True Crime All The Time - Stephen McDaniel

Episode Date: November 20, 2017

In 2011, Stephen McDaniel was a young man who had a lot going for him. He had just graduated from law school and was studying to take the bar exam. But Stephen had some deep dark secrets that would soon be revealed including the fact that he was obsessed with his next door neighbor and fellow law school graduate Lauren Giddings. This obsession would ultimately lead Stephen down the path of murder.Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the case of this troubled individual who took the life of a woman who was loved by everyone with whom she came into contact. The details of the case are horrific but it's the motive for this murder that is truly perplexing. When it is all said and done, Stephen will be made to tell every sick detail of his crime.You can help support the show by going to patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact and merchandise information. While you're there make sure you click on our amazon link for any amazon shopping that you do. It's a great way to support the show.Credits:Writing/Research - Maggie DobschuetzSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Everyone and welcome to episode 54 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. What's going on? Hey man, what's happening? How much? We just had a little Penn Station. Yeah. Filled us up and now we're ready to record.

Maybe there's people across the world going, what's Penn Station? Why are they eating a train station? Look it up. Penn Station. Look it up. There's Google. Yeah. Google it.

Got me a little sub in my. Tommy. Yep. So we have an announcement that we want to make right up front. So we're coming up on our one year anniversary of true crime all the time. And we've never taken a week off. Right, Gibbs? We put out an episode every single Sunday. Well, I haven't. I mean, you take time off all the time, but you're like, here, Gibby, get this edit done. So we don't leave the studio until it's complete. Yeah. Speaking of taking time off, you felt like, sleep at one point in a previous episode. I don't want to hear nothing. Because I'm working hard. Your eyes got droopy. I was like, Gibbs. So we made the decision that we're going to take the

week of Thanksgiving off. We're not going to put out an episode the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Oh my gosh. You knew about this ahead of time. Oh, that's right. I kind of agreed with him. You were with me in the planning. I tried to fight the good fight, but, you know. So we're going to take that week off, Spend Thanksgiving with our family, recharge the batteries, and then come back strong. But we do want to wish everybody a very, very happy Thanksgiving for our listeners in the States. And for those of you in other countries, happy Thursday or whatever other day you may or may not be celebrating. All right, Gibbs, you want to get to some Patreon? Some Patreon.

Or you want to drink some Patron. Well, I'd rather drink. I was going to say, which one you want. I like to drink the Patron then do the Patreon names. At the same time? Mm-hmm. All right.

So we had a lot of new Patreon supporters. It's amazing. We had Jackie, Val, Laura Steventon, Helena Gustafson. Helena. She's my buddy. Big on social media.

She is. Kate Brown. Carly Hatchell. A Wondering Generality. That just sounds like a kid show. Yep. It's cool. La Terra.

Adam Chandler. And Adam actually sent me a message. because he wanted to give a huge shout out to Emily Rice and Harriet Davis. Who? Emily Rice and Harriet Davis. See, there you go. I got it out there twice. He wanted to get it out there twice.

Because the three of them listened to the show. They love it. And he just wanted to make sure that they got a shout out. Trey amigos. Yep. Ginger Lamontaine. Yeah, good job. I don't know.

I like Ginger. I just like that name. That's a cool name. if I got it right. Makes me think of, you know, when they're lost on the island. Gilligan's Island? That's the one. We had Todd Collier, Amy Flowers, Paige Summerfield,

Karina Mikalowski, Donna Rubba, Bubba, Rebecca Marchetti, Jeffrey Bolack, and Elizabeth Roberts. So we had a lot, and that's awesome. A lot of new Patreon supporters. And then we had Susan Nathan, support us on PayPal. Wow.

Thanks, Susan. Yeah, we appreciate everybody, all the support. We say it a lot, but now I want to leave out our Instagram, Facebook,

Twitter, everybody that's pushing us out there. But if we go back into the Patreon Vault Gibbs, this week I selected Catherine Clark and just want to give her a huge shout out for supporting the show

for a long time. She's been great. Really means a lot. Got to give a huge shout out to Maggie for, for her writing and research on the episode. Maggie May. And then make sure you check out Unsolved.

This week we're talking about the husbands of Rainella Dossett Leaf. And I'm just going to leave it there. Such a fascinating case. Drop the mic and walk away. Yep. So the husbands should give a little clue as to what this is about. All right. Gibbs,

you ready to get into this episode of true crime all the time? I am psyched. You are psyched. We are talking about Stephen McDaniel. And Stephen Mark McDaniel was born September 9th, 1985. He grew up outside of Atlanta, Georgia in a little suburb called Lilburn. You ever heard of that one, Gibbs? I never heard of it.

I never heard of that either. And you and I have heard of a lot of places. I never heard of making it up. I may be. Now, when he was a little kid, and we're talking about like four years old, his parents nicknamed him Mr. Clean. And this was because, you know, even at that age, he wanted everything to be very neat, very tidy all the time. It's a little OCD.

Maybe. Yeah. Maybe. I've got that. I don't know if it was diagnosed. But yeah, I know you like things that very orderly. Yeah. You don't like things to be messy.

No, not at all. I don't mind it quite as much. Well, you're pretty messy. And some things that his mother would say about Stephen. Number one, he was a people pleaser. He was very protective of his family. Wow, sounds like me. Maybe this is you.

It's getting interesting. But Stephen's life changed when 9-11 happened. Now, a lot of lives changed, right, from the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Stephen was 16 years old at the time and for whatever reason the attacks had just this profound impact on him. He was so affected by what happened that he started to in his mind feel like he had to be ready in case another attack would happen on U.S. soil. So when I say he was affected by, he didn't lose anyone. He didn't have anybody that was in, you know, the towers or the Pentagon or that was on the plane that went down.

It was just the idea of what happened apparently affected him. Now, it affected a lot of people. I'm not making light of that whatsoever. It affected a lot of people that didn't have, that actually didn't lose anybody. Right. Didn't have a direct connection. Yeah. It affected us all.

Yeah. But it affected him in the way where, you know, he almost becomes one of these type of, like, doomsday. preppers. I don't think he's alone in that, though. No, I do a little doomsday prepping myself. A little? There's... I have a bunker. There's enough boxes here of food and I'm... We can eat for five years. Yeah, I have a bunker with some water and some food and just in case, just in case. Never know. What is it better safe than sorry, right? It's definitely. I just know where to come if I want fed. But, you know, so he starts reading up on the internet about this kind of prepping. you know, water supply, making sure he had enough.

And then on top of that, what to do in scenarios where, what if the water supply was contaminated as some through some type of terror act? That's always the one that gets me, Gibbs. When I think about terrorist type of actions, I always think about like football stadiums and I think about the water supply. Those are the two that I think scare me the most. You get a football stadium like Michigan, Ohio State. I was going to say it depends who's in the stadium.

What teams? Yeah, well, you get one of these big, you know, 100 and some thousand people. Yeah, it can be some damage, you know. It would almost be like that movie with Ben Affleck when he played that Tom Clancy movie. Yep. What was it called? When they had to get that Coke machine out of the Baltimore Stadium before it blew up and killed everybody. again what was it called yeah like last chance or last chance that's that was the movie you guys seen it

if you haven't get on to next flicks you can find it and look for last chance i guarantee james earl jones and ben afflick and some girl it was in it so you got it had that going for it you know i'm talking about right you know the movie i don't know what it's called oh but i i've read all of tom clancy's books he played the uh he played the uh he played the um he played the same character that Baldwin played in like Hunt for Out October. Yeah, and Indiana Jones guy. Oh, Harrison Ford. Harrison Ford played, play the character like later. Clear and present danger? Yeah. Yeah. He played a couple of them, I think. It was good, though. People are fascinated by this, uh, people are probably Googling. Chris Pine played

him too in a remake. What was that called? Shia, I don't remember that one. Wasn't that good. You're good with the actors. It's the, it's the movie title. Yeah, I'm never good. That really seemed to allude you. Tom Clancy, man. The cruel intentions from last week was all over social media, man. It was. Neither one of us could think of it at the time. Clearly, our audience knew it right away because they were screaming it at their phones.

Yeah, it's different, you know, when you're recording. It definitely is. Try to sit in this chair, remember. Try to sit and give these shoes. Yeah, you don't want to do that. That's not good for anybody. But he was. He started to get really freaked out about.

the fact that, you know, something else bad was going to happen. He had to be ready for it. You know, talked about him filling up two-liter soda bottles with water, storing them under the kitchen sink in his apartment. So I don't know what kind of prepper he was, but he was worried about it. Sure. He was doing little things for sure. Probably got that, you know, the LDS guide to food storage and followed it. But we have to go back a little bit. So when he's eight years old, he played King Josiah in a church musical. Okay. So he was involved in the church.

He was also involved with the Atlanta boys choir up until the age of 13, which people are really going to be probably stunned by when they hear him on some of the clips we're going to play. But like I said, he was very heavily involved with the church. He even worked fixing up churches across the state of Georgia. So here's a kid that is doing some good things, right? Early in life. He was introverted. He enjoyed reading, history, adventure books.

He loved the Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. He was into some Gandalf the Great. I like Star Wars. I like Lord of the Rings. It's Gandalf the Grey in it. But as he starts to get older into high school, you can tell that Stephen McDaniel is not the normal high school kid. You know, people are going to look back at him and say, you know, he talked about his

historical figures, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln. He would tell other kids that he was politically conservative. Nothing wrong with that. It's just, were you talking about that in high school? No. I don't even know what I was in high school. It's like Michael J. Remember Michael J. Fox in that sitcom he did where he was like super like Republican or something like that, really conservative. What was that called, Gibbs? Don't know. Family ties. Family ties. I'll save you. I'll save you this time. Thank you for that. But when Stevens in high school, it was saying. that he took PE during summer school just so that he could fully focus on his studies. That is very atypical of the usual high school student, right?

You would admit that. Absolutely. I liked PE. Oh, damn, I excelled in it. Like dodge ball, crab soccer, kickball. If I went on that alone, scholar. You got a scholarship for PE? I could.

If that's all, if that's all we had to worry about, you know what? I'd be a road scholar. If there was no academics involved. That would be a Rhodes Scholar. Stephen and his dad, they both enjoyed samurai films. And his father even had a blog online for a period of time where he wrote about samurai films. Samurai. Cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger, cheeseburger.

Oh, hey, yeah, a little Saturday Live there. Yeah, that's old school. See, I knew that one. That's old school. McDaniel graduated from high school in 2004, and he actually won a presidential scholarship to attend Mercer where he majored in business. And when he was in college, very much like high school, he took full course load every semester. He was taking the max credits. I would never do that, Gibbs. I did that once. It backfired. That doesn't leave you enough time for partying.

As I found out. Well, it doesn't leave enough time to do your homework and attend your labs. Oh, yeah. I did it the reverse way. I did too much partying. Yeah. I went to the parties and forgot to show up to the labs the next day. I did way too much of that. And now it shows. It does. But one effect of all of this, right? So the max course load in high school, the max course load in college, it meant that he was so

heavily involved in his studies, it was not a lot of time for socializing and making friends. Now, I don't know that this is something Stephen was really good at anyway. His mother would say that he did have some. him friends, but he was not the type of guy who was going to be the life of the party and was out looking to have a lot of fun. This is a guy that was very straight-laced, not a drinker, not a smoker, didn't take drugs. This is the guy that was going to stay behind when everybody else was out partying to study and not go out to the bars. Basically the opposite of you and I. Real opposite. The anti-Gibs. Yeah. And one thing.

theory that's been tossed around about why Stephen may have been so focused on education. He had an older sister and this sister had a criminal record, forgery, theft, and a few other crimes around the Atlanta area. So it's been theorized that he was trying to be very straight-laced. He didn't want to end up like his sister. So after graduating from Mercer University, he applies to Mercer Law School in 2008. And on the application, he called himself level-headed, said that he had a highly competitive personality. Talked about how he possessed this inner drive to win in any situation.

Now, I know we haven't played any of the clips yet, but when I do play these clips, none of this is going to sound like the guy you're going to hear on the clips. It's just not. The voice doesn't match the, yeah. Is that going to be your word for the episode? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. When you get stuck, it's just, yeah. Yeah. So he's got his business degree and he put on his application to law school that he was working as a babysitter. There you go. Well, you know. Yeah. Not wrong with that.

He's an entrepreneur. Yeah. But he's babysitting his nieces and nephews. But at the same time, he's trying to publish a novel. So I think there was some aspects of this guy where, you know, he did have some drive. Yeah, I'm working on a novel. Are you? Mm-hmm.

You don't remember what it's called, though. No, I know what it's called. You know the main characters, but you can't remember the name of it. It's all up in my head. I don't put it on print yet. I'm still working it out. You don't put it on print it. Well, you know, I don't print it.

I don't type it out. You don't type it. Yeah. It's up in my head. I'm categorizing it, getting it ready. Look out, Oprah. That's right. Gbies publishing a novel.

It's going to be called G. Like, her stuff's called O. Yeah. Mine's going to be G for Gby. Is this a novel? Is this a whole network? I'm going to the whole network. Oh, my goodness.

G network. Magazine. Magazine. Your own cable channel. I'll be, well, I can say, you get a car. You get a car. You get a K bar. You get a K bar.

You get a K bar. I think I will give K bars away someday. Yeah, you better save up some money. You're going to start giving way K bars. They're not cheap, are they? Yeah, no, they're not. Especially when you add shipping and handling. Well, you charge extra for the handling.

Yeah, whatever. So we got to get back to Stephen, right? He's at, he's trying to get into law school. And he talks about on his application that he aspires to be a federal judge, but also puts on there that, quote, I'm not an overly optimistic person. So he gets waitlisted by the law school at first. Eventually they let him in. And he starts to attend Mercer Law June 2008. And he moves into an apartment located just across the state.

street from the school of law and he moves next door to a woman by the name of Lauren Giddings. Now, Lauren Giddings was 24 years old at the time. This is a woman gives when you read about her and we do talk a lot about victims, but this is this is a woman that had it all. She was beautiful. She had an unbelievable inner beauty as well. I mean, this is the way. people describe her, right? She was very nice, the type of person that everybody wanted to be around. It was also said that she was very outgoing. So you have Lauren Giddings, the extrovert, in moves Stephen McDaniel next door, the introvert. Pretty much these two were polar opposites. Now, he had asked her to go out with him a few times after moving in. She declined, said no,

in what was by everybody's statements, you know, always a friendly manner, not like, no, get away from me, you jerk or, you know, really putting the guy down or anything like that. Now, she might have been friendly to him, which I believe she was. But secretly Gibbs, I think she probably also thought, you know, this guy's a little creepy because, you know, and we'll post his picture. Not to say that it tells the whole story, but obviously it matches what we're about. ready to talk about. This guy, he had a strange look to him. I think that's pretty safe to say. Yeah. And if you look like him, I'm sorry, but it's a strange look. It's a little strange. He had, you know, this is a white guy, probably 5-6 with the Afro 6-8. He almost had like this curly, like amazing bouffant hairdo. I'm just jealous of anybody has hair on top of their head. Dude,

I am not jealous of this guy's hair. I think you are. It was, it's, uh, it's, it's, uh, it's staggering. I think you got a crush on the hair. No, this, I am jealous of some people, a lot of people's hair, not this guy's. And this is going to be backed up by other people that lived in the building. You know, they thought McDaniel was strange. You know, other folks in the, in the apartment complex, they weren't really sure what to make of this guy. You know, he was very shy. He didn't talk a lot. When he did, he would talk about zombies. He was obsessed with zombies. And he would tell people, you know, with this, what they described as some type of crazy look on his face about zombies. He talked about pulling off the perfect murder.

Now, how smart is that, Gibbs? Knowing that this guy is a murderer or we wouldn't, he wouldn't be on the show. Why in the hell would you go around telling other people that you think you could pull off the perfect murder? You're planning the perfect murder. Well, a couple episodes back, we told everybody how we thought we could plan the perfect murder. I think you did. I said I couldn't get away with it. Oh. So I guess they got me on tape. Yeah. You're going down, dude. It's just a matter of time for you. It's just a matter of time.

I'm about trying to keep my own time ticking. All the time. I mean, people went as far as calling him sinister and that he talked to them about wanting to have power over people. He thought he was smarter than everybody else. That's the other thing that you hear, you hear a lot about. Those are the worst when people think they're smarter than they really are. are. Yeah. He thought he was smarter, I think twofold. Number one, he thought he was smarter than what he really was. And then he thought he was smarter than everybody else. Yeah, that's always a problem. That's why I play the way I do. And then bam. So nobody could ever accuse you of thinking that you're smarter than everybody else? You just, you know, take it down a level and they think they know something

more than you. And they play right into my web. How do you make your web? A little spider man will Oh, you're killing me I weave it weave that web And then the other thing that people would say Later on about Stephen McDaniel Is that when he's saying some of these things

That people find very odd He's doing it with this Like an evil grin Like a very creepy smile Like the grinch Maybe You know I know who the grinch is

Okay, so I'll make sure It's an evil grits It's an evil grin. I'll go with you. Yeah. So when he's talking about the perfect murder, he's talking about his obsession of zombies. Again, people found all of this very strange. Now, he had just graduated from law school.

And he was studying for the bar. He was getting ready to take the exam pretty soon. He was going to be a lawyer. That's the other thing about this. This guy was like steps away from becoming a full-fledged lawyer. Then one day his neighbor, Lauren Giddings goes missing. Now at first, I don't think anybody immediately thought anything was terribly wrong. Lauren is studying for the bar as well. And that's a very intensive exam.

Requires a lot of study. So I think there were a lot of people that thought, you know, she's just kind of barricaded herself in her house and she's diving in head first studying for this bar exam. It's not easy. It took you. It took you. how many times to pass it Gibbs? Well, I got the first time. Oh, did you? But it wasn't easy. It wasn't easy.

But eventually friends and family, they become worried because they can't get a hold of Lauren. They reach out to the police. And we talked about Lauren. She had graduated from Mercer Law School. She was studying for the bar exam. She wanted to work as a defense attorney. And, you know, very similar to Stephen McDaniel, she was going to be taking the bar exam

fairly soon within a matter of weeks. She was going to be moving out of that apartment, moving to Atlanta to begin her law career. So, and we say this Gibbs about a lot of victims. She had her whole life ahead of her. She was inches away from becoming an attorney, moving to the big city, ready to take it by storm. Yeah. And it's what makes some of these cases, you know, even that much more sad. Right. The potential of, what would she have done? Yeah, I mean, beautiful, smart, kind. You know, we lost out.

Yeah, she talked about... But not having her in his world. Yeah, she talked about wanting to be a mother. She wanted to have a family. She wanted to have a big family because she had grown up in Baltimore in a fairly large family. Now, I want to play a clip. And this is a clip that we don't get very often because it's actually Stephen

McDaniel being interviewed by a reporter. as they're searching for Lauren Giddings. No one has seen her since Saturday. I haven't seen anything. I mean, I've always seen noise outside, but there's people walking by pretty much. She and I, we were both JD students. We graduated back in May.

What kind of person was she? I mean, how did you, what did you see? I mean, she's as nice as can be. I mean, very personable, very much a people person. Do you know anybody that, any enemies she might have had, somebody that might want to hurt her? No.

I mean, we don't know where she is. I mean, the only thing we can think is that maybe she went out running and someone snatched her. I mean, we went over, one of her friends had a key. We went inside and tried to see if there was anything amiss, but, I mean, she had a door jam that was sitting right by it. So there was no sign that anyone broke in. I mean, the door was locked when everyone got here. I mean, we just don't know where she is. I don't know anyone that would want to hurt.

She was as nice person as there is. Why would anyone do this? She didn't hear anything? No. I heard something. Maybe I'm going to help it. Okay, don't worry. Do you want us to down for a second?

You got something to drink? Do you know if a bunch of her friends are getting together or anything? I mean, that's how I found out that she was missing. We, a bunch of her friends came over yesterday night, around midnight, and they couldn't, they hadn't seen her since Saturday, so they were trying to find out where she was. So they were knocking on neighbors' doors and stuff? I know, they went in, they had a key to her apartment,

and they checked around, didn't see anything. didn't see anything out of place. I mean, it was locked when everyone got there. I mean, we got an email this morning from some people that live on the other side of Kroger, on the other side of the river that they had seen her in the past running in that area. We thought maybe someone had snatched her over there, or maybe she got hurt or something. So it's not every day where a killer is interviewed about the person that he killed before everybody knows what's happened. Now, the one thing that really struck me about that, Gibbs, is they're in the middle.

I mean, he goes full-blown Academy Award crying. He does, man. But within one breath, he's totally back to normal. She asked him, like, one question, and he's, the tears are gone. I think he wanted, like, after that, he really wanted to do is go, superstar. Because he just pulled off the ultimate, you know, what he thought in his head was the, uh, uh, Well, what you don't hear, I mean, this thing is very long. They interviewed him for like 11 or 12 minutes.

One of the, the part that, that I left out was the reporter tells Stephen McDaniel that a body's been found. And of course, he's shocked. He freaks out even more. This body would end up being the remains of Lauren Giddings found in a trash can. You know, her torso had been dumped in, in this garbage can. right next to the apartment building where she lived, where Stephen McDaniel lived. And it was extremely lucky that they actually found her remains on the day that they did because

the trash was scheduled to be picked up that day. So you talk about timing and if they miss that and it's picked up, maybe this story doesn't go down the way it goes. Yeah, maybe not. You never know. He's a talker. But her arms, head and legs, they've never been. found. The only found her torso. So they do air the interview, not in its entirety, but you know like what they would do on a newscast. But later that night, he actually goes to jail on some totally unrelated burglary charge. It has something to do with stealing a condom from a neighbor's apartment. Stealing a condom that he's probably not going to be able to use. It doesn't look like he'd ever need to be using it. Well, but I'm glad he is using it because he shouldn't

produce. Well, he will later say that he's a virgin. So I don't know why in the hell he's stealing a condom. Maybe he doesn't know what they're used for. I don't know. But this happened months earlier, and it just happened to be that I guess they figured out it was him. But because of this, you know, the reporter knows that he, you know, ends up going to jail and apparently makes a comment to a coworker that, you know, hey, maybe I just interviewed the murderer. Because again, she's seeing what we heard. And even more so if you can actually see it, his face, his body language, all that. But eventually he is going to be suspected of the murder of Lauren.

And it doesn't take police very long into their investigation until they start to hone in on him. Because number one, he's a neighbor. They're going to look at neighbors. And they question Stephen. And I have some of that audio of his interrogation. And I have to play it because I want everybody to think back to what he sounded like on the newscast to what you're about ready to hear. Look, just tell me what happened, brother. I don't know.

Well, where's she at? I'm a detective and I'm asking you for your help. I don't know. You don't know if you can help me? Yes. I need your help. Help me out. Tell me what.

do? Can you help me? I don't know. What do you mean you don't know? You can't help a friend out? I don't know what you need. I need to know what Lawrence is. I don't know. When's the last time you've seen her? Two or three weeks ago. Has anybody, have you ever seen anybody over her house last couple nights? No. Okay. If you knew where she was, would you tell me? Yes. What do you think, happened to her. I don't know. Do you even care that no one can find her? Yes. I mean, I don't know, do you? Yes. Do you have a girlfriend? No. Did you think Lauren was your girlfriend? No. I mean, the guy sounds like George McFly from back to the future. So that was like the first part of the interrogation, right? The police officer, detective, being pretty nice to Stephen.

But things are going to, they're going to take a turn. You don't know. No. That's what you want me to tell her mother and her father is that you don't know. I don't know. Not that you're sorry that she's missing. Not that you've been trying to help me all day find her, but you just wanted me to tell her, I don't know.

I don't know. Are you a sorry piece of shit that you want me to tell her that? You got your ass on that fucking news and stood out there and gave a media report. that her mother saw about her missing daughter. And you want me to sit there and tell them that you don't know. You sure stood out there and ran your mouth to the news media. But now you're going to get out here and you don't fucking know.

You know you're just a sorry piece of shit that don't give a fuck. So this little act that you're doing right now, ain't working with me. Okay? Because you didn't have no problem. no problem talking to the media. So I said it started to turn and it does turn.

I like it. I like it too. I love this dude's accent by the way from down in Georgia. You sorry piece of shit. I like it. I do too. He's going after him. But then another detective comes in. Stephen, we're telling way too many lies

again. So you're telling me their lives. You're willing to tell me that you're a virgin and that you told me jack off the port on the internet but you don't want to admit to having another call that makes me think you got something to hide Stephen that concerns me you tell me things that most people wouldn't tell somebody else but yet you lie about something simple about having a car why are you trying to hide that you have another car what's the big deal I don't have I got three cars you do you do

no I don't it's not at your house what happened to it I've never had another car that's the only car you ever had in making yes okay let me go talk to him again that's not what he's saying What happened alone? I don't know. You like her, don't you? She's my friend. Did you ever think about having sex with her?

No. You never tried to talk to her on a dating level? She had a pretty girl right there? Yes. You're telling me you look that a pretty girl like that and you never once thought, ever, man, she looks good. You never thought that? I don't understand.

What do you mean? don't understand. So you mean to tell me you look at porn on the internet and get off to that, but you never look to her and said, man, I wonder what it would it be like to have sex with her? Yes. You have? No. I mean, this guy's, I mean, it's something else. Yeah. He says, I don't know, probably hundreds of times in this interview. He says, I don't know as about how many times I said, yeah. Yeah. It's a very strong. thing if you want and these are just snippets right these are snippets from a very very long interview

it's almost uncomfortable to watch the way that he just i don't even know how describe it gibbs he is just so emotionless it's kind of reminds me i mean on a different level but it reminds me of the old saturday night skit you know they're sweaty balls where they're also monotone yeah yeah i don't I don't know if sweaty balls correlates exactly to the interview of Steve McDaniels. But I think I get where you're coming from. Yeah. There's a method to my thought pattern there. Because he really is just this, it's almost like a robot.

There's no intonation in his voice. There's no emotion. It's just, I don't know. Let's do the next five minutes like that. I don't know. See how people quickly turn off the podcast. They could just listen to the first couple episodes. Yeah.

It's probably how we were. True Crime All the Time is brought to you by Rockstar Games and L.A. Noir, the dark detective crime thriller set among the violence, glamour, and corruption of 1940s Los Angeles. Out now for Nintendo Switch, Xbox 1, and PS4, L.A. Noir allows you to scourer crime scenes, pick up and examine objects, interrogate witnesses, and determine who is telling the truth or lying to cover up a brutal murder. Solve crimes inspired by real cases from one of L.A.'s most violent decades. L.A. Noir from Rockstar Games. Out now, rated M for mature. Order now at rockstargames.com slash L.A. Noir. So he's really not telling the police anything. In this

interview. You know, all he's saying is no, I don't know, mostly I don't know. And they're getting frustrating. Like I said, it's almost, I feel bad for these detectives. I mean, they're going after him. You know, they start off kind of nice. Then one guy goes bad cop. Then another guy comes in. He goes bad cop too. But they can't break him, even though they're on to him. Have you lied to me at all in this interview? No. Yes, you have, Stephen. When you say you're You don't know when the last time you cleaned your bathroom is, that's a lie. When you say you don't know the last time you saw her coming in and out of her apartment or you don't notice whether or not she comes in and out, that's another lie.

Your door is only a few feet from hers. You've told some lies in this interview, Stephen. Without a doubt, when was the last time you did laundry? A few weeks ago. You ain't washed clothes in a few weeks? Yeah. Why? I have a lot of clothes.

No, you don't. That's another lie. That's right. That's three lies, Steven. You don't have a lot of clothes. Yes, I do. No. You got enough underwear to last you three weeks?

Yes. Do you wear the same pair of underwear more than one day? Yes. Why? Because it's still clean enough to wear. So he's definitely on the Gibby plan. Hey now. This one's still clean enough to wear.

Is that what it is? Like you, the sniff test? Yeah. Yeah. It's a sniff test. Not with underwear, though, dude. You can't, you gotta change your drawers every single day. I ain't wear underwear, man.

You go commando? I just go commando. I just put it out there. I don't. I don't know if I'd say it that way, but. Hey, I like, I like my boxers, man. I'm with you on that. My box are briefs, man.

Not your, I don't like your boxers. Well, they wouldn't fit you anyway. I like my own boxers. You'd have too much room if you wore mine. Too much room in the crotch. regional region. Is that what you're trying to say? That's what I said. You son of a bet you. I know it, man. Well, I am older.

Might not sing down more. Do your balls hang low? Can you tie him in a bow? No bow yet. But, you know. I forget the rest of that song, but it's pretty funny. Something about can you throw him over your shoulder like a continental soldier? You know what I'm talking about? I've been in a gym before where the old guy puts his leg up and you think he probably could. Oh, it's like that scene from Billy Madison.

They were talking about that. Those young kids are like, do you see those guys' balls? Man, they looked weird. So they're grilling Stephen McDaniel. We've got to steer this back to the interrogation. It's a lot of ball talk today. They're grilling him. They can't break him other than to get him to confess that he wears his underwear way too many times before he washes him.

Who needs starch when you do that? But he's not confessing. to the murder of Lauren Giddings. You heard the detective say that at one point in the interrogation, Stephen did say he was a virgin and would go back to this, this burglary of the condom. And they ask him about it. But again, he just, he's like, I don't know.

Everything is, I don't know with this guy. But he's in jail on this burglary. And he stays there for about a month until they actually charge him with the murder of Lauren Giddings. So they keep him in the jail. sweat them down and start building their case. Yeah. And they get a search warrant.

Sure. Which was major. They were going to see what they could find in his apartment. And they do find things. And they actually find a lot of things. So they found a wad of hair. A wad of hair. A wad of hair is the way it was described.

You know, they, they seized laptop, camera, cell phone, normal, all that type of stuff. There were some receipts. And one in particular was from Walmart. dated June 23rd, 2011. Two keys. And if you go back to the interview or the interrogation, you know, part of it, you probably heard parts of it, but they talked about having two cars. They were asking him this a lot because there were people that knew him that said he had this one car, like a geoprism that he drove a lot, but then they had been seeing him drive around another car. But he denied having more than one car.

They also ask him a lot about which Walmart he shops at. So they already had some knowledge even going into this interrogation. They found his journal. They found a foam cup with the name Lauren written on it, a thumb drive that had child pornography on it. So he's got kitty porn. He's got a style foam cup with her name on it. Who knows what he did with that?

Yeah. They're able to look through his search history. Scary shit there. Always clear your search. history, even though I don't know if it's ever really cleared. I don't think so from people that know what they're doing. But in searching his, they determined that he's pretty much cyber-stalking Lauren Giddings before her death. So these are just some of the things that they found in a search history. Nude Lauren Giddings. They could tell that he was going through her Twitter feed.

he searched molest sleeping girl in a number of different variations. None of this looking good for Stephen McDaniel. No. Now, he visited a lot of porn sites, which you heard the, he actually pretty much offered that up to the detective. The detective was kind of blown away that he just was telling him that stuff. Was he a member of the same ones you belong to? I don't know.

I didn't have a list of all of them. But dating sites. escorts on Backpage. What's Backpage? I was going to say, whatever that is. I don't know what that is. I think you probably know. That might be some dark web type stuff or something.

I don't know. Actually, I think Back Page is kind of like Craig's List, but like. For sex? Well, or just all different types of sex. Illegal activities. Really? I think so. I like when you use the word, I think.

Yeah. As if anybody's buying that. That I think. That you think. You're probably more sure about that than any of your movies that you've talked out in this episode. He was constantly Googling her name, looking at her Amazon wish list. Amazon Wishlist.

I mean, that's like a deep cut cyber stalking. I mean, someone can go and look at my Amazon wishlists? I don't know. It would just be like K bar, K bar, K bar, K bar, K bar, K bar. Yeah. Knife oil. That's right. Knife.

Sheath. You got it, man. Fine chamie to rub it down. I like a fine shammie when I'm rubbing it down. I think that came out a little wrong. Maybe it came out. Maybe it did. Again, he was looking at all kinds of different photo sharing sites.

He was just looking for pictures of her. I mean, this is stalking. He is not cyber stalking, but it's stalking. He's obsessed with her. Yeah, sadly. They were able to determine that on June 8th. He looked at her LinkedIn page, Googled her name, looked at her face. Facebook page. This is a lot of different places that he's trying to keep up with her on the same day.

He's definitely fascinated by her. No, fascinated, obsessed. Yeah, fixated. Fixated. That's a good word. The other thing that they figured out is on the day that her body was found, when Lauren Giddings' body was found, he actually searched on ways to permanently erase his search history. So you've got a lot of things not looking good here, right? Steve McDaniel. You wonder why people do this. That's their concern. Why don't they just picked up that little laptop, walk it out to the river, and throw it in? Well, for a guy that graduated college, graduated law school, I don't know how smart this guy was.

He's not too smart, because he's breaking every rule, like even like the basic rule of fight club, right? You never talk about fight club. Don't talk about fight club. He's talking about how he knew her and all that kind of stuff. to the news reporter. Yeah, I just, I don't think, well, for somebody that talked about trying to get away with the perfect murder, I think the guy was that smart. No. A couple of other search terms that came up.

Escape prison, choked unconscious, how long wake up. That sounds like one of your sentences. It's pretty Kristen clear. Christian clear. And one thing that really, really caused the police to take notice was a search. that he did looking up this burglar bar that that Lauren had and you heard him talk about it in the very first clip with the reporter so she had one of those bars that you wedged it up against the doorknob that was supposed to keep people from busting in on you they work are right but there's

ways around them well he did a search he knew she had it so the fact that he's searching about how to get around it right that's not good they said that he did that he did visited sites about necrophilia. He looked at something up Gibbs called gynaphasia. Gynaphasia. Which is some type of sex fetish that centers around seeing someone eaten. Like seeing someone else eat someone, I guess. I don't know.

So he wants to jack off to someone eating another human flesh? I guess. Like a cannibal, not you being a cannibal. watching somebody else be a cannibal. So this is why he was in the zombies. He's probably jacking off to walking dead. He's out there. He is definitely out there.

Okay. Sorry for that. The graphic nature of that? Yeah, but yeah. Hey. So they charged him. He pled not guilty at first. The judge gave him like a $2.5 million bond. So they have all this evidence.

They're pretty sure they're not letting this guy out to run off. Right. But there's going to be even. more evidence that comes out against him. So the police would find a balled up pair of underwear in a drawer in Stephen McDaniel's home. And when they tested that underwear, they did find DNA belonging to Lauren Giddings. They found a master key to the whole apartment complex and a key specifically to Lauren's apartment in his bedroom.

So not only did he have a key, he had a key that could get into every apartment. Yeah. Somehow he had a key that matched her apartment as well. So he was definitely going in there and visiting when she wasn't home. He, he was doing a lot of things. They found a large bloody sheet in a washing machine of the laundry room of the apartment building. And then they found a hacksaw. And the hacksaw still had human flesh on it, dried blood,

blood and this was locked in the closet of this laundry room. So again, how smart is this guy? Well, he's not. He's a dumbass. You mean, you're going to leave a bloody sheet. You're going to leave a hacksaw in the building that you live, both lived in. There's a lot of people that are what I call book smart and street dumb. Yeah, that's true. There's a lot of people like that, a lot.

There's a lot of people that are the other way around. very street smart can't remember the name of movies though and things like that yeah but it's a condition it's called um gibbieitis or something like that yeah better have that than have the other one it's very very rare yeah it's good shit and it's not contagious so i've been told yeah you wouldn't be able to catch it you had to think about that one for a minute didn't you i did so on top of finding this hack saw they find the packaging for the saw inside his apartment. Yeah. He didn't even throw that away.

Not surprised. So because of all this, right? I mean, they've got him. There's no doubt about it. Stephen McDaniel ends up accepting a plea deal to plead guilty, but he would avoid the death penalty. And if he did that, he had to come clean. He had to be honest about what happened to Lauren on the day she was killed. Now, one thing we haven't talked about, we mentioned that he had these master keys. And I'm sure he was going into her apartment when he knew she wasn't there. The other thing that he was doing, he had a video camera. And he had a rig. I don't know if it was on a stick or it was like a six foot pole, I think it was. And he had it rig so that he could hold it up to her window. You can actually see this video. It's online. There's no, there's no, there's.

There's not a reason for me to play it because there's no sound. But this is how sick this guy is. He would just stand underneath her window and just hold it up just to check to see what he could see, take it back to his apartment, do a little snapping giggle. And then depending on what I guess he found on the videotape. A little snap and giggle. I just, I just don't. He's definitely fascinated by her. No, and he's fascinating to me because I can't get, I can't even get in this cat's head.

That's how far out there he is to me. He's definitely a strange brew. That's a good movie, by the way. Strange for our Canadian listeners. Canadian? Take off, eh? Take off. Great White North.

You hoiser. So if you do live an apartment. Yes. This is not rare that there's one or multiple people that have a master key. If you want to know if people are coming in unannounced, get some toothpicks. When you leave, jam by a little toothpick up in the corner because they're not. not going to see it and they're going to hear it when it hits the ground. But when you get home, you look up that corner of that toothpick ain't there, you know someone's been inside. In the corner of what?

The door? Yeah, where the door meets the frame. Oh. Just jab it up in there. Yep. That's really smart. Talk about street smarts. Yeah, but that's how you know, because you're get, you come home and you look up and that's not there. Somebody came in. I don't know whether to be in awe of your street smarts or a tiny bit frightened by the fact that, you're going to be, you're this is something that you may look for as you're doing certain things that you may do. Could be. Or not do? Could be.

Plus, I own stock in a toothpick company. So he would say to police when he came clean that now one of the reasons he was using the video camera was to get a look at this bar, this door jam bar, whatever you call it. Sure. To see how it worked. And he did come clean about the fact that he had been in her apartment before. He had stolen a flash drive that contained a bunch of pictures of her. And then we get to the part where he has to describe in detail what he did to Lord. So what Stephen McDaniel would say was that 4.30 a.m. June 26, 2011.

He put on a mask. He used the master key to get into her house. Stephen McDaniel is a psychopath who cowardly allowed darkness and able to consume him. He should never be permitted to prowl the streets of this world again. That is the voice of Karen Giddings, the mother of Lauren Giddings, the Mercer-Lograd, who is killed almost three years ago. Just a week before jury selection was expected to start, Stephen McDaniel pleaded guilty to malice murder this morning. As part of his plea deal, McDaniel will serve life in prison, and he had to write out exactly how he killed Giddings. Here's part of that confession. It was 4.30 a.m. on Sunday, June 26th.

Steve McDaniels says he entered Lauren Giddings Barrister's Hall apartment with a master key from the complex wearing gloves and a mask. She woke up, told him to get out, and that's when he says he leapt on the bed, grabbed her throat, and began choking her. Some of her last known words, according to McDaniel, Stephen, please stop. McDaniel strangled her to death and dragged her lifeless body into the bathtub. I returned to Lauren's apartment around midnight Sunday to begin to dismember her with the hacksaw that was later recovered from the laundry room maintenance closet. I removed her limbs and head, wrapped them in several black trash bags separately, and discarded them in the Mercer Law School dumpster across the street from Barrister's Hall Apartments.

He writes he put her wrapped up torso in the garbage can at the apartment complex early in the morning on June 28th. McDaniel said he never sexually accosted Giddings before or after he killed her. In fact, from his statement, his motive is still unclear. McDaniel wrote he joined the search party late Wednesday night, still in a dreamlike delusional state in which I believed at the time, while taking part in the search that Lauren was still alive and that I had not done what I had done. even searching the empty law school in a delusional hope of finding Lauren alive and well, as if I had not really killed her.

To this day, McDaniel says, I am not delusional or without morals or decency, but says something in his makeup must explain what he did. Well, no shit. So he says he doesn't lack morals or decency, but yet he killed a 24-year-old woman, hacked her up, dismembered her, and threw her in a trash can like garbage. He's something.

All that bullshit about being in a delusional state and searching for her body and thinking that he hadn't killed her. I don't buy none of that. I don't either. He's just a little weak dude. So they went through the confession. Now, there was more to it. You know, he talked about the fact that he had done online research on how to

saw him that burglar bar. He was watching Lauren's sleep in her bedroom. And at some point, the floor creaked. And that's when Lauren sat up, looked at him and allegedly said the words, get the fuck out. She probably knew it was him right away because of that hair. He had a very distinctive hair. Yeah. You can't put that in a mask. And that's when he, you know, he lunged across the bed, strangled her. Now, they talked about him. dragging her body into the bathtub. But he doesn't dismember her right then. He just goes home and spends most of the day on his computer.

And it wasn't until later that night when he went back to the apartment, had his hacksaw, and he dismembered Lauren. The other thing that he said was that he cut up the mask, the gloves and the shirt that he'd been wearing. And he flushed them down the toilet. Now, I really found it hard to believe Gibbs that he did not sexually assault her. I mean, you know, we talked about it. This was a man that was obsessed with this woman.

Yeah, it was his fascination with her. I mean, I have a hard time believe in that as well. And he was a self-confessed virgin, but the autopsy would come back and it would back that up. Yeah, well, that was just a torso. They never found the head. Yeah, you're right. I mean, that's all they had to work with. And because that's all they found, you know, they ruled Lauren Giddings death due to unknown

homicidal violence. And another thing that that kind of does back it up, him saying that he didn't sexually assault her, aside from the coroner's report or the autopsy, apparently she was wearing pink running shorts when she died. And Stephen McDaniel said, you know, I never removed them. And she, her torso was found with. these pink running shorts still on, I just find it very odd. I would say he probably took a peek. Because if there, let's just, I just want to get this out. If there was no sexual motive to this,

why did he kill her? Because she spurned him a couple of times because she wouldn't go out with him. I mean, he's obsessed with her. I get that. But if you kill that, then I don't think he ever, I don't think he went in there to kill her. I think he went in to, uh, didn't think she was going to wake up, you know, and then he'd come in and sit there stare at her. She wakes up and then now, and she knows it's him. So now his cover's blown and he reacts. When he had a lot of fetishes. I mean, we already know that.

Yeah. I mean, by his search histories and, yeah, I just, I find it very hard to believe. Now, after Stephen McDaniel murdered Lauren Giddings, you know, he said he couldn't sleep. He was basically on his computer night and day. he skipped class the next day on June 27th, but he did attend classes the next couple days after that. He helped in the search for Lauren claiming that he was almost like in a dreamlike state. No, there's just a lot of criminals that like to be on scene, especially if they find anything.

I mean, that's just known. That's why the police, when they investigate, right, they hang out at the funeral. they hang out at the crime scene. They're not only looking at the crime scene. They're looking to see who's at the crime scene. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. And that's why I just don't buy it. I don't buy some of this stuff that he says.

But in his confession, he said, and this is a quote, that he was divided in mind, unable to account for how I could have committed these horrible acts. I know it was very wrong. And he would express remorse after the fact for what he did, saying if I could take it back, take back what happened, I would. And apparently he cried in jail. You mean when Bobbock took care of him? Yeah. I don't know if that happened, but it was said that he cried like a baby in jail the whole time. Yeah. So everything he said is what some intelligent person would say. You mean after the fact? After the fact. Sure. So he's trying to say the right thing. He thinks he's trying

to sound sincere and be sincere? He's not sincere. He's saying what? He's saying what? he knows needs to be said for the fact just to say it. Now, we talked about he was very, very close to becoming an attorney. All he had to do was pass the bar. Yeah. So he actually aided in his own defense. Of course he did. They always do.

And his defense attorney would come out and say, you know what, if this hadn't happened, I think he would have been a pretty good lawyer. He'd make a fine attorney. That's what he said. Yeah. That's what I'd say too if I was there. He'd make a fine attorney. We have to talk about Lauren's family because they had to deal with all of this.

I can't imagine my heart goes out to them. Knowing what happened to their daughter, there's a lot of families that never get to find out what happened to their loved one. Right. And that's kind of sad. It really is. But then think about Lauren's family, they got to find out, but they found out every minute detail. Yeah.

And some of these details, they were horrifying. Well, and then you have the fact that he didn't actually go to trial. You know, he pled guilty, but he plea bargained to get out from underneath the death penalty. I don't know if Lawrence family believed in the death penalty or not, but if they did, then that was possibly a sore spot for them as well, knowing that he wasn't going to get that ultimate sentence. I'm sure they went to them and talked to him about it. You know, I always thought they did, but in a lot of these cases that we've been researching or on some of the documentaries and stuff, you find out that they don't always do that. Well, the documentaries, but...

Documentaries. Yeah, but they did on that movie with Gerard Butler. Remember that one? Law-abiding citizen? Yeah. Yeah, my daughter and I just watched it. That was a good movie. It is a good movie.

I would have did the same thing he did, man. And you'd have been really good at it, too. That's what scares me about you. I really try not to cross you in any way that would... I'd have that plan. That shit be planned out. Sever our friendship in a way where we couldn't get it back. You grab that microphone right there thinking you're just moving it and puffer fish,

venom going right into you. But you did hear Lauren's mother speak a little bit in that very last clip. She would say that the family would be scarred forever by the sheer excrued. exquisite pain of missing her. So McDaniel gets life in prison in 2014, but he'll actually be eligible for parole in 2014. Now, I don't think Gibbs that he would ever get paroled. I wouldn't. The crime is just too brutal. But you never know. But you never know. That is out there. You know, that exists for the family. Right. So they, maybe not right now, but at some point, in time, some of those family members still alive.

Yeah. Are going to have to relive this in a different way. They're going to have to stand up and say why he shouldn't be let out. Well, if he gets out, come see me, boy, so I can slap you. We're going that route now? Yeah. All right. I'd actually pay money to see that.

Oh, man, it'd be good. I'd just be, I wouldn't have to hit him. I'd just slap him and he'd be down. Would you put your wine cooler down before you did? No, no, I'd go ahead and just, you know. Okay. Just checking. Yeah.

And I don't think this won't surprise you at all, Gibbs. I know it doesn't. But as of August 2016, according to the Macon Telegraph, McDaniel fired all of his attorneys. He's now decided to be his own lawyer. Oh, pro se. He sent out a handwritten motion to say that he was going to do this on his own and appeal his case. Sure. He sent letters to his original defense team requesting all the documents and materials related to his case.

And apparently they did. They started to send him some files and copies of certain things. But he's come out and said that they haven't complied with everything. They haven't sent him everything. Of course. What else he's going to say? He's got plenty of time to think about it all. I don't like this guy at all.

I'm sure our legal system will pay for a lot of stuff that he'll be doing while he's sitting in. there. Yeah, it will. Unfortunately, I mean, again, we could talk legal system all day long. It's got it's good and bad points. Yeah, you're never going to have a perfect system. But he's going through all this effort to get a new trial. I don't know on what grounds. I don't know what grounds he's going to find to get a new trial. I mean, he confessed. The confession was very detailed. Right. He did it. Everybody knows he did it. I don't think cases like this normally get neutral. There's going to have to be something that comes up that, you know, and we've seen it, it would have to be some huge bombshell where the state withheld evidence or, I guess, of anything, maybe he could argue

whether his plea was voluntary or, you know, his lawyers didn't do enough. Deress. Under duress. They were banging his head off the table. Right. Which in most cases, I would say is wrong. But this guy, I mean, I don't feel like that. I'd be okay with it.

They need to do. It's just get, you know, a thing of oranges, put them in a pillow case and beat them with that. See, then it's just not going to show up the way that you would. Like, or almost like a code red, just putting bars of soap in there. Or code red, yeah, from a few good men. A few good men. He got it. He nailed it.

He nailed it. I guess what? This is one that we'll have to keep our eye on. You know, if something comes up, I don't imagine it will, but if something comes up, we'll definitely. Call us, man. Give us a call. Talk about it. Sign a waiver.

and I will slap you. Sign a waiver. He's an attorney. He's going to pro se. He's going to sue me. So if I get a waiver sign, I'm good. I'm sure that's something he would do. All right, Gibbs, we've got some voicemails, so let's play those.

Hi, Mike and Gibby. This is Gabriela. I'm calling from Sweden. I've been binging your podcast now for the last two, three weeks. It's amazing. I thank you so much for, um, for letting me know about crimes in the U.S. I've been listening to lots of voicemails around Sweden and Europe,

and then I found I found yours, so that's wicked. If you're ever going to do any crime around Sweden, because we do have some interesting cases around here, horrible and interesting cases. Just give us a shout. Okay, take care. Bye for now. Bye.

Kind of like a voicemail from Sweden. I know. What a wicked voicemail, man. And the use of the word wicked, I'd love it. Yeah, she makes it sound really good. We're actually very big in Sweden. I'm not sure why. In Norway.

In Norway. The Scandinavian countries, they like their true crime. They do. They really do. It's cold up there. They eat it up. Yeah. We appreciate it.

Hi, Mike and Gibby. This is Tamara calling you from Atlanta, Georgia. Just want to let you guys know how much I enjoy the podcast. I look forward to it every Sunday when I know that a new episode or new episodes are about to drop and I know I can listen to them on Mondays at my job. Luckily, I have a job that will allow me to do that. So far, I think one of the most interesting cases that had stood out in my mind and of course there's so many of them and I've enjoyed every single one of them.

But the one that stands out in my mind is the one about Oba Chandler and just what he did to that family, the two daughters and the mother, it just makes me sick to my stomach. And it actually kind of hits home a little bit with me. Not that anything like that has ever happened to me or anyone in my family. But it's because I have an older sister that's two years older than me. And it kind of reminds me of me and my sister a little bit in a weird way. Anyway, enjoy the podcast. Keep up the good work.

You have also inspired me to listen to other podcasts. I now listen to the Martinis and Murder podcast. I'm loving it. Look forward to those as well. But I am a little partial to Mike and Gibby. So thank you so much for what you're doing. stay safe and keep your own time ticking thanks keep your own time ticking gibbs yeah how about that uh lanta voicemail on a podcast we did about alina i was going to say she's probably going to find this one

interesting but you know she mentioned oba chandler yeah what a what a freaking what he did out that was out of water there man and it's interesting to hear her talk about you know nothing i mean even remotely close to that has ever happened but you can you can can tell that people, you know, so she has an older sister a couple of years older than her. You can hear, you can hear the stress in her voice when she's almost, I'm going to say choked up, but she, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can hear it. I can hear the stress of her voice. Yeah, I think people, you know, they can listen to these cases and you can, I don't want to say put yourself in, in that position, but I do think people could say, I've been in situations where maybe something like that could have

happened to me. I don't know. Is that what you think that sometimes people can put... Yeah, I think they can see them or they had something similar in their life that, man, that could have been me, you know? Or, you know, last week there was a very strange guy and he kept looking at me and the grocery story followed me out. We hear stories from people like that all the time.

I don't do that just for fun. Yeah, we'll stop doing that and there won't be so many people feeling like it. speaking people up. That was a great voicemail, Tamara. No, it was, Tamara. Appreciate it very much. All right. So that is it for the case of Stephen McDaniel. I really dislike this guy. I can't say it enough. So it's another episode of true crime all the time. Now, don't forget, no episode next week. We'll be back with a brand new episode, relaxed, refreshed in two weeks. Everybody have a great Thanksgiving. Have a good time, folks. Enjoy your family. family, enjoy the food. Or don't enjoy your family, but enjoy the food. Or just enjoy the food.

For those of us in the States, for those of you outside the States, just have a great week. Eat some comfort food and that's it. So for Mike, and Gibby, stay safe and keep your own time ticking. Man, that, that law-abiding citizen really was a good movie, dude. I love that. It was a good flick. I like how he, well, it wanted to freak you out when it started because hell they bust into the house and he's got to sit there and one. watch his daughter and wife go through what they went through. Yeah, that's the part I had to make my daughter close her eyes on that. She's not squeamish about some of the violence. She knows it's make-believe, but that first part. It was pretty, I don't like her seeing it. Pretty intense.

I don't like her seeing stuff like that. She watches all the saw movies. She doesn't have a problem with any of that. Yeah, I thought it was a good movie for sure. So what's your top, top three true crime movies. Yeah, true crime. Well, doesn't have to be real, right? No. So number one, I have to go seven. I love seven. Sleven? Sleven? Is that Brad Pitt? Yeah. And, uh, you can do it. I know it. You can do it. It's the seven deadly sins, right? Yeah, Morgan Freeman. Morgan Freeman. Oh, is that one with what's in the box? Yes. What can you not know that? You say it all the time. I like that movie, man. That's good. I'm telling you, how can you know so much about movies except for the title?

And sometimes who's in them? I get that one, the title of that one and hit the other one. Like he did something like, The Seven Monkeys or the Monkeys or the, you know what I'm talking about? The one with Bruce Willis? Was Brad Pitt and Bruce Willis in it together? Like Seven Monkeys, I think it's called or something like that. Yeah.

I get him kind of, you know. They're nothing like each other, I don't think. Just the names sound familiar. Just because Brad Pitt's in it or? Well, that too, probably. All right, so I'll go seven, and then I will go, you know, I got to put Zodiac in there. I really like Zodiac. Now, that's real true crime.

Oh, yeah, yeah, based on a real crime. Jake Glennonfeld or Jake, you know, I'm talking about. Jake Jillon Hall? Jillenhall, yeah. I do like his sister. Maggie? Maggie. Yeah, she was in that movie, The Secretary.

Talk about a psycho, the dude in that movie. Played by James Spader. Oh, James Spader is a great psycho. Yeah, it's, it's, he's, he's, got this really weird fetish. And she plays to the fetish. Yeah, I've never even heard of it. Yeah. You gotta stop like late at night, like just sitting up watching Cinemax. Yeah. So on the Zodiac. Yeah. You got Jake Gyllen Hall. Yep. I know there's two other famous people. Mark Ruffalo. Oh yeah, Mark Ruffalo. He plays the cop. The other cop. And then probably

Downey Jr. is the most famous. Yeah, he probably is. What's Iron Man doing? it, man. Yeah, he's probably the most famous. Yeah. I just, I love that movie. There's something about it. It's long. It's like two and a half hours long, but it's just, we're not a long flick. It's very long. Maybe 245. I can't remember, but it just draws me in. If it's on, I just have to watch it. I mean, part of it's because I like the story of the Zodiac, but part of it's just, I just think it's a great movie. So what's your third? Man, I do really like that law-biting citizen. I'm trying to think of, That's because you just seen it. So that's why it's fresh in your head.

Do I get to count the Godfather? It's true crime. There's a lot of crime in there. Well, that's my top three. I was going to go. I was going to go. Number two by far is the best for me. Yeah.

Number three you can just have. I don't care about it. Yeah, I enjoy. Three really. One and two are great. But I actually like two the best. I mean, that's the one with De Niro and they go back. I think you go to two, one, and then flip over to Goodfellas.

Oh, Goodfellas. Oh, Goodfell. Toss that in. Oh, man. See, that's my problem. I can't, I can't think of them. Yeah.

Yeah, Goodfellas has to be in there. So your number three is what? I don't know. Now you're stealing some good ones, man. I was going to say Godfather. You were. Part two. Part two.

Part Duh. Part Duh. So then what is the worst crime flick? True crime, not true crime, but just crime flick you ever seen. Howard the Duck? Was that a...

Wouldn't he like a private investigator or something? I don't even remember. I wouldn't even watch a movie called Howard. Howard the Duck. What are you even watching it for? It's like one of the worst movies ever made. Howard a Duck. You actually watched that. Yeah, back in the day, I think I did. I could be totally wrong. It may be about something totally different.

Johnny Dangerously. I love that movie. Yeah. Going to hang him on a hook. My mother hung me on a hook one time. I guess that wouldn't be the worst one. No, I like that. It was pretty funny when Michael, what's his name? Keaton.

Keaton. Yeah. Michael what's his name? Oh, you know what? Okay, I'm going to go back. Okay. I'm not going to use the Godfather because you had that one. I'm going to go private eyes. Private eyes.

And this is like a pretty obscure movie. Yeah. But it had Tim Conway. Tim Conway? Yep. You know about the funny Tim Conway? Yep. Tim Conway and.

Carol Burnett, Tim Conway. Yeah, Carol Burnett, Tim Conway. Okay. And it had, I think it was Don Knott's. it's supposed to be funny funny oh yeah it's funny oh okay okay I was thinking crime like it'd be you know no it's about a murder

okay yeah I like Don Notts and Not many people have seen it It's um it's like I said It's like probably early 80s or something You know what the best Donnott's movie ever was What? I don't know what it's called

Shocker He was on like a I don't know I don't remember it all really well but it was really good. It's going to be a good story. But he, somehow, he was playing his normal character.

He was on like a Navy ship or something. And he's like, falls into the water and he turns into a fish and then it turns like aminated. Or you mean animated? Animated. You said aminated.

Oh, aminated? No, animated. Don Knott's turns into a fish. Yeah. I have no idea what you're talking about. Yeah. Is it a Disney movie? It might be.

Because he wasn't in some gizman. I don't think it's McKell's Navy. No. But he's, yeah, he turns into like this, uh, it was a great flick, man. I think you literally have just made that up. No, no. I wasn't doing acid or anything. It was good.

Well, your childhood may have been a little different than mine. I don't know. What year are we talking about? Uh, 70s? I don't remember. I was young. It was good. If I ever catch it on, I'm like, yeah, yeah, I was good.

I like watching it. I've never, I, I, he says, you know, he, like, because he's in the, water, fish, he keeps a war from happening. That sounds like a great plot, man. Great plot. Yeah. I'll tell you a good, we'll finish your private eye one. What about it?

That was it. Tim Conway, Don Knott's. Yeah. They work for Scotland Yard. Yeah. This real rich guy in a big mansion is murdered. Is ghosts involved? No, I don't think so.

Well, kind of. They're called in to investigate because they're bumble. I think I've seen this. It's very good. I like it. Yeah, he would. It's dumb, but it's good. I like dumb movies.

I love naked gun, blazing saddles, airplane. I love all those. Yeah, like some of those, too. Don Knott's is a fish. Don, I'll tell you, man. He was, he was a... No, I think he kind of went off the rails there. I don't know.

Somebody we know should be able to know this. Well, you know who will know is Google. You should Google it. You IMDB, Don Knott. Oh, yeah, that's good shit right there, man. You said I, IDMB. ID, I don't know. I, IDB.

I like those movies that are aminated. I like animated movies. And animated. Oh, shit, Gibbs. I forgot to turn the, uh, I forgot to turn the recording off. Oh. So this whole time we've been talking. Huh.

Oh, hell, I'll just leave it in. Well, uh, trying to think of what I said. I don't, you didn't say anything bad, did you? No. Except for that stupid Don Nots. That's a good, so there you go. So you play that, if you leave this in, somebody will know what that time.

Knott's movie is. You just said Dom. Don Nott's movie. Dom Nott's. Yeah, so if he plays this and you hear this peeps, let him know what that. If I keep it in. If you keep it in.

You probably Google it after this and find it. You're like, well, shit, he's right, so I'm not going to put it out there because. No, I'm not saying it's not a movie. I'm just messing with you. It sounds like something made up. It sounds horrible. Yeah.

So real fast then. What is your... Since I'm going to keep it in now? Maybe if you do. What's your... All-time number one movie, any John Ray. Did you just say John Ray? Yeah, that's John.

Is that like your next-door neighbor? John Ray. Billy Bob, John Ray? The Billy Bob's on the other side. John Ray's on the left. Oh, man. My left. I only get one movie.

One movie. If you said, if I said, man, I'd say it like that. That's how you'd say it too. Tomorrow is your last day. You can see one movie. It doesn't have to be my last day. I mean, you can't just put me. me on an island with a VCR or a DVD player with one DVD.

As we take you out to the island, it has no power, no electronics, you can watch one last movie on your trip to the island. But you go, literally, it's like my last day on Earth, I'm going to die. I don't say you're going to die. This is to be the last day. I can only, I can just watch one movie. One flick. So if I only get to pick one movie, I think I'm going to go Pulp Fiction.

I love me some Pulp Fiction That's a good one man Yeah Get me a rollout I actually watched it on the plane The other day when I was flying to Chicago Did you really? Yeah you know Netflix has that thing

Where you can download them Yeah So I downloaded it ahead of time That is pretty good Yep I like Pulp Fiction What would yours be? Because you're gonna die

For some reason We have to die The next day So you only get one movie I like cool hand Luke You're gonna go cool hand Luke Yeah I always like that movie

I always have Luke you know it's just the mom comes and visit them and she's got the bed made up

in the back of the pickup truck and yeah you never seen it he goes I've seen it but it's been so long ago

I don't even remember he eats all those like 50 eggs and one you know one bet he's got to eat 50 hard bowl

eggs he does it yeah he's got they're all sitting out and you got the warden's girlfriend

or an niece or somebody comes by and washes the car doing the the famous car we're seeing, you know. Does she wash it too?

She washed it and washed it. Depending on what part of the country you're from. She washed it up north, drove it down south, and then washed it. That's right. Oh, man. All right. I'm going to finally hit the button since I forgot to. Hit the button.