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Speaker 1: Imagine for just a second walking into a windowless room.

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The heavy iron door clicks shut behind you, and the

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first thing that hits you isn't the dark, it's the silence.

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Speaker 2: Oh right, that absolute, suffocating sea.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, It's absolute and just well unnatural. So you

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run your hands along the walls, the ceiling, the floor,

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and you realize they are completely lined with thick firebrius asbestos.

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Speaker 2: Which is terrifying on its own.

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Speaker 1: Honestly, right, but it's designed specifically to swallow any possible

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sound before it can escape. Or picture a totally different

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kind of terror.

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Speaker 2: I'm with you.

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Speaker 1: You're exhausted from a long day of travel. You check

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into this grandiose, historic hotel in the heart of a

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bustling downtown metropolis. Sounds nice, actually, sure, until you ride

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the vintage elevator up, drop your bags on the bed,

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and look out the window, completely unaware that the very

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foundation of the building you're sleeping in supposedly sits atop

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a literal.

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Speaker 2: Hellmel Oh wow, a hellmet Yeah.

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Speaker 1: A swirling demonic vortex spewing dark energies straight up through

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the floorboard. That took a turn, it really did. But

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I mean we tend to think of the most terrifying

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monsters in human history, right, the serial killers, whose names

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we sort of whisper in the dark. We think of

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them as lone wolves acting out their own twisted fantasies.

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Speaker 2: Right, isolated monster exactly.

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Speaker 1: But what if they weren't working alone? Like, what if

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they were just ponds in a much larger, much darker game.

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Speaker 2: It is a profoundly unsettling thought. I mean, it really is,

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and yet it's a thought that has captivated the public

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imagination for decades.

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Speaker 1: It really has.

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Speaker 2: We are just endlessly drawn to the idea that there's

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a man behind the curtain, you know, someone orchestrating the horror.

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Speaker 1: Well, welcome to Thrilling Threads. Today. We are embarking on

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a massive, intricate exploration of ten of the most chilling, outlandish,

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and quite frankly wildly popular conspiracy theories surrounding famous serial killers.

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Speaker 2: It's going to be a wild drive, it is.

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Speaker 1: Our mission today is to unravel the truth, untangle the fiction,

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and really get into the human psychology behind why these

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theories exist in the first place.

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Speaker 2: Which is the most fascinating part to me.

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Speaker 1: For sure. We're going to be looking at historical documents,

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crime scene anomalies, and the bizarre cultural mythologies that just

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spring up around these figures. There's so much material to cover,

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so much, but just a quick note before we dive

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into the deep end here. Some of the theories we

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are looking at today touch on real political figures, government agencies,

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and historical movements.

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Speaker 2: We get into some sensitive territory.

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Speaker 1: We do, so we want to assure you the listener,

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that we are impartially exploring these theories exactly as they

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are presented in the historical record.

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Speaker 2: We aren't endorsing any viewpoints.

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Speaker 1: Exactly, and we certainly aren't taking any political sides. We

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are just here to follow the threads of information and

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see exactly where they leave.

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Speaker 2: Setting that baseline is super crucial, because, well, the psychology

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of why we create and consume these conspiracy theories is

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arguably just as fascinating as the theories themselves. When you

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look at the overarching theme of what we are unpacking today,

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a really central question emerges. Why on earth do we

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construct these massive, elaborate, sometimes completely illogical conspiracies about serial killers?

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Speaker 1: Right? Why do we need the story to be bigger?

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Speaker 2: Well, the answer lies in how the human brain processes

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trauma and senseless horror. Evolutionarily speaking, our brains absolutely despise senselessness.

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Speaker 1: We hate it well on a reason for everything exactly.

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Speaker 2: We are pattern recognition machines. We survived as a species

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by understanding that, you know, dark clouds.

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Speaker 1: Mean rain, and a rustling in the bushes means a

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tiger or something.

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Speaker 2: Right, we crave a why so, when confronted with the

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horrific reality that a completely ordinary looking person like by

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next door, Yeah, the guy who might live next door

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or bag your groceries or attend year university, when we

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realize that person is capable of unspeaking, random violence entirely

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on their own, it completely shatters our fundamental sense of safety.

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Speaker 1: Because if it's random, you can't predict it, and if

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you can't predict it, I mean it, can't protect yourself

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from it. It's this terrifying vulnerability. It is, and this

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is where the conspiracy theory actually acts as a bizarre

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psychological shield. Like as wild as it sounds, it is

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genuinely more comforting for the human mind to believe in

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a grand shadowy syndicate.

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Speaker 2: Or a clandestine government mind control program.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, or even a supernatural demonic force than it is

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to just accept random chaos.

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Speaker 2: Precisely because if there is a shadowy syndicate or a

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demon or a government plot, then there is a mechanism

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behind the madness. There's a structure to the evil, right,

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it has rules exactly, And if there's a structure, perhaps

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it can be understood or tracked, or avoided or even dismantled.

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A conspiracy theory provides rules to a game that otherwise

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has none. That makes so much sense because if the

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violence is just random, chaotic and born from the fractured

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mind of an individual acting completely alone, well that means

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no one is truly safe anywhere at any time.

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Speaker 1: That is deeply terrifying. And that desire to put a

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framework around chaos brings us right to the concept of

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the architecture of evil.

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Speaker 2: Yes, the physical spaces right.

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Speaker 1: We often try to explain away horror by blaming the

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physical environment itself, like creating buildings or geography as the

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actual culprits.

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Speaker 2: It's a fascinating shift of blame.

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Speaker 1: To see how this works in practice, we really have

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to look at the mid nineteen eighties in California, during

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the absolutely paralyzing reign of terror of the nightstalker Richard Ramirez.

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Speaker 2: Ramirez is the ultimate embodiment of the kind of random,

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chaotic violence we were just discussing they really was. During

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his crime spree, which is the spring and summer of

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nineteen eighty five, he murdered at least fifteen people and

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left many more injured and deeply traumatized.

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Speaker 1: Just a horrific, horrific spree.

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Speaker 2: And what made Ramirez so uniquely terrifying to the public

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was his complete lack of a recognizable modus operandi, no none,

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He didn't target a specific demographic. His victims ranged in

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age from children to the elderly. There were men and

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women of various ethnicities and socioeconomic background.

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Speaker 1: So nobody felt safe exactly, and.

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Speaker 2: The weapons very too, from guns to knives to blunt objects.

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There was no pattern, which meant the entire population of

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Los Angeles felt like they were in the crosshairs.

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Speaker 1: And La was sweltering in this massive heat wave at

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the time, right, but people were literally nailing their windows

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shut in.

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Speaker 2: The dead of summer.

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Speaker 1: The fear was palpable, it was suffocating. And during this

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horrific spree, Ramirez frequently stayed at the Cecil hotel in downtown.

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Speaker 2: Los Angeles, a notorious Cecil Hotel.

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Speaker 1: Yes, Now, the Cecil has a remarkably dark history all

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on its own. Long before Rameirez checked in, it was infamous.

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Speaker 2: Oh absolutely.

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Speaker 1: It was built in the nineteen twenties as a destination

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for business travelers, right, but then the Great Depression hit,

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the surrounding neighborhood decayed into what we now know as

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skid row, and the hotel became this long term residence

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for transience.

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Speaker 2: It fell on very hard times.

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Speaker 1: Very quickly, it really did. And over the decades it

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just became this hot spot for suicides, overdoses, and unsolved murders.

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It developed a reputation as a place where criminals could

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just vanish into the labyrinth of hallways.

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Speaker 2: The concentration of tragedy in that single building is statistically staggering.

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It just naturally breeds folklore.

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Speaker 1: And that folklore exploded into a massive paranormal conspiracy. Because

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of this dark history, the theory emerged that the Cecil

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Hotel doesn't just attract bad people, It actually sits atop

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a literal hellmouth.

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Speaker 2: A hellmouth. It's such an evocative.

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Speaker 1: Term, right. In occult terms, a hellmouth is a demonic vortex,

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like a tear in the fabric of reality that spews

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out dark, corrupting energy.

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Speaker 2: It sounds like a movie plot.

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Speaker 1: It really does. The conspiracy suggests that Ramirez wasn't just

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a psychopath making his own horrific choices. Instead, the theory

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frames him as an avatar, like a vessel, exactly a

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vessel possessed and energized by the building supernatural forces.

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Speaker 2: It's a profound shift of accountability. I mean it takes

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the agency entirely away from the killer and projects it

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under the architecture.

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Speaker 1: It really does. When I was digging into this, I

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immediately thought of Stephen King's The Shining.

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Speaker 2: Oh that's a perfect comparison.

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Speaker 1: It is the exact same narrative structure, right the theory

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it turns Ramirez into an in real life Jack Torrance

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in The Shining Jack Torrance is a flawed guy, sure,

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but the Overlook Hotel is the actual villain.

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Speaker 2: The building makes him do it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, the building manipulates him, It feeds on his weaknesses,

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and it drives him to murder. This conspiracy theory does

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the exact same thing to the Cecil Hotel.

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Speaker 2: It makes the brick and mortar the antagonist.

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Speaker 1: Right, and here's where it gets really interesting. Think about

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the sheer horror of this for an everyday tourist. Oh man,

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Imagine you're visiting Los Angeles. You see a cheap rate

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for a historic hotel downtown and you book it. You

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wander into the lobby completely unaware that you are standing

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at ground zero of one of the most mythologized places

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in the United States.

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Speaker 2: Surrounded by people who truly believe the walls themselves are

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infected with the demonic virus.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, like, you're just looking for the ice machine and

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the building is supposedly vibrating with angel evil.

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Speaker 2: The psychological mechanism at play here is fascinating, though. Yeah,

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and it's deeply tied to how we process societal guilt.

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Speaker 1: Okay, guilt, how so?

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Speaker 2: Well, the helmet theory is an incredibly extreme, supernatural manifestation

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of confirmation bias.

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Speaker 1: Let's break that down because confirmation bias is usually talked

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about in terms of like reading news articles online or

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political bubbles, not demonic vortexes. So how does it apply

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to a haunted hotel.

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Speaker 2: Well, confirmation bias is our cognitive tendency to search for

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interpret favor and recall information in a way that confirms

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our prior beliefs.

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Speaker 1: Right, we see what we want to see exactly.

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Speaker 2: When you look at the Cecil Hotel, you are looking

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at a building located in an area that experienced severe,

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prolonged urban decay skid row. Yes, it became a magnet

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for people suffering from untreated mental illness, severe addiction, and

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extreme poverty. These are systemic, deeply entrenched societal failures, are

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huge problems, huge problems, and they are incredibly complex to solve,

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and quite frankly, they make us feel profoundly helpless and

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guilty as.

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Speaker 1: A society because we don't know how to fix it.

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Speaker 2: Right, So, when people look at the sheer volume of tragedy, despair,

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and violence concentrated at the Cecil, the brain struggles to

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process that this is just the mathematical result of poverty

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and neglect. It's too depressing, it is so to cope,

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they retroactively apply a supernatural spin to it, because it.

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Speaker 1: Is infinitely easier to point at a menacing looking building

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and say that place is cursed by a demon than

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it is to look in the mirror and say our

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civic infrastructure completely failed to support the vulnerable people living

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in this neighborhood. And this is the horrific consequence exactly.

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Speaker 2: Blaming a demonic vortex is a psychological escape patch, obss

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all society of its collective failures. Wow, if the building

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is possessed by ancient dark energy, then the urban decay,

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the mental illness, the violence, it's not our fault.

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Speaker 1: It's out of our hands.

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Speaker 2: Out of our hands. We couldn't have prevented it through

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better mental health funding or social safety nets. It's a supernatural.

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Speaker 1: Anomaly that is wild. It's like a dark modern way

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that humans use folklore to cope with harsh, unforgiving civic realities.

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Speaker 2: It's folklore as a defense mechanism.

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Speaker 1: Yes, that is deeply unsettling, but it completely tracks with

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how human nature operates. Now, sticking with this theme of

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how we process these narratives, we don't just use conspiracies

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to explain why people kill.

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Speaker 2: No, we don't.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes we use them to cope with how their stories end.

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The escapes, Yes, the escapes. This takes us back over

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a century ago to a remote farm in Laporte, Indiana.

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We are talking about the early twentieth century and a

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notorious killer named Bell gunness.

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Speaker 2: Bill Gunnis represents a completely different pypology of terror than

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Richard Ramirez.

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Speaker 1: Totally different.

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Speaker 2: Where Ramirez was chaotic, impulsive, and disorganized, Gunnis was cold, calculating,

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and highly methodical.

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Speaker 1: A businesswoman of murder.

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Speaker 2: Basically, she is the archetype of the black widow. She

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placed lonely hearts advertisements in Norwegian language newspapers across the Midwest,

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essentially advertising herself as a wealthy widow looking for a

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reliable partner to help.

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Speaker 1: Run her farm, and these guys just flocked to her,

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they did.

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Speaker 2: She allured these men, who often arrived carrying their entire

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life savings in cash.

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Speaker 1: Just walking into a trap with pockets full.

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Speaker 2: Of money, exactly, And once they were on her property,

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she murdered them, buried them in the hog pen, and

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kept the cash.

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Speaker 1: She turned murder into a highly efficient, industrialized financial scheme.

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Speaker 2: Industrialized is the perfect word for it.

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Speaker 1: But the conspiracy surrounding Belgunnis isn't about her methods. It's

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about her ultimate fate right the fire, Yes, So, in

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April of nineteen oh eight, her massive farmhouse burned to

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the ground, and when the authorities sifted through this smoldering ashes,

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they made a horrific discovery.

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Speaker 2: They found bodies.

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Speaker 1: They found the bodies of her children and alongside them

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the body of an adult woman. But there was a glaring,

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gruesome problem head the head. The adult woman's body was

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missing its head. Now, the immediate logical conclusion for the

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local authorities was that this headless body was Bell Gunnis

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and that she had perished in the fire alongside her kids.

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Speaker 2: The authorities desperately wanted that to be the case because

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it provided immediate closure. The killer is dead, case.

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Speaker 1: Closed right, tied up with a bow. But the physical forensics,

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even for nineteen oh eight standards, told a wildly different story.

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Speaker 2: It really complicated the narrative.

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Speaker 1: Entirely because Bell Gunnis was a famously large, physically imposing woman.

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Like she was tall and heavily built, But the headless

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body pulled from the fire was measured and it was

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significantly shorter and entirely too light to match Belle's known physique.

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Speaker 2: The math just didn't that.

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Speaker 1: Up, not at all. And then the plot thickens even further.

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Her hired hand, a man named Ray Lambfeir, was arrested

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and eventually convicted of arscene for setting the fire right,

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and while in prison, Lambfear confessed to a story that

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is nothing short of a Gothic horror novel. It is

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so macab He claimed that Gunnis had meticulously planned her

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own disappearance. She ordered him to burn the house down,

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but before that, she murdered a completely innocent woman, dressed

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the corpse in her own clothing, decapitated it so it

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couldn't be identified by dental records or facial features, and

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left it in the basement as a decoy.

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Speaker 2: And, according to Lampfeir, while the house burned and the

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authorities assumed she was dead, Bell Gunnis simply walked away

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into the night with a massive fortune and stolen cash.

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Speaker 1: Just walked away.

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Speaker 2: This discrepancy between the physical evidence and the official narrative

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is the anchor for the entire conspiracy.

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Speaker 1: It's crazy to this day.

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Speaker 2: Despite numerous exhumations and modern attempts at DNA testing on

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the remains over the years, it has never been definitively

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proven whether Bell Gunnis died in that wa fire or

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she orchestrated the ultimate escape.

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Speaker 1: I mean, think about the era we are dealing with here.

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This is nineteen oh eight. We are in an era

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long before DNA testing was a concept, before digital footprints,

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before facial recognition, social media, or national CCTV networks.

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Speaker 2: You could just vanish.

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Speaker 1: Exactly if you wanted to vanish. In nineteen oh eight,

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you bought a train ticket, changed your name, and you

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were gone.

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Speaker 2: It was startlingly easy to reinvent yourself.

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Speaker 1: But the sheer audacity of planning your own death using

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a body double is staggering. It is to decapitate the decoy,

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burn your own property to the ground, and just disappear

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into the dawn of the twentieth century. I mean, it

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sounds like the climax of a Hollywood thriller, but this

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was rural Indiana.

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Speaker 2: It is incredibly cinematic, which is exactly why this specific

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theory is endured for over one hundred years.

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Speaker 1: People love a good story, they do.

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Speaker 2: When we look at this through the lens of criminology

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and public perception. This ties directly into a phenomenon known

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as the myth of the mastermind.

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Speaker 1: The myth of the mastermind. Ok, this is a crucial concept.

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How does that function here?

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Speaker 2: Well, we have a deep seated collective anxiety about justice

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being evaded. Sure, society operates on the fundamental agreement that

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actions have consequences. When a killer like Gunnis supposedly dies

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in a fire before she can be arrested, put on trial,

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and forced to face the families of her victims, there

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is a profound lack of closure for society.

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Speaker 1: Right, it feels unfair like she cheated the system exactly.

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Speaker 2: The scales of justice remain permanently unbalanced. So psychologically we

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elevate her. We turn her into an evil genius, a

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criminal mastermind who is playing chess while the local police

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were playing checkers.

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Speaker 1: Wow, we make her smarter to explain why she wasn't caught.

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Speaker 2: Yes, the ambiguity of her death moralizes her, whether she

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actually choked on the smoke and burned in that basement,

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or whether she escaped to live out her days in

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luxury in California or Europe. The fact that we don't

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know for absolute certainty allows the mastermind myth.

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Speaker 1: To thrive, because we are terrified by the idea that

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someone could commit such Hannas acts and simply get away

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with it by being smarter than the system. Precisely, it's

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almost as if by leaning into the theory that she escaped,

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we are punishing ourselves in a way. Yes, like we're

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feeding our own latent anxiety that the bad guys can

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actually win if they are clever enough. And open question

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is so much more powerful than a closed book. Always

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a closed case just fades into the dry archives of history.

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But an unresolved, brilliant, gruesome escape that becomes a permanent

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legend that's thought on.

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Speaker 2: And that concept of elevating the killer to something larger

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than life leads us directly into another major psychological defense mechanism,

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which is, well, if we aren't blaming demonic architecture or

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marveling at the evil genius of a mastermind who escaped

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into the night, we tend to shift our focus to

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something else entirely, we shift our blame to organized human networks.

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Speaker 1: Oh right, the syndicates.

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Speaker 2: Yes, this is the most persistent vacic theme across all

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the historical cases were analyzing today. The terrifying idea that

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the killer didn't act alone.

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Speaker 3: The Falgar hypothesis exactly, the idea that the person caught

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holding the smoking gun, the person whose face is plastered

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on the front page of the newspaper, is just the

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tip of a massive, shadowy iceberg.

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Speaker 1: That is such a creepy thought. And to explore this

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we have to travel to New York City in the

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mid nineteen seventies, the summer of nineteen seventy seven, specifically.

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Speaker 2: A very chaotic time for New.

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Speaker 1: York, incredibly chaotic. The city was already dealing with a

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massive heat wave, rolling blackouts, and economic stagnation. It was

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a tinder box. And into this tinder box walked David Berkowitz,

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Son of Sam, Yeah, plunging the city into absolute terror

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with the Son of Sam shootings.

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Speaker 2: The Son of Sam case is a really fascinating study

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in the intersection of true crime, sensationalist media, and public hysteria.

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Speaker 1: It had all the ingredients it did.

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Speaker 2: Berkowitz targeted young people, often couples, sitting in parked cars

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late at night. The randomness of the attacks just parallel.

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Speaker 1: The city because again, no one knew who was next right.

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Speaker 2: And when he was finally arrested after a massive man hunt,

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he famously provided an explanation for his crimes that seemed

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rip straight from a horror film, The Dog the Dog.

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He claimed that his neighbour's dog, a black Labrador Retriever

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named Harvey, was possessed by an ancient demon named Sam,

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and this demon dog commanded him to kill.

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Speaker 1: Okay, looking back from a modern perspective, the idea of

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a talking demon possessed black lab barking orders to commit

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murder sounds utterly ridiculous.

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Speaker 2: It does sound absurd now.

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Speaker 1: And the historical record shows that Berkovitz eventually admitted this

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story was completely fake.

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Speaker 2: Right, Yes, he confessed to making it up.

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Speaker 1: He invented the demon dog narrative purely for the attention,

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hoping it would make him sound legally insane or at

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least more interesting to the press.

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Speaker 2: And it worked.

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Speaker 1: It totally worked, because in the cultural climate of nineteen

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seventy seven, that narrative was terrifying. It wasn't left off,

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it was front page news.

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Speaker 2: It perfectly mirrored the emerging anxieties of the era.

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Speaker 1: Yes, this is the absolute bedrock of what would soon

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explode into the satanic panic of the nineteen eighties.

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Speaker 2: It absolutely was the catalyst. Yes, the public was primed

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to believe in occult forces.

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Speaker 1: They were ready for it.

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Speaker 2: And what is truly fascinating is that, even after Berkowitz

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admitted the dog story was a fabrication, the conspiracy theory

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surrounding him didn't vanish.

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Speaker 1: It just mutated, exactly.

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Speaker 2: They slimply evolved in something far more complex and organized.

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This is where investigative journalist Maury Terry enters the picture.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: Terry spent decades meticulously building and championing a highly detailed

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theory that David Berkowitz was not a lone, disturbed gunman,

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but a fall guy. Right. He argued, Burkowitz was merely

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the fall guy for an intricate nationwide organization known as

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the Processed Church of the Final Judgment.

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Speaker 1: The Processed Church of the Final Judgment. Even the name

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sounds deliberately designed to invoke dread. It's very dramatic, it

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is so. The theory posits that the Processed Church was

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a highly organized, heavily armed Satanic cult with underground network

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stretching all the way from New York to California.

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Speaker 2: Coast to coast operation exactly.

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Speaker 1: And the proponents of this theory argue that Berkovitz was

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just a low level member upon when the police closed in,

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he was ordered to take the fall, spouting the nonsense

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about the demon Dog to cover for the cult's actual

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professional hit men.

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Speaker 2: It's an elaborate cover up theory, right.

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Speaker 1: And these hitmen were allegedly out there carrying out a

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master plan of societal terror, trying to bring about the

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apocalypse through random violence.

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Speaker 2: When you analyze this, you have to ask a fundamental question,

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which is why would the public of the nineteen seventies

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so readily, almost eagerly accept the idea of a nationwide

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underground Satanic network operating right under their noses?

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Speaker 1: Because accepting a cult is somehow easier than believing a

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frustrated postal worker was just driving around the boroughs shooting

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people for the throw of it.

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Speaker 2: That is a massive part of it. But we also

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have to look at the psychological profile of the killers

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themselves to understand why they feed these theory.

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Speaker 1: Okay, let's look at Berkowitz's mindset.

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Speaker 2: There is a constant, profound tension in the mind of

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a serial killer post capture. They are caught between two conflicting.

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Speaker 1: Desires, narcissism versus self preservation.

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Speaker 2: Precisely, the narcissistic desire to feel important, grandiose, and feared,

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versus the cowardly desire to avoid ultimate blame and moral

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responsibility for their butchery.

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Speaker 1: So they want the credit but not the punishment.

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Speaker 2: Yes, Berkovitz crave the infamy. He loved the son of

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Sam Moniker. He loves seeing his letters printed in the newspapers.

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Speaker 1: He was a media hound.

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Speaker 2: But by blaming a demon dog initially or later subtly

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encouraging theories of a grand cult, he disperses the moral

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weight of his actions. Oh, I see the narrative shifts

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from I'm a cruel murderer to I did it, but

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I was compelled by a supernatural force. Or I was

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just a small cog and a massive, terrifying machine that

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I couldn't control.

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Speaker 1: It's the ultimate having your cake and eating it too

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for a psychopath, it really is. He gets to be

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the star of the show, the center of national attention,

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without being the sole villain of.

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Speaker 2: The story exactly. He retains the spotlight but sheds the accountability.

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Speaker 4: Wow.

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Speaker 2: And from the public's perspective, look at the context of

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the nineteen seventies, it was a mess. It was a

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time of immense social upheaval, the fallout of the Vietnam War,

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the Watergate scandal, destroying trust in institutions, rapidly rising violent

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00:23:23,240 --> 00:23:23,839
crime rates.

474
00:23:23,880 --> 00:23:25,359
Speaker 1: Everyone is already paranoid.

475
00:23:25,480 --> 00:23:29,319
Speaker 2: Yes, so the mechanics of a cult a structured organization

476
00:23:29,440 --> 00:23:33,039
with a clear hierarchy and a master plan that felt

477
00:23:33,119 --> 00:23:36,960
like a plausible, logical explanation for the seemingly senseless decay

478
00:23:37,039 --> 00:23:38,039
of societal norms.

479
00:23:38,359 --> 00:23:41,559
Speaker 1: It gave the chaos a face, a name, and an agenda.

480
00:23:41,759 --> 00:23:45,640
Speaker 2: Exactly Believing in a master plan of societal terror implies

481
00:23:45,680 --> 00:23:47,559
that the terror has a definable goal.

482
00:23:47,599 --> 00:23:50,279
Speaker 1: Right, And perversely, fighting an enemy with a goal is

483
00:23:50,359 --> 00:23:53,559
far less frightening than facing terror for the sake of terror.

484
00:23:53,240 --> 00:23:55,000
Speaker 2: Because you can strategize against a goal.

485
00:23:55,079 --> 00:23:57,559
Speaker 1: You can fight a cult, You can arrest the leaders

486
00:23:57,559 --> 00:24:00,319
of a syndicate. You can't arrest the abstract cons accept

487
00:24:00,319 --> 00:24:01,319
of random violence.

488
00:24:01,680 --> 00:24:02,680
Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it.

489
00:24:02,880 --> 00:24:05,559
Speaker 1: This idea of the killer as a cog in the

490
00:24:05,599 --> 00:24:09,359
machine is a perfect bridge to our next historical case.

491
00:24:10,160 --> 00:24:12,759
We are taking this idea of an underground network and

492
00:24:12,799 --> 00:24:15,799
applying it to one of the most infamous, recognizable figures

493
00:24:15,799 --> 00:24:18,319
in American history, John Wayne Gacy.

494
00:24:18,599 --> 00:24:21,960
Speaker 2: Gasey is a figure who's confirmed historical reality is already

495
00:24:22,119 --> 00:24:26,119
so horrific, so beyond the pale of normal human comprehension,

496
00:24:26,519 --> 00:24:28,359
that it naturally breeds disbelief.

497
00:24:28,440 --> 00:24:30,880
Speaker 1: This shear scale of it is just hard to process

498
00:24:30,920 --> 00:24:31,440
the scale of.

499
00:24:31,359 --> 00:24:34,480
Speaker 2: His crimes truly challenges our understanding of how someone could

500
00:24:34,480 --> 00:24:35,960
operate undetected for so.

501
00:24:36,039 --> 00:24:39,240
Speaker 1: Long, right Because, on the surface, Gaysey was a pillar

502
00:24:39,319 --> 00:24:41,240
of his suburban Chicago community.

503
00:24:41,319 --> 00:24:42,200
Speaker 2: He was very involved.

504
00:24:42,240 --> 00:24:44,279
Speaker 1: He was He was a thirty six year old successful

505
00:24:44,319 --> 00:24:47,759
building contractor. He was heavily involved in local politics, a

506
00:24:47,839 --> 00:24:51,440
prominent member of the JCS, and most famously, he dressed

507
00:24:51,440 --> 00:24:53,960
as a clown to entertain children at local hospitals and

508
00:24:53,960 --> 00:24:57,440
block parties. Pogo the clown, Pogo the clown. The contrast

509
00:24:57,440 --> 00:25:02,279
between his public persona as a community servant and his

510
00:25:02,400 --> 00:25:05,440
private reality as a predator who murdered thirty three young

511
00:25:05,480 --> 00:25:07,680
men and boys and buried them in the crawl space

512
00:25:07,720 --> 00:25:09,559
beneath his house, it's just staggering.

513
00:25:09,880 --> 00:25:12,039
Speaker 2: It's the ultimate Jekyl and Hyde scenario.

514
00:25:12,319 --> 00:25:14,759
Speaker 1: It is. But the conspiracy theory we are looking at

515
00:25:14,759 --> 00:25:17,759
here has nothing to do with his clown persona. This

516
00:25:17,880 --> 00:25:21,480
theory strips away the personal pathology and replaces it with cold,

517
00:25:21,680 --> 00:25:26,079
hard logistics. The theory alleges that Gaycy was merely a

518
00:25:26,160 --> 00:25:31,680
disposal man for a massive nationwide human trafficking ring known

519
00:25:31,759 --> 00:25:33,160
as the Delta Project.

520
00:25:33,440 --> 00:25:37,200
Speaker 2: The terminology used in these theories is always so striking disposal.

521
00:25:37,240 --> 00:25:38,240
Speaker 1: Man, it's gross.

522
00:25:38,319 --> 00:25:42,960
Speaker 2: It completely dehumanizes the victims and sterilizes the crimes.

523
00:25:43,079 --> 00:25:45,880
Speaker 1: It really does. It's like the corporate outsourcing of murder,

524
00:25:46,079 --> 00:25:51,079
the chilling idea of subcontracting horrific crimes raadchilling. We naturally

525
00:25:51,079 --> 00:25:54,680
think of serial killers as being driven by uncontrollable, deeply

526
00:25:54,799 --> 00:25:58,680
personal compulsions, a psychological itch they have to scratch.

527
00:25:58,480 --> 00:25:59,599
Speaker 2: Right, an internal drive.

528
00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:02,920
Speaker 1: This theory frames it as a logistical supply chain. Like

529
00:26:02,960 --> 00:26:05,799
Gaycy wasn't hunting for his own gratification. He was just

530
00:26:05,839 --> 00:26:08,720
managing the grim logistics for a syndicate. He was the

531
00:26:08,799 --> 00:26:09,440
end of the line.

532
00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:12,480
Speaker 2: It turns him into a middle manager of murder exactly.

533
00:26:12,519 --> 00:26:15,279
Speaker 1: But when you step back, you have to ask, how

534
00:26:15,319 --> 00:26:19,119
does a part time clown and local contractor in Chicago

535
00:26:19,319 --> 00:26:22,160
get linked to a massive nationwide trafficking ring.

536
00:26:22,319 --> 00:26:25,000
Speaker 2: Well, this is where the conspiracy theory finds its footing

537
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:29,400
in verifiable historical facts, which is exactly what makes it

538
00:26:29,519 --> 00:26:33,119
so unnervingly sticky and difficult to completely debunk.

539
00:26:33,200 --> 00:26:34,359
Speaker 1: Okay, layout the facts for me.

540
00:26:34,720 --> 00:26:37,559
Speaker 2: When you dig into the history, the Delta Project was

541
00:26:37,599 --> 00:26:39,240
in fact a real entity.

542
00:26:39,319 --> 00:26:40,359
Speaker 1: It actually existed.

543
00:26:40,599 --> 00:26:44,119
Speaker 2: It existed, It was a known trafficking operation, and it

544
00:26:44,160 --> 00:26:46,759
was co run by a man named Philip Pasco. Okay,

545
00:26:47,279 --> 00:26:51,160
and here is the crucial chilling link that conspiracy theorists

546
00:26:51,279 --> 00:26:54,799
latch onto. Historical records confirmed that Philip Pasco was briefly

547
00:26:54,839 --> 00:26:58,400
employed by John Wayne Gacy's contracting business in the nineteen seventies.

548
00:26:58,440 --> 00:27:01,400
Speaker 1: See that's a staggering connection. It's not six degrees of separation,

549
00:27:01,480 --> 00:27:02,440
that's one degree.

550
00:27:02,519 --> 00:27:03,680
Speaker 2: It's direct contact.

551
00:27:03,720 --> 00:27:06,960
Speaker 1: And Gaysey himself lean heavily into this ambiguity, didn't.

552
00:27:06,720 --> 00:27:10,279
Speaker 2: He He absolutely did. Much like Berkowitz, Gaysey manipulated the

553
00:27:10,359 --> 00:27:11,440
narrative post capture.

554
00:27:11,519 --> 00:27:12,759
Speaker 1: He loved talking to the press.

555
00:27:13,039 --> 00:27:16,640
Speaker 2: In numerous jailhouse interviews, Gasey claimed that he did not

556
00:27:16,799 --> 00:27:20,519
act alone. He stated that his contracting business meant multiple

557
00:27:20,559 --> 00:27:23,200
people had keys to his house, and he claimed that

558
00:27:23,240 --> 00:27:26,039
others used his home to commit these murders while he

559
00:27:26,119 --> 00:27:26,799
was away.

560
00:27:26,880 --> 00:27:31,279
Speaker 1: Which supposedly mirrored the brutal dorm style operations used by

561
00:27:31,279 --> 00:27:33,160
the Delta Project exactly.

562
00:27:33,559 --> 00:27:36,559
Speaker 2: He was famously arrogant, he told his wife as he

563
00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:39,119
left his house in handcuffs. One day, you're going to

564
00:27:39,200 --> 00:27:41,440
read about me on the front pages of the newspapers.

565
00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:43,799
Speaker 1: So he wanted the fame, he wanted.

566
00:27:43,519 --> 00:27:46,640
Speaker 2: The infamy, Yes, but he tried to disperse the guilt.

567
00:27:46,839 --> 00:27:50,359
Speaker 1: But practically speaking, how much weight can we really put

568
00:27:50,359 --> 00:27:52,359
on the words of John Wayne Gacy sitting in a

569
00:27:52,400 --> 00:27:54,039
jail cell trying to save his own life.

570
00:27:54,079 --> 00:27:57,200
Speaker 2: Well, this is a critical point for anyone analyzing these cases.

571
00:27:57,720 --> 00:28:00,319
You must always be incredibly cautious about taking it. Serial

572
00:28:00,359 --> 00:28:03,039
killers jailhouse claims at face value.

573
00:28:02,799 --> 00:28:05,680
Speaker 1: Because wouldn't they want to eventually come clean at the end,

574
00:28:05,759 --> 00:28:07,599
to clear their conscience before they die.

575
00:28:07,920 --> 00:28:11,440
Speaker 2: Rarely, rarely, if ever, the minds of these individuals do

576
00:28:11,480 --> 00:28:15,039
not operate on standard human empathy or guilt. Post capture

577
00:28:15,720 --> 00:28:21,440
killers engage in intense, calculated impression management. Their physical freedom

578
00:28:21,480 --> 00:28:23,519
is gone, so the only thing they have left to

579
00:28:23,559 --> 00:28:25,079
control is their narrative.

580
00:28:25,359 --> 00:28:27,160
Speaker 1: So they just spin webs.

581
00:28:26,960 --> 00:28:31,519
Speaker 2: Exactly, They will inflate their importance, spin elaborate yarns that

582
00:28:31,599 --> 00:28:36,920
make them look like criminal masterminds who outsmarted everyone. Or conversely,

583
00:28:37,279 --> 00:28:42,000
they will deflect guilt by pointing fingers at shadowy organizations.

584
00:28:41,759 --> 00:28:43,920
Speaker 1: Like saying someone else had keys to the house.

585
00:28:43,880 --> 00:28:47,880
Speaker 2: Right claiming others used his house as a classic deflection tactic.

586
00:28:48,319 --> 00:28:51,160
It plants the seed of reasonable doubt, it muddies the waters.

587
00:28:51,200 --> 00:28:52,680
Speaker 1: But the Pasco connection is real.

588
00:28:52,960 --> 00:28:56,839
Speaker 2: It is the confirmed historical existence of the Delta Project,

589
00:28:57,119 --> 00:29:01,160
combined with Gaycy's documented employment of Passco, provides just enough

590
00:29:01,160 --> 00:29:04,279
factual connective tissue to make the theory impossible to dismiss

591
00:29:04,319 --> 00:29:04,880
out of hand.

592
00:29:05,079 --> 00:29:08,400
Speaker 1: It bridges the gap between a lone suburban predator and

593
00:29:08,440 --> 00:29:10,440
a systemic organized operation.

594
00:29:10,799 --> 00:29:12,200
Speaker 2: It definitely provides that bridge.

595
00:29:12,279 --> 00:29:14,920
Speaker 1: Yes, and once you cross that bridge from lone wolf

596
00:29:14,960 --> 00:29:17,920
to systemic operation, the theories only get more extreme.

597
00:29:18,039 --> 00:29:18,720
Speaker 2: They certainly do.

598
00:29:19,119 --> 00:29:22,400
Speaker 1: We are moving from human trafficking to a theory that

599
00:29:22,720 --> 00:29:26,160
takes the idea of the elite syndicate to its absolute,

600
00:29:26,400 --> 00:29:31,680
most macarre extreme conclusion. We are looking at Jeffrey Dahmer

601
00:29:31,839 --> 00:29:33,920
and the theory of the elite cannibal cover up.

602
00:29:34,279 --> 00:29:37,440
Speaker 2: Dahmer's case is entirely unique in this context because the

603
00:29:37,440 --> 00:29:41,599
primary conspiracy theory doesn't focus on his horrific life or

604
00:29:41,599 --> 00:29:45,440
his actual crimes. It focuses entirely on the circumstances of

605
00:29:45,480 --> 00:29:46,359
his death in prison.

606
00:29:46,680 --> 00:29:49,559
Speaker 1: Right, let's look at the facts first. Jeffrey Dahmer was

607
00:29:49,559 --> 00:29:52,279
beaten to death in nineteen ninety four by Christopher Scarver,

608
00:29:52,720 --> 00:29:56,000
a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Wisconsin.

609
00:29:56,119 --> 00:29:57,759
Speaker 2: That is the established historical fact.

610
00:29:57,960 --> 00:30:00,000
Speaker 1: Scarver cornered him in the prison gym while they were

611
00:30:00,079 --> 00:30:02,680
on cleaning duty and bludgeoned him with a metal bar,

612
00:30:02,960 --> 00:30:06,359
a brutal end it was, but a persistent dark corner

613
00:30:06,400 --> 00:30:08,759
of the Internet insists this was not a random act

614
00:30:08,799 --> 00:30:11,720
of prison violence or a clash of unstable inmates.

615
00:30:11,799 --> 00:30:13,440
Speaker 2: No, they have a much grander theory.

616
00:30:13,599 --> 00:30:16,880
Speaker 1: The fringe theory claims this was a highly orchestrated assassination

617
00:30:17,039 --> 00:30:19,079
directed by a shadow government.

618
00:30:18,920 --> 00:30:20,680
Speaker 2: Which sounds completely wild.

619
00:30:21,000 --> 00:30:24,160
Speaker 1: It is because, according to this conspiracy, Dahmer wasn't just

620
00:30:24,200 --> 00:30:28,079
a deeply troubled, isolated man from Milwaukee. He was a

621
00:30:28,079 --> 00:30:33,400
procurement agent for a global syndicate of wealthy elite cannibals.

622
00:30:33,839 --> 00:30:37,039
The leafs and logic are astounding, and the theory alleges

623
00:30:37,119 --> 00:30:40,400
that Dahmer was preparing to blow the whistle that he

624
00:30:40,440 --> 00:30:43,799
was going to name high ranking politicians and billionaires who

625
00:30:43,799 --> 00:30:47,759
partook in these acts, prompting this shadow government to activate

626
00:30:47,799 --> 00:30:50,960
Scarver as a sleeper assassin to silence him forever.

627
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:54,119
Speaker 2: If we logically deconstruct this, we have to start with

628
00:30:54,160 --> 00:30:58,079
the foundational evidence, or rather the complete and total lack thereof.

629
00:30:58,200 --> 00:30:59,079
Speaker 1: Right, where's the proof?

630
00:30:59,440 --> 00:31:04,079
Speaker 2: There is absolutely zero evidence, no paper trail, no witness testimony,

631
00:31:04,119 --> 00:31:07,440
no financial links tying Jeffrey Dahmer to any external organization,

632
00:31:07,799 --> 00:31:10,000
let alone a global syndicate of elite cannibals.

633
00:31:10,119 --> 00:31:13,359
Speaker 1: Zero. If anything, the tragedy of Dahmer was defined by

634
00:31:13,359 --> 00:31:14,640
his extreme isolation.

635
00:31:14,799 --> 00:31:15,839
Speaker 2: He's a profound loaner.

636
00:31:16,000 --> 00:31:18,680
Speaker 1: He was deeply lonely, operating entirely in the shadows of

637
00:31:18,720 --> 00:31:21,400
his own apartment. The idea that he was rhything elbows

638
00:31:21,400 --> 00:31:23,079
with billionaires is absurd.

639
00:31:23,119 --> 00:31:27,680
Speaker 2: Entirely isolated. And as for the assassination theory, Scarver's motives

640
00:31:27,680 --> 00:31:30,319
for the murder had been thoroughly documented and they were

641
00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:33,359
entirely his own. What they were driven by his own

642
00:31:33,400 --> 00:31:38,200
severe untreated schizophrenia and a deeply held personal religious disgust

643
00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:39,920
for Dahmer's gruesome crimes.

644
00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:41,680
Speaker 1: So he just hated what Dahmer did.

645
00:31:41,799 --> 00:31:46,440
Speaker 2: Yes, Historical accounts and psychological evaluations of Scarver highlight his

646
00:31:46,480 --> 00:31:50,200
sentiment of divine retribution. He believed he was acting as

647
00:31:50,200 --> 00:31:52,759
an instrument of God's wrath, bringing justice to a man

648
00:31:52,799 --> 00:31:54,000
who had escaped the death.

649
00:31:53,839 --> 00:31:56,279
Speaker 1: Penalty because Wisconsin didn't have the death penalty.

650
00:31:56,440 --> 00:32:00,319
Speaker 2: Exactly, it was a volatile, tragic mix of severe mental

651
00:32:00,359 --> 00:32:05,000
illness and close proximity in an undersupervised prison environment, not

652
00:32:05,240 --> 00:32:07,160
a calculated hit by a shadow government.

653
00:32:07,279 --> 00:32:10,319
Speaker 1: You know, this maps perfectly onto the concept of blood libel.

654
00:32:10,359 --> 00:32:11,519
Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely, for.

655
00:32:11,480 --> 00:32:16,039
Speaker 1: Anyone unfamiliar, blood libel is that centuries old, completely false

656
00:32:16,079 --> 00:32:20,759
and deeply anti Semitic myth where marginalized groups, historically Jewish

657
00:32:20,759 --> 00:32:24,279
people were accused of murdering children to use their blood

658
00:32:24,400 --> 00:32:25,599
in religious rituals.

659
00:32:25,799 --> 00:32:28,319
Speaker 2: It's one of history's oldest conspiracy theories.

660
00:32:28,599 --> 00:32:32,000
Speaker 1: It was a horrific tool used to dehumanize and justify

661
00:32:32,039 --> 00:32:35,640
the persecution of an outgroup. And we're essentially seeing that

662
00:32:35,759 --> 00:32:38,640
ancient template repurposed for the modern era.

663
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:42,519
Speaker 2: Exactly, it's the architecture of an ancient myth updated for

664
00:32:42,559 --> 00:32:46,279
the Internet age. The outgroup is no longer a religious minority.

665
00:32:46,480 --> 00:32:50,160
It is the ultra wealthy, the political elite, the amorphous

666
00:32:50,200 --> 00:32:51,519
shadow government.

667
00:32:51,160 --> 00:32:52,000
Speaker 1: The one percent.

668
00:32:52,359 --> 00:32:55,960
Speaker 2: Yes, we currently live in an era of profound, pervasive

669
00:32:56,000 --> 00:33:00,160
distrust of the ultra wealthy and the political establishment. Health

670
00:33:00,200 --> 00:33:03,640
inequality is staggering, and people feel disconnected from the levers

671
00:33:03,680 --> 00:33:07,000
of power. People are angry, very angry. So by projecting

672
00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:11,799
the absolute most heinous, unforgivable taboo in human society, cannibalism,

673
00:33:11,839 --> 00:33:16,039
onto the elite, the conspiracy theory aggressively validates that profound

674
00:33:16,079 --> 00:33:17,160
societal distrust.

675
00:33:17,240 --> 00:33:18,160
Speaker 1: Oh that's fascinating.

676
00:33:18,279 --> 00:33:20,880
Speaker 2: Dahmer, in this narrative, ceases to be a real human being.

677
00:33:21,319 --> 00:33:23,880
He becomes a terrifying prop used to express a broader

678
00:33:23,920 --> 00:33:27,200
societal fear that those in power are not just financially corrupt,

679
00:33:27,200 --> 00:33:30,400
but fundamentally monstrously evil on a biological level.

680
00:33:30,519 --> 00:33:33,519
Speaker 1: That completely reframes the narrative. If you look at it

681
00:33:33,519 --> 00:33:36,519
from that angle, the conspiracy isn't about the killer at all.

682
00:33:36,759 --> 00:33:38,559
It's an indictment of the system.

683
00:33:38,720 --> 00:33:41,400
Speaker 2: It is political commentary dressed up as true crime.

684
00:33:41,640 --> 00:33:45,680
Speaker 1: It takes the visceral horror of Dahmer and weaponizes it

685
00:33:45,720 --> 00:33:49,000
to articulate class warfare and political paranoia.

686
00:33:49,119 --> 00:33:50,000
Speaker 2: That's exactly right.

687
00:33:50,400 --> 00:33:54,400
Speaker 1: And you know, this profound distrust of the elites naturally

688
00:33:54,720 --> 00:33:58,359
and almost inevitably bleeds into a profound distrust of the

689
00:33:58,400 --> 00:33:59,319
government itself.

690
00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:03,480
Speaker 2: It's a very short jump from billionaires to government agencies.

691
00:34:03,559 --> 00:34:06,440
Speaker 1: It is we start to wonder if the institutions meant

692
00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:08,840
to protect us are actually the ones pulling the strings.

693
00:34:09,320 --> 00:34:12,400
In the nineteen sixties and seventies, the Cold War was raging,

694
00:34:12,840 --> 00:34:15,760
public trust in the government was actively fracturing due to

695
00:34:15,760 --> 00:34:18,000
the Vietnam War and political assassinations.

696
00:34:18,079 --> 00:34:22,239
Speaker 4: The culture was saturated with paranoia saturated, and this atmosphere

697
00:34:22,320 --> 00:34:26,519
of intense, suffocating paranoia birth theories that the government didn't

698
00:34:26,559 --> 00:34:30,000
just fail to catch our worst killers, they actively manufactured

699
00:34:30,000 --> 00:34:31,199
them in laboratories.

700
00:34:31,360 --> 00:34:32,800
Speaker 2: The Manchurian candidate theory.

701
00:34:32,920 --> 00:34:35,920
Speaker 1: Yes, and the poster child for this terrifying theory is

702
00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:36,639
Ted Bundy.

703
00:34:37,039 --> 00:34:41,480
Speaker 2: Bundy is perhaps the most heavily mythologized serial killer in

704
00:34:41,559 --> 00:34:42,320
modern history.

705
00:34:42,360 --> 00:34:43,039
Speaker 1: He really is.

706
00:34:43,239 --> 00:34:46,480
Speaker 2: He's recognized for his high BodyCount, his perceived good looks,

707
00:34:46,800 --> 00:34:51,199
his charisma, and his ability to blend seamlessly into high society.

708
00:34:51,320 --> 00:34:54,320
He really defy the stereotype of the creeping monster in

709
00:34:54,360 --> 00:34:55,000
the shadows.

710
00:34:55,079 --> 00:34:56,519
Speaker 1: He was the guy who looked like he could be

711
00:34:56,519 --> 00:34:59,159
the president of a fraternity or a rising star in

712
00:34:59,239 --> 00:35:01,679
local politics. He was very polished, and when you look

713
00:35:01,679 --> 00:35:05,199
at his timeline, it's fascinating. In nineteen sixty six, he

714
00:35:05,400 --> 00:35:09,039
was an exceptionally bright, ambitious student studying Chinese at the

715
00:35:09,079 --> 00:35:12,920
University of Washington. Out of nowhere, he drops out in nineteen.

716
00:35:12,679 --> 00:35:14,480
Speaker 2: Sixty eight, just a suddeny shift.

717
00:35:14,599 --> 00:35:17,599
Speaker 1: Yeah. He travels to the East coast supposedly to understand

718
00:35:17,599 --> 00:35:20,239
his roots and figure out his identity, and then he

719
00:35:20,280 --> 00:35:23,039
returns to the West, eventually being accepted into law school

720
00:35:23,039 --> 00:35:24,119
at the University of Utah.

721
00:35:24,239 --> 00:35:26,320
Speaker 2: It sounds like typical young adult wanderlust.

722
00:35:26,559 --> 00:35:29,159
Speaker 1: Right on the surface, this just looks like a young

723
00:35:29,199 --> 00:35:31,519
man trying to find his way in the world. But

724
00:35:31,599 --> 00:35:35,679
the fringe theory attempts to tie this specific transient timeline

725
00:35:35,800 --> 00:35:37,079
directly to the CIA.

726
00:35:37,519 --> 00:35:41,639
Speaker 2: Specifically, the theory suggests that during this transient period, Bundy

727
00:35:41,719 --> 00:35:45,440
was recruited or kidnapped and became a rogue test subject

728
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:46,920
for the M Culture program.

729
00:35:47,000 --> 00:35:49,880
Speaker 1: Right the M Culture program. The theory posits that the

730
00:35:49,920 --> 00:35:53,639
government scrambled his brain. They used massive doses of LSD,

731
00:35:54,119 --> 00:35:56,559
sleep deprivation, and hypnosis.

732
00:35:55,920 --> 00:35:58,239
Speaker 2: The usual M culture toolkit exactly.

733
00:35:58,559 --> 00:36:01,480
Speaker 1: But their intention wasn't to create a serial killer. Their

734
00:36:01,519 --> 00:36:05,639
intention was to create a covert programmable sleeper assassin for

735
00:36:05,679 --> 00:36:08,840
the Cold war a weapon, yes, a weapon, but the

736
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:12,679
experiment supposedly went wrong. It broke his psyche, fracturing his

737
00:36:12,719 --> 00:36:15,840
mind and resulting in him becoming a cross country serial

738
00:36:15,920 --> 00:36:17,760
killer instead of a controlled asset.

739
00:36:17,920 --> 00:36:19,440
Speaker 2: It's a very sci fi concept.

740
00:36:19,480 --> 00:36:22,519
Speaker 1: When I hear this, I immediately imagine a real life,

741
00:36:22,679 --> 00:36:26,440
incredibly dark, twisted version of Jason Bourne, or, like you said,

742
00:36:26,480 --> 00:36:29,960
the Manchurian candidate. The idea of a sleeper agent triggered

743
00:36:30,000 --> 00:36:32,519
to kill by a code word. It's pure Hollywood, but

744
00:36:32,599 --> 00:36:36,119
bringing it back to reality is so jarring. Picture it

745
00:36:36,639 --> 00:36:40,199
a handsome, ordinary looking law student sitting in a lecture

746
00:36:40,199 --> 00:36:43,880
hall in Utah, taking notes on tort law, but harboring

747
00:36:43,920 --> 00:36:48,039
this shattered engineered government program psycheist waiting to snap.

748
00:36:48,599 --> 00:36:50,119
Speaker 2: It is profoundly terrified.

749
00:36:50,239 --> 00:36:51,679
Speaker 1: It's a nightmare, it is.

750
00:36:52,360 --> 00:36:55,119
Speaker 2: But to understand why this theory has such a men's traction,

751
00:36:55,519 --> 00:36:57,800
we must ground it in historical reality.

752
00:36:57,880 --> 00:36:59,079
Speaker 1: Okay, let's look at the facts.

753
00:36:59,320 --> 00:37:02,000
Speaker 2: The listener needs to remember that cultural was not a myth.

754
00:37:02,239 --> 00:37:04,639
It was not a movie plot. It was a real,

755
00:37:05,079 --> 00:37:10,719
highly controversial, heavily documented, and deeply illegal CIA mind control

756
00:37:10,760 --> 00:37:13,519
program spearheaded by a man named Sidney Gottlieb.

757
00:37:14,039 --> 00:37:16,320
Speaker 1: The fact that it was real is the craziest part.

758
00:37:16,480 --> 00:37:19,519
Speaker 2: It really is. The United States government actually was experimenting

759
00:37:19,519 --> 00:37:24,760
on its own citizens, often unwittingly, with LSD, sensory deprivation,

760
00:37:24,840 --> 00:37:28,480
electroshock therapy, and psychological torture during that exact era.

761
00:37:28,559 --> 00:37:29,519
Speaker 1: And what were they trying to do.

762
00:37:29,920 --> 00:37:32,039
Speaker 2: They were desperately trying to crack the code of human

763
00:37:32,079 --> 00:37:35,159
consciousness to use it as a weapon against the Soviets.

764
00:37:34,719 --> 00:37:37,119
Speaker 1: Which is the terrifying kernel of truth that makes the

765
00:37:37,159 --> 00:37:40,639
conspiracy bloom. If the government admits to dosing people with

766
00:37:40,840 --> 00:37:45,400
LSD in secret facilities, the public mind naturally extrapolates the

767
00:37:45,400 --> 00:37:46,280
worst case scenario.

768
00:37:46,440 --> 00:37:50,079
Speaker 2: Precisely, the verified facts provide a rock solid foundation of

769
00:37:50,280 --> 00:37:54,840
justifiable paranoia. If the government was secretly running psychological torture

770
00:37:54,880 --> 00:37:58,840
camps in the nineteen sixties, what else were they capable of? However,

771
00:37:59,320 --> 00:38:03,440
making the leap from unethical, illegal experiments to the deliberate

772
00:38:03,599 --> 00:38:08,199
or accidental creation of a highly organized cross country serial

773
00:38:08,280 --> 00:38:08,800
killer like.

774
00:38:08,760 --> 00:38:10,039
Speaker 1: Bundy, that's a big lead.

775
00:38:10,159 --> 00:38:13,000
Speaker 2: It's a massive leap. That's where the verified facts end

776
00:38:13,400 --> 00:38:17,039
and sci fi horror begins. There's absolutely no documentary evidence

777
00:38:17,039 --> 00:38:20,079
placing Bundy in any and culture program none at all.

778
00:38:20,199 --> 00:38:24,039
His pathology, his narcissism, and his violent compulsions are deeply

779
00:38:24,119 --> 00:38:27,519
rooted in his own psychological development and early life trauma.

780
00:38:27,920 --> 00:38:29,960
Not a CIA laboratory.

781
00:38:29,760 --> 00:38:32,599
Speaker 1: But the shadow of the CIA and their covert operations

782
00:38:32,639 --> 00:38:35,920
looms incredibly large over the nineteen sixties, which brings us

783
00:38:35,920 --> 00:38:37,119
to another figure from that.

784
00:38:37,159 --> 00:38:38,800
Speaker 2: Era, a very different kind of figure.

785
00:38:38,800 --> 00:38:41,440
Speaker 1: Very different. Not a lone wolf acting out in the dark,

786
00:38:41,480 --> 00:38:44,519
but a highly charismatic cult leader operating in the bright

787
00:38:44,599 --> 00:38:49,159
California sun. Charles Manson, the Manson family. Yes, and the

788
00:38:49,159 --> 00:38:52,960
theory here isn't just about a mind control experiment gone wrong.

789
00:38:53,440 --> 00:38:58,320
It's about a deliberate, calculated, successful psychological operation.

790
00:38:58,760 --> 00:39:02,559
Speaker 2: A psyop theory builds heavily on that same underlying theme

791
00:39:02,599 --> 00:39:08,440
of government paranoia, but it introduces a very specific, very

792
00:39:08,440 --> 00:39:10,440
plausible political.

793
00:39:09,880 --> 00:39:13,760
Speaker 1: Motive, the anti hippie angle exactly so. The theory alleges

794
00:39:13,800 --> 00:39:16,199
that Charles Manson was not just a rambling x KHN

795
00:39:16,239 --> 00:39:19,480
who gathered a following. He was an active intelligence asset

796
00:39:19,519 --> 00:39:20,639
working directly for the.

797
00:39:20,599 --> 00:39:23,239
Speaker 2: CIA, which is a bold claim, very bold.

798
00:39:23,599 --> 00:39:26,079
Speaker 1: The premise sets the stage perfectly, though it's the late

799
00:39:26,159 --> 00:39:29,800
nineteen sixties, the US government and the conservative establishment were

800
00:39:29,840 --> 00:39:32,840
absolutely terrified of the growing hippie counterculture.

801
00:39:32,920 --> 00:39:34,320
Speaker 2: It was a massive cultural shift.

802
00:39:34,400 --> 00:39:37,440
Speaker 1: You had millions of young people protesting the Vietnam War,

803
00:39:37,559 --> 00:39:41,000
rejecting traditional capitalism and forming a massive political block.

804
00:39:41,159 --> 00:39:42,800
Speaker 2: They were a threat to the status quo.

805
00:39:42,880 --> 00:39:46,159
Speaker 1: A huge thought. So the conspiracy asks a strategic question,

806
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:50,440
how do you stop a peaceful anti war movement that

807
00:39:50,519 --> 00:39:52,719
is gaining massive momentum.

808
00:39:52,199 --> 00:39:53,360
Speaker 2: And the alleged answer is.

809
00:39:53,719 --> 00:39:56,840
Speaker 1: You rot hit from the inside out. You brainwash a

810
00:39:56,920 --> 00:40:01,280
charismatic cult leader Manson and have his follower his girls

811
00:40:01,360 --> 00:40:04,320
commit horrific high profile murders are.

812
00:40:04,239 --> 00:40:07,119
Speaker 2: The Tate LaBianca murders of August nineteen sixty nine.

813
00:40:07,280 --> 00:40:10,920
Speaker 1: Yes, the goal of this supposed syop was to completely

814
00:40:10,960 --> 00:40:14,239
discredit the political left in the eyes of the general public.

815
00:40:14,440 --> 00:40:16,280
Speaker 2: It's a smear campaign via murder.

816
00:40:16,519 --> 00:40:17,199
Speaker 3: Exactly.

817
00:40:17,519 --> 00:40:19,960
Speaker 1: If the government could paint the peace and love hippies

818
00:40:20,000 --> 00:40:23,280
as nothing more than drug craze murderous vagabonds who might

819
00:40:23,320 --> 00:40:26,400
break into your house at night, the middle class sympathy

820
00:40:26,400 --> 00:40:28,880
for the anti war movement would evaporate instantly.

821
00:40:28,960 --> 00:40:31,280
Speaker 2: And the details line up in a very eerie way,

822
00:40:31,360 --> 00:40:32,360
which fuels the theory.

823
00:40:32,440 --> 00:40:36,159
Speaker 1: They really do. Manson famously used massive amounts of LSD

824
00:40:36,360 --> 00:40:39,360
and sleep deprivation to strip away his followers' egos and

825
00:40:39,400 --> 00:40:43,199
create permanent personality changes, making them willing to kill on command.

826
00:40:43,360 --> 00:40:46,280
Speaker 2: Chillingly, those were the exact research objectives of the m

827
00:40:46,280 --> 00:40:47,079
culture scientists.

828
00:40:47,079 --> 00:40:48,480
Speaker 1: The parallels are undeniable.

829
00:40:48,679 --> 00:40:51,559
Speaker 2: They are, which is why the theory endures. It raises

830
00:40:51,599 --> 00:40:55,400
an incredibly complex historical question, one that forces us to

831
00:40:55,400 --> 00:40:57,360
look at the intersection of intent and outcome.

832
00:40:57,559 --> 00:41:01,880
Speaker 1: So let me ask you directly, separating the conspiracy from

833
00:41:01,920 --> 00:41:04,920
the truth for a second, Let's assume the CIA had

834
00:41:04,960 --> 00:41:07,440
absolutely nothing to do with it. Even if it wasn't

835
00:41:07,480 --> 00:41:09,440
a conspiracy, did it work?

836
00:41:09,719 --> 00:41:12,360
Speaker 2: That is the truly chilling reality we have to confront

837
00:41:12,360 --> 00:41:15,199
when studying this era. If we look purely at the

838
00:41:15,320 --> 00:41:19,000
historical outcome, the answer is an unequivocal yes.

839
00:41:19,079 --> 00:41:19,519
Speaker 1: Wow.

840
00:41:20,000 --> 00:41:23,440
Speaker 2: Even the CIA link is entirely false, which all credible

841
00:41:23,519 --> 00:41:27,599
historical consensus says it is. The Manson family did effectively

842
00:41:27,679 --> 00:41:30,199
kill the hippie movement's innocence in the eyes of the

843
00:41:30,199 --> 00:41:31,000
American public.

844
00:41:31,119 --> 00:41:33,880
Speaker 1: The optics were utterly devastating. You went from Woodstock to

845
00:41:33,920 --> 00:41:34,679
the Manson family.

846
00:41:34,719 --> 00:41:37,800
Speaker 2: In a matter of months, they were the counterculture, which

847
00:41:37,800 --> 00:41:40,880
had branded itself entirely on peace, love and anti violence,

848
00:41:41,239 --> 00:41:45,039
was suddenly globally associated with a charismatic madman and butchery.

849
00:41:44,760 --> 00:41:45,559
Speaker 1: To change everything.

850
00:41:45,679 --> 00:41:47,760
Speaker 2: Middle America looked at the Hippies and no longer saw

851
00:41:47,800 --> 00:41:51,679
misguided kids holding flowers. They saw potential murderers. The fact

852
00:41:51,719 --> 00:41:54,400
that Manson emerged at the exact time the government was

853
00:41:54,400 --> 00:41:57,079
struggling to contain the anti war movement, and the fact

854
00:41:57,119 --> 00:42:00,840
that he used LSD, a drug popularized by the counterculture

855
00:42:00,840 --> 00:42:05,159
but also actively weaponized by mculture, makes the theory incredibly

856
00:42:05,159 --> 00:42:07,480
compelling to anyone looking for historical patterns.

857
00:42:07,559 --> 00:42:11,880
Speaker 1: It feels too perfectly timed, too strategically flawless to be

858
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:14,519
a mere coincidence, and that feeling.

859
00:42:14,480 --> 00:42:17,199
Speaker 2: The feeling that things line up too perfectly, is the

860
00:42:17,199 --> 00:42:19,320
lifeblood of any strong conspiracy theory.

861
00:42:19,400 --> 00:42:23,199
Speaker 1: It's that human desire for pattern recognition asserting itself again.

862
00:42:23,599 --> 00:42:25,840
We see the historical result the sudden death of the

863
00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:29,760
Hippie movement, and we reverse engineer a grand Mastermind plot

864
00:42:29,800 --> 00:42:30,719
to explain.

865
00:42:30,360 --> 00:42:33,199
Speaker 2: It, because accepting that a random x con just happened

866
00:42:33,239 --> 00:42:37,400
to derail an entire cultural movement by accident is deeply unsatisfying.

867
00:42:37,480 --> 00:42:40,800
Speaker 1: It's anti climactic, and this idea of reverse engineering a

868
00:42:40,840 --> 00:42:43,519
myth to fit a narrative leads us perfectly into the

869
00:42:43,559 --> 00:42:46,679
final thematic area of our exploration today, the power of

870
00:42:46,679 --> 00:42:50,159
the pen. Yes, we are moving from vast government cover

871
00:42:50,280 --> 00:42:53,320
ups to the myths we manufacture entirely ourselves. Through the

872
00:42:53,320 --> 00:42:54,000
power of the pen.

873
00:42:54,360 --> 00:42:57,679
Speaker 2: This is where we examine how history, literature, journalism, and

874
00:42:57,760 --> 00:43:01,159
eventually the Internet create killers out of thin air, or

875
00:43:01,239 --> 00:43:07,039
exaggerate real, mundane criminals into literal comic book supervillains.

876
00:43:07,159 --> 00:43:09,400
Speaker 1: And we're going to start this examination way back in

877
00:43:09,440 --> 00:43:12,360
eighteen ninety three at the Chicago World's Fair with a

878
00:43:12,400 --> 00:43:13,800
man named h. H. Holmes.

879
00:43:14,320 --> 00:43:17,639
Speaker 2: H HH Holmes a classic case of myth making.

880
00:43:17,880 --> 00:43:21,000
Speaker 1: He is a fascinating character. He is often cited as

881
00:43:21,039 --> 00:43:24,920
America's first documented serial killer, and the mythology surrounding him

882
00:43:25,000 --> 00:43:28,360
is absolutely monolithic. It's huge, It's woven into the fabric

883
00:43:28,360 --> 00:43:31,800
of American folklore. The most famous element of his story

884
00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:34,239
is what historians call the murder Castle myth.

885
00:43:34,519 --> 00:43:35,159
Speaker 2: Right, the hotel.

886
00:43:35,280 --> 00:43:38,239
Speaker 1: We've all heard the legend. Right, Holmes built this massive,

887
00:43:38,360 --> 00:43:42,239
labyrinthine hotel in Chicago, specifically time to capitalize on the

888
00:43:42,280 --> 00:43:44,599
influx of tourists for the eighteen ninety.

889
00:43:44,320 --> 00:43:46,679
Speaker 2: Three World's Fair, a literal trap for tourists.

890
00:43:46,719 --> 00:43:50,679
Speaker 1: Supposedly, he supposedly attended the fair, picked up unsuspecting naive

891
00:43:50,719 --> 00:43:53,599
women who are traveling alone, took them back to his castle,

892
00:43:53,719 --> 00:43:56,599
and murdered them in a building explicitly designed from the

893
00:43:56,639 --> 00:43:57,840
ground up for slaughter.

894
00:43:58,159 --> 00:44:01,320
Speaker 2: The details that get passed around are incredibly gruesome.

895
00:44:01,599 --> 00:44:05,639
Speaker 1: Oh they are insane, soundproof gas chambers where he could

896
00:44:05,639 --> 00:44:09,280
watch them die, giant acid vats in the basement, the

897
00:44:09,320 --> 00:44:12,679
plumbing system right, a system of pipes leading directly to

898
00:44:12,719 --> 00:44:15,519
his private apartment so he could asphyxiate victims in their

899
00:44:15,559 --> 00:44:17,920
sleep at the push of a button. And the most

900
00:44:18,000 --> 00:44:23,039
eerie cinematic detail the shoot, the greased shoot, a three

901
00:44:23,119 --> 00:44:25,920
feet by three feet shaft leading straight from the upper

902
00:44:25,960 --> 00:44:29,199
floors to the basement, where he allegedly installed a cremation

903
00:44:29,400 --> 00:44:32,119
kiln and lime pits to dispose of the evidence.

904
00:44:32,440 --> 00:44:36,320
Speaker 2: The narrative paints a picture of a Victorian industrial slaughterhouse.

905
00:44:36,880 --> 00:44:40,599
It presents Holmes as an evil genius of architecture.

906
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:43,760
Speaker 1: And engineering exactly. It's incredibly captivating. It sounds like a movie.

907
00:44:43,920 --> 00:44:46,840
But here is the massive reality check. When you dig

908
00:44:46,880 --> 00:44:48,920
into the historical documents.

909
00:44:48,480 --> 00:44:50,679
Speaker 2: The truth is much less glamorous, way less.

910
00:44:51,039 --> 00:44:55,400
Speaker 1: Most modern historians and architectural experts have thoroughly debunked almost

911
00:44:55,440 --> 00:44:57,800
all of this. They argue the castle was just a

912
00:44:57,920 --> 00:45:00,800
poorly constructed, very ugly, over sized buildings.

913
00:45:00,800 --> 00:45:01,760
Speaker 2: It was a shoddy hotel.

914
00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:05,360
Speaker 1: Did it have multiple hidden rooms and weird hallways, Sure,

915
00:45:05,880 --> 00:45:08,960
but those rooms were used to stash stolen furniture and

916
00:45:09,039 --> 00:45:13,239
hide from his constant barrage of creditors, not to stash corpses.

917
00:45:13,280 --> 00:45:16,320
Speaker 2: Holmes was a con man first, second, and third, he

918
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:16,840
was a grifter.

919
00:45:17,199 --> 00:45:20,039
Speaker 1: Yes, he absolutely killed people, but almost always people he

920
00:45:20,119 --> 00:45:23,639
knew personally, like his business partners or his mistresses, and

921
00:45:23,719 --> 00:45:26,039
he killed them as part of larger insurance fraud and

922
00:45:26,079 --> 00:45:26,960
financial schemes.

923
00:45:27,239 --> 00:45:29,480
Speaker 2: He was chasing money, not a body.

924
00:45:29,239 --> 00:45:32,639
Speaker 1: Count, right. He wasn't hunting random fairgoers in a labyrinth

925
00:45:32,679 --> 00:45:36,320
of doom. When I was reading the realities of this,

926
00:45:36,440 --> 00:45:39,559
I was laughing because I realized this is basically eighteen

927
00:45:39,679 --> 00:45:40,760
nineties clickbait.

928
00:45:40,840 --> 00:45:42,920
Speaker 2: That is a very apt analogy. It was the birth

929
00:45:42,960 --> 00:45:44,880
of true crime sensationalism, right.

930
00:45:44,800 --> 00:45:48,239
Speaker 1: It's the peak of yellow journalism, you had newspaper barons

931
00:45:48,280 --> 00:45:51,719
like Hurst and Pulletzer fighting for circulation in a crowded market, and.

932
00:45:51,679 --> 00:45:53,480
Speaker 2: A mundane fraudster doesn't sell.

933
00:45:53,800 --> 00:45:57,239
Speaker 1: A grimy, cowardly con man who poisons his business partner

934
00:45:57,320 --> 00:46:00,360
for a life insurance payout isn't exciting enough to out

935
00:46:00,400 --> 00:46:04,320
the morning edition. But an architectural evil genius with a

936
00:46:04,360 --> 00:46:07,800
custom built murder castle filled with acid rats.

937
00:46:07,800 --> 00:46:09,519
Speaker 2: That sells papers by the millions.

938
00:46:09,800 --> 00:46:13,159
Speaker 1: They literally invented a supervillain to drive revenue.

939
00:46:13,239 --> 00:46:15,920
Speaker 2: It was a highly profitable fiction. But this raises an

940
00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:20,239
important psychological question. Why do we still prefer the evil

941
00:46:20,280 --> 00:46:24,480
genius trope today, long after the sensationalized journalism of the

942
00:46:24,480 --> 00:46:26,800
eighteen nineties has faded into history.

943
00:46:26,920 --> 00:46:29,519
Speaker 1: That's a great point. Why does the murder castle myth

944
00:46:29,679 --> 00:46:30,760
endure so strongly?

945
00:46:30,880 --> 00:46:32,960
Speaker 2: Why do we want him to be a supervillain? Yeah?

946
00:46:33,000 --> 00:46:37,119
Why because believing a killer is an architectural genius, a

947
00:46:37,159 --> 00:46:41,480
mastermind who designed a flawless technological system of death, makes

948
00:46:41,519 --> 00:46:43,800
us feel better about the fact that the authorities didn't

949
00:46:43,800 --> 00:46:44,519
catch him sooner.

950
00:46:44,880 --> 00:46:46,480
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Okay, if.

951
00:46:46,360 --> 00:46:48,440
Speaker 2: You look at the reality that Holmes was just a

952
00:46:48,480 --> 00:46:51,760
regular sleazy con man who slipped through the cracks of

953
00:46:51,760 --> 00:46:55,599
a deeply flawed, disorganized, in nascent police system in eighteen

954
00:46:55,679 --> 00:46:59,119
ninety Chicago. That implies the police were incompetent.

955
00:46:58,880 --> 00:47:03,559
Speaker 1: And realizing the police incompetent makes society feel incredibly unsafe exactly.

956
00:47:04,079 --> 00:47:06,960
Speaker 2: But if he was an uncatchable, once in a generation

957
00:47:07,159 --> 00:47:10,760
genius operating an impossible labyrinth, well, no police force could

958
00:47:10,760 --> 00:47:13,119
be expected to stop a supervillain. The myth of his

959
00:47:13,239 --> 00:47:16,119
genius protects our faith and the institutions meant to protect us.

960
00:47:16,440 --> 00:47:18,400
Speaker 1: It excuses the failure of the system.

961
00:47:18,639 --> 00:47:20,079
Speaker 2: It does wow.

962
00:47:20,440 --> 00:47:24,360
Speaker 1: We actively elevate the killer's intelligence to protect the reputation

963
00:47:24,440 --> 00:47:28,440
of the cops. That is a wild psychological twist. We

964
00:47:28,559 --> 00:47:30,880
need the villain to be brilliant so the heroes don't

965
00:47:30,880 --> 00:47:34,960
look foolish exactly, And speaking of elevating killers through literature

966
00:47:34,960 --> 00:47:38,840
and myth, our next theory takes a beloved literary figure

967
00:47:39,119 --> 00:47:43,079
and violently drops him right into the foggy, bloodsilk streets

968
00:47:43,079 --> 00:47:43,800
of Whitechapel.

969
00:47:43,920 --> 00:47:46,880
Speaker 2: We are talking about the granddaddy of all true crime mysteries.

970
00:47:47,559 --> 00:47:51,480
Speaker 1: Jack the River, the famous London serial killer who terrorized

971
00:47:51,480 --> 00:47:54,159
the East End in eighteen eighty eight and was never caught.

972
00:47:54,360 --> 00:47:55,519
Speaker 2: The ultimate cold case.

973
00:47:55,760 --> 00:47:58,760
Speaker 1: The list of suspects proposed over the last century is endless,

974
00:47:58,920 --> 00:48:02,079
ranging from impoverished butchers to members of the royal family.

975
00:48:02,519 --> 00:48:05,440
But one of the most absurd head scratching theories comes

976
00:48:05,440 --> 00:48:07,960
from a nineteen ninety six book by an author named

977
00:48:08,039 --> 00:48:08,719
Richard Wallace.

978
00:48:08,920 --> 00:48:10,039
Speaker 2: Oh, this one is out there.

979
00:48:10,159 --> 00:48:12,639
Speaker 1: He claimed that the shadowy Jack the Ripper was none

980
00:48:12,719 --> 00:48:14,039
other than Lewis.

981
00:48:13,719 --> 00:48:15,880
Speaker 2: Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland.

982
00:48:16,039 --> 00:48:19,719
Speaker 1: Yes, curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would say. And what

983
00:48:19,920 --> 00:48:23,480
was his rock solid, irrefutable evidence for besmirching the name

984
00:48:23,679 --> 00:48:25,880
of a globally beloved children's author.

985
00:48:26,280 --> 00:48:29,320
Speaker 2: Prepare yourself anagrams. Anagrams.

986
00:48:29,599 --> 00:48:33,039
Speaker 1: According to the methodol or. Wallace took completely random paragraphs

987
00:48:33,039 --> 00:48:36,519
from Carrol's children's books and simply rearranged the letters to

988
00:48:36,559 --> 00:48:40,320
form new sentences where Carroll supposedly confessed to the gruesome murders.

989
00:48:40,480 --> 00:48:42,480
Speaker 2: It's just it's beyond beelief.

990
00:48:42,679 --> 00:48:44,840
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, I burst out laughing when I

991
00:48:44,880 --> 00:48:47,039
read this. If you give me a long enough grocery list,

992
00:48:47,360 --> 00:48:49,360
I could probably make an anagram out of it to

993
00:48:49,440 --> 00:48:51,880
confess to a bank robbery if I tried hard enough.

994
00:48:52,199 --> 00:48:55,679
Speaker 2: It is a stark, almost comical reminder of how cheap

995
00:48:55,760 --> 00:48:59,239
parlor tricks can masquerade as legitimate.

996
00:48:58,760 --> 00:49:01,639
Speaker 1: Criminology, parlor tricks designed to sell books exactly.

997
00:49:01,840 --> 00:49:05,599
Speaker 2: The theory relies entirely on a forced, bad faith manipulation

998
00:49:05,679 --> 00:49:08,119
of text. As you pointed out, you can make an

999
00:49:08,119 --> 00:49:11,159
anagram out of almost any lengthy text if you've bend

1000
00:49:11,159 --> 00:49:12,400
the rules of syntax enough.

1001
00:49:12,440 --> 00:49:13,440
Speaker 1: It's just a word puzzle.

1002
00:49:13,679 --> 00:49:16,519
Speaker 2: But while the theory itself is laughable, it highlights a

1003
00:49:16,599 --> 00:49:19,679
much darker, more cynical side of the true crime industry.

1004
00:49:20,199 --> 00:49:24,199
There is a relentless, insatiable hunger for new angles on

1005
00:49:24,320 --> 00:49:27,920
old cases, especially the Ripper case. We call it ripperology,

1006
00:49:28,559 --> 00:49:33,400
and sometimes authors will prioritize a sensational, deeply libelous claim

1007
00:49:33,800 --> 00:49:38,360
over historical integrity simply to generate controversy, secure publishing deal,

1008
00:49:38,559 --> 00:49:39,519
and drive sales.

1009
00:49:39,760 --> 00:49:43,239
Speaker 1: It turns real historical tragedy into a game of scrabble

1010
00:49:43,360 --> 00:49:46,000
where the prize is notoriety and profit.

1011
00:49:46,159 --> 00:49:48,320
Speaker 2: It's the ultimate commodification of true crime.

1012
00:49:48,599 --> 00:49:51,960
Speaker 1: It is, and what's truly wild is that this desire

1013
00:49:52,079 --> 00:49:55,599
to connect ridiculous dots hasn't gone away. The tools have

1014
00:49:55,760 --> 00:49:56,400
just changed.

1015
00:49:56,480 --> 00:49:57,840
Speaker 2: The instinct remains the same.

1016
00:49:57,920 --> 00:50:00,679
Speaker 1: The instinct is the same, but the delivery mechan as faster.

1017
00:50:01,239 --> 00:50:03,280
What used to be published in fringe books in nineteen

1018
00:50:03,320 --> 00:50:06,400
ninety six is now birthed instantaneously online, and.

1019
00:50:06,320 --> 00:50:07,840
Speaker 2: That brings us to the modern era.

1020
00:50:07,679 --> 00:50:09,800
Speaker 1: Which brings us to the final thread in our exploration

1021
00:50:09,880 --> 00:50:12,920
today and perhaps the most modern bizarre example of how

1022
00:50:12,960 --> 00:50:15,199
conspiracies are manufactured and propagated.

1023
00:50:15,199 --> 00:50:17,480
Speaker 2: Today, we are looking at the Zodiac Killer meme.

1024
00:50:17,840 --> 00:50:22,960
Speaker 1: Yes, we absolutely cannot talk about famous serial killer conspiracies

1025
00:50:23,000 --> 00:50:27,519
without talking about the incredibly bizarre internet phenomenon of claiming

1026
00:50:27,559 --> 00:50:30,440
that US Senator Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer.

1027
00:50:30,559 --> 00:50:33,039
Speaker 2: It's a defining moment in Internet culture now.

1028
00:50:33,079 --> 00:50:35,320
Speaker 1: To be clear, this started as a literal joke on

1029
00:50:35,360 --> 00:50:38,039
Twitter back in twenty thirteen, a random user made a

1030
00:50:38,079 --> 00:50:42,440
sarcastic comment, but by the twenty sixteen presidential election cycle,

1031
00:50:42,800 --> 00:50:45,440
it had morphed from a niche joke into a massive,

1032
00:50:45,559 --> 00:50:47,599
unstoppable viral phenomena.

1033
00:50:47,760 --> 00:50:51,440
Speaker 2: It evolved rapidly, complete with users generating side by side

1034
00:50:51,480 --> 00:50:55,800
photo comparisons between Cruse and the original nineteen sixties police

1035
00:50:55,800 --> 00:50:57,320
sketches of the Zodiac right.

1036
00:50:57,519 --> 00:51:00,880
Speaker 1: The Internet was absolutely flooded with these side by side comparisons.

1037
00:51:00,920 --> 00:51:04,760
People were analyzing his facial structure, his mannerisms.

1038
00:51:04,159 --> 00:51:05,360
Speaker 2: The glasses, the hair yea.

1039
00:51:05,639 --> 00:51:08,360
Speaker 1: It bled out of Twitter and led to mainstream news articles,

1040
00:51:08,400 --> 00:51:10,880
late night talk show monologues, and people were literally buying

1041
00:51:10,920 --> 00:51:13,360
t shirts and coffee mugs referencing the theory.

1042
00:51:13,480 --> 00:51:14,840
Speaker 2: It became an industry of its own.

1043
00:51:15,079 --> 00:51:18,239
Speaker 1: I remember seeing this spread online in real time. It

1044
00:51:18,280 --> 00:51:21,639
was fascinating as a cultural observer to watch a sheer

1045
00:51:21,840 --> 00:51:27,679
admitted Internet absurdity completely bypass all logic and become mainstream

1046
00:51:27,800 --> 00:51:28,679
cultural news.

1047
00:51:28,880 --> 00:51:30,880
Speaker 2: The Internet moves at lightning speed.

1048
00:51:30,679 --> 00:51:34,320
Speaker 1: And the glaring fatal flaw to the entire theory the

1049
00:51:34,440 --> 00:51:39,199
absolute physical impossibility of it. The Zodiac murders peaked primarily

1050
00:51:39,280 --> 00:51:42,000
in nineteen sixty eight and nineteen sixty nine, and Ted Cruise.

1051
00:51:42,159 --> 00:51:45,320
Ted Cruz was born in late nineteen seventy, so logically

1052
00:51:45,360 --> 00:51:47,039
physically temporarily impossible.

1053
00:51:47,159 --> 00:51:50,480
Speaker 2: It perfectly illustrates the rapid evolution of conspiracy theories in

1054
00:51:50,519 --> 00:51:53,239
the modern era. What used to be whispered in dark

1055
00:51:53,320 --> 00:51:56,239
rooms like the folklore of the Hellmouth at the Caesel Hotel,

1056
00:51:56,679 --> 00:51:59,559
or published in exhaustive friends books like the Lewis Carroll

1057
00:51:59,599 --> 00:52:02,039
anagram is now birth does a meme.

1058
00:52:02,280 --> 00:52:05,840
Speaker 1: It's weaponized humor. It's using irony to build a narrative exactly.

1059
00:52:06,000 --> 00:52:09,280
Speaker 2: The fundamental human desire to connect dots to find patterns

1060
00:52:09,280 --> 00:52:12,079
in the chaos hasn't changed, but it is now being

1061
00:52:12,119 --> 00:52:14,400
weaponized by social media algorithms in irony.

1062
00:52:14,440 --> 00:52:15,960
Speaker 1: People knew it was fake, right, oh.

1063
00:52:16,159 --> 00:52:18,199
Speaker 2: The vast majority of the people sharing the Ted Cruz

1064
00:52:18,239 --> 00:52:21,039
meme knew it was factually impossible. They knew he wasn't born.

1065
00:52:20,920 --> 00:52:22,039
Speaker 1: Yet, so why share it?

1066
00:52:22,159 --> 00:52:25,719
Speaker 2: Because the act of participating in the conspiracy, of sharing

1067
00:52:25,760 --> 00:52:28,880
the side by side photos, of engaging with the content,

1068
00:52:29,400 --> 00:52:31,679
it became a form of digital community building.

1069
00:52:31,800 --> 00:52:34,480
Speaker 4: It was a shared inside joke, yes, an inside joke

1070
00:52:34,519 --> 00:52:36,679
that scaled globally in a matter of days.

1071
00:52:37,559 --> 00:52:41,239
Speaker 2: The actual truth of the claim was entirely secondary to

1072
00:52:41,280 --> 00:52:44,360
the viral engagement and the sense of belonging it produced.

1073
00:52:44,519 --> 00:52:45,320
Speaker 1: That's incredible.

1074
00:52:45,400 --> 00:52:48,519
Speaker 2: It shows that today a conspiracy theory doesn't even need

1075
00:52:48,559 --> 00:52:51,480
to be believable to be influential. It just needs to

1076
00:52:51,559 --> 00:52:52,719
be shareable if.

1077
00:52:52,599 --> 00:52:55,679
Speaker 1: It's funny or provocative enough. The truth simply doesn't matter.

1078
00:52:55,840 --> 00:52:56,400
Speaker 2: Not anymore.

1079
00:52:56,480 --> 00:52:58,960
Speaker 1: No, that is such a profound point. It doesn't need

1080
00:52:59,039 --> 00:53:02,000
to be true, it just needs to be shareable. The

1081
00:53:02,039 --> 00:53:05,960
metric of success has changed from accuracy to virality.

1082
00:53:06,119 --> 00:53:08,800
Speaker 2: It's a brave new world for conspiracies, and that brings.

1083
00:53:08,599 --> 00:53:11,000
Speaker 1: Us to the end of our exploration today. We have

1084
00:53:11,079 --> 00:53:14,800
been on a truly thrilling journey unraveling the threads of

1085
00:53:14,880 --> 00:53:16,079
these chilling narratives.

1086
00:53:16,119 --> 00:53:17,480
Speaker 2: We've covered a lot of ground.

1087
00:53:17,239 --> 00:53:21,239
Speaker 1: From haunted hotels and decapitated decoys in rural Indiana to

1088
00:53:21,320 --> 00:53:25,280
the paranoia of government sleeper agents and the viral absurdity

1089
00:53:25,280 --> 00:53:26,679
of modern Twitter memes.

1090
00:53:26,960 --> 00:53:31,239
Speaker 2: And throughout all of these diverse, seemingly disconnected threads spanning

1091
00:53:31,280 --> 00:53:36,239
over a century, we see a unified, deeply human theme.

1092
00:53:36,159 --> 00:53:39,119
Speaker 1: Which is that these theories, no matter how outlandish, how

1093
00:53:39,280 --> 00:53:42,800
historically inaccurate, or how biologically impossible they might be, are

1094
00:53:42,880 --> 00:53:45,719
ultimately a reflection of us, you really are. They aren't

1095
00:53:45,800 --> 00:53:48,880
really about the killers at all. They reflect our own fears,

1096
00:53:48,960 --> 00:53:52,840
our modern anxieties, our profound distrust of authority, and our

1097
00:53:52,920 --> 00:53:56,880
desperate evolutionary need to find meaning and structure in the darkest,

1098
00:53:56,960 --> 00:53:59,000
most chaotic corners of human behavior.

1099
00:53:59,119 --> 00:54:00,800
Speaker 2: If I may leave you with the final thought to

1100
00:54:00,880 --> 00:54:03,760
mull over something that reframes everything we've discussed today.

1101
00:54:03,760 --> 00:54:05,000
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely, let's hear it.

1102
00:54:05,000 --> 00:54:08,760
Speaker 2: It is this our conspiracy theories at they're very core,

1103
00:54:09,280 --> 00:54:12,440
actually a bizarre, twisted form of optimism.

1104
00:54:12,519 --> 00:54:15,639
Speaker 1: Optimism that's a strong word for theories involving demons and cults.

1105
00:54:15,639 --> 00:54:17,679
Speaker 2: How do you figure out think about it deeply. If

1106
00:54:17,679 --> 00:54:21,079
a shadowy elite syndicate is pulling the strings behind the scenes,

1107
00:54:21,199 --> 00:54:24,480
or a vast government agency is running a massive, calculated

1108
00:54:24,480 --> 00:54:28,760
psychological operation, or even if an ancient demonic vortex is

1109
00:54:28,800 --> 00:54:32,840
possessing people, that at least someone or something is in control.

1110
00:54:33,159 --> 00:54:36,000
Oh wow, there is a pilot flying the plane. Even

1111
00:54:36,000 --> 00:54:38,719
if that pilot is evil, there is a master plan.

1112
00:54:39,400 --> 00:54:43,199
The alternative that the world is fundamentally chaotic, that violence

1113
00:54:43,239 --> 00:54:45,360
is utterly random, that no one is at the wheel,

1114
00:54:45,559 --> 00:54:50,039
and that completely ordinary people can commit horrific acts entirely

1115
00:54:50,079 --> 00:54:53,519
on their own volition for no grand purpose is far

1116
00:54:53,559 --> 00:54:54,360
more terrifying.

1117
00:54:54,519 --> 00:54:55,159
Speaker 1: It really is.

1118
00:54:55,360 --> 00:54:58,199
Speaker 2: A conspiracy theory gives the monster a leash, It gives

1119
00:54:58,239 --> 00:55:01,719
the horror of boundary. Without the theory, the monster is

1120
00:55:01,760 --> 00:55:04,760
just walking freely among us, unbound by any rules.

1121
00:55:05,119 --> 00:55:09,000
Speaker 1: Wow. A conspiracy theory gives the monster a loosh. That

1122
00:55:09,119 --> 00:55:11,360
is a profoundly heavy thought and one that is going

1123
00:55:11,400 --> 00:55:12,760
to stick with me for a long time.

1124
00:55:13,000 --> 00:55:14,760
Speaker 2: It changes how you look at the folklore.

1125
00:55:14,920 --> 00:55:18,000
Speaker 1: It makes you realize that sometimes we invent monsters to

1126
00:55:18,079 --> 00:55:20,840
hide from the chaos. And now we want to turn

1127
00:55:20,880 --> 00:55:24,239
it over to you, the listener. Yes, as you listen

1128
00:55:24,280 --> 00:55:26,679
to this deep dive today, did any of these theories

1129
00:55:26,719 --> 00:55:30,159
fundamentally change how you view these historical events? Do you

1130
00:55:30,199 --> 00:55:32,400
subscribe to the idea that there's always more to the story?

1131
00:55:32,480 --> 00:55:33,000
Speaker 2: We want to know.

1132
00:55:33,320 --> 00:55:36,599
Speaker 1: Does the idea of a nationwide trafficking ring or a

1133
00:55:36,639 --> 00:55:41,000
Grand Cia plot secretly comfort you more than the reality

1134
00:55:41,039 --> 00:55:43,880
of a lone, disturbed individual acting out in the dark.

1135
00:55:44,639 --> 00:55:47,679
Are we just building elaborate cages for our own fears.

1136
00:55:47,920 --> 00:55:48,920
Speaker 2: It's a lot to ponder.

1137
00:55:49,280 --> 00:55:51,719
Speaker 1: We want you to be part of this conversation. Let

1138
00:55:51,800 --> 00:55:54,159
us know your stance. Drop a comment below and tell

1139
00:55:54,199 --> 00:55:57,920
us where you draw the line between historical fact, comforting

1140
00:55:57,960 --> 00:55:59,519
fiction and absolute fear.

1141
00:55:59,719 --> 00:56:02,559
Speaker 2: Is we are constantly drawing and redrawing.

1142
00:56:02,199 --> 00:56:04,880
Speaker 1: As a society, It truly is. Thank you so much

1143
00:56:04,960 --> 00:56:08,320
for joining us for this incredibly deep exploration on thrilling threads.

1144
00:56:08,559 --> 00:56:10,639
We hope you challenged your perspective and kept you on

1145
00:56:10,679 --> 00:56:11,559
the edge of your seats.

1146
00:56:11,679 --> 00:56:12,800
Speaker 2: We certainly covered a lot.

1147
00:56:12,960 --> 00:56:15,000
Speaker 1: We can't wait to unravel the next mystery with you.

1148
00:56:15,599 --> 00:56:17,400
Until next time, stay curious.