm just scared of what does happen. If I touch anything, like, I go hard. and that's like the mushrooms man like there's a lot of people going out to the desert with shamans and doing the buffo and like and you know to each his own like I have to have

that mentality because I'm not God I'm not God I don't I don't have the answers I mean the next person I have on this podcast could be you know ranting and raving about how like ketamine is the worst thing ever you know and you're just sitting here saying it was helpful so who's right I don't know both people yeah I mean I was I was I did the MDR I was trying to do I was looking at an electroshock. I was like trying to look for anything. And luckily, I would try different things. I'm on Zoloft now.

I think that really did help. And, you know, but I look at like my September, I was looking at my September, 2003 steps. It was like 2000 a day, which is like, that's stagnant. That's depression right there. And, you know, just being able to just go out,

you know, got to go outside, got to do this and that. It is. It's, I remember, you know, talking to, asking a good friend, I was just like, I just wish they make you, because it takes so long to, for antidepressants and to kick in. And I said, like, I wish they just made something that kicked in quick. And it was like, yeah, they did make something that kicked in quick. That's why you're here. Right.

You know, that's what liquor is and that's what pills are. But they, they don't work in that way. But that is it. That's the medicine that we use. Yeah. It's something that, you know, recovering out loud is so important. I love how, like, you know, Ben Affleck talked about going to AA, and everyone's like, you're not supposed to talk about AA.

It's like, listen, talking about AA, yes, they say it. In the traditions, they say don't talk about it. They originally didn't want to talk about it because if you talked about it and then you fell off the wagon, it looks like the programs of failure. Right, right. We're in a different scenario right now with the way the world is. and with social media and everything, that you really need to talk about it because people don't have the support systems like they had in the past.

They don't have, a lot of them are separated from family because we move around so much. They don't have maybe a pastor or something. So we need to do, and a lot of people look to social media. I would have never met you. I've never met so many people without social media. It's one of the good things. You can solve murders and you can meet people in recovery. So let's do that.

It's changing. It's changing. Yeah. And you need, you know, so whenever we hear somebody that, is into recovery and you know it's often I'm sure you have this as well like trying to find guests and people that that might be in the public eye or something that have might have interesting stories that aren't you know that don't want to talk about the recovery or not you know out there but they're they're there and I think once people realize that it's great to talk about and say

oh you know like when I show up to meetings and I see famous people there it's just like it's kind of a thrill for a second and then you're just like oh wait this guy's just a screwed up design you know it's right you know yeah i remember when i came off the show like uh i was on a meeting a zoom meeting and someone was like like like you know will you accept this rose or like and like it just felt very like an invasion of my privacy because like these are my people this is my safe space where i'm held and i got really fucking pissed off you know for a minute and uh it's it's like what you said man like don't think like don't think yourself too seriously there's a great yeah like who the fuck are you did you see the john milaney special no but i mean like yeah yeah where he's talking about how he

he's like my when he went to rehab my biggest fear was getting recognized in rehab right and then that was replaced by another big fear which was nobody recognized me at all right right nobody cares nobody gives a shit and it drove him i think he said fucking bananas right right and it's true you know you you think that uh people are gonna well we're all fucking consumed with our own thoughts and like you know that's that's that's what yeah that's the thing that i think people miss about those of us that suffer from addiction like like selfishness right self-scent like that's what we talk about it's like we are programmed differently than other people's where like we and that's why it's all about service and owning our part and and how can we be helpful because it's like

anything to get outside of these thoughts. I mean, if I, just the amount of empathy that I have, right, I used to think, oh, an empathetic person because I talked to so many victims of families and everything, but the empathy level has skyrocketed for me. And maybe it's because the ego has gone down and it's been replaced by the empathy or whatever. And I hate people that call themselves empaths or whatever.

They're usually not. But they, it would have been such a good book to have read 20 years ago, without the drinking stuff, you know, just because of the fact that you realize there are so many people that are in certain situations. So, you know, the empathy, particularly for people that I've helped put away too.

Right. There was this one case in El Monte, the Jack in the Box Killer. This guy had jumped over the counter, shot a kid, and then jumped over. And he was wearing, the killer was wearing a Halloween mask. It looked like they were never gonna solve it. I worked the case. I'd spent a lot of money on geo-targetting these two areas.

We're able to get a call, get a tip, and get it. The kid that was murdered was a Mexican-American kid, like a big Marcy fan. He had the pompadio. I'm a Marcy fan, too, so I really related to him. And, you know, it was one of those things where I just, you want to be able to help these people and be empathetic with these people but when you're doing it you're just like oh screw these murderers this or that you know screw them

but when they I'm very much against the death penalty they wanted to give this kid the death penalty and that really affected me and I didn't like the feeling of like I could have what I did could have led to somebody's death luckily he got life he was just sentenced last year that's how long this stuff takes you know I solved it in 16

and they just sentenced him last year but it's just a matter of that kind of stuff and I feel bad for the kid you know it was a young kid you know just like something happened with him and he went down the wrong path yeah does he deserve to spend his entire life in jail I don't know can you be really rehabilitated yes you know biggest question with that was the the women the biggest crime in American history is probably the Manson murders in terms of what people wrote about other than the Kennedy assassination and you know those women that

were so young at the time and everything you know and they were consistent get their parole and then the governor would say no and everything but you know you've got to have be able to have second chances you can have second acts in life you can hit the bottom there are going to be people that are never going to like you after you've gone from a place that like you're adored you know it's going to happen yeah the second chances thing for me is is so important and it's exactly what you just said

which is I can't expect people that I may have hurt during my drunken period to forgive me. I can't expect that. If they do that, that's wonderful. And there's also people out there that have been hurt by drug addicts and alcoholics and that has caused them a tremendous amount of trauma. So they don't give a shit if I'm online celebrating 10 years. Their first reaction is going to be like all drug addicts are bad people.

Yeah. And that was a huge realization for me. And it also made me understand how important it is for me and others to give people a second chance. Because at the end of the day, man, a lot of people gave me a second chance. So who am I to turn around and not give the person, my brothers, my sisters, whoever it is, a second chance? and that's confusing and a lot of my relationships is confusing when I try to explain that to people

because people do some heinous shit you know and I try to see like can they come back can they rehabilitate themselves and a lot of those stories are out there and I appreciate them because I'm one of them yeah and you've just got to be able to once you get to that point

where that empathy is big and once you put yourself really put yourself into somebody else's shoes and realize that how lucky we are to live in this time period, even though everything seems incredibly messy. I love how when people are like going off on nepo babies, that's a nepo baby. We're all nepo babies. We were born in the 21st century or 20th century with all of these technological advancements, all of this medicine, born in America.

You know, it's just like we won the lottery here when it comes to born as humans and not, you know, goats, nothing to the goat community. Now I'm going to get canceled by the goats. other goats. Anyway, so, you know, we've won that. You know, we're so lucky and having that gratitude, which was always something that was difficult to go with is, um, is that rain. Yeah, there's some rain going on. Sweet. The world is crying for us. Um, so before we end here, I just, I am curious because you hit on a little bit. Obviously, we are in an opioid epidemic. We are actually now in a loneliness epidemic. You know, that is, that is really my. stick lately, which is that like when people die by suicide or die by overdose, they die

alone, you know, and our world is moving more and more into this darkness that is isolation because it's, it can be comfortable if you have a phone and a beer, you know, like it can be really comfortable. So just curious like parting thoughts. I don't know. The book here, killers amiss killers. And you touched on, yeah, 123,000 people a year, um, dying. due to overdose, a lot of those people are innocent in the sense that they got a bad batch of drugs and didn't know what they were putting into their bodies and parting thoughts on any of that. Yeah, the loneliness thing is really the biggest thing of our lifetime now because of the phones, because of dating apps. You've heard the statistics, 80% of women swipe on 20% of the men, you know, and that's two things.

one is that you've got men that aren't meeting women and you also have women who are hating these 20% of the men because they're all players. That's a big thing. You're getting to a point where, you know, young men are not meeting people. They need their tribes, you know. A lot of people don't like tribalism. You need your tribe. You need to find those people.

And it doesn't necessarily have to be, you know, you've got to get out there. You've got to be face to face. not just doing online gaming and that kind of thing. The deaths of desperation, as they call them, which are the threes, which is suicide, overdose, and I'll put overdose slash poisoning, accidental poisoning, and liver disease is at an all-time high. It's going to keep rising. Suicides are actually down in a lot of places other than America

because there was a lot of suicides by poisoning. They've taken poisoning. It's a lot harder to get in different places. and the fact that it's 80% men of these deaths. A lot of middle-aged men, too, men 40 and up. We need to figure out a way, there's been so much, you know, so much stuff online focused on women and women's mental health and everything. Reaching the young men is paramount.

Because a lot of times they don't want to hear it either. But you're starting to see athletes doing it. You know, Patty Pibault, who's a big MMA guy from Liverpool. He talks about a mental health a lot, which is great. Also, Tyson Fury, too, as far as fighting fighters go. So you're starting to hear that. I hope that it grows, you know, and that's definitely something that I'm going to focus on. And, you know, one of the things that I wanted to get out of my comfort zone, still, you know,

the next book I'm writing about is about heroes in situations like terrorism attacks, like regular people, not EMTs or anything, but, you know, There was a case of a guy in London, the London Bridge attack, where he was in a restaurant, and these guys had driven up a car. They had run over a bunch of people, and they were just going through with machetes killing people, and they broke into this restaurant, and they said, Al-Haw-Aqbar, and he said to them, he stepped up, and he said, fuck you on Millwall, and just started punching. Millwall, he was a former, you know, what they would call hooligan in America.

It was a middle-aged guy now and, you know, mental health issues and things, but, you know, he stepped up and has an amazing story. They won't give him the award that he should have, which is the George Cross, because of prior things that he had done, you know, which is just false. You know, this guy saved a lot of people's lives. And there was another guy, two years later, another terrorist attack, who fought somebody off. So I'm interviewing those people and collecting these stories of ordinary people who put themselves in harm's way. That's what the next book is. And then, you know, to really get out of my comfort zone after that, I'm starting a men's wear line called Will Wagon, which is built on young men's mental health and sobriety.

And, you know, it's something that is, I've always liked fashion, and I've always liked whatever I would do a sports team. I would always work with artists to create merch and that kind of thing. And I started the University of Kansas hockey team and we were awful, but we sold out the merch and going through that kind of thing. And just trying to create a brand that is something that people can not necessarily rally around, but just be able to say, all right, you know what, this is subtle, but it's there and the clothes look good. And, you know, that's the, aside from the mental health stuff of drinking, you know, I came up with something. It's like, you know, one night in the pub or look amazing forever. Right.

You know what I mean? Because it's expensive. It's really expensive to drink. I've got the app on my phone. I think I've saved $30,000 with this money in two years. Yeah. You know, the kids that are going to come over for the World Cup, when in Germany, beer is actually cheaper than water in restaurants.

You're going to come over here and realize that beer's $15 at the stadiums. And apart from all the bad things. things that it can do, the muddy thing and just a waste of time. Yeah. Well, I asked you a few minutes ago if you felt free and you kind of hesitated, but I am seeing someone that, you know, is moving towards some cool stuff. And I'm grateful you're here. I'm grateful you're alive. I'm grateful that you took the time. And I asked you before the show, if anything was off limits, you said I'm an open book, you know, and that's, that's sobriety. You know, that's how I feel. It's a fucking open book. Ask me anything. If for some reason I don't want to answer the question, I'm

going to tell you I don't want to answer the question. Yeah. You know, and so I just appreciate your transparency, all that you're doing and all that you're going to do. And take care of yourself, man. We need you here. Thanks. Thanks so much, man. I really do appreciate and thank you so much for using your platform for this. We need more people like you in all different realms. You know, it's just like if I'm going to be the guy that's like the crime guy that's doing it, you know, a bachelorette guy that's doing it. We need everywhere and every because entertainment has become so fractured you know what i mean it's like in the 50s i love lucy had half the market share you know but now entertainment has become so fractured so in everybody

in each little pocket if we can get one kind of ambassador i think we're going to do well i love it i love it all right that's billy jensen thanks for uh listening this is a good one peace