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Everyone, I want to share my
newest podcast with you, Unsafe Spaces.

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Unsafe Spaces is an investigative, serialized
true crime podcast that explores the crimes that

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take place in the places we're supposed
to feel the safest. In season one,

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Tampa's Missing Men, I explore how
two different missing persons cases reported on

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the same day opened a Pandora's box
of unreported assaults, cold missing persons cases,

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ignored rapes, and unsolved murders within
Florida's gay community, and the two

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men who could be responsible for all
of them, not to mention the cold

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cases of missing gay men in Georgia, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Jersey,

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South Carolina, and beyond. I'm
going to play you a clip now from

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Unsaved Spaces while you're listening. Subscribe
to Unsafe Spaces wherever you get your podcasts.

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Let's violate world. Let's bring our
fantasies to realities. I'm extreme,

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calculated and loving. Easy to make
them vanish with no link to us in

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the least, easier to find a
loner guy, less connection. I do

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a chokehold from behind. You hold
him down, strap him up, not

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to be found again. He wasn't
going to be going back. These are

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quotes from America Online instant messages between
Master Scott, who we now know is

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Scott Schweikert, and Dom Dude for
sub, who we now know is Stephen

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Lorenzo. Whenever I take on a
new case, the first question I find

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myself asking is how did we get
here? What series of events, both

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personal and anthropological, created an environment
for these crimes to have occurred? And

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in this case the answer is a
lot more complicated than in others I've cover,

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because in order to understand these crimes, we have to understand not just

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gay culture, but societies effect on
it. We have to understand power dynamics

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and couples. We have to take
a look at law enforcements and media's roles

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in crime. It's often a challenging, convoluted, and heart breaking study in

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humanity, and so it's hard to
know just where to start, because more

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often than not, beginnings are just
the reverberations from a coalescence of events that

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came before. Few things rarely begin
anymore. Usually they just carry over.

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But for now, I guess we'll
start with December twenty second of two thousand

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and three. On December twenty second
two thousand and three, there were two

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different missing persons cases filed with a
Tampa, Florida police Department. The first

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was of twenty six year old Jason
Rodney Galehouse, a gay man who had

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recently moved to Tampa from Sarasota,
Florida. Jason was reported missing by his

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roommate at eleven twenty five am on
the morning of the twenty second. His

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roommate reported that on the night of
Friday, December nineteenth, he, Jason,

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and two of their friends a couple, had gone out bar hopping in

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Tampa. The four of them eventually
ended up twenty six oh six, a

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gay bar on North Armenia Avenue in
the early morning hours of December twentieth.

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Because the four friends had driven to
twenty six oh six together, Jason didn't

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have his car with him, and
when it was time to leave, Jason

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told his friends that he didn't need
a ride because he was going to go

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home with two guys he'd met at
the bar. It was the last time

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that Jason's friend saw him, and
unfortunately, none of them saw either of

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the two men that Jason left the
bar with. Detective Carlos Lastra was the

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responding officer in Jason's missing person case, and he took the disappearance seriously.

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Immediately following Jason's roommate's interview and AFFI, David Lastra went to Jason's place of

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work, a flower shop where Jason
was a floral designer, and upon interviewing

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Jason's boss, he learned that Jason
hadn't been to work in three days,

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which was very unlike him. In
a follow up interview with Jason's roommate,

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the one who had reported him missing, he told Lastra that he had known

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Jason for years, that they were
childhood friends. Back in Sarasota, he

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let Lastra search the house that he
shared with Jason and another roommate, and

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when pressed about Jason's life, he
admitted that Jason had been to the hospital

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on two different occasions for drug overdoses, but that had been years prior.

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He said that since then, Jason
no longer used GHB. JHB is a

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depressant drug that slows down messages traveling
between the brain and the body. It's

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also a party drug and often referred
to as the date rape drug, but

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he said that Jason did still occasionally
snort cocaine and that Jason had been going

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to twenty six oh six every weekend
for the past six several months. He

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said that Jason did have a habit
of using recreational drugs and hooking up with

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guys from the bars, and he
confirmed that after reaching out to friends,

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no one in their friend group had
seen nor heard from Jason since he left

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the bar that night. The second
missing person's report that was filed with Tampa

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Pedee on the twenty second was for
twenty six year old Michael Wocholes. Michael

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had recently moved to Tampa from Tarpin
Springs, Florida, about forty miles away

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northwest. He was working as a
waiter at Bahama Breeze. According to his

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former roommates, Michael was a happy, go lucky guy who'd recently reconnected with

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his estranged mother and had begun dating
again after a break up the previous year.

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They said that Michael had started going
out with men he'd met in internet

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chat room zones and that it was
something they worried about, But it was

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Michael's new roommate, Fred Van Denebel, who reported him missing when he failed

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to return home from a night out
According to reports, Michael was last seen

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in his red nineteen ninety two Jeep
Cherokee leaving his Bay Club apartment in Tampa's

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Rocky Point neighborhood between eleven PM and
midnight on December twentieth, almost twenty four

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hours after Jason Galehouse was last seen
leaving twenty six oh six. It was

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unclear where exactly Michael was headed that
night. He spoke with several friends on

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his cell phone after leaving his apartment, but only said that he was going

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out for drinks. Michael's cell phone
and jeep disappeared with him, and there'd

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be no signs of Michael nor any
major leads in his case for two weeks

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following his disappearance. Now, there
are a few different things at play in

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the production of this podcast. For
one, I am a gay man around

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the same age Michael and Jason would
be now, so it's hard not to

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experience this investigation or see the people
involved through a personal lens. Second,

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and more critical, the only way
to discuss this case holistically is to share

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as best I can the gay experience
and gay culture written large. It's a

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defining factor in both this story and
in the spaces we'll be discussing and despite

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how media often portrays it, homosexuality
is not a monolith. So throughout the

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season, I'll be playing conversations I've
had with gay men across the country and

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of all ages about their experiences and
how those experiences have defined their relationship with

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homosexuality, their relationships with other gay
men, and their identity as a whole.

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This is a part of a conversation
I had with an old friend,

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Eric Schmidt, about drug and alcohol
abuse amongst gay men. Drug and alcohol

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abuse runs pretty rampant within the gay
community, or at least it did when

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you know, when we were I
think it's I think it still does.

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And you know, I for me, I can only imagine that that comes

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from or I will speak for myself, like when I have over imbibed or

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putting myself in risky positions with substances, it was because I didn't feel comfortable

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in my own skin, or I
had self loathing or lack of confidence and

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was just afraid and needed something to
take my head away from my body.

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I guess yeah, And I wonder
if that has been your experience as well.

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I absolutely, I would say absolutely, I think I think also,

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you know, again going back to
that, like we don't we don't date

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as teenagers, we don't learn how
to form intimate relationships with people as teenagers,

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and then drugs and alcoholicure do make
that easier. I think a lot

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of my drug use was was very
wrapped up in the perceived intimacy of either

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getting high with somebody, using with
somebody. The sex that we were going

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to have while we were while we
were high absolutely went hand in hand with

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me being able to move into a
sexual space that I you know, didn't

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get in the shallow end of the
poolung