My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark XX
[0] This is exactly right.
[1] Hey, this is exciting.
[2] An all -new season of only murders in the building is coming to Hulu on August 27th.
[3] Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez are back as your favorite podcaster, detectives.
[4] But there's a mystery hanging over everyone.
[5] Who killed Saz?
[6] And were they really after Charles?
[7] Why would someone want to kill Charles?
[8] This season, murder hits close to home.
[9] With a threat against one of their own, the stakes are higher than ever.
[10] Plus, the gang is going to Hollywood to turn their podcast into a major movie.
[11] Amid the glitz and glamour of Los Angeles, more mysteries and twists arise.
[12] Who knows what will happen once the cameras start to roll?
[13] Get ready for the stariest season yet with Merrill Streep, Zach Alfinacus, Eugene Levy, Eva Longoria, Melissa McCarthy, DeVine, Joy Randolph, Molly Shannon, and more.
[14] Only murders in the building, premieres August 27th, streaming only on Hulu.
[15] Goodbye.
[16] Are we doing it?
[17] Enough.
[18] Let's do it.
[19] Here we go.
[20] Ready?
[21] Okay.
[22] Were you a cheerleader?
[23] Do I fucking look like I was a cheerleader?
[24] Were you?
[25] Yes.
[26] Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
[27] And looking back, I shouldn't have been.
[28] But if you start anything, ready, okay is a great way to start.
[29] Ready, okay.
[30] This is my favorite murder, the podcast.
[31] Do you're, hey, cheerleaders.
[32] Hey, cheerleaders.
[33] Get cheer don't.
[34] And cheer, get your herkeys on.
[35] It's time for your favorite.
[36] A true crime cheerleading podcast, my favorite murder.
[37] It's time for the first 45 minutes of your first true crime podcast.
[38] Where there's no true crime, a lot of personal issues.
[39] That's Georgia Hard Stark.
[40] That's Karen Kilgarra.
[41] And there's Stephen Ray Morris.
[42] Hard Start Kilgarer.
[43] We're calling him now.
[44] Stephen Hardstart Kilgarer.
[45] Yeah, we've changed his name.
[46] Oh, Stephen, we'd legally changed your name.
[47] Stephen.
[48] Cool.
[49] Stephen.
[50] We also enrolled you in a Monastery kindergarten just so we could get the experience.
[51] of being hyphenate parents.
[52] That's right.
[53] Can I wash my feet?
[54] Yes.
[55] Did you see someone today on Twitter was like Georgia, I found this at a library and you weren't wrong.
[56] And it's like a children's book called like, can I wash my feet a Montessori?
[57] No. Or some fucking weird, like next level.
[58] By Georgia hard stuff.
[59] I quickly put it out just to prove you wrong.
[60] And it worked.
[61] You self -published, which is awesome.
[62] That's right.
[63] You planted it in a library.
[64] I was like, this murder.
[65] Someone's going to look in here.
[66] I ran a murderer.
[67] Reno with a Twitter account.
[68] Love it.
[69] Hi, everybody.
[70] Hi.
[71] How are you?
[72] Should we...
[73] Oh, yeah, we got...
[74] This is a big day.
[75] Yeah, before the skippers start their thing of pressing the 15 second forward button 15 times, which I fucking do all the time in podcasts.
[76] Yeah, how can you not?
[77] I mean.
[78] I feel like we're past the era of skippers, though.
[79] I feel like skippers must be gone entirely.
[80] I can't imagine.
[81] I don't...
[82] I can't imagine they stick around for the shit.
[83] We talk about when it actually comes down to the occasion.
[84] They're skipping, they're skipping, they're skipping, they're skipping, and now, and still skipping, continuing to skip.
[85] I mean, we just talk about that.
[86] I guess it's a lot of shit we talk about later in the episode, you wouldn't understand unless we talk about it, unless you don't skip.
[87] It's like, it's like days of our lives.
[88] You will not know what's happening if you're coming at the top of this, the show.
[89] It's like, choose your own adventure, but unless you don't want an adventure.
[90] Right.
[91] No, cowards.
[92] Yours was better.
[93] No, no, no, but what I was going to link it up.
[94] to is screw the skippers because this announcement is fire.
[95] Yeah.
[96] And lit.
[97] Skippers, you don't even skip ahead right now.
[98] You don't get this.
[99] You get nothing because guess what?
[100] We have a big surprise announcement for y 'all.
[101] We got our shit together.
[102] Yeah.
[103] After two fucking years of not knowing what we were doing.
[104] I mean, yeah, and we're not alone in that.
[105] That's for sure.
[106] Skippers know what we're talking about um we have a fan not a fan club because that's narcissistic we have a fan cult where we control your every thought and movement we started a fan cult um and we want you to join it please because if you want and if you have 40 bucks it's 40 bucks a year 39 99 save that penny that's true pick it up for shipping put in and up shipping all day long you have good luck um but with that 40 dollars Off the top, you get a shirt and an enamel pin.
[107] That's exclusive as fuck.
[108] Excuse me. It's exclusive as fuck.
[109] Right.
[110] And I can't get anywhere else.
[111] And then also, like, the big deal about it is that you get first access to buying live show tickets.
[112] That's right.
[113] A bunch of other stuff, like, we're going to make videos.
[114] There's, like, private chat rooms.
[115] It'll be like the Facebook group, but now they won't steal your information.
[116] Well, we don't know about that.
[117] Like, we can't get, no guarantees in this goddamn.
[118] family but you we're going to post fan art so you guys can see all the stuff that you make that some people see on instagram some people see on twitter yeah it's all very haphazard and there'll be contests starting with we're going to give the um the gal who uh came up with uh what's our final segment title which is fucking hooray we're going to give her a little something you get a prize we get a prize we're going to give you something we're just going to be a fun hang out i i think in um in business they call it like it's uh second -tier roll -out platform engagement, listener engagement.
[119] Got it.
[120] Karen's corporate.
[121] Karen's become corporate.
[122] I'm wearing a blazer right now.
[123] It's so tight on my boobs.
[124] He's going to say something.
[125] Those things don't fit across an Irish back.
[126] I'm going to tell you.
[127] Is there an Irish back?
[128] Yeah.
[129] Oh, there's a back, an Irish?
[130] Yeah.
[131] It's a real wide back because you have to carry bales of hay to that's your roof.
[132] This is literally from my 90s act.
[133] Oh.
[134] I used to brag about having an Irish back.
[135] in my stand -up comedy routine why do I never see you on Comedy Central Karen because I wasn't very good at it that's why okay but so okay as we just said about the fan cult thing and listen we're going to stop shilling to you in a fucking hot second that right but so tomorrow Friday the 13th yes we fucking plan this yeah for years for years and years that's why we started this podcast we're announcing our fall tour yes yay we're going on another one we're just gonna keep touring until you guys don't feel like doing it with us anymore and then we will gracefully bow out but until that time we're going to try to come to all the cities people want us to come to that's right so find out if your town is a town we're going to come to on Friday yeah until you guys until we're doing fucking cat cafes and no one's coming and the cats are leaving then we're going to keep doing this I feel like if if we can get 20 people together it'll still be worth it do you count cats as people for cats one person I'm not allowed to because I have dogs If you want to, you can submit the paperwork for me to change my mind.
[136] Okay, so we're announcing the tour on my favorite murder .com, which is like redone in a beautiful brand new website that also has our brand new merch on it.
[137] Yep.
[138] There's a lot of new shit, guys.
[139] Okay, on Friday the 13th.
[140] Yeah, so check on Friday the 13th and see if we're coming to our town.
[141] And then over the weekend, you can join the fan cult, which means you'll have first access.
[142] They'll give you a password and you'll have first access to the live show tickets on Monday morning, including VIP passes.
[143] So those might, yeah, sell out that way.
[144] And then on Wednesday, there's going to be pre -sale with a password, which will give you.
[145] For anybody who's like, fuck you and you're cold, I'm not, you can't control my mind.
[146] I don't have $40.
[147] Why are you so elitist?
[148] Yeah.
[149] Yeah.
[150] I think, as the kids say, this podcast has blazered itself.
[151] I think this podcast has ripped the back out of its own blazers.
[152] Yes.
[153] They're cheap, Mervin's blazers.
[154] and needs to calm down.
[155] I just had a flash of shopping Mervyn's.
[156] So anybody that's not from, I think it's California only.
[157] Okay.
[158] I'm sure there's like equivalence at some place.
[159] We'll hear about it.
[160] If Mervins was in your town, we'd like to know.
[161] But Petaluma had a Mervance, which is one of the only, like, larger stores in my town.
[162] It's like a mini department store.
[163] Right.
[164] It's like a mini cheap department store.
[165] It was almost like the original target, but it didn't have cool things to buy.
[166] It just had like...
[167] Just department store stuff, though.
[168] Like a J .C. Penny.
[169] Exactly.
[170] but almost like lower rent than J .C. Penny.
[171] Like J .C. Penny was for the rich kids.
[172] We were over at Mervyn's.
[173] And that's where you bought, that's where everybody in my school and town bought their first bra.
[174] I was going to say I stole my first bra from Mervyns.
[175] We were just trying to pass the fucking time.
[176] Dude, the most boring thing in the world was going shopping with your mom.
[177] At Mervyns.
[178] At Mervyns.
[179] At Mervyns today.
[180] I learned real quick that my mom would be like, come shopping with me. I'll buy you a lipstick or whatever.
[181] She'll buy me a little trinket, which is great.
[182] And I'd be like, okay, but then I didn't realize that meant four and a half hours of my mom in the fucking dressing room.
[183] Yes.
[184] Like four and a half literal hours.
[185] Of her trying stuff on.
[186] I'm trying shit on and a fucking Mac lipstick is not worth it.
[187] So she would get that out of you when you were like more of a teen?
[188] A teen.
[189] I think the last time it happened was when I was 16 and had a fucking nervous breakdown on the floor of the fucking changing room of like the beige changing room at like fucking.
[190] Blooming.
[191] Blumies.
[192] What was it called?
[193] Bloomingdale.
[194] Yeah, Bloomingdale's.
[195] Yeah.
[196] Can't.
[197] Oh, God, I'm sweating.
[198] I'm now sweating.
[199] What's funny is, with my mom, it was the inverse, or she would be like, you need a new blank for school or whatever.
[200] So we go to close time, which was actually down the strip mall from her.
[201] Where my mom worked, close time.
[202] No, really?
[203] She worked at the corporate office, yeah.
[204] Oh, I love it.
[205] I told you about how she, she, after a meeting jokingly, like, did the kick her leg up close time thing, but she was wearing a time thing.
[206] But she was wearing a time.
[207] skirt and fucking flew out her legs room underneath her and landed on her fucking ass in a corporate office did people go crazy laughing i don't know what she was so i can't see janet handling that well i love her but she's a very formal lady she's like she's very like always blown out she's good with like a you know like a i love lucy style gaffa gaffa gat like i hope so what's it called a gaff a gaff a gaff a gaff a gaff a gaff a jf a stunt.
[208] I can hear our tour, our fucking amazing, awesome tour agent, Joe, yelling at how badly we're doing about promoting this right now.
[209] Are we still in that fucking promotion?
[210] We're done.
[211] Now we're talking about close time.
[212] And there's new merch at my favorite murdermerch .com.
[213] That's it.
[214] We said that.
[215] We have close time.
[216] Oh, merch is a different thing.
[217] Sorry.
[218] I don't know.
[219] It's there too.
[220] But I like, yeah.
[221] That's it.
[222] Oh, okay.
[223] I have a corrections corner.
[224] Hold on.
[225] I'm telling my close time story.
[226] God.
[227] I forgot.
[228] I'm sorry.
[229] go now I can't remember what it was it was just that my mom would always be like you can get a new thing and that we would be in close time for like 17 minutes because I had to look at every item on every rack because things didn't always look good on me I had wide hips I'd big a big butt big boobs the fucking Irish back that I just learned about fucking Irish back early where I was like what's happening yeah so I try things on I'd be like I want to wear plaid this and checkered that because it was the 80s and everyone would be like no no no no no and Girls.
[230] Truly, after like 15 minutes, my mom would be like, Karen, I've been at work all day.
[231] We have to go.
[232] And I'd be like, this.
[233] You wanted this.
[234] We can't.
[235] I can't, I can't shop this way.
[236] I can't find my Pat Benatar.
[237] Love is a battlefield outfit this right.
[238] And that's why you hate shopping today.
[239] It is.
[240] I'm, I'm truly scarred.
[241] I was truly scarred.
[242] I'll go with you.
[243] Shopping.
[244] I'm really good at, this is going to look great on you.
[245] Like, no, it's not.
[246] And you try it on you.
[247] You're like, oh, you're right.
[248] Okay.
[249] Can we make that plan and feel.
[250] three months?
[251] Sure.
[252] Okay, great.
[253] What's going to happen in three months?
[254] I, personal stuff.
[255] You'll stop.
[256] You're stopping your compulsion of ripping clothes to shreds in clothing stores.
[257] And slapping whoever's in the dressing room with me, just to slap out.
[258] She likes to bring a pair of scissors to clothing stores and just absolutely shredding everything around her, and she doesn't want me to know about it.
[259] If I try something on and it has like a weird bump or the buttons don't close, I'll just cut it up with large scissors.
[260] So it would be great if you could come with me and help me. I'd love to.
[261] Okay, awesome.
[262] I'd love to.
[263] Corrections Corner.
[264] Just real quick.
[265] Remember how I kept yelling about, just call 911.
[266] Just call 911.
[267] Oh, yeah.
[268] All these, like, people, all of these, probably one person who works at 911, you know.
[269] Yes.
[270] Emergency services was like, can you please tell everyone not to call 911 for non -emergency things?
[271] And instead to find their non -emergency police number.
[272] Actually, that's, not only is that a great point, program.
[273] I have, yeah.
[274] Is that what you were going to say?
[275] Yes.
[276] Go ahead, sorry.
[277] No, please.
[278] It's ours.
[279] Program your non -emergency emergency police station phone number into your phone.
[280] That's right.
[281] Says police so you can hit it as fast as 911.
[282] But you're not clogging up.
[283] Have you ever called 911?
[284] No. Wait, no, yes, I did.
[285] When the gap that I worked at in San Francisco and Market Street got robbed, I had to call 911.
[286] I couldn't tell them what streets we were on.
[287] I couldn't give them a specific address.
[288] And basically what these guys did was just really fast shoplifting and they pushed our security guard over as they left so it was so like grab and go kind of a thing it was a grab and go that it doesn't I don't think really count as a robbery in a major metropolitan city so they were kind of like yeah I guess call us back if you know like call us back if you remember if they had a knife or something exactly it wasn't really a true emergency okay all right what about you I've called on like car accidents oh and maybe a couple you know a girl I lived with, this is not funny.
[289] I don't know why I'm laughing.
[290] I lived with like five girls one time when I was like 20 and one of them locked herself in the bathroom and proceeded to have a seizure.
[291] Oh, no. I'm like, yeah, it was, it's not funny.
[292] Why am I laughing?
[293] It's pretty crazy.
[294] Maybe it stresses you out to tell me a person who has seizures about that story.
[295] Yeah, or maybe I'm traumatized from it, but everything was fine.
[296] But you didn't see it?
[297] She was fine it was bad uh no it's there a bloody mess no no no no she was fine my thing is i'm always afraid yeah you can't if you're that's a thing that happens like was embarrassed and wanted to hide it exactly we could all tell and like kick the door down she's just like can i please privately slam my head against the tile i don't want to seem ugly in front of my friends um that also happens when people are choking people always if they start choking they get up from the table and go to the bathroom which you should not do if you're choking stay around people so someone can give you the high I'm so scared of choking.
[298] Have you ever eaten something alone and then you're like, the way I just laughed when I was chewing, that should have, I should have choked on that and died.
[299] No?
[300] I don't think a lot when I'm eating alone.
[301] It's a blur.
[302] There's a lot of noises and like crying.
[303] Speaking of being alone, this is my other thing I wanted to tell you.
[304] Okay.
[305] Okay, here's, this is what's wrong with me and I feel like this is a safe space.
[306] Everyone listening has been there.
[307] I was, I'm listening again.
[308] to the audio book of I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara because I can't fucking get enough of it.
[309] Yep.
[310] And I'm listening to it as I fall asleep at night.
[311] Dude.
[312] Yeah, I know.
[313] As I don't fall asleep at night, I should say.
[314] So, like, last week, I'm trying to fall asleep listening to it, which is like, the woman's voice who reads, it's like really kind of, it's really soothing and monotone, but the writing is so deep and you're like in it and I can imagine everything.
[315] And so I'm like imagining someone breaking in how they do it, which is really, I don't want to challenge anyone, but it's kind of fucking hard in this apartment, right?
[316] No. And I'm laying next to Vince who's sleeping.
[317] And then I remember that he's leaving the next day for four fucking nights.
[318] And I'm going to be alone doing this.
[319] So the next day, I texted my dad and I, a 37 -year -old woman, had my daddy fucking stay at my house while my husband was out of time because I was so scared.
[320] Yes.
[321] That's incredible.
[322] Well, that's a testament to how amazing that book is written.
[323] But you know what's really funny and you'll feel less alone.
[324] my sister's best friend Adrian who's like my sister who has been a listener since episode one and then I found out she was a murdering now like we both were like wait what and we've known each other for 20 well now 40 years good God but she called me specifically to say I'm halfway through I'll be gone in the dark and I am freaking out she goes Karen I have read every true crime book there is.
[325] She goes, I've never given a single shit.
[326] No. I've plowed through all of Ann Rule.
[327] I've done it all.
[328] She goes, I don't understand what's happening.
[329] I'm laying awake at night.
[330] I am scared shitless.
[331] I can't stop thinking about how fucked up this guy was.
[332] She's like, do you think he's still alive?
[333] Like, we were having this conversation where I've never, she's the coolest most.
[334] Well, she's in fucking, she's in Northern California, too.
[335] That's right.
[336] That would scare the shit out of me. But he's down here if he's alive.
[337] You think so?
[338] Yes.
[339] Yes, for sure.
[340] Why?
[341] Because that's the last place he killed.
[342] I keep going through my head being like, go through your head of jobs and what would he be that would make sense of why he was in those specific cities.
[343] So I keep going through jobs and I keep going through like maybe he was a teacher.
[344] Maybe he was a, you know, a teaching assistant.
[345] Maybe he was a pilot because there was an Air Force base in Irvine when I was a kid, like, which comes up in the book.
[346] And because there was also one right where like, I think in Carmichael, right?
[347] And Galita, too, there was like, uh, for, read the book.
[348] My God.
[349] Listen to it.
[350] I think.
[351] I feel like everybody has.
[352] Yeah, we're all.
[353] We're all done.
[354] Stephen just turned his notebook over and I thought he was holding up like a cute card for us.
[355] That's God will be gone in the dark.
[356] He's like, you got the fucking name room.
[357] You assholes.
[358] You are so stupid.
[359] Uh, yeah.
[360] What if it just said?
[361] They caught him.
[362] They caught him.
[363] Guys, it's happening right now.
[364] Georgia.
[365] It was your dad.
[366] George.
[367] You invited him into your house.
[368] No, but it is such a good book.
[369] it's like and what I said to Adrian is because she is so good at boiling it down there's no extra writing and but also it's not sparse it's just the most concentrated boiled down here's how it happened here's this experience for people and it's all that stuff which I feel like part of this true crime wave that's just happening to everybody right now is because this is my personal theory because it's all about the monsters hiding and plain view as like the wolves and sheep's clothing i'm obsessed with that thing where we are now starting to see our government crack apart like people who claim to be on one side claim to be on the other but in truth they're bought by somebody yeah you don't even understand they have no fucking no moral compass none just sociopaths at large that where everyone's going oh no this it can't be this way yeah like and that's not even that is not partisan that's like i feel like there's a different level of something happening where people are starting to culturally, publicly acknowledge that we have people, men and women in our society that are true monsters that do not seem like anything at all.
[370] Yeah.
[371] They speak in low tones.
[372] They look very pretty or attractive.
[373] They say the right things.
[374] They make you feel great.
[375] Nothing about it.
[376] It's that Ann Rule's head buddy thing.
[377] Totally.
[378] You cannot see them coming and it's the scariest fucking thing in the world.
[379] Well, it's the same thing with Anne Rule that Michelle McNamara has.
[380] where it's like, well, she's one of us.
[381] Like, I just like, I want to, when I finish listening to it, I want to go have coffee with her and talk about it.
[382] She's just so, she's herself.
[383] And you can tell how, like, the book, she describes how obsessed she is.
[384] And I totally fucking get it.
[385] We totally get it.
[386] Remember in the book when she talks about getting that big, crazy amount of files that they kind of like snuck out of the building?
[387] One of my last conversations with her, she told me about getting the mother load it was at a patent show I was on she was in the dressing room and she was like we just got this thing and like I just remember it was a very brief conversation and also I want to say this it's not like she and I were best friends I don't want to try to portray that as we had some amazing relationship I just knew her yeah we had this conversation I just remember her like total excitement but also it was this thing of like like now we have we have 30 times more information like and now now we're really going to start to get into something it's so fucking nuts oh when i was listening there's a three -part um podcast called all be gone in the dark that talks about how the book was made by everyone kind of key players in it it's really good and i and for a moment i was like i know he doesn't know me but i wonder if patent kept those boxes and if i could have one of just one yeah i just want one yeah i wonder if gilly jensen has them or or um a kid one of the researchers he's the best he's researcher we called the kid he's the best yeah okay anyway what else do you have um oh this is very important uh we found this out from um you and stephen no stephen and i have started a band um small foreign fashion yes um no this was got this got sent to us as a story uh i believe today okay i haven't seen it um and it's so amazing so of course on the minisodes we've read a bunch of stories about people finding things in walls that's been a whole conversation um that we've been having then there was that story that came through that's incredibly tragic of a woman who fell into her wall and then her body was discovered years later that baby that story came through a lot of people sent it to us we didn't really talk about it because it's just pure tragedy and it's such a suffocating terrible feeling literally um but then this one came through today.
[388] The headline of this story, Oh, no. Mystery Monkey Mummy surfaces in Dayton's demolition.
[389] No. I don't ever wrote that fucking, what is it called?
[390] Alliteration?
[391] No, yeah, but also, what do they call them?
[392] The headline?
[393] Yeah.
[394] That's not what I meant, but then you said, I'm like, yeah, that's what it's called.
[395] Okay, let me read this to you.
[396] Okay, okay.
[397] So this happened in Minnesota.
[398] Minnesota's long new Dayton's as a store with just about everything.
[399] And it's proving even more so.
[400] Oh, no. Tim Nelson wrote this, by the way.
[401] So, Tim, you're just doing a great job.
[402] We're only two sentences in.
[403] It's proving even more so, as crews demolished the interior of the iconic downtown Minneapolis store for redevelopment, the latest, a dead monkey.
[404] What?
[405] A quote, we don't know a lot about this monkey, but I can't say that there was a monkey found during renovation.
[406] We continue to find a lot of pieces of history like this in the Dayton's project as we redevelop the building.
[407] What's historical about a monkey?
[408] unfortunately this was one of the recent discoveries Cruz had previously discovered a wallet long ago stolen from an employee in 1969 and found during demolition of a wall oh that's fun demolition worker submitted a photo of the dead monkey to the Facebook group Old Minneapolis so go join that so a bunch of like old women old ladies who were like oh it's an old Minneapolis they're trying to they're trying to enter stuff on Facebook like how does this work that was a robot grandma I don't know why I said it like that and long -tide customers employees respond with tales of pet shop on the store's eighth floor and a monkey that went missing in the 60s can you imagine how depressing a 1960s fucking pet shop on the eighth floor of a department store it was they create imagine you're in a department store like Mervyn style but it's the 60s and they're like oh you can buy a monkey there too do you need a bra do you need some plates no it's happy it loves department stores it loves a cave It just loves two feet of room.
[409] We really don't know the story or the origin behind this find.
[410] There are a lot of ideas and theories right now, but none that we can say we understand to be true.
[411] I bet they're funny.
[412] Oh, wait.
[413] Interestingly, Robinsdale mayor, Reagan Murphy, says he may know the riddle of the monkey.
[414] My dad once stole a monkey from a Dayton's display back in that same.
[415] What?
[416] They decided to bring it back after it shat all over my dad's friends, bedroom while they were at school.
[417] It says the word chat in this newspaper article.
[418] Explain my face right now.
[419] Georgia's baffled.
[420] Horrified confusion, I would call it.
[421] Yeah, that's right.
[422] You just don't know what's going on.
[423] They returned it by letting it loose in the store.
[424] That is probably, this is probably that monkey.
[425] He just outed his dad so hard.
[426] It's hilarious.
[427] And now they're having a huge influx of leasing in Greece.
[428] Congratulations, everybody at the Dayton's renovation.
[429] that's the best fucking story of all time.
[430] I am baffled and I love it.
[431] I wonder if someone, if it's shadow over that room, they released it in the store.
[432] The manager gets there the next morning.
[433] It's shadow over the store.
[434] He takes the monkey, strangles it with his own hands, and sticks it in the wall.
[435] I don't think that can a man overpower a monkey?
[436] No. Scratch his fucking eyes out.
[437] Monkeys are ten times more powerful than people.
[438] Second question.
[439] Why is he in a display?
[440] Don't put life animals in a display.
[441] and a fucking pets store on the sixth floor, everyone.
[442] Yeah, but remember when, like, Melanie Griffith's mother, Tippy, Hedron had her own tiger?
[443] There was a weird shit going on in, like, the 60s and 70s of people and, like, exotic pets that couldn't actually be controlled.
[444] For sure.
[445] Goodbye, everybody.
[446] Let's go think about it.
[447] We're going to go look it up.
[448] See you later.
[449] Don't laugh into your coffee mug.
[450] Don't laugh into your KCRW coffee mug.
[451] Now it's a horse.
[452] Click clock.
[453] Click clock.
[454] Karen turn in no demon horse.
[455] Coo clap, cool clap.
[456] Listen, I, uh, look and listen, I put some extra oxygen in the air for us, right?
[457] So we get a little wacky.
[458] Um, hi everybody.
[459] Who goes first tonight, Stephen on this lovely, hot evening.
[460] Steve?
[461] Shit, I don't know either, Stephen.
[462] I think I went first last time, didn't I?
[463] Yeah, but last week was, um, Skylight.
[464] Skylight books all be gone in the dark event.
[465] Well, I had to talk first.
[466] You talked the most.
[467] I was like, I am not joining in.
[468] A hundred percent, no. That, that kind of.
[469] because Patton and I've known each other since we were 23.
[470] Jesus.
[471] And you're right now, 30?
[472] Yep.
[473] Can you tell by my extremely large neck that I'm only in my early 30s?
[474] Yeah.
[475] So I was letting you guys do it.
[476] I mean, what choice did you have?
[477] Between the two of you and I'm like, I'm not going to, I used to go watch you guys fucking perform when I was 20 at Largo on Fairfax and just like, oh my God.
[478] Like, I'm not going to add anything to this conversation.
[479] As if we'd let you.
[480] I mean, if anyone's ever hung out with comics, you know that it is like an elbow -throwing verbal jest.
[481] And it's not, my, whatever I have to say is not worth that skinny little elbow of mine.
[482] So wait, so either we can do who wants to go first or we can try to remember who went first a week before.
[483] What would you rather do?
[484] What would you rather do?
[485] I don't care.
[486] I honestly don't care.
[487] I want to go first.
[488] Do it.
[489] Can I?
[490] Yeah, of course.
[491] Just because, look.
[492] I had a can a half of sparkling wine so I can tell a story still.
[493] Yes.
[494] All right.
[495] Okay.
[496] A can and a half of sparkling wine.
[497] Classy as fuck.
[498] That's whom I am.
[499] Congratulations.
[500] Congratulations to you because I have to tell you something.
[501] Okay.
[502] You were right about something.
[503] You know what?
[504] Can we just sit in that for one second?
[505] I know you'd want to.
[506] It doesn't happen that often.
[507] Just hearing the words.
[508] Okay, thanks.
[509] Karen, you were 100, percent right.
[510] The Alienist is a good show.
[511] You were right.
[512] It's fucking great.
[513] I have two episodes left.
[514] I can't wait.
[515] But I love it.
[516] That's what I watched while Vince was out of town.
[517] So good, right?
[518] It's so good.
[519] Because it's giving you enough of your true crime or your crime.
[520] That wasn't true.
[521] I don't think.
[522] Maybe based on true.
[523] But also there's like the visuals of that show.
[524] It's gorgeous.
[525] And fucking fanning Dakota.
[526] She's nailing it.
[527] Nailing it.
[528] Do you think she puts drops in her eyes to make her pupils be cartoonishly large like that?
[529] I wonder if it's a lighting guy.
[530] Maybe.
[531] Lighting human.
[532] It doesn't have to be a guy.
[533] That's right.
[534] Well, it is based on true shit.
[535] Because here's how I know.
[536] They went and did something and I was like, what is that thing they're talking about?
[537] Looked it up.
[538] This is the story of the Boston Boy Fiend, Jesse Pomeroy.
[539] Holy fuck.
[540] Yeah, I'm going there.
[541] What's wrong?
[542] I didn't do this guy?
[543] I didn't.
[544] Did you?
[545] I looked it up and you did the smiley face.
[546] No, no, no. I know it into this.
[547] Okay.
[548] So Karen and I, hold on.
[549] Stephen tried to go off mic with this.
[550] Because he's like, I don't want to fucking throw it.
[551] Because so Karen and I both today, apparently, had to text Stephen to go, did we do this already?
[552] Let's hear it.
[553] Well, no. It doesn't matter anyway.
[554] I know.
[555] It doesn't.
[556] Yeah.
[557] Well, the visuals I sent because I think you originally wanted to do this and then you didn't.
[558] Because it's horrible.
[559] Because it's horrible.
[560] And the final visuals were the giggler and the smiley face killer.
[561] And it doesn't matter too because the episode.
[562] will be posted from Boston isn't this one.
[563] So it's only to those people in Boston in the audience who are turning this off right now.
[564] Okay, great.
[565] But they wouldn't because now it's your turn to tell the story.
[566] This is almost like, uh, what is it?
[567] The Twilight Zone.
[568] The Twilight Zone.
[569] Wait, so you had to show you did do the...
[570] Do you think you did this?
[571] You did the smiley face.
[572] All I know, no, no, no. I mean, anything's possible, you guys.
[573] All I know is I know the Jesse Palmory picture where he's got one goosey eye.
[574] But I could have just looked at it.
[575] it.
[576] I do that kind of thing where I'm like, look at that weird illustration of a bad boy killer in the end.
[577] I remember, but I was so deep into this by then.
[578] It was five o 'clock.
[579] I want to hear it all.
[580] Okay.
[581] I want to hear you tell it to me. I was like, here's, I don't remember it.
[582] So perfect.
[583] Because I don't either, except for the eye.
[584] Okay.
[585] Except for the eye.
[586] You know this, this photo, this drawing, not, it's not a photo.
[587] It's a drawing of a boy who's got like a milky weird eyes, like a, you know, looks 12 or 13 in the photo.
[588] Okay.
[589] This is what we're talking about yeah um this is jesse harding pomeroy he was born into a lower middle class family in one of the worst slums of south boston at the time in the late 1800s charlestown had to look it up so i didn't say charleston oh charlestown good one massachusetts it's the oldest neighborhood in boston oh so jesse is born in november on november 29th 1859 let's fucking go back there that's all the way back That's way far back.
[590] He's the second of two children.
[591] His dad, Thomas, is a fucking asshole and a veteran of the Civil War drinks, has a horrible temper.
[592] He beats Jesse with a horse whip or leather belts all the time, often making him strip completely before he beats him.
[593] That's not good.
[594] Can I just say this, though?
[595] Yeah.
[596] I heard that the Civil War is pretty bad.
[597] Yeah.
[598] You fucks your brain up.
[599] If he was a survivor, like I served, was a veteran, fucking guy.
[600] got through it.
[601] Saw some shit.
[602] He saw some deep, dark, doctor sawing people's legs off style shit.
[603] Saw some shit.
[604] And beating your kid wasn't like crazy back in the bed.
[605] Beating your kid in 1859 was a form of self -expression.
[606] If you didn't do it, you were being soft on them.
[607] Yeah, that's right.
[608] Right?
[609] Ruth Ann Snowman was his mother.
[610] She was a seamstress.
[611] She adored Jesse.
[612] And throughout all of this shit going on, she never fucking wavered on her thinking, on defending him.
[613] Oh.
[614] but come on okay lady well he sometimes denials helpful that's true okay so he had been a sick baby left him kind of there's all these different accounts of what okay here's what I'm gonna tell you I found that the most times about what was wrong with him okay because there's so many accounts it said that he was sick as a baby which left him scrawny and frail but it also said that he had a large body oversized body huge fucking head his dome was like banana side like so long large his had some large like weird features I just watched the Andre the giant documentary last night so I'm like picturing his hand holding a fucking a fucking beer bottle when it looks like a Barbie toy yeah in a big hand less his heart how sad would it be if you had a huge body but you were still scrawny yeah that sucks maybe that maybe his head was normal size and his body was scrawny so it looked like a giant head maybe he was a gray alien anyway maybe he was a psychopath.
[615] Scronia and fail, it's reported that, quote, many people, according to some accounts, including his father, it said, could barely look at him without a shutter because his right eye may be due to illness or a reaction to a smallpox vaccine.
[616] One thing says about an accident.
[617] It's just hard to tell.
[618] I'm sure a historian's yelling at me right now.
[619] He had a thick white film covering his pupil so he had one white milky like marble eye got it uh might have had a cleft palate he was i just want to say really quick that just made me think of jimmy pardo and his smile train you know jimmy pardo on never not funny podcast he does all this like every year he does the podcastathon and he raises all this money for smile train and smile train goes out and gives anybody that can't afford the surgery to fix it they go fix them That's the most gorgeous thing I've ever heard in my life.
[620] It's very, very cool.
[621] It's very sweet.
[622] Okay, sorry, I just wanted to say that.
[623] Slightly positive things.
[624] Can you just every couple, every page add in a fucking positive thing, please?
[625] Should we do?
[626] Because this is a really depressing story.
[627] This is a bad one.
[628] Yeah, but I'm doing it.
[629] Okay, do it.
[630] So everyone said that there was something wrong with Jesse, that he wasn't quite right.
[631] He got bullied and teased a lot at school.
[632] A neighbor said that at five years old, and here's where I, lose all fucking sympathy.
[633] Jesse stabbed a cat and threw it in the river.
[634] Oh.
[635] Goodbye.
[636] If he had a bad eye and a cleft palate, he had a shitty time at school.
[637] In South Boston, I agree.
[638] You're right.
[639] Every day in South fucking Boston, he got teased mercilessly.
[640] Shitty.
[641] Yes.
[642] This was back when bullying was again, like beating your children.
[643] Celebrated.
[644] Celebrated.
[645] This isn't the way it is now.
[646] Yeah.
[647] um so and pets also disappeared from their home all the time that's a bad sign he was a loner he never played or really spoke with other children in the neighborhood maybe because they fucking believe him because they were assholes yeah he preferred to spend his time alone reading dime novels his favorite was a series based on a man named simon gertie he was a renegade white dude amongst the shawnee indians and he let they all went on on Frontier Settler Massacres in the 1780s, and they made a fucking, like, serial dime store novels about this dude, yeah.
[648] He was on Native American side.
[649] And, like, massacred.
[650] Shit.
[651] Yeah.
[652] Which is, like, something they talk about in the alienist.
[653] That's exactly right.
[654] It's so creepy.
[655] Oh, so they took pieces.
[656] They must have.
[657] Awesome.
[658] This, okay.
[659] Okay.
[660] And the stories are full of blood and sex and gore and wars and battle and crazy shit.
[661] And this kid is, little kid is reading this stuff.
[662] So it's like video games now.
[663] Like, did it do it or did it not?
[664] We don't know.
[665] Or us was Stephen King.
[666] I mean, I read Stephen King way too young.
[667] Yeah.
[668] Yeah, but that wasn't real.
[669] It was like campy and kind of.
[670] I wish someone had told me that.
[671] Oh, shit, Karen.
[672] Wait, so you didn't know cars can't talk?
[673] I've been trying to light shit on fire with my eyes for, I know.
[674] That's why you get headaches.
[675] My dad actually used to say that when I would get mad.
[676] He'd go, don't give me those fire starter eyes.
[677] Oh, shit.
[678] Okay, so Jesse's first reported attack took place in the Boston suburb of Chelsea, which was across the river from where they lived.
[679] He goes over Chelsea.
[680] Jesse had just turned 12 years old.
[681] He's a fucking baby.
[682] He's a baby.
[683] It's around Christmas time of 1871, and Jesse somehow entices a small boy.
[684] named Billy Payne to come with him to a remote area.
[685] And as soon as they're alone, and don't worry, I don't get too detailed.
[686] Jesse forces the child to take off all his clothes, just like his fucking dad does.
[687] And then he ties him up and takes a rope and flogs the child.
[688] The kid, once he's, and then Jesse leaves, once the kid is found, he's too traumatized to give police a good description of who attacked him.
[689] I think just said he was a teen.
[690] or something like that because he also looked it was tall and looked old for his age two months later and this is like this is so crazy because it's such a quick succession of attacks yeah two months later in february of 1872 jesse led seven -year -old tracy hayden to the same area promising that they were going to quote see the soldiers because that's where they were fought uh he repeated his first assault on uh Tracy as well as on his next victim in may of 1872, 8 -year -old Robert Mayor, who he lured away by promising him a trip to see the circus.
[691] In this attack, the boy said that the assailant, who he couldn't describe, sexually pleasureed himself while inflicting his beating.
[692] And he achieved sexual satisfaction at the height of the boy's suffering.
[693] God, he's so young to be doing that.
[694] Something is going on at home or other places.
[695] Some bad, bad stuff.
[696] Like to, two, I feel like it takes years for people to equate pain and sex.
[697] Right.
[698] You know what I mean?
[699] Like that happens when kids are older in their teens and 20s because it takes so fucking long to get to that place where your brain is like, these are the things that turn me on and make me come.
[700] Except for if your dad is stripping you and beating you.
[701] Well, it's that your dad is stripping you and beating you so often that it happened by the time he was 12.
[702] Yeah.
[703] So I'm not telling me, so something was going on his entire fucking love.
[704] life to get him there yeah it's so dark i know okay and i'm doing it it does look like stephen keeps holding up a fucking no fucking cue car for us literally looks like in the corner of i it looks like steven's like 30 seconds 30 seconds to commercial i think it's because this i upgraded my notebook to be a lot bigger oh so it looks like well let's start write some messages on there yeah tell me anything um just right you're doing great george no one is horrified by this No one thinks, no one's going to stop listening to this podcast because of this.
[705] Yeah, this is actually what people listen for.
[706] Oh, great.
[707] Great.
[708] Not great.
[709] However, uh, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[710] Okay.
[711] So then he took off, left the boy alive.
[712] So keeping with his 60 to 90 day cycle, Jesse then, uh, in mid -July of 1872, lures seven -year -old Johnny Bulk to the outhouse on the powder horn hill in Boston, excuse me. uh with this uh promise of two bits for running an errands who's like come on over here two bits two bits don't know how much that is the assault was similar to the previous ones the boy was stripped bound whipped and beaten until jesse achieved orgasm then he said he'd kill the boy if he ever told anyone and he got the fuck out of there the public starts going bananas they flip out um they start calling him the mysterious boy fiend the police are under pressure capture him but they didn't have very much of a description to go on other than the attacker was a teenage boy with brown hair that's all they fucking had wow yeah so like all the teenage boys got rounded up and they were like parading them in front of the victims and they couldn't identify any of them the city of chelsea offers a thousand dollar reward and the police uh launch an investigation da da da da okay the attacks stop at this point just for a little while in late july possibly due to turmoil in the Pomeray house when Jesse's father takes off and leaves Ruth to provide for herself and her sons.
[713] There's like not information about why he left or what, but kind of get riddance.
[714] Yeah, for real.
[715] But it could also be, so they end up moving and that could be because the dad left, but it could also be because there was a description of the quote boy torture in the paper and she possibly read it, recognized it as her son and was like, you.
[716] we're getting the fuck out of town this neighborhood and this was long ago long ago enough that if your description got put in the paper and you left town and just moved like a neighborhood yeah no one would find and no one knew you yes at the next neighborhood yeah totally um it's not like what's that app we have where we can talk to our neighbors about weird shit the neighborhood fucking next door do you love it my neighborhood it's filled with paranoid lunatic retirees who are like, who's stealing the oranges off my tree?
[717] It's insanity.
[718] I read it.
[719] I read laugh and delete them every single day.
[720] Well, this wasn't happening.
[721] Okay.
[722] Then she, okay, so Ruth rents a small storefront in South Boston for her dressmaking shop.
[723] She opens a dressmaking shop.
[724] In August of 1872, the three of them, the mom and sons moved to a flat across the street from the shop, and the boys help out in the shop.
[725] Then the move coincides almost exactly with the end of the Chelsea attacks and the beginning of the South Boston attacks.
[726] So, yeah.
[727] And this is where Marky Mark comes into this story.
[728] That's right.
[729] Do a fucking, I dare you to do an accent right now.
[730] That's all I can do.
[731] That was the best anyone's ever done.
[732] I don't understand the Boston accent.
[733] I can't do it.
[734] I can't hear it in my head.
[735] I don't get it.
[736] I had it when I was trying to get Charlestown, but it's gone and I won't try it okay on august 17th 1872 seven -year -old george pratt was wandering around south boston shoreline looking for treasure treasure a little boy looking for treasure oh sorry i ruined that word for you that's okay when he was approached by an older boy who offered him 25 cents to help him run an errand jesse binds and tortures the boy and this time it so it starts to escalate at this point okay um he bites chunks of flesh from the boy's body and also stabs him with the needles.
[737] Fuck.
[738] I know.
[739] And this kid's 12 who's doing this.
[740] Less than a month later, Jesse kidnaps and assaults six -year -old, a six -year -old boy named Harry Austin stripped and beaten like his previous victims, but this time it escalates.
[741] He takes out his pocket knife and stabs the child under each arm.
[742] I guess it wasn't, but wasn't a deep stab.
[743] And he goes to try to castrate.
[744] the boy but gets that someone comes by just at that moment and he runs off good god thank god i know right then six days after this of six like this is a fucking fiend this person is mad he's a sexual psychopath that's right at 12 doing these things horrible six days after austin was attacked jesse lures joseph kennedy who was seven into the marshes near the bay and viciously beats him like austin attack with a knife and jesse forces the boy to kneel and recite the Lord's Prayer, but with obscenities, which is such a childish, weird thing to do.
[745] You know what's funny is when you first started talking about this, I was like, I wonder if this guy's Catholic, this boy's Catholic.
[746] I wonder, like, maybe something was going on in his home, like, not just with his dad, obviously, but in his school or at church.
[747] Some creepy priests somewhere along the line.
[748] Yeah.
[749] Yeah.
[750] Like, yeah, as much as people want to think, like, you're born this way, you're born evil it's not a thing i mean if he's a sociopath he wouldn't care if he's hurting people but it does if you don't become a sociopath you don't you're not born a sociopath you become a sociopath no i think you're born a sociopath is it nature or nurture let's decide right now let's debate it let's let's debate it let us know what you guys think please in the in a forum on the my favorite murder fan cult let's let's all scream at each other about nature versus nurture constantly cross promoting and selling that's right also real quick i have uh i you can buy detergent from amway from me if you just DM me i'll sell you some detergent great great um bo bo bo bo bo bo good lead okay six okay six days later like the fact that he thought that reciting the lord's prayer but with obscenities was like part of the torture shows what it's child he was and how and how how off his understanding of I don't know I just I have to say when you just said that fact it kind of made my heart race a little bit oh because it's like you're gonna get like can't fucking say the boy is during the Lord's prayer the boy refused to do it yes yeah that's very like that's that's so taboo it's it's like a consecrated that's not the right word but it's holy thing It's like you're talking to God.
[751] So it's like you're saying, fuck you God.
[752] Oh, no. Which is not allowed in 1860, whatever.
[753] Can you, um, can you, uh, sample that track of Karen saying, fuck you God and just put a fucking hard techno beat and then send it, send it to her school that she went to, her Catholic school she went to?
[754] Good vibrations.
[755] Fuck you go.
[756] Oh my God.
[757] That would be amazing.
[758] This is not funny.
[759] No, it's not.
[760] Six days later, five -year -old rock.
[761] It's actually stressing me out.
[762] I'm sorry.
[763] No, no, no, I mean, because it's just, it's bad.
[764] It's bad.
[765] I know.
[766] No, no, go ahead.
[767] Stressing in a good way.
[768] Six days later, a five -year -old boy named Robert Gould was found lashed to a post near railroad tracks in South Boston and told, and he told about an older boy who lured him to the remote area with a promise to see soldiers.
[769] And then when they were alone, the boy stripped him and beat him and slashed him.
[770] And this kid, Robert, was finally able to give the police their first good lead in the case after all these victims.
[771] He described his attacker as a large boy with an eye like a white marble.
[772] Oh, okay.
[773] I wonder why none of these other boys, he must have hid it from them somehow.
[774] I think they were really traumatized, too.
[775] Yeah, I guess that's true.
[776] I don't think they could talk about it, maybe.
[777] Yeah.
[778] Who knows?
[779] So horrible.
[780] The Boston police, okay, so then they're like, great.
[781] fucking conduct a classroom -by -classroom search of the Boston school system.
[782] They even go to Jesse's fucking school, but somehow they didn't see him.
[783] And then for an unknown reason, maybe guilt, maybe toying with them, who the fuck knows?
[784] Maybe he was 12 and wasn't thinking the way we think.
[785] In fact, on his way home from school that day, Jesse walks into the South Boston police station where detectives are sitting and questioning the victim Joe Kennedy.
[786] he Joe spots Jesse from across the room and in the meantime Jesse's like for some reason like bad idea and he's like fucking crab walking out of there yeah but fucking Joe Kennedy is like that's fucking him and starts yelling at that that's him and so the police grab him okay a few other victims were able to identify Jesse as their attacker including one from the Chelsea neighborhood who exclaimed that's the boy who cut me shit later that night during questioning he confesses to all the crimes and he's but he later recants all of that but he is arrested and due to his age he's sentenced to the state reform school at westboro for the term of his minority six years oh so he's 12 years old and they're like you did all this horrible stuff you're going to reformatory school okay that's it the end no unfortunately do you want it to be no no no no no no jesse is a star inmate applies himself to his studies but of course he's bullied by the other children and his mother is like how fucking know he didn't do it and she hardcore petitions for his parole and it's confirmed before he even spent two years there so jesse he's now 13 is quietly paroled into his mother's custody on february 6 1874 these pieces of this story are coming back to me like the thing of the in the police station where I'm like, I think I did do this at a live show.
[787] I think you did.
[788] But my brain is such that it's also a very new experience where I'm like, he did not get paroled.
[789] Did you do it at New York?
[790] In New York?
[791] I don't fucking know.
[792] Who cares?
[793] Let's just talk.
[794] Let's just talk.
[795] That's what our podcast is called now.
[796] Let's what it's about.
[797] Let's just talk.
[798] We love talking.
[799] Okay, so he's paroled.
[800] Then in April, on April 22nd, 1874.
[801] All right.
[802] this list gets bummer I mean not that it hasn't been two boys playing in the marshes between South Boston and seven near South Boston Say it Savon Hill Spell it Savon Savon Oh Savin Savin or Savin or Savon Savon Hill Or a third option that we could never Anticipate That's not spelled the way it sounds Or yeah it's it's seven Okay go ahead They discover the body of a young boy lying on his back in the mud Oh, I know.
[803] So little boys find a dead little boy?
[804] Yeah.
[805] Police are summoned and the boys identified as Horace Millen of South Boston.
[806] He's four years old.
[807] I know.
[808] I'm sorry.
[809] His throat's been cut and his body had been, had numerous stab wounds around 33 total.
[810] Whoa.
[811] He'd also been sexually mutilated.
[812] Fucking poor little bit.
[813] Escalation.
[814] Escalation.
[815] Yeah.
[816] Police found footprints nearby that led back to a war.
[817] a half a mile away and there they like follow the fucking footprints and they're like hey anyone around here see anything this morning and a bunch of witnesses recall a young teenager walking around with horace the boys the two boys the teenager and horace then jump from the wharf the older boy helps this little companion down and then he takes the older boys hand and together they walk away across the marshes towards where horace's body had been found Awful.
[818] I know.
[819] And also very Mary Bell.
[820] Yeah, exactly.
[821] Mary Bell is like always mentioned in this kind of in his articles.
[822] Yeah, it's that same thing.
[823] And she was, she was being basically sexually tortured.
[824] Totally.
[825] There's no way he wasn't.
[826] Yeah.
[827] I mean, even just like his, what his dad was doing to him, it was way more than that.
[828] Yes.
[829] Not that that's an excuse.
[830] This is horror.
[831] No. Here we go.
[832] All bad.
[833] But, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, okay.
[834] This time, because.
[835] of his record though the police fucking were like we know who did this they arrest jesse at his home where they found blood on his clothes scratches on his skin and the sole of his boots matched the imprints left on the sand and there was also marsh mud on his boots and so when the police confronted him and asked him if he'd done it he replied a suppose so oh nonplussed i suppose so his only request was that the police not tell his mother of his of the latest crime so i think his mom was like crazy probably religious and overprotective of him yeah and you know that made him crazy too she also i bet maybe had some guilt because the dad was so awful right there's no way to correctly parent a child i'm sorry to tell you guys Georgia with parenting advice like three cats that equals one child right yeah that's what we agreed upon one silent child That's what we agreed on.
[836] A few days later, though, he takes back his confession, denies any wrongdoing, etc. So he's waiting trial.
[837] He's sitting in fucking jail awaiting trial.
[838] And Ruth Pomeroy, his mommy fucking dearest, she continues to voraciously insist Jesse's innocent.
[839] She's forced to close her dress shop a month after Jesse's arrest.
[840] and because the public was pissed the fuck off, probably.
[841] And her shop's now vacant.
[842] Hi, how are you doing?
[843] Her shop's now vacant.
[844] I'm going to give you a clue.
[845] It's not a monkey that they find.
[846] Oh, no. Okay.
[847] Shops vacant.
[848] It's rented out by the owner of a nearby grocery store.
[849] He starts renovations.
[850] Don't do that.
[851] Do it, though.
[852] In late July, a worker knocking down a wall in the cellar, notice some bright fabric sticking out of a pile of, of ashes and rubbish rubbish he reaches down and gives it a pull and a child skull rolls out of the rolls out oh and the scream could be heard four blocks away four decades oh yoy the police were summoned they're not called they are summoned they're not because there's no phones the police have a long letter written to them that they receive two months later a tin can is held up with a string place you're like a line of children yell down the street in grape in a what's that called oh telephone telephone no it's not called that though yeah when you whisper into people's ears yeah but there's no such like it's a telephone so it's not called that is this pre -telephone days isn't it i don't know someone a sign a telephone person email us a telephone scientist we'd love to hear from you said a thing email us that you're just going to be some person actually i am a telephone scientist and you're correct Like it's going to be some sweet email.
[853] It's going to be.
[854] Not what we deserve.
[855] My name's Jan Edison and my great grandfather was Thomas Edison.
[856] Do you want a tour of the, because everyone who emails us is nice.
[857] Like we don't deserve how nice everyone is to us.
[858] No one attacks us.
[859] Never.
[860] Everyone's like, we think you're great.
[861] We get what you meant.
[862] And we forgive your stupidity.
[863] Here's the facts that you should be saying.
[864] Oh, God.
[865] We're so lucky.
[866] Okay.
[867] But, but, but police know, are pretty sure the skeleton belongs to.
[868] because earlier that year on March 18th, just six weeks after Jesse got out of that reformatory before his first murder of Horace, nine -year -old Katie Curran had disappeared while running an errand in the neighborhood of the dress shop.
[869] The cops had searched the entire neighborhood, including the Pomeroy store, but stopped searching when another kid and they told them that they'd seen a girl matching Katie's description get into a buggy with a strange man. oh plus they were like jesse likes boys so oh right it's not his memo right so but katie's mother identifies the clothes that they found um as katies and an angry cat crowd gathers around the block so they take mrs pomeran charles the brother into custody for their safety they end up being there for like six fucking weeks whoa because people are just like they've had it yeah yeah and they need to be witnesses in the trial too um jesse confesses to Katie's murder.
[870] He tells the chief of police that Katie had gone, so Katie had gone out that morning to buy a school thing, a school supply thing, but had gone into the Pomeroy store by mistake.
[871] She had asked Jesse if they had one.
[872] He was manning the counter alone.
[873] Remember how she was like, you guys got to work here.
[874] Yeah.
[875] He lied and told her there was a store downstairs.
[876] And then he said that when she went downstairs, quote, I followed her, put my left arm around her neck, about her neck and my hand over her mouth and with my knife and my right hand I cut her throat I then dragged her to and behind the water closet and put some stones and ashes on the body so fucking crazy it's so bad and it's it is reminding me of the alienist like yeah it's so parallel it's amazing well they go and interview him remember in his solitary confinement to try to find the killer in this in the show remember that's right Remember, that's why I found this.
[877] When he's on that chain and, oh, my God, that's right.
[878] Guys, watch it.
[879] But Katie's body did show signs that he had done more to her than he said.
[880] There had also been stab wounds and mutilation, much like the Millen kid.
[881] Later, when asked at an inquest why he'd done it, Jesse said, I don't know, I couldn't help it.
[882] It's here, said pointing to his head.
[883] It is here, he said, while he pointed.
[884] it out his head.
[885] You said that twice for to underline it.
[886] It's here.
[887] And that's not a quote.
[888] It is here.
[889] Which is so awkward.
[890] That's how people talk back then.
[891] I know.
[892] Especially in Boston.
[893] Especially in Boston.
[894] Very proper.
[895] Ta -da -da -da -da.
[896] Okay.
[897] Boop -boop.
[898] Okay.
[899] In December, Jesse's tried for the Millen murder.
[900] And people are like, how the fuck did this happen?
[901] I guess this was not a normal thing.
[902] There had never been a boy serial killer before.
[903] he's the first fucking one in America.
[904] They wanted to know why he committed such atrocities.
[905] Tons of experts were hired and they all hypothesized what was wrong with him.
[906] People were like, it's crows back then.
[907] No one knew what the fuck was going on.
[908] It's the telephone and that person was a witch and got drowned.
[909] That's right.
[910] It's these gas lamps they're trying to put into our homes.
[911] There's no such thing as telephones.
[912] You're a witch.
[913] They ultimately, though, didn't think he was insane, just evil and had no feelings for his victims and felt no remorse for any of his acts which we all know that now come on and Ruth continues to fucking be like he's innocent and she was even like Katie's body would just put in the cellar after she left the store by someone else to like frame her kid she just wouldn't fucking buy it honey I know sweetie well Jerry convicts Jesse on first to remurder with a recommendation of mercy because of his age so he could have they could have recommended death by hanging, but they were like, he's fucking 14 at this point.
[914] God.
[915] And, but then the judge was like, nope.
[916] I sentenced him to be fucking hanged.
[917] Yep.
[918] Hanged.
[919] and everyone freaked out and was like, you can't hang a child.
[920] And so eventually his sentence is commuted to life in solitary confinement.
[921] Oh, yeah, yeah.
[922] So on September 7th, 18, 76, just three months shy of a 17th birthday.
[923] okay I was wrong about the age just three months shy of his 17th birthday Jesse was taken to the state prison at Charlestown where for the next 16 years he lived in a 10 by 8 by 8 cell built in 1805 to How's the Insane?
[924] So you can't imagine it was fucking choice digs and in that TV show it's awful it's like a dungeon basically and he's so fucking scary how about that fucking actor who I didn't even think until this very moment was an actor because he was so scary in that part is he who is he who is he jesse pomeroy great job fictional jesse pomeroy that's right okay so he tries to escape all the time doesn't happen um but he also becomes a voracious reader reads all 8000 books in the prison library whoa which is like you got time on your hand yeah that's right he learns french german greek latin all this other shit um and he becomes what and then he becomes Hannibal Lecter I mean what the fuck yeah yeah that's also insanely tragic is it because if his fucking father right left him alone he could have been in my theory a sociopath who doesn't right people but who was incredibly intelligent and then just kind of didn't care if he saw bad things happen or it's like too that you think like if he hadn't had these these oddities about him that kids didn't fucking mercilessly bully him about he wouldn't have been so angry and have so much anger to get out on children that were smaller than him.
[925] You know, they took it out on him, whatever was going on in those kids' house, he took it out on smaller children.
[926] Yeah.
[927] But the difference is, like, teasing and being mean is one thing, but what this guy did was like, he's a psychopath.
[928] Totally.
[929] I mean, between home and school, though, he never had a moment of not being, because they didn't just tease him.
[930] I'm sure they beat him up and shit.
[931] I'm not defending a fucking psych, like, um.
[932] Serial killer.
[933] No, no, I know.
[934] But you are arguing nature versus nurture.
[935] I am doubling up on my birth control tonight because I am never having fucking children.
[936] Just take two extra.
[937] It'll be fine.
[938] I do think nature versus nurture.
[939] I think nature and nurture, but I don't think you can have, I don't think, all right, anyways, you'll read about it in the forum.
[940] George is going to take this online and explain it to you why explain it on a podcast when you can go online and explain your theory?
[941] How many semesters of psychology did I take at community college do you suppose?
[942] Did you do half and then drop out?
[943] I probably took level one like three times and dropped out each time.
[944] You heard that story of the guy that got the fencing sword up his nose that touched his front of lobe and everyone loved that.
[945] Lost his long -term memory or whatever.
[946] It was very fascinating.
[947] Phineas Gage.
[948] Okay.
[949] Is that him?
[950] Yeah.
[951] And he becomes...
[952] Wait, Finius Gage is the guy that had the full -on railroad tie in his head, though.
[953] What were you talking about?
[954] There's one guy that got a fencing sword...
[955] Oh, I don't know.
[956] This one.
[957] Up his nose, touched his frontal lobe, and then every time you walked in the door, he'd be like, hi, good to see you.
[958] And then you'd leave, and one minute later.
[959] And he'd be like, oh, my God, hi, good to see you.
[960] That must have been level two, because I don't know that guy.
[961] Karen, you must have gone further than me. But also, I don't think we even have to say this anymore.
[962] Could be completely wrong about that.
[963] But we aren't.
[964] Greek Latin, et cetera.
[965] Oh, and he becomes obsessed with learning about law an attempt to get himself the fuck out of prison.
[966] Wow.
[967] All this shit happens, but it never works, obviously.
[968] Later, a commission of three psychiatrists, maybe our fucking dude from the alienists.
[969] Oh, yeah, that's right.
[970] And a prison physician studied him.
[971] And in 1914, after he'd spent 38 years.
[972] in solitary.
[973] They found him to be sane and intelligent, but a cold, paranoid manipulator, utterly obsessed with his pardon.
[974] So the only person who visited him was his mother, who visited him every month until her death around 1915.
[975] Wow.
[976] And then in the late 1920s, Jesse was the state's oldest prisoner.
[977] Whoa.
[978] Which is like, and you could, there's photos.
[979] There's like photographs of him.
[980] He looks like just an old man. Yeah.
[981] Because he was just, just, an old man um i wonder what would happen if they had let him out he would have murdered people he would immediately go kill a child he and albert fish would be like what's up real we're gonna be roomies i've got your needles this is a fucking sitcom yeah i got your needles um do do do okay that okay in 1916 41 years into his fucking sentence so he's like double the time he was alive yeah or out right you know what I mean Jesse's solitary confinement is lifted.
[982] He had spent the longest stretch in solitary confinement second only to the Birdman of Alcatraz.
[983] Oh, that's right.
[984] He's the...
[985] Yeah.
[986] The Birdman or Alcatraz is a good movie, by the by.
[987] I should watch it again.
[988] Clint Acewood.
[989] Alcatraz.
[990] San Francisco.
[991] Birds.
[992] What more could you want?
[993] Listen, we're offering you so much.
[994] Look at that movie.
[995] Okay.
[996] We're coming to an end here, guys.
[997] Calm down.
[998] In 1929.
[999] Age 92.
[1000] And then...
[1001] He wrote books and shit, too.
[1002] In 19, and I'm going to read you one now.
[1003] Yes.
[1004] In 1929, 71 -year -old Jesse Pomeroy is removed from the general population at Charlestown, taken by automobile, his first and only ever fucking automobile ride.
[1005] He's taken by automobile, auto meal.
[1006] Yep.
[1007] To an auto meal.
[1008] To an automatic.
[1009] To auto, blah, blah, blah, blah.
[1010] Bridgewater prison farm for medical care.
[1011] First only car ride.
[1012] First time being outside of the prison in about 55 fucking.
[1013] years.
[1014] Jesus.
[1015] And everyone was like, he seemed non -fucking plussed by it.
[1016] He just didn't give a shit.
[1017] Didn't give a shit.
[1018] Which is like, fair enough.
[1019] Your brain at that point has to be mush.
[1020] Two years later, after 58 years in prison, almost all of it spent in solitary confinement.
[1021] Jesse Pomeroy, the boy fiend dies at Bridgewater.
[1022] He was dismissed in the press as, quote, the most friendless person in the world and, quote, a psychopath.
[1023] his final wishes were that his body be cremated and his ashards that's my brother's name and his ashes scattered to the four winds wow that's the story of boyfeing jesse pomeroy fuck boston it is that is the most nutso story i know i tried to do my best of not it was great okay uh it was fresh and new for me i just wanted to the tiniest cage of this podcast to where it's always a new story for me. Jesus Christ.
[1024] I pulled something out of my nose.
[1025] I just really wanted to tell you you were right about the alienist.
[1026] I kept going back to that.
[1027] I'm like, why are you doing this story?
[1028] It's so horrible.
[1029] And it's like Karen will like the start of it.
[1030] A hundred percent.
[1031] I like the whole thing.
[1032] But also because I feel like those are the stories, those are the stories I like to talk about the most because, A, it's long, long ago.
[1033] So we don't have to be as sad as we normally feel.
[1034] Right.
[1035] even though it's awful.
[1036] And then there's that interest of, like, the way things were set up.
[1037] This was, like, probably right when, like, police forces began.
[1038] It's all that kind of stuff where everyone was learning.
[1039] And I'm sure no one was going to go, oh, yeah, a 12 -year -olds killing these kids.
[1040] Like, no one.
[1041] I'm sure they were like, a wolf is loose in our in Boston or whatever.
[1042] I mean, I didn't get into how fucking bananas the press went over this at the time.
[1043] Yeah.
[1044] Yeah, it was, it was unprecedented.
[1045] And I think stories like this and fucked up stories like the Candyman and shit are like important because you can't just like, you have to, this exists and this is what happened.
[1046] And we, you know, you have to, I don't have to tell you exactly what he did to his victims, but I, but it's a crazy fucking story that.
[1047] And it's a real thing that, right, this is a human condition.
[1048] Exactly.
[1049] Even though it's extreme and rare, this is something people, human beings can do.
[1050] Yeah.
[1051] Which people have been in denial about.
[1052] Right.
[1053] which is why we're obsessed with true crime is that we can't believe that humans are capable of this so we want to know as much as possible because we're so confounded by it yeah and so you can't skip over the really really worst ones because those happen too i mean you can't people are tuning in for that shit nobody wants that everyone's like tell me the worst please well i was just thinking like all the people who are like i have a baby boy and i can't i can't listen to this stuff and i'm like all right well I have two baby nephews and I want to I want to know about this shit I'm fascinated it horrifies me I want we all know babies quit bragging everybody oh please put that on a new shirt we all know babies quit holding your baby friendships over my head I like what I like enough oh wow hey this is exciting an all new season of only murders in the building is coming to who Lou on August 27th.
[1054] Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez are back as your favorite podcaster, detectives.
[1055] But there's a mystery hanging over everyone.
[1056] Who killed Saz?
[1057] And were they really after Charles?
[1058] Why would someone want to kill Charles?
[1059] This season, murder hits close to home.
[1060] With a threat against one of their own, the stakes are higher than ever.
[1061] Plus, the gang is going to Hollywood to turn their podcast into a major movie.
[1062] Amid the glitz and glamour of Los Angeles, more mysteries and twists arise.
[1063] Who knows what will happen once the cameras start to roll?
[1064] Get ready for the stariest season yet with Merrill Streep, Zach Alfinacus, Eugene Levy, Eva Longoria, Melissa McCarthy, Devine, Joy Randolph, Molly Shannon, and more.
[1065] Only Martyrs in the Building, premieres August 27th, streaming only on Hulu.
[1066] Goodbye.
[1067] Karen, you know I'm all about vintage shopping.
[1068] Absolutely.
[1069] And when you say vintage, you mean when you physically drive to a store and actually purchase something with cash?
[1070] Exactly.
[1071] And if you're a small business owner, you might know Shopify is great for online sales.
[1072] But did you know that they all?
[1073] also power in -person sales?
[1074] That's right.
[1075] Shopify is the sound of selling everywhere, online, in -store, on social media, and beyond.
[1076] Give your point -of -sale system a serious upgrade with Shopify.
[1077] From accepting payments to managing inventory, they have everything you need to sell in -person.
[1078] So give your point -of -sale system a serious upgrade with Shopify.
[1079] Their sleek, reliable POS hardware takes every major payment method and looks fabulous at the same time.
[1080] With Shopify, we have a powerful partner for managing our sales.
[1081] and if you're a business owner, you can too.
[1082] Connect with customers in line and online.
[1083] Do retail right with Shopify.
[1084] Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at Shopify .com slash murder.
[1085] Important note, that promo code is all lowercase.
[1086] Go to Shopify .com slash murder to take your retail business to the next level today.
[1087] That's Shopify .com slash murder.
[1088] Goodbye.
[1089] Mine is another one of these stories, interestingly, that's so famous I had to contact as we said, contact Stephen, Because I was like, how did we not do this yet?
[1090] Yeah.
[1091] And as I read it, I was like, I could hear you, I could hear your voice saying it.
[1092] Yeah, yeah.
[1093] So I was like, this could be, I could be making a huge mistake.
[1094] It's the story of Isay Sagawa, the Japanese cannibal who walks free.
[1095] Do you know?
[1096] I don't.
[1097] And I know if I would have known if you'd done this.
[1098] Get ready.
[1099] Oh, to fucking scream.
[1100] On the night of June 11th, 1981, by the way, Stephen helped me with most, of this research with the chronology today.
[1101] Thank you, Stephen.
[1102] But then I also watched the beginning of an amazing documentary from Channel 4, Britain's Channel 4, a channel that makes incredible documentaries for TV.
[1103] And there was a really old one that they had made about this guy.
[1104] And it was called, Excuse Me for Living, which is the name of one of the books he ended up writing.
[1105] That's a great name.
[1106] Isn't it the best?
[1107] But then when you find out, I don't want him to own it.
[1108] I know, it's so good.
[1109] But it really goes crazy in -depth on his side of things and kind of like, whatever, his experience.
[1110] But it's really, really, really fascinating and really well put together.
[1111] And very old.
[1112] It looks like you're watching footage from like the 50s.
[1113] I love it.
[1114] The older, the better because then they can't, like, shit doesn't get, like, clouded and facts don't get unfacted.
[1115] Yes.
[1116] I don't know anything about it.
[1117] Okay, cool.
[1118] Also, in this documentary, there's.
[1119] British people from what look like the 70s, always a joy.
[1120] There's people named Colin with wiry crazy hair that's going over to one sign.
[1121] The eyebrows?
[1122] Yes, there's a lot of eyebrow action, a lot of tweed.
[1123] Love it.
[1124] Highly recommend.
[1125] Okay, so on the night of June 11th, 1981, 25 -year -old Dutch student, René Hartweld, was studying at the Sorbonne in Paris and she arrived at her classmates flat thinking she was there to help him translate some German poetry for him.
[1126] Never trust a German poet.
[1127] There you go.
[1128] She met the small, quiet, 32 -year -old Japanese student in one of their classes that they had together.
[1129] She noticed he was isolated at the French university.
[1130] He seemed awkward.
[1131] He was slightly odd.
[1132] He was very small.
[1133] He was four foot nine.
[1134] Wow.
[1135] Oh, so she felt compassion, him being alone in a foreign city, she could empathize with.
[1136] So when a group of her classmates made dinner plans, she invited him along.
[1137] She's a sweet baby angel.
[1138] Right.
[1139] They had a long conversation that night on a full range of topics.
[1140] And overall, for everybody, it was a success.
[1141] So soon after, he asked Renee for help translating the German poetry that he had been struggling with.
[1142] went over to his apartment to work on it with him go to a public place well she thought they'd already hung i know i know but like every university never very small she's like this he's pocket size there's public place so the first night she goes over to help him translate his german poetry the night ends very abruptly and oddly send her a letter saying sorry about everything last night can you please come back over tonight, I really need this help, and I would really appreciate it.
[1143] So she goes back over, and that's the night of June 11th.
[1144] Okay.
[1145] Um, so, uh, she, she feels like she gets that this guy might be uncomfortable, maybe uncomfortable around women, um, or whatever.
[1146] So she, she's like, it's fine.
[1147] She goes back over.
[1148] She sits down at his desk, um, which leaves her with her back to the room.
[1149] And as she is, um, looking over, the homework that he needs help with he walks up behind her with a gun with a silencer on it and shoots her in the back of the head holy shit he immediately faints oh my god when he wakes up he has sex with her corpse and then tries to eat her because it turned out he was not a awkward um four foot nine uh he was four foot nine uh he was four But he was not a tiny, powerless, awkward little man. He had been planning to kill her for quite some time.
[1150] Oh, my God.
[1151] Because he wanted to eat her.
[1152] What?
[1153] The man's name was Isay Sagawa, and he had a lifelong obsession with cannibalism.
[1154] He was born in 1949 to wealthy parents in Kobe, Japan.
[1155] He was very premature, so premature that when his father held him for the first time, he held him in the palm of his hand.
[1156] Oh, gosh.
[1157] That's so sad.
[1158] Yeah.
[1159] His strict but loving parents had another son one year later and raised them as twins because Oh, yeah.
[1160] Isay was so small that he being the older brother looked like the younger brother.
[1161] And as his brother grew up normally and fully, he was very skinny.
[1162] He just, like, he just was tiny.
[1163] And he was very, very self -conscious of it from a very early age.
[1164] Aren't we all so fucking self - fucking conscious of our bodies at all times?
[1165] And from a very early age.
[1166] I'm watching this documentary and I'm like, it would be great to be tiny skinny and four foot nine.
[1167] Isn't that always the fucking way?
[1168] We're all now at this moment and time just learning radical self -immolation.
[1169] Acceptance.
[1170] Excuse me. I've had two cans of fucking sparkling wine.
[1171] If we could just learn to spontaneously combust ourselves into the stratosphere.
[1172] Think of all the weight you would lose.
[1173] Think about the universe loving you if you were just particles on fire.
[1174] That's right.
[1175] Okay.
[1176] So he is obsessed with the fact he repeatedly in these documentaries talks about himself being ugly, being tiny, and being skinny.
[1177] And also oddly, and they have home movie footage in this Channel 4 documentary of his uncle used to come to their house and they would put on a play where the uncle played a man -eating giant and the two little boys would play princes that he would the giant would then grab up put into a pot and eat and cook alive and eat and so i have fucking chills really that's creepy yeah you had to see it and he in the documentary when he talks about it kind of makes his face like why why did he do that wait they're interviewing him yes dude yes okay go on It's part of how disturbing this story is, is he is, he basically becomes famous for being a sexual psychopath.
[1178] How have I never heard of this?
[1179] Go on.
[1180] Okay.
[1181] So, um, so he attributes that experience, but he also was, he so he became obsessed with this idea of man eating giants, monsters that could eat men, human beings, the idea of eating human flesh to the point where in first grade, he asked his teacher, um, about the moral repercussions of eating human flesh.
[1182] What?
[1183] Imagine, now imagine those chills that you would get.
[1184] How old is a first grader?
[1185] Is seven?
[1186] Okay.
[1187] I'm looking at my seven -year -old nephew.
[1188] Hey, Auntie Georgia.
[1189] What's your stance on eating other people?
[1190] If I wanted, I would be like, oh my God.
[1191] You'd be shaking, you'd be like, excuse me, oh, for me, Micah?
[1192] You'd pull a Clary Starlingo.
[1193] May I use your phone, please?
[1194] Oh my God, that was That was beautiful, Karen.
[1195] Thank you.
[1196] He thought the idea, the reason he was so obsessed with it is that he thought that if he could eat other human beings, it would fill him out and make him bigger, stronger, make him, he felt like he wasn't, he was only half there.
[1197] Oh, God.
[1198] And that everybody else was fully formed.
[1199] Oh, man. So he got this idea and it became this obsession.
[1200] If he could just consume someone else, it would fill him out and make him whole.
[1201] I mean, I get, I think it's crazy and he's mentally ill. I get the from first grade on having this obsession yeah the logic of it right yes for sure the logic of the crazy I fucking get well and I've been crazy and obsessed with a specific thing in my life many fucking times yeah well and to the point where like when you have body dysmorphia where when you see yourself one way you literally cannot see yourself and you think everyone sees that and obsesses on it when in fact everyone's just obsessing about themselves exactly but when you also have then some kind of a psychopathy, then your, that obsession doesn't you don't get distracted by other things.
[1202] You continue to obsess on it to the point where then you begin to fantasize about it.
[1203] And so then when he moved into adolescence, the obsession on the fantasies, they became intertwined, the sexual aspect and the cannibalism became intertwined.
[1204] So this is level three of psychology.
[1205] This is, I am pretending to know what I'm talking about to the point where I'm starting to believe it.
[1206] And it feels - Sounds great.
[1207] Fucking great.
[1208] Sounds great.
[1209] It's a true victory for me tonight.
[1210] Okay.
[1211] So when he's 15, he actually, it gets so bad he reaches out to a psychiatrist.
[1212] And it explains that he is having sexual fantasies involving murder and cannibalism.
[1213] And, um...
[1214] Oh, my God.
[1215] He also tells them that he's, it's focused on Western.
[1216] They keep referring to them as Western.
[1217] Western women.
[1218] But it's basically white women, tall, blonde, kind of Maryland Monroe type women that are fully curvy and curvaceous.
[1219] And that's what he's seeing is that would fill me up.
[1220] That would make me whole.
[1221] Got it.
[1222] It's also symbolic.
[1223] Once he spills the beans, he's too scared to go back.
[1224] So he just never goes back again.
[1225] And at one point, maybe a little later on, he also goes to his brother and confides in his brother that he wants to eat human flesh.
[1226] And his brother's like, you fucking nut.
[1227] And never talks about it again.
[1228] Isn't that great?
[1229] Because I was going to be like, well, he's so crazy or like mentally ill, he doesn't know to go get help, but then he fucking did.
[1230] Like when I am starting to obsess about a thing, I know to go to a psychologist or a psychiatrist.
[1231] Right.
[1232] He did that.
[1233] No, he did.
[1234] He actually, and he was young too, which is really hard.
[1235] It's hard when you're younger to be like, I'm going to get some professional involved in any of this.
[1236] Probably in the Japanese culture too.
[1237] Yes.
[1238] That can't be a big thing, right?
[1239] I don't know, but I'm saying yes.
[1240] very authoritative.
[1241] I bet someone will very nicely correct us.
[1242] Hopefully.
[1243] Okay, so it's not until he's 23 and he's still living at his parents' house that he finally acts on these obsessions.
[1244] A young German woman moved into the neighborhood and he sees her and he's like, this is my chance.
[1245] He starts obsessing on her and he's obsessed with biting her butt.
[1246] Okay.
[1247] So one night he breaks into her apartment.
[1248] He only has an umbrella in his hand.
[1249] He's wearing a Frankenstein mask.
[1250] But remember, he's four foot nine.
[1251] That's scary.
[1252] It's horrifying.
[1253] He goes into her room.
[1254] She's asleep.
[1255] And he's standing there trying to figure out what to do first.
[1256] And his knee touches her leg and he wakes her up.
[1257] So a tiny Frankenstein with an umbrella is standing next to her bed.
[1258] She starts screaming.
[1259] He freaks out.
[1260] He goes to run away.
[1261] She grabs him by the and wrestles him to the ground and calls the cops so the cops come they arrest him what the fuck on attempted rape charges but then um he says father is very rich and there has a big influential fancy job so the father pays off this german woman um to drop the charges so she takes the money and she's like see you later alligator and nothing else happens oh except for they sent him to a psychiatrist again okay um but like this now this time now the whole family knows yeah he goes to the psychiatrist the psychiatrist gets downloaded all the shit that's going on with him and uh the psychiatrist comes back um and tells him or his parents or whatever that he is a sexual psychopath and extremely dangerous oh my god they're like thanks a million and they do nothing later days so five years later in 1977 he say moves to Paris to pursue his Ph .D. in comparative literature at the Sorbonne.
[1262] I mean, I didn't graduate, I didn't finish community college.
[1263] And I'm not a sexual sadist.
[1264] That's, both of those things are true.
[1265] Yeah.
[1266] Two, two truths and a lie.
[1267] Let's hear that lie.
[1268] That's crazy.
[1269] Well, also, he's clearly very high level.
[1270] Yeah, yeah.
[1271] Intelligence.
[1272] Yeah.
[1273] So there's a, there's so much going on.
[1274] Okay.
[1275] So I don't feel bad.
[1276] Yeah, don't feel bad at all.
[1277] He's surrounded by, now he's in Paris, though, surrounded by the object of his, the objects of his sadistic, murderous fantasies.
[1278] Everywhere he looks, there's these big, huge, comparatively Western women that he has been spending all of his young life in Japan obsessing over and thinking about and rarely seeing, now he's fucking smack dab in the middle.
[1279] Oh, shit.
[1280] So, in 1979, he basically is, he's, of course, still thinking about it.
[1281] He's like, he wants to do it.
[1282] He knows he has to.
[1283] It's his obsession.
[1284] Then in 1979, the American actress Gene Seberg commits suicide in her car in Paris.
[1285] And it's right near his apartment.
[1286] And so he sees that as a sign that now it's time to start committing the, basically to make his fantasy go true.
[1287] No, it's not.
[1288] Yeah.
[1289] So throughout that year, he started hiring sex workers to come back to his apartment, but he never had the guts to do anything out of control in any way that anybody reported or anybody knew about.
[1290] But then one day, Renee Hartfeldt walks into his classroom and he is immediately obsessed with her.
[1291] He thinks she's beautiful.
[1292] He starts drawing pictures of her, and he begins to plan her murder so that he can eat her.
[1293] her.
[1294] Oh, my God.
[1295] Um, so, so we skip back to the night where he shoots her, he faints.
[1296] Poor baby.
[1297] When he comes to, rapes the corpse.
[1298] Then he tries to tear her flesh with his teeth.
[1299] Oh my God.
[1300] But it doesn't work.
[1301] He can't do it.
[1302] So he leaves and he goes and buys a butcher knife.
[1303] What the fuck?
[1304] He comes back to his apartment and over the next two days, he, um, cuts her up and cooks some of her flesh.
[1305] Oh, my God.
[1306] And then on the night of June 12th, like basically two days later, he takes a cab carrying two big, huge, heavy suitcases to a place called Bois de Beaulant.
[1307] I think I pronounced not, right.
[1308] That sounded gorgeous.
[1309] Thank you.
[1310] It sounded right.
[1311] Bolon.
[1312] It's a public park, okay, in Paris, that has a big lake.
[1313] And his plan, it's 8 .30 at night.
[1314] His plan, he's going to take these two suitcases that have her cut up body park.
[1315] in them and put them into the lake no but he doesn't know that there's a restaurant lakeside oh shit so as he is struggling with two huge heavy suitcases trying to pull them down to the lake all these people witness him and they're like eating their fucking chicken diane right and they're like look at their french onion soup tiny Japanese man and their baguettes that's right and they see a tiny Japanese man struggling struggling struggling with two suitcases to the point where he He struggles for so long to get them down into the water.
[1316] He finally gives up near the edge of the lake, lays down on a bench, and goes to sleep.
[1317] When he wakes up, he sees an old man opening one of the suitcases.
[1318] When the old man sees what's inside, he starts screaming, and Isay gets up and calmly walks away.
[1319] Holy shit.
[1320] And disappears.
[1321] How the fuck have I never heard of this banana story?
[1322] Isn't that crazy?
[1323] I've heard, I have heard like large swaths.
[1324] Yes.
[1325] That's, it's because I was waving my hand.
[1326] You know what?
[1327] You were like doing a paintbrush.
[1328] I've swathed it, but I never knew these fucking nuts of details.
[1329] So he just fucking high tails it out of there slowly, which just creeps me out.
[1330] Yeah, yeah.
[1331] So they basically, all those witnesses call the police.
[1332] The police, they all say, yep, we saw a cab drop.
[1333] this guy off he tried to do this whatever they find the cab driver the cab driver is like yeah i assumed i was taking him to the train station because he had these two huge suitcases and they're like what's his address so they go to his address he's walking out as the police are walking up and he just immediately confesses to everything so they don't there's he's just arrested and take it in but then the police have to go up into his apartment and what they find up there is the grisliest grossest seen there's more yes because well because he had cut up her body and so there was wrapped up body parts in his refrigerator and there's cooked body parts on plates on his kitchen table along with a plate of peas no like it was like he had set up this whole dinner and he had he had been like kind of you know eating eating for days oh my god so he is held in prison in Paris but his father his rich father gets him a high -powered attorney, he comes in front of the judge, Judge Louis Brugier, I think, accent agueu, and that judge declares that anybody who would prepare in advance to kill any someone could not be mentally sound.
[1334] And so he believes that a Sagawa is suffering from advanced dementia.
[1335] And he orders him to be confined and definitely to the Henri Collin asylum for the criminally insane.
[1336] There's no trial.
[1337] So while he's in the asylum, Japanese writer, Inihiko Yamota, hopefully, interviews him about these crimes and about his life.
[1338] And they have a bunch of conversations, talk a bunch, and eventually they turn all of that into a biography about Sagawa called In the Fog.
[1339] And when that biography comes out in Japan, it fucking sells out nationwide.
[1340] Oh, holy shit.
[1341] What the fuck?
[1342] But since no murder charge is ever brought against him in France, the French authorities end up deporting Sagawa back to Japan.
[1343] And he's sent to a place called the Matsu Matsuzawa hospital.
[1344] his father's forced to resign from his high power job his mother attempts suicide so this of course is horrible for the family sure um but isae is becoming a cult phenomenon so when the book sells people are fascinated and they say that they think the theory is because western women are just a kind of a conceptualized object over there he became like an anti -hero oh my god so it was it was like this thing of it wasn't it wasn't personal to anybody because none of these women looked like any of them so it was just this kind of um yeah it was just kind of the perfect objectification where people could just be fascinated by the gris grisly hideousness of the crime like it was the murder of an idea not an actual woman whose family was mourning her it was like he wanted to murder this idea and with that the media went berserk and at one point the magazine, it's a French magazine called Perry Match and it publishes previously unseen shocking photos of René's dismembered corpse it's such a scandal, a reporter actually gets arrested for it and a million copies of the magazine are seized by the authorities.
[1345] Oh my God.
[1346] So they fucking go round that shit up.
[1347] Can you find it online?
[1348] No, I didn't look.
[1349] I didn't look at ATIC.
[1350] I would never, I wouldn't look either.
[1351] Yeah.
[1352] I would never would.
[1353] I saw the plate of peas in one of the documentaries, and I was like, I just, I'm never going to get that plate of peas out of my head on that dinner table.
[1354] Sure.
[1355] That's plenty for me. But it was that, it was that kind of insane media frenzy that kind of was making, making it popular and so well known.
[1356] Well, then on August 12, 1986, Sagawa is set free from the mental hospital that he was sent to due to lack of evidence.
[1357] against him because the French authorities had all the evidence and they locked it up and they lock him up in Japan it's not yeah yeah it doesn't so basically he's got the he's got the juice to get him out shit his family gets him out three years later um a man in Japan abducts and kills four girls he basically this guy goes on a murder spree and the media goes to Sagoa and asks him to weigh in on the killer and from there he becomes He starts to become a, like, a media celebrity.
[1358] He starts becoming a columnist for newspapers.
[1359] He writes, after In the Fog, which was his first book, he writes 18 more books about himself, cannibalism, his murder, all of it.
[1360] You've got to be a psychopath if you can write 18 fucking books, man. For real.
[1361] I'm not, like, joking about writing books.
[1362] Like, that's crazy.
[1363] No, and also all about himself.
[1364] So, like, so crazy, crazy self -obsession.
[1365] he also appears on television shows and begins to work the lecture circuit no yeah um eventually and this is the part where uh i watched the channel four documentary and then there was another another documentary um from 2007 and i think it was also a british one from channel five um but i might just be saying that because the other one was from channel four but uh that also interviewed him and much older, and he started starring in porno.
[1366] Sado masochistic porn where he would be getting beat up, tied up, slapped around by big Western women, white women.
[1367] Oh my God.
[1368] One of the pornoes that he stars in featured him having a relationship with a Dutch woman, where they actually go to like this theme park that's Dutch themed.
[1369] So it is like beyond the bounds of good bad taste beyond the bounds of exploitation like he enjoys the fact that he is he is like this disgusting celebrity for this crime family yes yeah that's what everyone all the people the talking heads in these documentaries the cops and there's a there's a really amazing um a professor a professor that they talk to from Cambridge who's like all of his books are immoral garbage So does the judge who in France, does he get talk shit on who was like, he's just crazy, let's send him away?
[1370] It doesn't seem like it.
[1371] No, none of those things really seem to be connected in any way.
[1372] Like if he had been brought to trial in France, then maybe.
[1373] But basically.
[1374] I'm not fucking blaming French people, just that one judge or it's like you got to let other people decide if he's crazy or not.
[1375] Maybe it was his theory and there wasn't enough, like, psychological evidence to argue it.
[1376] Yeah.
[1377] But I mean, yeah, that's, I think that that was the beginning of the breakdown.
[1378] Also, if his dad had enough money, and this is, again, just a theory of mine I'm making up in the, on the spot, he might have just paid that judge off and he's just like, yeah, it's that or he would have gotten, if the trial, if it had gone to trial, he would have had a fucking great attorney and would have gotten him off anyway, so it wouldn't have mattered.
[1379] I mean, the whole, but the whole thing is so insane and disgusting because he did it.
[1380] He said he did it.
[1381] The evidence proves he did it.
[1382] He took this life and then did.
[1383] defiled it the worst way he possibly could and then just kind of nothing happened so in these documentaries he's he's telling people about him he's taught he loves talking about himself you can tell laughing and he says he he claims that he has no desire to murder anyone but he still wants to eat a woman so it's not the murder he yeah tries to rationalize okay but it's just the eating of the flesh and he also you clearly he is romanticized and rationalize this idea, that whole theory of if I just eat someone, I will be whole and all that stuff is basically kind of his like calling card of like, here's why I did it.
[1384] And it's almost poetic how I needed this because I'm so small and ugly for me. Yeah.
[1385] When it's like, yeah, okay, go on.
[1386] In 2009, he gave a vice and interview in vice.
[1387] So vice did a whole story about him, which I didn't watch because after the second documentary I watched, I was like, I've had it with this.
[1388] guy yeah but stephen told me a super hilarious part do you want to tell everybody that part okay so yeah when i was reading or looking at this interview my the part that really stuck out to me was the interviewer at some point i think like a third of the way through he said i'm just going to plot ahead with these questions so i can get the fuck out of here that's how creepy this guy is oh my god like and at the beginning of the excuse me for living documentary it's really beautifully and amazingly shot he's getting a haircut, but he's just staring into the camera as someone cuts his hair.
[1389] And I swear to God, he doesn't blink for like two minutes.
[1390] Oh my God.
[1391] It's really, really fucking unnerving and very strange.
[1392] I don't want to watch it.
[1393] I want to see a photo.
[1394] Yeah, you have to look at it.
[1395] But when Stephen sent me that text, I was just like, holy shit.
[1396] Like, it must, he must be so much even more up his ass after, because he's still alive.
[1397] He's still free.
[1398] He both his parents died.
[1399] He's fucking famous.
[1400] Yes.
[1401] He doesn't have any money.
[1402] Um, Like, he had to pay off his parents' debts, and, you know, he was, like, living in whatever state -run housing for a while or whatever, but basically he's living free and he's kind of doing whatever he wants, and people are still talking to him about his crime, even to this day.
[1403] Oh, also, in that vice interview, I read a thing where he said, he would love to be killed by a beautiful woman.
[1404] or he would love to drown in female saliva.
[1405] Ew.
[1406] And that, my friend, is Japanese cannibal, Isay, Sagawa.
[1407] What the fucking fuck.
[1408] Is not nuts?
[1409] Yes.
[1410] There's lots of things you can watch with that guy in it talking about himself.
[1411] I just want to see a photo of him, but I don't want to watch anything.
[1412] Okay.
[1413] Is that fair?
[1414] We'll get you a photo.
[1415] I'll email you a photo later tonight.
[1416] I would love that.
[1417] Okay, perfect.
[1418] oh god yeah i need a a fucking hooray silkwood shower after this episode how about we fucking hooray ourselves out of out of all those bad vibes right now let's do it okay this is something that i found a guy that i follow on twitter name adam jeskowitz jeskowitz yeah um he tweeted this uh this afternoon and i i can't stop watching it so apparently on the lakers i'm about to talk about basketball, which I know nothing about Get Ready.
[1419] Okay.
[1420] We're going into a totally new territory.
[1421] I'm ready.
[1422] I'm scared.
[1423] I'm here with you.
[1424] Stay with me. Let's do it.
[1425] Apparently the Los Angeles Lakers.
[1426] Heard of them.
[1427] That's a team here in our city.
[1428] I'm heard of it.
[1429] They, there is a guy who last night played in the game of basketball.
[1430] Okay.
[1431] He spent 10 years in something called the G League.
[1432] Okay.
[1433] So he basically was like a farm team is what I'm assuming for basketball spent 10 years playing in it and last night played his first they brought him up to the big leagues and they he played his first game as a Los Angeles Laker against Houston he scored fucking 19 points people were chanting MVP he just keeps hitting threes you have to see there is I'm assuming those are all good things I don't know yes it's the best amazing there is a one minute video that I retweeted onto my Twitter that I started watching and I couldn't stop crying and this is what I love, Adam Jaskiewicz, who tweeted it originally wrote, even if you don't enjoy basketball, this is pretty lovely.
[1434] Dude fought for a decade for this moment and when it finally happened, it was perfect.
[1435] He's also a volunteer tutor to kids and seems like a genuinely good person.
[1436] And in this video, his teammates are up off the bench fucking screaming.
[1437] It is like one of the most inspirational, beautiful things.
[1438] I've ever seen.
[1439] And as someone who, like, you know, I've lived in Los Angeles for 24 fucking years.
[1440] I have tried to do things and given up about four different times.
[1441] Oh, yeah.
[1442] And to see a thing like that where this is a guy that just plugged along and then walked out on the court and nailed it.
[1443] And he's in his 30s, I think.
[1444] So, which is, you know, for NBA player, not young.
[1445] Just fucking incredible.
[1446] Like, if you get a chance, even if you don't give a shit about sports, look it up you will fucking love this story okay it's the best i love it it made me so happy you're crying right now it's i do i did a light cry i just fucking really relate his name again andre ingram and he congratulations l -a laker andre ingram because the world fucking loves you right now suddenly we care about fucking basketball they made us care i have i too want to shout out two Instagrams that are making me happy or like social media things one is this i but i follow this fucking body positive model uh on instagram name uh ali tate who posts these photos of herself that are so she's what one would call a plus size model which means she looks like a normal woman right and she posts photos of herself in beautiful clothing.
[1447] She posts photos of herself in bathing suits and she has my body.
[1448] She has a normal woman's body and she's so positive about it.
[1449] She posts these photos where she's naked and bending over and there's roles and it's just made me look at my own body and be like, that just because you have those things doesn't mean it's unattractive and it's been really wonderful and she seems really sweet.
[1450] So that's Allie Tate.
[1451] The other one that's not body positive, but it's been making me fucking crack up.
[1452] And I think it's brand new.
[1453] It's called Honest Couple.
[1454] Oh, yes.
[1455] That's Jake Wiseman.
[1456] Jake Wiseman created this fucking Instagram account.
[1457] It's so funny.
[1458] He takes fucking, like, stock photos of couples that just look like the most annoying couples you've ever seen in your life and posts the honest caption of what one of them is really thinking.
[1459] And I just cannot get enough of it.
[1460] And I love it so much.
[1461] So I think he needs to it needs to be a thing yeah it's so hilarious it's like two people it looks like they're on a hike and they're taking a selfie of themselves they're both smiling and gorgeous like stock photo and then underneath it it says he hasn't made her come in two years right or to say he made me cry three minutes after this photo was taken it's just like or her friends are the least funny people I've ever met in my like it's just this he was like I'm sick of these photos of like perfect couples and then you find out they broke up a week later so here's what's really fucking happening it's so hilarious he's the best he's so funny and also watch corporate on comedy central because he's one of the one of the stars of that's right yeah great stand -up comic he is really funny oh matt inglebritson too of course yeah matt calm down matt you're tall you're tall you got it um thanks for listening you guys god was this a three fucking hour episode that was nuts it feels like it it was a three can fucking sparkling wine episode that's how you know george just threw half a six pack a wine and feeling fine.
[1462] Feeling myself.
[1463] Feeling fine.
[1464] Sink it.
[1465] Georgia, sink it.
[1466] That's a basketball chute.
[1467] It's all full fucking circle.
[1468] It comes back to fucking cheerleading.
[1469] We always bring it back around for you, the listener.
[1470] We love you.
[1471] Stay sexy.
[1472] And don't get murdered.
[1473] Goodbye.
[1474] Oh, Elvis.
[1475] I think he's ended up.
[1476] He's right there.
[1477] You want cookie?
[1478] Nah.
[1479] Good boy.