True Crime All The Time - Patrick Purdy
Episode Date: December 10, 2018Patrick Purdy was a 24-year-old who had a rough childhood, mental difficulties, and a hatred for individuals whose ethnicity was something other than his own. On January 17, 1989, Purdy opene...d fire at the elementary school he attended as a child. He killed 5 children and wounded over 30 others, including one teacher, before turning the gun on himself.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss this school shooting that occurred in 1989. What went so wrong in Purdy's life to make him commit this horrible act? Also, we hear from some of the teachers that risked their lives that day displaying true acts of heroism.You can help support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimevisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact, merchandise, and donation informationPlease help support our sponsors:Candidco.com/tcattBuffy.co/tcattBetteryhelp.com/tcattSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Hello, everyone and welcome to episode 108 of the True Crime All the Time podcast.
I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson.
Gibby, how are you, man?
Good, man.
How about you?
I'm doing great.
Yeah.
I am upbeat.
I am ready to put out an amazing episode.
Okay.
And that's what we're going to do.
We're going to do it.
That was your week.
It was good.
Yeah?
It was slow.
Slow.
Work-wise.
Workwise, yeah.
Did clean out my office, which you helped me do.
I did.
And I think that's, even though I'm working for maybe a couple more weeks, a week and a half.
Some reason I carried out the big box and you carried a torn labor, man.
So you had to do the heavy lifting.
I did.
But I think that's the last time I'll be in the office.
And it was a weird feeling.
I hope so because somebody's already moved into your office.
Yeah, I know.
They didn't wait very long.
No.
They moved somebody else.
Yeah, it is when you move out.
Then all of a sudden, all the people start coming in.
see what's left in your office that they might want to take.
They're cherry picking this stuff.
Yeah, yeah.
And then the new person moves in.
They're like, hey, why is there only one monitor?
Why is there only, you know, why do I have the old, the old heavy monitors?
Right.
I thought he had.
Somebody took the nice, big white screens and.
All right, Gibbs.
We have got some new Patreon shoutouts.
Okay.
We had Camilla Pagan.
Hey, Camilla.
Kayla Kennedy.
Kennedy.
Richard Bungay.
Hey, Bungay.
Sari Torres.
Seri?
Seri.
Is it like your phone?
Like, seri.
No, that's Siri.
Or Siri.
Demosco del Barberes.
Ooh, Demensco El Barbarreze.
That was not in any way, correct.
But I liked it.
I liked your version very much.
Yeah.
He came out at our highest level.
Thank you very much.
Aaron Weatherford.
Hey, Aaron.
Andy Cajulin.
Oh, Cajulin.
Melissa Mac.
You know Cajulin, man.
Is that like, you know, like,
That stuff in jello.
That's collagen.
It's close enough.
It's not close.
Jody Missy.
Jody and Missy.
Jody and Missy both.
They're a tag team.
Nikia White.
Hey, Nakia.
Julia Krimser.
Kremza.
That's like the Russian.
That's Kremlin.
It's a Russian.
Kara Evans, our buddy that we met at CrimeCon.
Flying the friend of these guys.
Who just got married.
Oh, yeah, that's right.
Congratulations.
Yeah, congratulations.
She's been a patronage.
on supporter for a long time.
She just...
Since crime con.
She went nuts and just went out of the stratosphere.
She said, man, I've been logging some lot of flights lately.
Yeah, she must be making some good dollar.
She must be getting some overtime or I don't know how it works when you're flying.
Maybe she said, I got this wedding money.
Whatever it is, she felt compelled to support us even more.
And I appreciate that.
Victoria Nesseth.
Hey, thank you, Victoria.
Brett Del Simone.
Hey, Brett Del Samone.
Crystal Childs.
Crystal.
Jeanette A Strand.
Better than being B stranded.
And Ashley Hermes.
Ashley Hermes.
So awesome support.
Yeah, that's good.
From new Patreon members.
Appreciate that.
Yeah, we do appreciate that.
And if we go back into the Vault Gibbs, this week we selected Magda Anna.
Magda.
Been with us a long time.
So we appreciate the new support.
We appreciate the continued support from everyone.
Thank you.
And we had some great PayPal.
support.
Oh, I like PayPal.
As well.
Kipper Westbrook.
Hey, Kippa.
Sizable donation.
Grace Brunei.
Ooh, Brunei.
Jillian Pachron.
Wait a minute.
Pachron?
Mm-hmm.
Really?
Yep.
Linda when?
Hey, Linda.
When is it happening?
Eric Mead.
Hey, Eric.
And Jamie Hester.
Oh, hey, Jamie Hester.
Thank you.
So a lot of PayPal support, and we really appreciate that as well.
All right, Gibbs.
We just finished up recording a brand new Patreon episode.
episode. Petron only on Charlie Brandt. It was good. It was good. I mean, this is a guy that
murdered at the age of 13. Yeah. Tried to murder essentially his whole family. I know.
Murdered part of it. He did. And then 30 some years later murders his new family. Yeah.
Essentially. But that's not the story. I mean, that is the story, but that's not all of the story.
Well, you got the gap? Yeah. 33.
years, you know, basically.
Right.
What happened during those 33 years and it comes down to the fact that investigators feel
this guy could be a full-blown serial killer.
Yeah.
With a body count as high as we've seen 26 could be even higher.
Could be.
Because he had a job that allowed him to travel and, you know, but, you know.
So if your Patreon, go listen to it.
Yeah, go listen to it.
If you're not Patreon.
It's a good reason.
to join up to start a couple bucks a month and get you a couple podcasts all right so we there is no
unsolved episode this week we're taking a break from unsolved but i will say go ahead and make an
announcement gives starting in i mean we have some more unsolved episodes plan the rest this year sure
but starting in 2019 in january we are essentially 52 episodes a year on both
both T-CAT and Unsolved.
Yeah.
So you won't have the gap coming up in the future.
There will be no more gaps.
Yeah.
There will be 52 episodes of Unsolved next year.
And we will still continue to do our Patreon-only episodes.
Yep.
Yep.
We made that decision.
We are just going to get busier.
Because I am going to have a little bit more time, which we've talked about.
Are you ready to get into this episode?
I am.
Let's do it.
So we're talking about Patrick Purdy.
And you and I have been going back and forth for a while now.
We have been wanting to cover a school shooting.
Touchy subject.
There's a lot of them out there, unfortunately.
And this is the one that we picked first.
And we're going back to the 80s.
And this is a name that a lot of people may not have heard of.
You know, everybody's familiar with Columbine and, you know, Newtown and, and a lot of
of the ones that are more recent, there are not many events, Gibbs, I believe this, that tear this
country up as some of these school shootings have over the years. And unfortunately, there are a lot
to cover and we will cover them. But the one we're talking about today, unlike the ones that I just
mentioned, it was not committed by a fellow student who currently went to the school where the
shooting occurred, this one was committed by an adult and it was motivated by what authorities
would later claim to be to a large degree racial hatred. So a different motivation,
right, than some of the newer, I say newer, but some of the more recent school shootings,
a lot of those are around being bullied or, you know, other factors. This has, the one we're talking
about right now has a lot to do with race. It has a lot to do with ethnicity. And it has to do with a
man who saw a certain ethnicity as preventing him from getting where he wanted in life.
That's, that's the story we're about ready to tell. And it happened on January 17th,
1989 at the Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton, California. Patrick Purdy shot and killed
five school children and wounded over 30 other kids and a teacher before turning the gun on
himself. You know, this event became known as the Cleveland School Massacre. I've seen it listed
as the Stockton Massacre, the Stockton School Yard Shooting. You'll see it listed by a number of names.
But getting back to, you know, the tragedy of how many school shootings there have been, I think a lot of us,
myself included, tend to think of these school shootings as more of a recent thing, right?
You think back to Columbine, late 90s, 1999.
And I think a lot of us think about Columbine setting the stage is kind of one of the first, right?
Setting the stage for a bunch of these school shootings to happen.
Sir.
Later.
And there's no doubt.
It has gotten worse over time.
But there have been school shootings for a long time.
The shooting at the Cleveland School in Stockton in 1989 was the most deadly of the 1980s.
But Gibbs, when you get into the research and you saw it, you see that even in the 1980s,
there were a large number of these school shootings.
You just didn't hear about them like you do today?
No.
Right?
You didn't have social media.
You didn't have 200 channel TV with, you know, 80 of them being news channel, right?
I mean, back in a day, it was probably picked up.
more on the local regional, didn't really hit national a lot. If it did, it was not a big story.
Yeah, I just don't remember as a kid worrying, being in school, worrying about somebody coming in
and, you know, starting to shoot up the school. Yeah, for me, you know, of course, I was
graduated by then, but I don't think it was really something you thought about until Columbine.
Yeah. That's when you thought. Wow. Yeah. It received so much coverage. It did. But I
know my kids do today. They really, I mean, that is something that is on their mind. We talk about it. You know,
every time one of these pops up on the news, you know, over the years, I've gotten that question. Man,
is that going to happen? Do I need to worry about that? And what do you tell kids? Yeah. I mean,
and you're right. And then, you know, then your wife works in the school too. Sure.
So, you know, she's a teacher. She's very aware of it as well. The one thing I will say that I do tell them is be nice to people.
Do not. You know, now bullying. There's a lot.
of anti-bullying campaigns these days. Not to say that it doesn't go on, but I tell him, I said,
just be nice to everyone because you don't know what's going to happen. You don't want to make an
enemy. Yeah, I mean, there's no reason to bully somebody. I mean, there's just not. There's no
reason to do certain things. So just be cordial, be nice. You know, if you don't have anything
nice to say, why even say it to somebody? All right. Let's get into the background of Patrick Edward
Purdy. He was born November 10th, 1964 in Washington State to Patrick and Kathleen Purdy.
So his dad was in the U.S. Army at the time that Patrick was born and would later be
honorably discharged after spending time in the hospital for psychiatric evaluations.
I think this is an important issue, Gibbs, because later on, the mental stability of
his son Patrick will be questioned as well. And you know, you look at the marriage of his parents.
It was not a good one. It ended when Patrick was just a couple of years old. I mean, he was a little
baby. There are reports that his father threatened to kill his mother with the family pistol
and she filed for a divorce, eventually taking Patrick to live in Stockton, California.
That's not a good way to stay married.
threatening your significant other with a gun.
Not a good recipe for long-term, happy married life.
His mother remarried to a man named Albert in 1969,
who became Patrick's stepfather.
Again, this wouldn't be a long marriage either.
It lasted about four years.
But it's during this marriage that Patrick attended Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton.
So the same school that he's later as an adult going to go on a shooting spree, he was there
from kindergarten to about third grade.
So you look at Patrick.
By the age of nine, 10 years old, his father's out of his life has been for many years, Gibbs.
His stepfather is now gone and he's alone living with his mother.
They've moved to Sacramento.
And the reports on his mother are not good.
There's allegations that she was physically abusive, she was neglectful.
It's been said that she liked to party more than she liked to be a parent.
To that point, protective services were called twice in December 1973 alone on allegations
that she was abusive to Patrick and his two.
siblings. So we know this attack is going to occur in 1989. Right. After it happens, as happens in all
these types of situations, they're going to go back, right? They're going to talk to people that
knew the Purdeys back in the day. People would say of Kathleen back during that time frame,
that she didn't supervise her children. She essentially left them up to their own devices. She would
often locked them out of the house.
The purdy kids in the wintertime walked around with no coats on.
This is what people said about this family.
Obviously, she was not a good mother.
Not a good mom at all.
Doesn't sound like that.
No, in no way, shape, or form.
But what apparently was a number of visits by child protective services didn't amount
to much because Patrick and the other children continued living with their mother.
it wouldn't be until Patrick was 13 years old that he hit his own mother in the face that she kicked him out.
And at the age of 13, he was homeless for a time living on the streets.
And then he was in and out of foster care.
But eventually he ended up with his father in Lodi, California.
But his criminal record had essentially already started by,
this point. You know, at the age of 12, he had his first brush with the law, some type of BB gun
shooting incident. But he wasn't arrested then. His first arrest would come after he started living
with his father and he was attending Lodi High School. And Gibbs, if the care provided by his mother
sounded less than optimal, which I believe it did. You would agree with that. I would agree with that.
I'm not sure that the parental care provided by his father was that much better.
Now, he was a teenager, right?
He's a 15-year-old kid.
You and I both know how hard teenagers can be to control.
Oh, yeah.
It's some tough times.
At a certain point, I was this way for sure.
I'm assuming you were too.
As a teenager, you just start thinking that you know everything.
and you just want to start doing your own thing.
Even if that leads you, that own thing leads you down the wrong path.
Yeah, I mean, you can tell your kids from experience.
Sure.
What's going to happen?
Some reason they don't believe it and they've got to just go out and find out on their own.
And then they come back and they're like, hey, you were right.
I know I was right.
Yeah, sometimes they just have to experience things for themselves.
And I did that too, right?
I can remember back my dad saying that's not a good idea.
I wouldn't do that.
Right.
But you know what?
You did it.
Hell, I did it anyway.
Yeah.
Yeah, you know we do things.
And you also know what?
It turned out not to be a good idea.
Yeah.
So the old man was right every now and then, more often than not.
But I don't think I realized it until I was older out of those teenage years, right?
I thought I was so smart.
Well, sometimes we don't have the logic we think.
should have or logic that we need to have. That comes from experience. That comes from been there
done that. So Patrick's in high school. Sometimes. I don't think he attended all that much
from the research. He was drinking heavily. I think this kid was an alcoholic Gibbs by the age of 15.
He was into drugs. So again, that's why I said. I don't know if his dad was a good parent or if this was
just a teenager that was going to do whatever the heck he wanted to anyway. I don't know the answer to that.
His first arrest that I mentioned came at the age of 15, and it wasn't just one. He was arrested a number
of times at that age. He was arrested for underage drinking. He even got arrested for solicitation
of prostitution. Really? At 15. At 15? That's it and it young. I don't know where you got the money.
You found it. Maybe. What time, what was your age when you start hitting? The
sex worker, uh, local sex workers.
Uh, it must have been nine, ten.
Nine, ten.
Yeah.
I don't remember.
But something bad happened in 1981.
Purdy's father, who was also named Patrick, we said that, he died in a car crash.
And I think it had a big effect on Patrick.
As it would to any kid.
Yeah.
You know, your father dying at, at a young age when you're young as well.
Now, his stepmother, because his father remarried.
would later be interviewed.
I think something happened at that school or in that area,
and he went back.
He couldn't handle it any longer.
He kept it inside and hadn't talked to anyone.
I honestly believe it.
And I don't know what makes my conviction that.
But there was a reason he got into alcohol and or drugs,
and it could have stem back to when he was going to that school.
So obviously Gibbs, this is after the shooting, but I thought it was probably the best place to play the clip because she's talking about him being into alcohol and drugs.
She's also foreshadowing a little bit about what she believes may have been the cause of the shooting.
We're going to get into that much, much more later on.
But as far as Patrick is concerned, he started piling up arrests, you know, drug possession, illegal weapons.
possession of stolen property.
You know, as a teenager,
it's not good.
It's not good at all.
But what happened is, and this happens in a lot of cases we talk about,
all of these charges were either dropped due to lack of evidence or they were reduced
down to, let's say, misdemeanors.
That's going to be a big deal later on when we talk about buying a gun.
He even had an arrest for armed robbery in 1984.
That's a serious offense.
Yeah, getting into felonies.
But the charges again were reduced and he only served 30 days in jail.
Lucky.
For some type of, well, obviously it wasn't armed robbery by the time they reduced the charges.
You're not going to do 30 days for armed robbery.
No.
Then you'd get into early 1987.
He was arrested again.
this time with his half brother, they were shooting guns in a national force near Lake Tahoe.
So it's one thing to point out, Patrick Purdy had an obsession with guns from, I believe,
a pretty early age when he was arrested.
Apparently he had a book on him that was some type of white power, Aryan nation book.
And he didn't go quietly.
He resisted arrest.
in the sheriff's deputy's report, it was said that Patrick Purdy told him it was his duty to help
the suppressed and to overthrow the suppressors.
Really?
Yeah.
That's what he's okay.
Yeah.
So he's still pretty young, right?
At this point, he's in his early 20s, but he's getting into some strange ideations.
Let's put it that way.
you know, during this resisting arrest, apparently, you know, he kicked some of the deputies.
And when they finally got him in the back of the squad car, he kicked out one of the back windows.
Not good?
No. So he's in jail.
He tried to take his own life twice, unsuccessfully, once by hanging himself with ripped up strips of his shirt.
That didn't work.
No.
And then the second time, he tried.
to cut his wrists with his fingernails and toenails, which I think would be very hard to do.
She got a really long big toe toe toenail. Maybe. Maybe it's all scragly. Yeah.
It got cut somehow. It's all jagged. You get it? I don't know. I think it'd be tough though.
It didn't work. You know, like I said, he was unsuccessful. But I think the key thing here, Gibbs, is that his mental health was evaluated during this period.
And in the reports that came out, he was described as dangerous to both himself and to others.
And it was noted that he suffered from some, you know, mental difficulties, mental disabilities,
whatever you want to call them.
Actually, in the report itself, I think they use the R word.
Obviously, that's a word that is not used.
But I think everybody knows what I'm saying.
back then they they used that word about Patrick Purdy.
They would.
So he pleaded guilty to his charges.
And he spent about 45 days in the county jail.
So again, he's not doing long stretches of time.
Do you ever do county?
I've never done any jail.
No time at all?
No.
I've been married for 20-some years.
There you go.
But I've never done actual jail time.
Yeah.
And my wife's going to hear that.
and she's going to be like.
You think you're in jail, huh?
All right.
Oh, you think it was bad now?
Yeah, let me show you what it's going to be like.
Wait to you after you said that.
Now it's really going to be bad.
Yeah.
All right, Gibbs.
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of your modeling kit. Candidcoad.com slash teacat. So over the years, he bounced around from job to job.
he never had anything stick, right, whether it was construction, laborers, jobs. He worked as a security
guard. Apparently in his security guard gig, there was an incident where somebody was being beaten in
front of him and he failed to step in. He just sat there and watched somebody get beaten and they said,
you know what, I don't think you're cut out to be a security guard here.
You're not keeping things very secure.
You're not doing what you're supposed to be doing?
Right.
So he left that job in the fall of 87.
So we're getting close.
We're just a couple of years away from this mass shooting.
Purdy began taking classes to be a welder at a local college.
But again, he left after just a few months.
He started drifting around the country, looking for work, doing.
odd jobs. I think the key thing is here, he wasn't very good at sticking with anything. And this is
going to come up later. Not a finisher. No, he would start things. He couldn't stick with things.
And then he would blame other people. And again, I don't want to get too much into it right now.
It's going to play a big part in this and this story. So in early 1988, he's back in Stockton,
California, working at a job. But, you know, just a little bit later that year, he's up in Oregon,
working, living with his aunt in a town called Sandy, which at the time was a logging and farming
community of about 4,000 people pretty close to Portland, Sandy, Oregon. And it was on August 3rd that
Patrick Purdy walked into the Sandy Trading Post and he bought a Chinese maid.
AK-47 for $349.95. Wow. It's cheap. Yeah, pretty cheap. AKs back then were pretty cheap. I read that you could
pretty much get one anywhere for somewhere in the 300s. Wow. Okay. You know, AK's most popular gun in the
world. Yeah, in the world. In the world by far. There's more AK-47s out there than I believe any other type of gun.
because you think of an AK being from Russia, every communist country has adopted the AK
over the years. And then because they were so cheap, you could get them so cheap,
all these other countries started buying up AKs. You look at like Somali pirates.
Use AKs. I mean, everybody, especially in like third world countries.
The most populated country in the world, what China's?
Aks? Sure.
So, yeah, it's a communist country.
But you see them in the Middle East.
You see them everywhere.
There's automatic or semi-automatic?
Both.
They make them both.
What was this one?
What about?
What Patrick Purdy bought was a semi-automatic AK-47.
Yeah.
Meaning, and you and I have talked about this before, but just to clarify,
semi-automatic meaning you have to pull the trigger.
Every time you pull the trigger, you're going to fire a round.
Right.
versus automatic where you just keep your finger held down on the trigger.
Right.
In a military type AK, there was, there would be a selector switch where you could go from
semi-automatic to fully automatic.
Right.
Like if you were in the military or what probably like a Somali pirate would try to buy
would be one of those.
Yeah.
I kind of like the semi-automatic because you have control.
Yeah.
I mean, if you talk to a lot of people.
people that have been in the military that have shot, you know, M-16s and, and guns like that,
sometimes they're very hard to control on when they're on automatic mode.
It just has a tendency to walk itself up because of the recoil.
You can't, it's hard to keep it on a, like on a plane.
But it is important.
I'm glad you asked the question.
It's important to note that this is a semi-automatic AK-47, essentially no different.
different than a hunting rifle.
The difference being, and this is where later on,
we're going to get into the gun debate a little bit,
the difference being with an AK-47,
you can buy a very high capacity clip.
Yes.
It holds a lot of rounds.
Right.
And Patrick Purdy is going to do that.
So he's bought this AK-47.
On December 26th,
this is less than a month before the shooting.
He's back in Stockton.
And he got a room at the El Rancho Motel, not to be confused with the Mexican restaurant that we go to.
El Rancho Grande.
El Rancho Grande.
Yeah.
Just a couple of days later, December 28th, Patrick Purdy walked into the Hunter Lone Pond Shop in Stockton and he bought a tourist nine millimeter pistol.
Apparently, the guy had a lot of guns.
Over the years, he had purchased a lot of handguns.
But back then, in the 19.
1980s, there was a 15-day waiting period on handguns.
Okay.
And I can't remember if that was nationwide.
I think it might have been.
Okay, you weren't sure?
I'm not been positive.
California.
It could have been California.
But for some reason, I thought there was a national 15-day waiting period at one point.
Obviously, that's not the case today.
No.
You can walk right in.
Walk out.
And walk out.
But back then, there was a 15-day waiting period.
and he did that.
Bought it on the 28th.
15 days later,
he goes back to the pawn shop
to pick up this 9mm handgun.
This is four days before the shooting.
And we have to talk about Stockton,
California a little bit.
And specifically,
it's makeup back in 1989.
So one article said that Stockton
had about 172,000 residents back then.
and that a sixth of those 172,000 residents were immigrants from Southeast Asia.
That's a pretty high percentage.
That's a really high.
And it's an important fact because it's going to come out that Patrick Purdy had a deep-seated
hatred for immigrants in general, but especially for immigrants that came from Southeast Asia.
It's not just Asian, but Southeast Asian.
Yeah, very specific.
We're talking about like Vietnamese, Cambodian, you know, that type of, you know, that region.
That's a strange thing to have a hatred.
I mean, any race is bizarre to me, but to isolate, not Asian, but Southeast Asians.
But it's why I'm putting out these numbers, right?
a sixth of the population of Stockton, California, had immigrated from Southeast Asia.
So he was in contact with a lot of immigrants from that region of the world.
It's going to be huge.
It's going to be, play a big part.
Now, to piggyback off that, the makeup of the students at the Cleveland Elementary School
where this shooting is going to happen, it was said that, you know, at the time is about
70% Asian. I don't know if that was specifically Southeast Asian, but all of this is leading us up
to the events of the shooting, right? Purdy was 24 years old when this happened, although police
would have a very difficult time at first determining his correct age. Apparently, his driver's
license said he was 26. Other public records listed him at all types of different ages, 24, 25, 27.
And what's so strange about this is you can go back now and look at newspaper articles
from 1989 and you will see him listed as five, six different ages.
So they got just that whole five years difference.
Well, I think a lot of, a lot of newspapers went with 26 at first because that's what
his driver's license said.
It's probably the information.
that they had first.
But it would,
it would later come out
that he was actually 24 years old.
Well, you had him saying
25, 27, 26, 24, whatever.
Yeah, I mean, they were in the ballpark.
But it wasn't just ages.
He also used a number of aliases
over the years.
His name was Patrick Purdy,
but a lot of times he used the last name West.
Wait, what?
You mean using my last name, Rex West?
Yeah.
I don't think he ever used Rex, but...
Rex West.
I saw that he listed himself as
Patrick West, Eddie West.
He just didn't like to, I guess, say who he really was, how old he really was.
In fact, like I said, even some of the early articles that came out, these, and this wasn't
the podunk times.
This was like the New York Times or some of the big papers in San Francisco in L.A.
After the shooting, they actually said his name was West.
Really?
And they listed Patrick Purdy as an alias, even though that was his real name.
So at the time of the shooting, Patrick Purdy was 5'10, 150 pounds soaking wet, and had dirty blonde hair.
And it was that Tuesday, January 17th, 1989, Patrick Purdy parked his 1977 station wagon on a street near the Cleveland Elementary.
school just before noon. Inside this car Gibbs, he had packed it with fireworks, a pipe bomb,
and a bunch of containers that had flammable liquid. It's a recipe for a big boom.
Huge boom. But that was his design. And I've seen a couple of different varying accounts of how he
started this fire, which resulted in this big boom. One account, he used a Budweiser beer bottle.
fill with gasoline to make like a Malta of cocktail.
Okay.
Yeah, I can see that.
Lit that on fire and threw it into the car.
Either way, he did start a fire in the car.
And I think the thought after the fact is, okay, this is a diversion, right?
This was designed to be a diversion for police maybe.
That's what the thinking by investigators was after the fact.
But we have to talk about what Patrick was wearing, what he was carrying.
So he's wearing a flack jacket.
But it's not just that.
It's what he had written on this jacket.
So he had on it the words freedom.
Libya, PLO, Earthman, which I don't even know what that means.
I don't either.
And death to the great Satan, which he misspelled and it looked like satin.
Someone's like, what's oh?
this guy hated satin it's the the great satin whatever that is yeah he really didn't like the great satin
so number one he's not that smart or he can't spell i'm i'm leading towards the fact that he's not
that intelligent yeah but we talked about him getting into some strange ideologies i mean shit he's
talking about the plo you know acting like you know this is something that you might hear from a
terrorist right it sounds like it death to the
The Great Satan. Well, who's the great Satan in this scenario, the United States?
United States, yeah.
So, of course, he had his AK-47 that he bought back in Sandy, Oregon, and he's got the
tourist pistol, the 9-millimeter. He had attached a bayonet to the AK-47.
I think it's strange, not strange, but I think, again, here he is, his hatred for America
because he and his stock of his gun, right? He's got freedom.
that he etched in, he's got, or carved in, he's got the word of victory, but then he has
Hezbo law, you know, that he carved into the stock. So again, terrorists or whatever that you want
to call it, but, you know, it's almost, it's almost Gibbs, like he picked a bunch of organizations
that hated the United States and adorned his clothing and, you know, carved them into his
gun. And again, we're going to get into this. Why does he hate the United States? And why does he have a
hatred of individuals that immigrated from Southeast Asia? We're going to talk about it more.
So he's got all this gear on, right? He's got his weapons, his car is burning. He's ramboed up.
Yeah. So I'm just picturing him with his car behind him and big flames and like you said,
ramboed up and he's ready to go.
is the car like is burst you know burst into flames it's on a it's on an adjacent street so he walks from
the car towards the school and specifically towards the school playground and there's hundreds of
kids outside at recess and they're out there being kids they're playing they're having fun i mean you
you remember elementary school recess that was the best oh i loved it man that was when you got to
hang out with your friends and play kickball or tag or whatever that was the best part of the day back
back back out with a girl behind the bleachers if you were mike gibson but i can't stress it enough
you know when you picture this scene it's an elementary school playground hundreds and hundreds
and maybe 400 kids it was estimated we're outside at this point in time Patrick purdy takes up a position
and he starts firing on the playground into these kids with the AK-47.
Now, the thing about the AK-47, we haven't talked about this.
It is a bigger bullet caliber than an M-16.
It's a bigger.
You and I talk about 556.
Right.
This is a 7.62.
Okay.
It is a bigger caliber bullet.
So he opens fire.
And ultimately, he's going to.
fire this gun a hundred and five times at least that's that's what the official report will end up saying
105 there are some reports that have said you know they thought it was as many as 150 but the
official report is 105 the guy only reloaded one time now that doesn't sound possible and when I first saw
that okay I thought no there's no way you can't shoot a hundred and five times and only reload once
because a normal AK-47 clip holds 30, I believe.
It does.
I think that's right.
Like, I know an AR-15 clip holds 30, and I'm pretty sure that AK is the same way.
So I thought that's not feasible.
But then you come to find out that Patrick Purdy had bought a drum magazine for the AK-47.
It held 75 bullets.
Yeah.
Massive.
75 bullets of a rifle cartridge, it is massive.
So that's where you get to the 105, right?
He shot emptied out this 75 round drum magazine.
Then he put a 30 round clip and he emptied that.
That adds up to 105.
But think about 105 bullets.
This thing only lasted two to three minutes.
It doesn't take long at all to pull the trigger,
105 times. No. You can do it very fast. Absolutely. But that would have been two to three minutes
of absolute terror, not only for the kids, but the teachers. Now, when it, when it was over,
Patrick Purdy could hear police sirens. They were getting closer. And being the chicken shit that
he was, right? He pulled out that Taurus nine millimeter handgun and shot himself in the head.
there on the playground, fell down, crumpled on the asphalt.
Sure.
But Gibbs, the damage was done.
Five children were killed.
One teacher and over 30 other students were wounded.
It's absolutely terrible, but it could have been so much worse.
I agree with you.
If he was a good aim.
I'm surprised, almost surprised, I hate to say it that way, but to have 105 shots ring out in a
crowded playground like that, that only five children were killed. And it's horrible. It's
terrible. Terrible. Terrible. Terrible. That those five were killed. But I agree with you,
it could have been so much worse. It could have been. The five children killed were
So Kim and Ram Chun, Oam Lim, Rothenan Orr, and Taitran. And all five of these children,
you know, three of them were six years old.
One was eight and one was nine.
We're talking about very, very young children here.
Right.
And it's the same with the children that were wounded.
All of them, because that's who was out, you know, at recess at that time,
they were all between the ages of six and nine years old.
Just little babies, man.
Now, the majority of the children were of Cambodian or Vietnamese descent.
Okay.
That were wounded.
Nine were Caucasian.
One Hispanic.
and one student was Native American.
That's the makeup of the kids that were injured.
All five of the kids that were killed came, I believe, from either, or their parents did,
came from either Cambodia or Vietnam.
And you think about why they came.
They're looking for a better life.
These families are.
American dream.
For their children.
Think of the places that they're leaving.
Vietnam, Cambodia, places that have been.
in constant conflict for a number of years.
Imagine the carnage and the death that these families saw over in those countries.
Now they get to the United States and they think, this is it.
This is where we're going to raise our kids.
They're going to prosper.
They're going to get a good education.
We don't have to worry about all this violence.
And then their kids are killed in a mass school shooting.
Yeah, they didn't get away from anything.
That's horrible.
So I mentioned that one teacher was injured.
And it was second grade teacher, Janet Ging.
She was on recess duty that day, along with one other teacher.
But it was Janet who was injured.
And like I said, the two of them were watching over about 400 children out there having fun on the playground.
And she would be interviewed later.
She survived.
She said, you know, everything happened so fast.
She heard the shots.
She saw the asphalt on the playground start to kick up, right?
As shots were fired into it, she saw the asphalt just kind of rise up into the air.
And she kind of followed that and she could see the shooter, right?
She saw a black gun.
She saw red sparks coming out of it.
She said kids were running, screaming, diving into the sandbox.
Others ran towards a school.
she was just screaming at the kids to get down to take cover and eventually she turned to run as well
and she was hit in the leg with a bullet in an interview she described the feeling Gibbs as if her leg
was a balloon that had been filled too full.
Wow.
With too much air until it ultimately popped.
Wow.
That's the way she described being hit with this, you know, 7.62 round.
in the leg. But here's an interview with Janet.
I looked around and I saw a guy standing out by the sixth grade portables.
I didn't see his face. It seems like he had sunglasses on. But he was in a stance like you see
soldiers. I mean, the type of military stance with a gun policeman stance with a gun right in front of
him. And it was just total popping. I mean, I could see rocks flying. I felt the shot in my leg.
and then I went down and I could see partly around me and I could see kids laying and the other kids
had run into the building but I was laying there with my back to him and I could still hear him going
off and I thought he's going to shoot me anytime.
But it's always amazing to hear from the people that, you know, were actually involved
because she was there.
She experienced the panic, the fear and the fear that she had for the kids.
And it wasn't just her, right?
there was other teachers.
They weren't outside, but they were watching in horror from their classrooms.
There was one story Gibbs about a teacher that had a classroom of hearing impaired students.
And she talked about how she had to sign to them, you know, about what was going on and, you know, to get under their desks.
And she said she remembered looking out the window and seeing Janney's,
gang on the ground with a hole in her leg. What she said Gibbs was a size of a grapefruit.
Wow. Well, that's type of caliber. And I just can't overestimate this, you know, the impact on this
incident to so many people there that day. And even years down the road, right? We're talking nightmares,
fear of public places. People have talked about how, you know, some of the teachers, how it ended their
careers because they couldn't step foot in a school ever again. No, I'm sure. The anxiety.
The fear. The fear. It just wouldn't let them do it. In divorce. You know, many of the teachers
talked about how they were so traumatized that ultimately their marriages just fell apart.
Yeah, taking that home every night, you know, and if you weren't there, weren't involved,
you'd be like, okay. Eventually, you're going to have to get over this type of, yeah, yeah, maybe.
know and all you're doing is curled up playing on bed all the time depressed depends on how
supportive your your spouse or significant other is right and we're but we're talking about the
people that lived yeah right i mean we talked about the five innocent kids that lost their lives
we talked about obviously we can't name everyone that was wounded but you have a lot of collateral
damage in a situation like this and some of these things
they may not show up, right, until many years down the road that ultimately devastate people's lives.
Some of this anxiety, PTSD, some of these things that you experience as a kid, it may not show up in
the worst way until 20 years down the road or something.
Yeah, you know, one of those nine-year-old, six years old could have found a way to block it out at that
time and then it resurfaces as they got older.
Yeah, there's something that traumatizes them in life again and it comes out and then they remember and, you know.
And you talked about it earlier on. My wife's a teacher. She teaches fourth grade. And so I'm blown away by the heroism that, you know, these teachers showed. And obviously we'll talk about it when we talk about some of the other school shootings as well. It's amazing what some of these teachers did. And in this case,
and in some of the other ones.
It was at recess time.
So most of us were not in our rooms.
The children were on the yard.
I happened to go to the office to call a parent.
And as I was leaving the office, people started running into the office
and saying that there was a shooter or there was shooting on the yard.
And they were locking the office down.
And I actually had to push somebody aside from the doorway to get.
out of the office to run across the yard to get back to my classroom. No, you can't go. No, you can't go.
We don't know how many people are out there with guns. And I said, but my kids are out there.
So, and to be honest, I don't even know who that was that was holding me. I pushed that person
aside and went out the door, looked because there is an open yard there, and then went through the
building. And you know what, if you're inside an office, you would probably think it was multiple
shooters. When you hear that many rounds, you know, the first clip, 75 rounds go off within a
minute, you're thinking, man, it's got to be three, four, five shooters out there to shoot that
many that many that fast. But, you know, think about what she said. They're saying, no, don't go out
there. It's too dangerous. And she says, I don't give a shit. Those are my kids. Right. And she,
she said I push somebody down to get through that door to try to get to my kids.
This is a teacher.
This is not a trained Navy seal.
And it just gets me, man.
That is heroism.
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So after the shooting is over, when authorities start investigating, eventually they find
Purdy's motel room.
And inside this room gives, they find 100.
hundreds and hundreds of little toy soldiers, little green army men.
Yeah.
And the tanks and the jeeps that go along with it.
Everything.
Yeah.
It's like he's mapping some things out.
Right.
He also might have just been playing with him.
But there was some indication that he was using them possibly to map the shooting out.
Right.
The more we learn about Patrick Edward Purdy, the more grotesque it gets.
Police say for the past three weeks, Purdy stayed in this Stockton motel off Highway 99.
Inside this room, police say they found ammunition and something very strange.
There had to be a hundred little plastic army men, a couple of jeeps and a tank,
that were spread out through the entire room, up on top of the drapes in the shower,
one in the freezer
and it has drawn on it
some pictures
and written in black ink
at the top
V for victory
and at the bottom
F for freedom
I don't know why you put one in the freezer
or in the shower
but again
I'm going to get into Purdy's mind
because I think by this point in time
obviously to do something like this
to shoot up a school yard full of children
there's no making sense of that.
I don't you can spend the rest of your life.
You're not going to make sense of of this man.
So they did an autopsy and the autopsy came back.
They didn't find drugs.
They didn't find any evidence of, you know, tumors like on his brain or anything that
they thought would have caused him to act irrationally.
And you can find it.
You can find this autopsy.
It's out there.
And you can see the.
the hand-drawn picture that the coroner made of Patrick Purdy.
And then it's labeled on his, I believe it was his right temple.
It's labeled one and a quarter inch gaping hole.
And there's a little shaded area where he shot himself.
And then there's another picture of the other side, not a picture of drawing.
Right.
Of the other side of his face where they're showing you the X.
It's labeled one and a half inch by five and three quarter inch.
And that's where the exit wound was.
Exit wound was.
It also states in the autopsy that he was wearing orange earplugs.
Some normal shooting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Or even just construction.
You know, they didn't have to be specifically for, for shooting.
But that's premeditated.
Obviously, he knew what he was getting ready to do.
Oh, sure.
He thought, I better have these ear plugs in.
So the big question that everyone is asking, right, trying to make sense of this, why would Patrick Purdy gun down a school yard full of children?
And you have the Stockton police captain.
He comes out and says, you know, he just hated everyone.
But the state's attorney general's office, they did a big investigation after this shooting.
And they concluded that the shooting was racially motivated.
We hinted about that, you know, a couple times during the episode.
In the report they released, they said Patrick Purdy compensated for his own feelings of
powerlessness and inadequacy by shifting blame to others and by rationalizing that he was
unsuccessful only because of unfair favoritism to others who were receiving government support
while he was not.
That's a big statement.
It's a huge statement.
And it really encapsulates this whole thing.
So we talked about the fact that he had a hard time sticking with a job,
couldn't maybe get the type of job that he thought he should have.
At a lot of times in his life,
he was living in Stockton, California,
an area with a high concentration of people that had immigrated from Southeast Asia.
he is probably seeing these people succeed through hard work, work ethic.
He's not succeeding.
So what does he think?
He thinks that the U.S. government is giving these people everything.
And that's why they're succeeding.
I really think that's what a lot of this comes down to.
And that's what the state attorney's general's office, their investigation concluded as well.
Now, they did say that he acted alone.
That was one of the things that they had.
had to figure out. And they also said, you know, hey, this wasn't an impulse thing, right?
This was premeditated murder. He carefully planned this out over the course of at least a month.
And to them, the choice of victims was not random. You know, the attorney general came out and
said, Purdy attacked Southeast Asian immigrants out of a festering sense of racial resentment and
hatred. Now, they found out through their investigation that he hated a lot of different groups,
but especially any group whose ethnicity was different than his own. And he apparently especially
despised individuals of Southeast Asian descent. There's just no way around it. There was,
there's too much evidence. They gathered it. Yeah. It was writing on the wall. Yeah. And they uncovered
some very specific examples that backed this up in 1987.
We talked about Purdy taking welding classes at a college, and they found out that he
complained to a lot of people at the college about the number of specifically Southeast Asian
students at that college.
So he just didn't understand the demographics of the community he lived in.
Right.
So that's why I wanted to make special note.
of Stockton.
Right.
And the percentage of people living in Stockton that were from Southeast Asia.
Apparently, he wasn't smart enough to realize that, you know, if one-sixth of the population
of Stockton is made up of a certain group or ethnicity, well, then the local college in
Stockton is most likely going to have a similar proportion.
Yeah, it's going to be proportionate.
The schools, the work, everything.
I just think he wasn't smart enough to figure that out.
So sometime in early 1988, at one of his various jobs, he said to some coworkers that he didn't like competing against Southeast Asians for jobs.
And he couldn't stick with a job.
So he was all the time looking for a job.
He also said that Vietnamese and communists would overrun the United States.
And investigators found coworkers that said, you know, he had started to badmouth the U.S. government
for what he called the U.S. giving jobs and money to the Vietnamese.
So he's just, you know, ignorant, really.
Yeah, he just, he thought everybody was getting a free ride.
And here he's struggling.
He's afraid to work.
But couldn't, couldn't figure out the fact that, you know, these folks that came over from Vietnam, came over
from Cambodia probably had a work ethic that was much, much better than his and were succeeding
based on their hard work. Meanwhile, he's going from job to job and can't figure out why he's not
the CEO of some major company. Just a few weeks before the attack, Purdy's in a bar in Stockton,
talking to other patrons of the bar, again, about the U.S. government giving out on his soapbox.
Yeah, on his soapbox.
The U.S. government's giving free stuff, money, jobs to these people that come over.
But these folks from that bar said that he said something very ominous that night.
As he was leaving, he talked about what his AK-47 could do.
and he told the people in the bar,
you're going to read about me in the papers.
Yeah.
He knew.
He had been planning this, right?
This was two weeks before.
He'd been planning this thing for at least a month.
He knew what he was going to do.
On multiple occasions in the weeks leading up to the attack,
he was seen staking out schools.
He was caught by a janitor in a school at one time.
In one instance,
he was seen near the playground of the Cleveland.
school that he would later attack. At one point, he was stalking one of the local high schools
that at night served as a Cambodian community center, I guess where people could take classes
at night. Trying to figure out his target. Yeah. Or targets. Yeah, trying to figure out what he's
going to do. I mean, knows what he's going to do, but maybe he hadn't narrowed it down to a single
target. Or maybe he thought, like you said, he could pull off more than one target. Even on the day
of the attack. As he's getting into his car to drive to the school, he's talking to some guy in the
parking lot. And his last known words were racially charged. You know, he told this guy at the motel
that it was operated by Hindus. And his last words were apparently, this is what this guy said,
the damn Hindus and boat people own everything. This guy was a racist. Of course he was.
There's no, there's no doubt about it.
So you had that question, right?
Why would this guy shoot innocent children?
But the other question that you had, and this is one that comes up, right, in every school
shooting, how did this guy, Purdy, an alcoholic who had numerous arrests, had a long rap sheet
of criminal offenses, walk into this gun shop in Sandy, Oregon, and, you know, and, you know, and, you
buying a K-47.
Yeah, I don't know how the alcoholic plays into it
because, I mean,
unless he was in there drunk,
I mean, they would never know he's an alcoholic.
There's not a system that registers you as an alcoholic.
I mean, you can have things on your record like DWI,
DUI, things like that.
But, you know, an alcoholic and a good alcoholic,
you wouldn't even know they're drunk anyway.
So I don't know how that would come into play,
but I think you asked the question,
you know, when you have a criminal
record like he did, how did that not get picked up within that 15-day period?
Well, no, keep in mind, there was no 15-day period for buying a rifle.
Oh, okay, for the rifle.
That was only for handgun.
That was just for the handgun.
Even back then, you could walk into a store and buy a rifle same day.
But the answer is pretty easy.
Anyone could walk into a store, buy a semi-automatic rifle as long as you filled out the
correct paperwork.
And I don't think Gibbs, and I think this is the key.
factor. I just don't think he had a felony on his record. Well, if he didn't have a felony, then
remember all those charges we talked about. It seemed like every one of them got knocked down,
got knocked down underneath that felony mark. Well, if you don't have a felony, then you're in the
clear. Also, I think back then, they just asked the question if you had a felony. And you could mark,
no. That's, and I think that's, that's so stupid. Yeah, this was way before the,
like you and I have purchased guns.
You know what's involved in the background check.
You're filling out paperwork,
but it's also going to the FBI.
It's not like the honor system.
No.
Of just writing down if you've had,
you know,
felony or domestic abuse.
No,
not me.
No,
sir.
But I don't think that,
this was before the type of background checks that,
you know,
exists today.
But as it does today,
right,
this shooting sparked both sides of,
the gun debate into action. You had those people calling for stricter gun control and you had those
people opposed to it. We have that today. We will always have that. Shoot, yeah. It's never going to end.
In America, we will always have that. It's never going to end. But what did come out of this was
the Roberty Roos Assault Weapons Control Act of 1989. Now, this was specific to California. And it made
certain brands and certain models of semi-automatic firearms illegal, those that were classified
as assault weapons. And then 10 years later, in 94, they amended it to ban magazines that
could hold more than 10 rounds. But again, this is a California thing. Right. There was a federal
ban on assault weapons passed in 94, but it expired in 2004. And again, I don't want to get into
what an assault weapon is and, you know, that that is a almost a debate in and of itself.
There are a lot of people that despise the term assault weapon.
But I do want to talk about as we wrap this up, Gibbs, one interesting story I ran across.
And it was about a man named Rob Young.
Rob Young was six years old.
In 1989, he was at the Cleveland Elementary School that day.
And he was one of the 30 plus kids that.
was wounded.
Really?
He later became a police officer and a gun owner.
And there's,
there's a lot of articles and even videos about Rob Young.
He's been pretty outspoken against many of the gun ban measures that have been
proposed over the years.
And a lot of people might think that's strange, right?
This,
this is a man who as a kid wasn't,
was wounded by an AK-47, what a lot of people.
you know, deem to be an assault weapon. And I think what's interesting about it is it's kind of put him
at odds with many of the other students and especially, you know, the teachers that were there that
day. Many of them are, you know, obviously very opposed to guns and, and in favor of the different
type of gun control that has been proposed over the years. But he's on the other side of it.
You know, as a police officer, and in one of the articles, he talks about it, how, you know, guns have
saved lives. And I just found it very interesting, the dynamic of his life having lived through
it. Through through that, yeah. Becoming a police officer. And, you know, you and I Gibbs,
we believe everybody has the right to take whatever stance they want. Yeah. On, on any issue.
I just thought it was, it was very interesting to read about him specifically.
you know, being there. Not just being there, but being one of the wounded. Right. Yeah. I mean, it was a good
story. It's a really good story. But that is it for the case of Patrick Purdy. Cleveland Elementary
school shooting, Stockton, Massacre. I mean, again, it's got a lot of names. And I'm sure people in
California are very familiar with this. Right. I don't know if the rest of the country is. This is not known
like a Columbine or, you know, some of the other ones that, that have been more recent,
I didn't know much about this one before I started researching it. Gives, we got some voicemails.
Let's hear.
I want to check those out.
Hi, Mike and Gibby.
This is Daisy calling from London, England.
I just want to say a massive thank you for your podcast.
I listen to them all day, every day at work.
and it keeps me saying I work in finance so yeah just constantly have them on repeat
and so yeah I just wanted to say thanks guys and stay safe and keep your own time taking
I think it's great to hear the voice and I really like the voicemail and I work in finance
myself so I can appreciate that okay all right let me break this down so actually at first I
didn't think that was too bad. Then I felt like it morphed to Australian. Okay. And then I think you got
again, you, you kind of go like to the south, like a southern United States. Yeah. I've never seen
accents morph. I don't know what it's all about. I just really don't know. That's a good one. While you're
trying, I know you're still trying to do the same one. It just, it just kind of slides off into different ones.
It goes in a different direction. But she said she's in finance.
and she needs something to get through the day.
You and I are both in finance.
Yeah.
So we can understand.
Commiserate with that.
Hi, Mike and Gibby.
My name is Sarah.
I'm from Vancouver, Washington.
I never listened to a podcast before, but a couple months ago, I found your podcast.
And to be honest, nothing ever compares to true crime all the time.
I've tried listening to other ones, but it's just not Mike and Gibby.
And I just appreciate everything you guys do.
And, you know, I love, love this podcast.
I'm now just getting into the true crime assault.
So I just want to say thanks.
And keep your own time kicking.
Bye.
And nothing compares to us.
It's like that song.
You know what?
I will say this.
To you.
There are a lot of very good true crime podcasts.
There really are.
There really is.
So, but we're very happy if you like ours.
We love it.
Thank you for that.
Yeah, we love to hear that.
Vancouver.
Hey guys, it's Cassidy calling from Athens, Greece. I'm actually Canadian citizens, but I've been here working on a fishing boat for about a year and a half. And I got into your podcast last year when I was spending a lot of time alone on the boat. And it made me start locking my cabin door at night, even though I was there by myself and had security. But anyway, I just wanted to tell you guys, I love the podcast. I have both of you.
You are hilarious and can't choose a favorite.
All right.
Love you guys.
And yeah.
Bye.
Athens, Greece.
So that's so close to the Italy.
You know, she's just around the corn.
So you're going to do that.
Yeah, because I can't remember what the greaser sounds like.
So I do that.
And I say, how amazing.
She's working on a fishing boat out on the beautiful water,
catching these beautiful fish all day long.
So we fly over to Greece.
Fly to Greece.
But she's a Canadian.
citizen.
She's can nod you in.
And she's on a fishing boat.
Yes.
Which I would think you would want to lock your cabin door anyway.
I don't know.
You're out there on open water.
That's what I'm saying.
You're out on the open water.
What's you worried about, mate?
I'm worried about the other fishermen.
Oh, that's true.
Or pirates.
Pilots are out to get some pirates.
Hi, guys.
This is Carolyn from Dallas.
And I just wanted to tell you that I listen to your podcast all the time.
I listen to a lot of true crime, and you're my favorite, always will be.
And I look forward to every episode, every week.
I'm a national native, Nashville, Tennessee.
And we had a crime there that happened when I was growing up,
the Marcia Trimble case.
And if you look on the Internet, you'll see that.
That's a real interesting story.
And then the Perry March, or Janet March, M-A-R-C-H case,
where Perry killed his wife.
and they've never found her to this day, but he's in prison.
And the last one is Dennis Paul Reed, R-E-I-D.
He was the Nashville fast food killer.
In fact, my daughter worked with him at a restaurant,
and after he was arrested, we, of course, were mortified.
And they interviewed my daughter on the news,
and that's when I became a true crime addict.
And I'm always listening, watching, and go forth.
but I just love your podcast.
I think you guys are great.
Y'all work so well together and keep up to good work.
Thank you.
All right.
Love that voicemail.
From the south of y'all.
Well, you and I...
You and I love Nashville.
We do love Nashville and we love Dallas.
Wouldn't she from Dallas now?
Actually, two of my favorite cities, Nashville and Dallas.
Definitely love Nashville for sure.
We'll definitely check into all three of those,
but she's really got me hooked on this Nashville
fast food killer.
Yeah.
I got to check into that.
We got some Nashville friends that grew up around that time.
We ought to reach out and see what they say about it.
Well, how do you, what time was it?
How do you know what time it was?
Because it had fast food.
You crack me up.
You don't even know what time period we're talking about, but they grew up around that time.
Yeah, you know, they're, they're no.
Hey, guys, this is Paul Dean in Poulton County, Georgia.
Oh, Fred and Rosemary West is a father of a daughter.
I almost had to turn this podcast off several times, and I don't have a weak stomach,
but because of how you reported on it, really made it not as terrible.
But thank you for that.
Thank you for always making it as lighthearted as possible, but still showing respect to everyone.
Anyways, keep up good work and keep your own time ticking.
By the way, British people say garage, not garage.
Anyways, bye.
garage i told you that from the beginning i don't know why you don't listen to me it's the garage
garage i like garage go out to the garage and get the i swear i think i've heard i've heard
british people say garage garage but i could be totally wrong unless it's people like me garage i'll go
with paul how crazy is it that his name was paul dean yeah you just talked about paul dean i know
and had no idea mad you never hear the voicemails ahead of time nope i never let you hear him it's a surprise
Hey guys, just wanted to wish you a happy Thanksgiving, and I will now do my best turkey impersonation for you.
And I wanted to remind everybody to, or have you given an announcement, a true crime podcast, Chicago, July 13th.
Got my ticket.
Looking forward to it.
Love you guys.
I hope you have good holidays coming up too.
You're the best.
Bye.
So a couple things.
Shows you how far behind we are on voicemails.
Sure.
And the other thing.
And then the next thing is we will be at the festival in Chicago.
I'm looking forward to.
Are we?
When is it?
July something or other.
Do you give me those dates yet?
She just said it.
No.
I told you we were going.
Well, you probably need to give me the dates.
It's so far out.
Well, I might want to book my hotel.
Oh, that's true.
I'm not spooning with you again.
It ain't happening.
That's why I don't tell you ahead of time.
So, yeah, I probably need to know.
It forces you into a spooning scenario.
Well, hotel so I can get my room now.
Oh, but I do want to hear that.
turkey impersonation in person.
Sure.
In Chicago.
Well, she's a gobbler.
So that's it, Gibbs, no mail bag this week.
Nothing in the mail?
Nothing in the mail.
What would you like to have in the mail?
You know, I never turned down beef jerky.
So, send some beef jerky to Mike.
We've been getting some pretty good beef jerky.
Yeah.
One of the ones we got last week was an IPA beef jerky.
Really?
So it was infused with an IPA.
Oh.
That's good stuff, man.
It was good.
All right.
That is it for another episode of true crime all the time.
So for Mike and Gibby, stay safe and keep your own time ticking.
