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Speaker 1: Welcome to episode eighty eight of Get Out Alive, a

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bi weekly podcast about animal attacks, why they happen, and

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how we can avoid them. I'm your host, Ashley, and

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before I get into today's episode, as is custom now

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on this podcast, i read a review as a thank

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you to all of you who take a second to

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rate and review this podcast this week. Coming from Apple Podcasts,

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Kitten Foster sixty six 's one wrote, loving the show,

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Ashley definitely brings in the smarts to the episode, as

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I'm cracking up at the often absurdity at how in

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the world folks find themselves in these encounters. I've got

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a long standing dislike of chimps anywhere on the same continent,

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and it's nice to feel their support. And then in parentheses,

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don't stop swearing. Thank you so much. I don't intend

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to stop swearing anytime soon, as you'll hear in this

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episode a little bit. And for those of you who

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haven't listened to the last few episodes, we are covering

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Chimp Crazy the documentary on HBO, and the first two

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episodes are available on the main feed before this one. Otherwise,

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the last two will be available on our Patreon. All right, so,

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for today's episode. This has been a long one in

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the making. I've been talking to our guests for months

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and months before this recording. And this is really a

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follow up to episode sixty of this podcast, which was

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the Owl Theory, and that was all about the death

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of Kathleen Peterson. If you like true crime or have

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seen the Staircase documentary, then you will know of this

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case a little bit. And this theory, the owl theory

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that we covered, was created by a neighbor of the Petersons,

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and we at the very end of that episode very

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briefly touched on the fact that there was a book

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about this theory and we, and by we, I mean

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mostly I did not speak very kindly of this book

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and I had never read it before. So long story short,

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the universe somehow worked in a weird way where Titty Smith,

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the author of that book, and I got in contact

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and I finally read the book, loved it, thought it

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was great and super interesting. So this episode is all

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about us going over the evidence that points towards a

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raptor causing the death of Kathleen Peterson. And there are

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a ton of pictures online to go along with the

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book and go along with what we're talking about. I'll

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link everything in these show notes, but without further ado,

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Please enjoy this interview with author of Death by Talents,

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Titty Smith.

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Speaker 2: Okay, so my name is Titty Smith. I live in Jakata, Indonesia.

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I've lived here for a few years. I used to

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teach at the University of Indonesia. So I've been in

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philosophy departments in New Zealand and Indonesia and took a

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bit of time off to write this book end of

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just getting back into the swing of things again after that.

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Speaker 1: So speaking of your book, Death by Talents, how because

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you're not from America, the case that it covers is

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based in America, So like, what guy you interested in

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Kathleen Peterson's death.

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Speaker 2: So most people got interested in Kathleen Peterson's death after

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the Staircase Right docu series was re released in I

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think it was re released on Netflix something like twenty

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seventeen sometime around there, So that's when most people sort

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of got back into it. So for the first time

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got into it. That's when I got back into it

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because the first time I had seen it was in

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about twenty ten, and that even that was about six

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years after it was first released in Europe, so I

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had torrented it or something in what a few years

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after it had been released, and I sort of I

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knew about the main theories of you know, Kathleen's death.

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You know, what had actually happened to this woman. And

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you know, it's a very if you watch it. It's

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one of these TV shows that kept off the sort

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of true crime documentary documentaries genre. You know, it was

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sort of if you think of the Jinks or making

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a murderer, you know, the Staircase was actually quite a

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bit before these other shows and very much informed them

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in the way that they were made, the sort of

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suspense that they build up with the courtroom drama and

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all of that. So anyway, you know, skip forward, what

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is it about? Almost ten years and then COVID hits

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and my wife and I are stuck in a tiny

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little apartment in Jakata with absolutely nothing to do for

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months and months on the end during lockdown, and I suggested, oh,

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have you seen the Staircase. That's quite a good one,

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and she said no, what's it about? And I said, oh, wow,

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I won't tell you, but you know, you should check

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it out. So she started watching it, and just before

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it ended, I thought, I'm going to be a bit cheeky,

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you know, and I'm going to tell her about the

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crazy theory that I know has been floating around, you know,

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in the background of all this. I said to her,

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you know, some people think and Owl killed Kathleen. And

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she sort of looked at me like I was making

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a joke, you know, Yeah, didn't believe anything. I was there,

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and I said, no, no, seriously, you know, they really do.

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And she said, well, that's just stupid. And I thought, well,

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it's not just stupid, you know. So I went on.

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I remembered that I had seen back in the day,

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you know, a photo of Kathleen's autopsy and the wounds

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on the back of her head, which are really striking, yeah,

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to look very much like the sort of tried and

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shaped talon like Mark's on the back of her head.

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And I found this and I showed my wife and

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I said, well, see it's not just crazy. There's there's

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a little bit of ever like it's a bit crazy,

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but look at this photo. You know. Yeah, in my

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life is like well all right, you know, yeah, still

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still crazy though, And I'm still but there's more than they,

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you know. So then I sort of this rabbit hole opened,

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and I started collecting all of these things to show

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my wife, you know, like, it's not just crazy, it's

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not just crazy. And then eventually, by accident, I had

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a messed this giant library of case evidence, photographs of

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the crime scene and you know, photos of the autopsy

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and trial testimony and all of this stuff, you know,

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And all of a sudden, by accident, I realized, oh God,

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I've fallen into this case quite deeply. Yeah, And the

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deeper I fell, the more I saw evidence that didn't

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make sense on any of the available theories that had

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been presented so far, and that included the original owl theory,

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as it's called. And that's when I actually began to

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get quite worried about what I was discovering, because it

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implicated the North Carolina police in quite a major sort

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of cover up of the evidence. And that's when I realized, oh, dear,

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I'm not American, I'm not from North Carolina, but what

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I've discovered here is quite quite terrible and indicts quite

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a few people, and the people of North Carolina probably

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deserved to know this.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So, like I guess would you describe yourself as

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like a true crime person, Like, were you into knowing

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about like these kind of stories before you stumbled upon

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this case?

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Speaker 2: I mean, look at as much as anybody, right, I

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think I think everybody has a little bit of a

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dark streak and they think, oh, you know, Jeffrey Dahmer,

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how interesting? Or Jack the Ripper, who really was it?

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You know, there are mysteries and there, and you know

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though that particular genre of true crime TV is quite addictive,

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you know, Making a Murderer was that. I got very

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excited when that came out. And the Jinx is just

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an incredible one and it's crazy, yeah, you know, and

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the whole story of that that one again, that's one

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of those stories that where you wonder, you think you

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need to ask some pretty serious questions of the American

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place for so long? Yeah, sorry, yes, and I've forgotten

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what the question is. No.

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Speaker 1: IM just curious, like if you were into true crime,

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like I know, someone into like the true crime podcast

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and like binge those like Crime Junkie and stuff like that.

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Speaker 2: But I mean just just I think, really just as

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much as the average person bored person during lockdown.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, no, absolutely, so for those because this podcast like

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isn't exactly true crime, this is like this case specifically

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is like a really good intersection of true crime and

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also the content that we cover. So for those unfamiliar,

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could you give us a brief rundown of what happened

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that night?

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Speaker 2: So this went down in Durham, North Carolina, in two

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thousand and one, December the ninth, two thousand and one,

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So this was just after nine to eleven. So a

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nine to one one call was made by Mike Peterson

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at two forty am and he tells the operator, quick come,

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my wife's had an accident. She's still breathing, please come,

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And the operator says what kind of accident? And Mike says,

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she fell down the stairs quickly and six minutes later

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he calls again and this time he says, she stopped breathing.

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Where are they? And just a couple of minutes after that,

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the first responders arrive. Now, when the first responders arrive,

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they are shocked at what they find. They have been

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told somebody fell down the stairs, but when they arrived

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they find blood all over the scene. There's blood spatter

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and spray all through the stairwell, at the bottom of

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the stairs is where Kathleen is lying. She has pulled

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out more than sixty of her own head heres by

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the roots and clutching them in her hands. So it's

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a really really pretty grotesque scene really. But one thing

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that they noticed as they wandered into the house, or

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ran into the house rather, is that the back of

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the front door had these great big wipes of blood

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on it. So not only was the area where Kathleen

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was found was covened blood, but there was blood on

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the front door, And as they went along the front

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path they also saw that there were spots of blood

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along the front path. Now this was very strange because,

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of course, if you fall down the stairs, you can't

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smear blood all over your front door, and if you

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fall down stairs and die at the bottom of the stairs,

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you certainly can't get blood down your front path. So

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they're immediately suspicious of the story that they're being told.

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When the police arrive on the scene a few minutes later,

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they just find everyone acting quite suspiciously. Really. They find

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Mike seems to be kind of incoherent. He's which you

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would probably expect, right, but it seems though in the

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interim of calling nine to one one and finding his wife.

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He's called his son to the scene, and his son,

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Todd Peterson, is now at the house with friends from

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a Christmas party, we're told, right, which is bizarre. Now,

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one of these friends is a doctor and is checking Mike.

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We're told that she has been called to check Mike

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for shock. But her husband is there as well, the

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doctor's husband, and he's drunk as a skunk apparently, and

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he's wandering around the crime scene, you know, disturbing things

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and you know, bumping into walls and all the rest

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of it. So already things are a little bit strange

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in this house. Now the police decide, look, we can't

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have any of this, and they lock all of the

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witnesses away. They lock everyone in a small study and

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they say you can't leave, and they stay in there

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for about the next the next five or six hours

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or so wow, before being allowed to leave those five

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or six hours. It's not really clear what the police

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are doing. This is how this case begins to be

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set out in these two narratives. Right, you have the

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narrative from Mike saying, right, she fell down the stairs

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and has died in this terribly bloody way, or as

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the police imagine, this guy's beaten his wife to death

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and he's making up a ridiculous story to try and

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explain it. So those are the two that's sort of

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how things got kicked off. And eventually, you know, Mike

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has put to trial for the murder of Kathleen, Kathleen Peterson,

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his wife. Now it bears to state it of this

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was a very very wealthy family, incredibly wealthy family. Mike

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was an author of war novels and was a millionaire. Really,

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I mean his first book got a million dollar advance

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from Simon and Schuster.

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Speaker 1: Wow.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty great. His first book million dollar advanced, and

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his other books, you know, were in the pipeline, was

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selling well. And he had just had news from Hollywood

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that one of his books was in the sights of

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a producer and might be made into a film. And

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Kathleen Peterson worked for Nortel. She was an executive at Nortel,

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the Canadian telecommunications company. And you know, this was a

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very wealthy family, a lot of money and in fact,

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the house was the largest domestic property in all of Durham. Wow,

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with one of the largest grounds right used to be

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owned by relatives of the Duke family of Durham, so

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that where you get Duke University and that sorting.

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Speaker 1: Oh wow, okay, so clearly very well known in the community.

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So immediately I can imagine the police were like, this

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is going to be a high profile thing. So to

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come on the scene you already have that going in

241
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the back of your mind, and then to see there's

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a bunch of people who are contaminating the crime scene.

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The husband's acting weird. So when Michael first went to trial,

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how did that end?

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Speaker 2: Not well for Mike? So he was found guilty of

246
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first degree murder, went away for life without prole and

247
00:14:05,840 --> 00:14:07,480
that was in two thousand and three, so that was

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two years after Kathleen was found dead at the bottom

249
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of the stairs. Now, the idea was that he had

250
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beaten her to death with some sort of weapon, and

251
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what the prosecution alleged was that he had used a

252
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fireplace blowpoke and had beat nurse to death over the head.

253
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The interesting thing is that they also alleged that he

254
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had cleaned up the scene of the crime. And this

255
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gets very confusing because it changes the timeline in a

256
00:14:40,440 --> 00:14:42,600
very unusual way to how Mike is supposed to have

257
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done this, so the idea goes on the prosecutions account.

258
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Mike beats his wife severely in the stairwell over the

259
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head with this brass blowpoke. She falls and sort of

260
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passes out but is bleed in the stairwell, and then

261
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Mike realizes, oh, no, I've got to start cleaning the

262
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scene because I don't want to go to jail forever, right,

263
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so I've got to cover my tracks. So he goes

264
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to the laundry room and he gets all of these

265
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cleaning products and he starts wiping away blood from different

266
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areas in the stairwell. And then Kathleen, who hadn't actually

267
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been dead, the idea goes sort of sits up and goes, ah,

268
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I'm not dead, you've bastard, and he Mike is forced

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to then pick up the blowpoke again and finish her off.

270
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And then he decides, oh, well, never mind about the cleanup,

271
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and he puts the cleaning products away because well, we

272
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don't know what, because because because he's mad or upsets

273
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or whatever, his plans have been disturbed. But it sets

274
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up a very strange you know, the actual scenario if

275
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you break it down and what the prosecution alleged to

276
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had happened is very very bizarre. So the last thing

277
00:15:58,279 --> 00:16:02,679
that we're supposed to imagineas is that Mike then takes

278
00:16:02,759 --> 00:16:07,879
this murder weapon, the brass blowpoke runs out the front door,

279
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smudging blood on it as he goes, and dripping the

280
00:16:11,320 --> 00:16:13,720
blood on the path as he runs to dispose of this.

281
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So that's how you explain the blood going outside the house,

282
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which is Mike hiding the murder weapon. We later find

283
00:16:21,919 --> 00:16:24,600
out that this is probably not what happened, or in fact,

284
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it certainly not what happened anyway, So yes, Mike went

285
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to jail for eight years. In twenty eleven, he was

286
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released pending a new trial when it was found that

287
00:16:36,200 --> 00:16:39,120
the blood spatter analysis that had been carried out was

288
00:16:39,159 --> 00:16:43,639
probably substandard in his first trial. So Dwayne Deaver was

289
00:16:43,679 --> 00:16:46,759
the name of the blood spatter analyst. He had been

290
00:16:46,799 --> 00:16:50,240
found guilty of fudging evidence in previous cases.

291
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Speaker 1: Oh boy, So the.

292
00:16:52,679 --> 00:16:57,080
Speaker 2: Blood spatter analysis, it was argued, is probably substandard in

293
00:16:57,120 --> 00:17:00,960
this case. And so Mike was released pending a new trial.

294
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And at this new trial, which never you know, before

295
00:17:04,200 --> 00:17:06,680
the new trial happened, Mike pled guilty to what is

296
00:17:06,680 --> 00:17:09,960
called an Alfred play. Now, this is where you plead

297
00:17:10,000 --> 00:17:13,160
evidence to a crime, even when you insist that you

298
00:17:13,200 --> 00:17:15,720
are sorry. You played guilty to a crime, even when

299
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you insist that you're innocent. So it's a way of

300
00:17:18,240 --> 00:17:20,599
sort of saying, look, any reasonable Jerry is going to

301
00:17:20,599 --> 00:17:23,000
find me guilty, So I'm pleaded guilty to sort of

302
00:17:23,039 --> 00:17:25,920
expedite things because there's no point in me pleading innocent,

303
00:17:26,039 --> 00:17:29,160
even though I am an ascent. Yeah, also strange. I

304
00:17:29,200 --> 00:17:30,640
think that you can do this in the States, which

305
00:17:30,640 --> 00:17:31,160
is pretty cool.

306
00:17:31,279 --> 00:17:34,799
Speaker 1: Think, Yeah, it is wild. I do want to note though,

307
00:17:35,000 --> 00:17:37,359
like you know, you said that the blood spatter analyst

308
00:17:37,599 --> 00:17:42,279
fudge things, but this case was so different from other

309
00:17:42,480 --> 00:17:45,920
even murder cases, because there were over ten thousand like

310
00:17:46,039 --> 00:17:49,759
blood spatters to analyze and they were all in weird

311
00:17:49,839 --> 00:17:54,039
spots and different types of blood spatter things like transfer

312
00:17:54,079 --> 00:17:57,480
stains versus like smugchstains things like that. So this took

313
00:17:57,519 --> 00:17:59,720
a whole team of people. So the fact that one

314
00:17:59,759 --> 00:18:03,119
person and fudged it messes up the whole thing. I mean,

315
00:18:03,119 --> 00:18:04,839
there's so many other things that were also messed up

316
00:18:04,839 --> 00:18:05,680
that we'll get into.

317
00:18:05,759 --> 00:18:08,400
Speaker 2: But I feel sorry for Diva in a way, because

318
00:18:08,440 --> 00:18:12,000
it was never proven that he did anything wrong. Really,

319
00:18:12,079 --> 00:18:14,200
the argument is, well, what I mean is in the

320
00:18:14,240 --> 00:18:17,400
other cases, Yes, the argument as well, because he had

321
00:18:17,480 --> 00:18:21,079
been misbehaved in these other cases, he must have. You know,

322
00:18:21,160 --> 00:18:24,039
it's probable that he hasn't behaved well in this case.

323
00:18:24,680 --> 00:18:28,880
Fair well, you know, I guess. But when you look

324
00:18:29,000 --> 00:18:34,039
at how other police officers behaved. True, in this case,

325
00:18:34,400 --> 00:18:38,920
we have very clear evidence of really bad behavior, really

326
00:18:39,240 --> 00:18:43,640
legal stuff going on, and nobody was found guilty or

327
00:18:43,680 --> 00:18:45,960
liable for any of that. So, I mean, I just

328
00:18:45,960 --> 00:18:47,759
sort of feel a bit like Diva ended up being

329
00:18:47,799 --> 00:18:50,400
the full guy for what was really the whole department

330
00:18:50,400 --> 00:18:52,559
SA something a lot of them should have been found

331
00:18:52,599 --> 00:18:53,319
guilty of here.

332
00:18:53,599 --> 00:18:56,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's a really good point. So let's now

333
00:18:56,920 --> 00:19:00,400
touch on. So you have a gallery on your website

334
00:19:00,400 --> 00:19:02,400
where people can go look at the evidence as they're

335
00:19:02,400 --> 00:19:04,720
reading along or like in my case, as in the audiobook,

336
00:19:04,880 --> 00:19:06,480
so I could go look at the pictures that you

337
00:19:06,519 --> 00:19:09,839
were referring to in the book. Let's talk about the

338
00:19:09,920 --> 00:19:13,599
pictures from the case and what the heck is up

339
00:19:13,680 --> 00:19:15,200
with them and why are they're not the way that

340
00:19:15,240 --> 00:19:15,880
they should be.

341
00:19:17,000 --> 00:19:24,839
Speaker 2: Of the crime scene photographs and the crime scene video. Yeah, yeah,

342
00:19:23,680 --> 00:19:26,920
it's I don't even know where to start. I really don't.

343
00:19:27,759 --> 00:19:31,720
It's difficult, like you say, to without a gallery or

344
00:19:31,720 --> 00:19:34,119
without actually looking at them. It's difficult to express in

345
00:19:34,200 --> 00:19:38,519
words how substandard the quality is of these images. It

346
00:19:38,559 --> 00:19:41,880
would I'm not exaggerating when I say it would be

347
00:19:41,960 --> 00:19:45,119
difficult for me with any sort of digital camera that

348
00:19:45,160 --> 00:19:51,720
you give me to emulate the quality of these photographs.

349
00:19:51,759 --> 00:19:54,079
So I would need a certain degree of expertise to

350
00:19:54,160 --> 00:20:00,000
make a photo that s bad. Yeah, they're overexposed, so overexposed,

351
00:20:00,079 --> 00:20:03,400
but you can't clearly make out objects, even the central

352
00:20:03,440 --> 00:20:08,359
objects that are under the subject of the photograph. The

353
00:20:08,440 --> 00:20:11,000
main thing depicted you can often not make out because

354
00:20:11,000 --> 00:20:14,119
it's so overexposed. The color of almost all of the

355
00:20:14,119 --> 00:20:18,559
photographs is distorted. They're very often washed over with this

356
00:20:18,839 --> 00:20:23,480
very strong sepia or red tone. Now, sepia and red

357
00:20:23,680 --> 00:20:28,200
are very good filters to use if your intention was

358
00:20:28,279 --> 00:20:33,039
to hide colors, so red filters. If you look through

359
00:20:33,039 --> 00:20:35,519
a red filter, in a sense, the world just becomes

360
00:20:35,519 --> 00:20:38,960
more black and white. The difference between relative colors becomes

361
00:20:39,079 --> 00:20:40,960
much harder to makeout. So if you were trying to

362
00:20:41,039 --> 00:20:43,400
hide a whole range of different colors in a picture.

363
00:20:43,559 --> 00:20:45,160
One of the best things you could do is put

364
00:20:45,440 --> 00:20:48,680
a red or a brown filter over it. So that's

365
00:20:48,680 --> 00:20:51,759
suspicious already, because you know they shouldn't look like that,

366
00:20:51,839 --> 00:20:54,160
and if you think about why they might look like that,

367
00:20:54,799 --> 00:20:58,559
there's an explanation that presents itself. The other thing about

368
00:20:58,559 --> 00:21:01,440
the photographs that was brought up at trial but was

369
00:21:01,480 --> 00:21:07,200
never given a good explanation, was they're inconsistent. So photographs

370
00:21:07,279 --> 00:21:10,279
of the same areas of the house taken on the

371
00:21:10,319 --> 00:21:14,440
same day represent different things. The example that was present

372
00:21:14,559 --> 00:21:18,839
at a trial was supposed a blood spatter on cabinets

373
00:21:18,839 --> 00:21:21,720
and on walls. So you have these photographs that are

374
00:21:21,759 --> 00:21:25,519
taken of the same area on the same day, and

375
00:21:25,640 --> 00:21:30,000
yet in one area of wall you'll see five little

376
00:21:30,039 --> 00:21:32,519
specks of blood and in the next photo they're not there.

377
00:21:33,960 --> 00:21:37,680
Or on a cabinet, same picture us, same area taken

378
00:21:37,720 --> 00:21:40,680
on the same day, spots of blood, three of them,

379
00:21:41,559 --> 00:21:45,160
next photo not there. Now on the stand, the lead

380
00:21:45,240 --> 00:21:49,119
forensic investigator was asked, well, why are the photographs like this?

381
00:21:49,240 --> 00:21:53,279
Why do they present objects that disappear or appear randomly,

382
00:21:54,039 --> 00:21:56,400
And his answer was I was told this was a

383
00:21:56,400 --> 00:22:01,400
photo glitch. Well, who told you it was a glitch?

384
00:22:01,680 --> 00:22:04,440
I can't remember how many glitches are there in the photos,

385
00:22:04,559 --> 00:22:08,519
don't know. So the photographic record is really dodgy for

386
00:22:08,559 --> 00:22:11,839
all sorts of reasons. And when you look at I

387
00:22:11,839 --> 00:22:13,720
think overall, if you just look at the quality of

388
00:22:13,720 --> 00:22:17,519
the photos, you have enough information straight away to suspect

389
00:22:17,599 --> 00:22:20,319
that something is being hidden. Yea, that the photos are

390
00:22:20,319 --> 00:22:22,839
being deliberately obfuscatory.

391
00:22:23,200 --> 00:22:25,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just had a thought. I'm like, also looking

392
00:22:25,640 --> 00:22:27,920
at the pictures as you're talking, especially the one of

393
00:22:28,039 --> 00:22:31,160
Kathleen's eye, were like, you show the enhanced one next

394
00:22:31,200 --> 00:22:34,599
to it. It is crazy how much detail is missing

395
00:22:35,000 --> 00:22:39,079
from the picture with the filter over it. You miss

396
00:22:39,160 --> 00:22:41,160
so much information, it's crazy.

397
00:22:41,240 --> 00:22:43,759
Speaker 2: Well that's from the crime scene video. So that's a

398
00:22:43,839 --> 00:22:47,480
still from the video, oh man. And the video as

399
00:22:47,519 --> 00:22:52,039
well is corrupted in terms of color. The other thing

400
00:22:52,240 --> 00:22:55,599
that you can do, if you did end up doing

401
00:22:55,640 --> 00:22:57,680
what I did, which is waste two years of your

402
00:22:57,720 --> 00:23:01,079
life looking through every piece of evidence in this is

403
00:23:01,400 --> 00:23:05,039
you can compare the video with the photos of those

404
00:23:05,119 --> 00:23:08,960
areas that seem unusual. For example, to give just one example,

405
00:23:09,799 --> 00:23:12,200
in the gallery, you might see there. There's a picture

406
00:23:12,240 --> 00:23:15,160
of Dan George standing in front of the front door,

407
00:23:15,759 --> 00:23:18,400
and at the base of the front door are bright

408
00:23:18,599 --> 00:23:22,640
red objects scattered about that I allege our feathers at

409
00:23:22,640 --> 00:23:24,400
the base of the front door. We'll get to why

410
00:23:24,480 --> 00:23:28,440
I allege their feathers shortly. I suppose if you look

411
00:23:28,440 --> 00:23:30,759
at that same area when it is filmed in the

412
00:23:30,799 --> 00:23:33,839
chrome scene video, you can't see anything. There's no red

413
00:23:34,279 --> 00:23:37,720
material there, there's no and yet a photograph has taken

414
00:23:37,759 --> 00:23:41,039
of those objects, and they're yellow in the photograph, like

415
00:23:41,559 --> 00:23:47,039
yellow and over exposed. So it's again it's all the

416
00:23:47,039 --> 00:23:50,319
photos in the video. It's all inconsistent, none of it degrees.

417
00:23:51,160 --> 00:23:54,200
Objects are present in some images not in others. It's

418
00:23:54,400 --> 00:23:55,480
very very suspicious.

419
00:23:55,960 --> 00:23:58,799
Speaker 1: And you know, like I watched the Staircase documentary before

420
00:23:58,839 --> 00:24:02,039
we cover the episode like on the Owl theory episode

421
00:24:02,039 --> 00:24:06,079
that we've done before, and when you watch that documentary,

422
00:24:06,400 --> 00:24:10,759
like none of this is really covered well. And also

423
00:24:11,680 --> 00:24:14,200
you go into that documentary like with the two theories

424
00:24:14,240 --> 00:24:17,359
either she fell or Michael killed her, and your book

425
00:24:17,400 --> 00:24:21,440
pointed out I had no idea that Michael became romantically

426
00:24:21,519 --> 00:24:25,079
involved with the director of that documentary, right.

427
00:24:25,359 --> 00:24:28,680
Speaker 2: Well, the editor, Yeah, the editor of the documentary. Yeah.

428
00:24:28,839 --> 00:24:31,519
I mean for people who are in this world of

429
00:24:31,680 --> 00:24:34,960
true crime more deeply, that's quite a well known point

430
00:24:35,000 --> 00:24:38,000
by now. But in any case, it tells you a

431
00:24:38,000 --> 00:24:42,279
little bit about the connections between the family and the

432
00:24:42,319 --> 00:24:46,440
production team. Things were going on there that I think,

433
00:24:46,680 --> 00:24:48,359
I guess what I want to say about that is

434
00:24:48,799 --> 00:24:50,799
all of the media that people are consuming on this

435
00:24:50,880 --> 00:24:53,839
case is motivated one way or another. The theory that

436
00:24:53,920 --> 00:24:56,599
is the most interesting part of this whole case, right,

437
00:24:56,799 --> 00:25:00,839
the l theory that people actually get fascinated, that people

438
00:25:00,960 --> 00:25:04,160
actually want to learn more about. Where have you in

439
00:25:04,160 --> 00:25:06,319
the mainstream media and any of that, Where have you

440
00:25:06,359 --> 00:25:09,200
actually seen it presented? It's hardly ever present. Even the

441
00:25:09,240 --> 00:25:12,119
Netflix special that presented in the last of five minutes

442
00:25:12,160 --> 00:25:15,079
gave Larry Pollard as two minutes to talk about it.

443
00:25:15,240 --> 00:25:19,240
There was basically because there arms were tied by that point.

444
00:25:19,400 --> 00:25:21,400
They knew that everybody knew about it and they had

445
00:25:21,440 --> 00:25:23,559
to present something on it. But from the very beginning

446
00:25:23,559 --> 00:25:27,079
they've wanted to present this as a binary decision. Either

447
00:25:27,119 --> 00:25:28,839
she fell or she was murdered. Either she fell or

448
00:25:28,880 --> 00:25:31,519
she was murdered. Yeah, why has it always been presented

449
00:25:31,640 --> 00:25:32,119
like that.

450
00:25:34,640 --> 00:25:37,359
Speaker 1: So let's get into that something else that may have

451
00:25:37,440 --> 00:25:40,000
slash probably did happen. Your book was very convincing, and

452
00:25:40,039 --> 00:25:43,200
I'm totally on team OWL for this case. So let's

453
00:25:43,200 --> 00:25:48,480
get into how this theory started and what this theory is.

454
00:25:49,000 --> 00:25:50,880
Speaker 2: I think the best way to start actually is to

455
00:25:50,920 --> 00:25:55,119
say what's wrong with the first two theories, because that

456
00:25:55,559 --> 00:25:58,400
way we can kind of see the need to approach

457
00:25:58,440 --> 00:26:02,119
this in a different way. So the first two theories.

458
00:26:02,160 --> 00:26:04,839
For first of all, we Mike beats Kathleen over thehead

459
00:26:04,839 --> 00:26:07,400
with this brass blowpoke. The trouble is, she didn't have

460
00:26:07,440 --> 00:26:10,559
any injuries to her brain, and she didn't have any

461
00:26:10,640 --> 00:26:13,440
sort of broken skull or even sort of like bruising

462
00:26:13,480 --> 00:26:15,559
on her face or anything like that that you'd expect

463
00:26:15,799 --> 00:26:18,960
from the sill of an attack. In fact, Kathleen had

464
00:26:19,039 --> 00:26:23,799
bled to death from deep lacerations on her scalp, and

465
00:26:23,920 --> 00:26:28,160
that's very unusual if the method of death was a

466
00:26:28,200 --> 00:26:31,319
homicide by beating, almost unheard of, really.

467
00:26:31,359 --> 00:26:33,839
Speaker 1: So just to confirm was her cause of death, like

468
00:26:33,920 --> 00:26:35,559
she bled to death from those wounds.

469
00:26:36,039 --> 00:26:40,720
Speaker 2: Apparently the medical examiner originally wrote exagination as the cause

470
00:26:40,759 --> 00:26:44,119
of death, but was dissuaded from making this the ultimate

471
00:26:44,160 --> 00:26:46,519
cause of death by the police, who encouraged her to

472
00:26:46,880 --> 00:26:51,240
point to something brain injury like and so she said, oh,

473
00:26:51,359 --> 00:26:56,279
plus a serious concussion or a major concussive event or

474
00:26:56,319 --> 00:26:59,920
something like that, which sounds made up right, But really

475
00:27:00,039 --> 00:27:01,759
the evidence is that she bled to death. I mean,

476
00:27:01,759 --> 00:27:03,759
if you look in the staircase, she must have bled

477
00:27:03,759 --> 00:27:07,680
to death. Really it would be you know, so the

478
00:27:07,680 --> 00:27:11,400
cause of death I think in the autopsy reporters called

479
00:27:12,240 --> 00:27:16,119
death from blood loss combined with major concussive event. So

480
00:27:16,160 --> 00:27:20,000
she bleed to death. Now that's again, so that's very

481
00:27:20,079 --> 00:27:22,759
unusual if this is a homicide by beating with a

482
00:27:22,799 --> 00:27:26,319
metal rod. So that's just strange. Okay. Now you think, oh, well,

483
00:27:26,400 --> 00:27:30,200
maybe that's better explained by this fall theory, because you know,

484
00:27:30,519 --> 00:27:35,160
shallow falls on hard oak steps. She could slice her head,

485
00:27:35,279 --> 00:27:39,440
bleed out, but not damage the brain or crack the

486
00:27:39,480 --> 00:27:42,440
skull or anything like that. Okay, it's a bit implausible,

487
00:27:42,519 --> 00:27:44,759
but you know, perhaps you could explain it that way.

488
00:27:44,799 --> 00:27:47,160
The trouble is with the full theory, there's just way

489
00:27:47,200 --> 00:27:50,359
too much blood. There's way too much blood everywhere. It's

490
00:27:50,440 --> 00:27:53,680
sprayed all over the walls, it's gone at bizarre angles,

491
00:27:54,440 --> 00:27:57,279
it's under some of the what are they like the

492
00:27:57,319 --> 00:28:01,039
noses of the steps, you know, coming up strange angles.

493
00:28:02,240 --> 00:28:04,680
And there's also the blood outside the house and on

494
00:28:04,680 --> 00:28:06,640
the front door that we talked about, so that needs

495
00:28:06,680 --> 00:28:09,400
to be explained as well. She obviously didn't fall and

496
00:28:09,440 --> 00:28:11,000
then fall all the way out the front door and

497
00:28:11,079 --> 00:28:13,039
down the path and then come back to her resting

498
00:28:13,079 --> 00:28:15,599
position at the bottom of the stairs. So those are

499
00:28:15,599 --> 00:28:19,480
the problems with the two main theories. And Larry Pollard

500
00:28:19,720 --> 00:28:23,119
comes along. Now, Larry was a neighbor of the He

501
00:28:23,200 --> 00:28:25,519
was in fact the next door neighbor of the Peterson's,

502
00:28:25,799 --> 00:28:27,920
and he was an attorney, and he was following the

503
00:28:27,960 --> 00:28:31,920
case closely as a neighbor would and as an attorney would,

504
00:28:32,000 --> 00:28:35,680
right doubly interested, and he was just a bit confused

505
00:28:35,720 --> 00:28:38,000
really because the evidence didn't make any sense to him.

506
00:28:38,279 --> 00:28:41,880
He knew that the arguments were fall on the one hand,

507
00:28:42,039 --> 00:28:44,359
or murder on the other, and he knew what the

508
00:28:44,359 --> 00:28:46,400
available evidence was and he just thought, the woman, this

509
00:28:46,480 --> 00:28:49,039
doesn't sound very convincing at all, how strange. So he

510
00:28:49,160 --> 00:28:52,000
was chatting over the back fence with one of Michael's

511
00:28:52,000 --> 00:28:54,599
team one of Michael's legal team and asked if he

512
00:28:54,640 --> 00:28:57,599
could be shown the autopsy photos because one of them

513
00:28:57,640 --> 00:29:01,440
had mentioned that they were pretty bizarre. The injuries were

514
00:29:01,440 --> 00:29:05,559
pretty bizarre. So the lawyer brings the copy of the

515
00:29:05,599 --> 00:29:09,440
autopsy photos and presents them to Larry, and Larry, who

516
00:29:09,480 --> 00:29:12,319
was a hunter, took one look at the wounds on

517
00:29:12,359 --> 00:29:16,640
the back of Kathleen's head and said, these look exactly

518
00:29:16,759 --> 00:29:19,240
like turkey tracks. And they do.

519
00:29:19,519 --> 00:29:19,640
Speaker 1: Right.

520
00:29:19,720 --> 00:29:21,559
Speaker 2: If you take a look at the injuries on the

521
00:29:21,559 --> 00:29:26,279
back of Kathleen's head, they're like two perfect symmetrical trident

522
00:29:26,480 --> 00:29:30,759
marks right beside other. Yeah, they look like bird feet.

523
00:29:30,920 --> 00:29:33,000
I mean, you know, you might not be able to

524
00:29:33,000 --> 00:29:36,319
pick exactly what species they are it is, but that

525
00:29:36,440 --> 00:29:39,079
looks pretty damn close to bird feet of some sort.

526
00:29:39,759 --> 00:29:44,279
So Larry was just a bit confused, as you would be,

527
00:29:44,279 --> 00:29:48,000
because he didn't believe a turkey had killed Kathleen. But

528
00:29:48,160 --> 00:29:51,319
he found it very strange because he knew from his

529
00:29:51,440 --> 00:29:54,640
hunting days what the tracks of a turkey looked like,

530
00:29:55,279 --> 00:29:57,920
and he realized, well, that looks just like a turkey.

531
00:29:58,559 --> 00:30:01,359
So it actually took so a couple of months after

532
00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:04,400
viewing the photos for Larry to realize that the best

533
00:30:04,440 --> 00:30:07,880
explanation would be an owl, and it would probably be

534
00:30:07,920 --> 00:30:11,119
one of the territorial bar owls that were so common

535
00:30:11,480 --> 00:30:13,680
around the property. Now, remember I said that they live

536
00:30:13,720 --> 00:30:16,240
in the largest domestic property in Durham, so they had

537
00:30:16,240 --> 00:30:19,960
these huge grounds. I don't know exactly how many acres,

538
00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:22,160
but you know, this was a very very big wooded property,

539
00:30:22,720 --> 00:30:26,000
and there was an old barn between Larry and Mike's

540
00:30:26,000 --> 00:30:30,039
house that the barn owls and the barred owls would

541
00:30:30,079 --> 00:30:33,279
nest them. So Larry sort of had the Eureka moment

542
00:30:33,319 --> 00:30:35,960
when he was thinking about the blood outside the house

543
00:30:36,359 --> 00:30:38,599
and he realized, oh my god, if the attack began

544
00:30:38,880 --> 00:30:43,759
outside and Kathleen ran inside and then fainted at the

545
00:30:43,799 --> 00:30:46,400
bottom of the stairs, right having some kind of seizure,

546
00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:49,519
maybe to explain all the spray, that would explain the

547
00:30:49,559 --> 00:30:52,200
blood inside and outside house, and it would explain the

548
00:30:52,240 --> 00:30:55,720
head injuries that don't come alongside any brain injury or

549
00:30:55,720 --> 00:30:59,160
skull injury. The other thing to notice, Kathleen had sort

550
00:30:59,200 --> 00:31:02,519
of scratched around her eyes, which would be a very

551
00:31:02,519 --> 00:31:05,920
commonplace for birds of prey to focus their attacks, and

552
00:31:06,119 --> 00:31:09,279
on her elbows with these sort of puncture like injuries

553
00:31:09,559 --> 00:31:13,319
that again look like the punctures of talents. So Larry thought,

554
00:31:13,359 --> 00:31:15,759
this is incredible. You know, I've got to go to

555
00:31:16,279 --> 00:31:18,799
Mike's lawyers before the trial ends because they might want

556
00:31:18,839 --> 00:31:20,920
to do something about this, because the trial was just

557
00:31:20,960 --> 00:31:24,039
about to close up. And of course he went to

558
00:31:24,640 --> 00:31:28,599
Mike's lawyer, David Rudolph, and was laughed at, essentially, you know,

559
00:31:28,880 --> 00:31:31,759
as you probably would be right if you went into

560
00:31:31,960 --> 00:31:35,359
anyone's work and said, I think your client is the

561
00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:38,839
victim of an owl attack. Sounds laughable. So he was

562
00:31:38,880 --> 00:31:40,920
sort of not taken seriously for a long time.

563
00:31:41,079 --> 00:31:42,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, as you're saying this, I'm looking at the picture

564
00:31:42,960 --> 00:31:45,839
on your website of the wounds on Kathleen's head. And

565
00:31:45,880 --> 00:31:48,759
even if you were to like argue it was a

566
00:31:48,799 --> 00:31:52,079
fire poker, one, yeah, you would expect there to be

567
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:56,359
damaged to her skull if it was that severe. And two,

568
00:31:56,880 --> 00:31:59,920
just looking at the marks, they're not the same. It's

569
00:32:00,079 --> 00:32:02,039
clear if this was a bird of prey, it's like

570
00:32:02,599 --> 00:32:05,680
its toes are spread differently on each foot. A fire poker,

571
00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:09,039
the pokers can't move if you were to measure the

572
00:32:09,119 --> 00:32:12,720
space between like what we are assuming our owl feet

573
00:32:13,119 --> 00:32:15,240
it's not consistent between both feet. It would have to

574
00:32:15,240 --> 00:32:17,480
be like two different fire pokers, or the fire poker

575
00:32:17,519 --> 00:32:20,640
would have had to like get bent. You know what

576
00:32:20,640 --> 00:32:20,920
I mean.

577
00:32:21,079 --> 00:32:24,920
Speaker 2: You're saying that there's a certain randomness to the symmetry exactly,

578
00:32:25,359 --> 00:32:28,160
like it's the same object, but it's a moving object,

579
00:32:28,319 --> 00:32:29,960
like a clause a dynamic claw.

580
00:32:30,319 --> 00:32:35,240
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, yes, And you know, I think it's a

581
00:32:35,279 --> 00:32:39,200
good example of why, like wildlife forensics is important because

582
00:32:39,200 --> 00:32:41,160
if you're just like a normal cop, you're not going

583
00:32:41,160 --> 00:32:44,960
into this scene expecting, like the most obvious answer would

584
00:32:44,960 --> 00:32:48,359
be one stairs or two Michael killed her. You're not like, well,

585
00:32:48,400 --> 00:32:51,119
what if an owl came in and did this? Like

586
00:32:51,160 --> 00:32:54,920
that probably wasn't in anyone's front of mind, but especially

587
00:32:54,920 --> 00:32:57,039
back then because it's such like a new field. I'm

588
00:32:57,079 --> 00:33:01,640
sure no one had the expertise who even like know

589
00:33:01,680 --> 00:33:04,079
what they were looking at if it was an owl.

590
00:33:04,319 --> 00:33:08,039
But that's just acknowledging like the head wounds. That's not

591
00:33:08,079 --> 00:33:11,640
even acknowledging all of the feathers and the mutant from

592
00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:13,839
like the bird poop that was present on the scene.

593
00:33:13,880 --> 00:33:17,640
So let's get into those things that were not acknowledged

594
00:33:17,720 --> 00:33:20,079
the first time. This was investigated.

595
00:33:20,839 --> 00:33:24,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is where I enter the scene. So

596
00:33:25,960 --> 00:33:29,799
so far we've had Larry Pollard, and his argument is, look,

597
00:33:30,000 --> 00:33:33,519
we can explain the major problems that the two other

598
00:33:33,599 --> 00:33:37,559
theories had away if we say a bird of prey. Now. Actually, well,

599
00:33:37,599 --> 00:33:40,039
just before we go further as well, talk about how

600
00:33:40,119 --> 00:33:43,000
Larry got his tiny bit of confirmation, which is he

601
00:33:43,079 --> 00:33:48,039
wrote to the district Attorney and said, look, I think

602
00:33:48,079 --> 00:33:50,680
a bird of prey might have been involved. Can you

603
00:33:50,759 --> 00:33:52,880
just tell me that if in the trace evidence report

604
00:33:52,920 --> 00:33:56,640
there's any mention of feathers or something like that. He

605
00:33:56,720 --> 00:33:58,759
writes to the DA and asked where any feathers in

606
00:33:58,799 --> 00:34:01,759
the trace evidents port. He eventually gets a letter back

607
00:34:01,799 --> 00:34:05,400
that says, right, we appreciate your interest in this case. No,

608
00:34:05,559 --> 00:34:09,039
there were no feathers found at the same thanks very much. Now, Larry,

609
00:34:09,039 --> 00:34:11,239
who's by now pretty convinced the bird of prey had

610
00:34:11,280 --> 00:34:14,639
something to do with it, thinks I think something's fishy

611
00:34:14,679 --> 00:34:17,800
here because that I'm almost certain this is a bird

612
00:34:17,800 --> 00:34:20,000
of prey. And so if there were no feathers found,

613
00:34:20,039 --> 00:34:22,360
that makes no sense. Right. If this was a tussle

614
00:34:22,840 --> 00:34:25,840
between a large owl and a human, there are going

615
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:29,000
to be some feathers somewhere. So he, as I said,

616
00:34:29,039 --> 00:34:30,840
he was an attorney. He used to work at the

617
00:34:30,840 --> 00:34:34,480
Special Prosecutor's Office in Durham, and so he went to

618
00:34:34,519 --> 00:34:36,440
his old place of work and sort of, you know,

619
00:34:36,639 --> 00:34:40,880
behind everyone's back, said hey, mate, do you think I

620
00:34:40,920 --> 00:34:43,400
can get you know, the trace evidence report in the

621
00:34:43,400 --> 00:34:47,440
Peterson case on the sly and this. Mats were like, yeah, yeah, yeah,

622
00:34:47,440 --> 00:34:49,559
for sure, but just don't tell anyone. He's like, no, no, totally,

623
00:34:49,599 --> 00:34:53,360
I won't tell anyone. So he gets the traces Evidence

624
00:34:53,400 --> 00:34:55,880
report and on the first page it says, father, a

625
00:34:55,880 --> 00:34:58,320
feather was found in Cathleen's here. So of course he's like, well,

626
00:34:58,360 --> 00:35:00,760
that was exactly what I asked for, confirment, So now

627
00:35:00,760 --> 00:35:04,519
I know you're lying, right, So he's obviously furious. He

628
00:35:04,679 --> 00:35:08,519
asks to review the slide with the feather in the

629
00:35:08,559 --> 00:35:13,119
company of the new District attorney. So they get the

630
00:35:13,119 --> 00:35:16,480
special microscope they can an expert. They all get the

631
00:35:16,519 --> 00:35:18,800
slide and have a look and they find that on

632
00:35:18,840 --> 00:35:22,280
the slide there's a there's a strand of Kathleen's here

633
00:35:22,679 --> 00:35:27,559
attached in blood is a broken feather fragment and another

634
00:35:27,760 --> 00:35:30,039
broken feather. So there were, in fact, two broken feather

635
00:35:30,079 --> 00:35:33,960
fragments in Kathleen's here that hadn't been admitted to right

636
00:35:34,039 --> 00:35:36,440
when Larry asked about them, so he called that the

637
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:40,679
smoking feather. That was Larry's smoking feather. The trouble is

638
00:35:40,719 --> 00:35:42,800
that that's not all the evidence there is now you

639
00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:44,840
because you would think, right, if there was that feather,

640
00:35:44,880 --> 00:35:48,199
there were loads of feathers. Yep, it still doesn't make

641
00:35:48,239 --> 00:35:52,199
any sense. If Larry is right and Kathleen was attacked

642
00:35:52,199 --> 00:35:55,039
by a bird and ran inside, you know, she should

643
00:35:55,079 --> 00:35:57,280
have feathers all through a here. They should have been

644
00:35:57,280 --> 00:35:59,880
all over her hands if she was pulling right, And

645
00:36:00,039 --> 00:36:02,480
yet we're being told there were a couple of microscopic

646
00:36:02,519 --> 00:36:05,039
feather fragments, and it still doesn't make any sense.

647
00:36:05,159 --> 00:36:05,360
Speaker 1: Right.

648
00:36:05,760 --> 00:36:08,320
Speaker 2: That's when I started to get a bit curious about

649
00:36:08,320 --> 00:36:10,480
what could be going on here, and that's when I

650
00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:13,119
started looking more closely at the crime scene photos and

651
00:36:13,159 --> 00:36:16,280
the crime scene video, and that's when I discovered really

652
00:36:16,880 --> 00:36:20,199
evidence that I felt really needed to be shared with

653
00:36:20,360 --> 00:36:22,280
the people of Durham and the people of North Carolina

654
00:36:22,320 --> 00:36:26,079
more widely, and that's evidence of feathers in the crime

655
00:36:26,079 --> 00:36:29,119
scene video and crime scene photos That's why the photos

656
00:36:29,119 --> 00:36:31,440
are of such terrible quality. That's why the crime scene

657
00:36:31,480 --> 00:36:35,480
video has been redacted. There are ways to enhance some

658
00:36:35,559 --> 00:36:39,280
of these images, but it's very, very difficult. I've struggled

659
00:36:39,320 --> 00:36:41,880
to do the best job that i can, but I'm

660
00:36:41,880 --> 00:36:43,880
not an expert in the field. I've been using sort

661
00:36:43,880 --> 00:36:47,800
of online tools, you know, forensic image analysis tools. But

662
00:36:47,920 --> 00:36:51,440
you know, there's even more. Even if you doubt that

663
00:36:51,559 --> 00:36:55,400
evidence that I've presented, there, there is evidence of bird

664
00:36:55,480 --> 00:37:00,639
droppings directly under Kathleen's head in the stairwell. This substance

665
00:37:00,760 --> 00:37:04,039
is a white substance. It's in splats that are consistent

666
00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:06,719
with the way in which an owl or any other

667
00:37:06,760 --> 00:37:10,320
sort of raptor would deposit droppings, especially if it were

668
00:37:10,320 --> 00:37:12,920
a frightened bird or a nervous bird. These are mutes,

669
00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:15,559
So these have been ejected, and not because the birds

670
00:37:15,559 --> 00:37:17,880
just had a big feed. They've been They're rejected in

671
00:37:17,920 --> 00:37:21,920
a sort of fit of stress. And these images have

672
00:37:22,000 --> 00:37:25,159
now been viewed by multiple ornithologists and raptor experts that

673
00:37:25,199 --> 00:37:28,199
I've sent these images to multiple ornithologists and raptor experts.

674
00:37:28,199 --> 00:37:31,840
Almost all of them agree that these are consistent with

675
00:37:32,679 --> 00:37:35,280
bird droppings, and by now, in a way, I'm sort

676
00:37:35,280 --> 00:37:38,480
of fed up of talking about it, because this should

677
00:37:38,519 --> 00:37:40,639
be all through the newspapers and Durham. You know, there

678
00:37:40,679 --> 00:37:42,920
should be the news and observers should be taking that.

679
00:37:43,039 --> 00:37:45,360
The Herald Sun should be picking this up, you know,

680
00:37:45,400 --> 00:37:48,400
the Charlotte Observer should be talking about this. And I've

681
00:37:48,400 --> 00:37:50,440
reached out to all of these newspapers. I've reached out

682
00:37:50,440 --> 00:37:54,079
to hundreds of journalists, and nobody seems to realize how

683
00:37:54,119 --> 00:37:58,480
important this is to this case and proving quite serious

684
00:37:58,519 --> 00:38:02,679
police mailpractice because the white marks, the white substance, the

685
00:38:02,760 --> 00:38:06,159
splat marks that are over the blood in the stairwell were,

686
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:09,960
we are told, never tested by police, and the police

687
00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:12,400
even when they were on the stand, pretended they had

688
00:38:12,440 --> 00:38:16,119
never noticed them when they were investigating the same. It's

689
00:38:16,199 --> 00:38:20,639
just it's so appalling. It's so appalling. It angers me,

690
00:38:20,679 --> 00:38:22,960
it genuinely, you know now I have to laugh for

691
00:38:23,079 --> 00:38:26,159
or cry. Yeah, but it really does anger me because

692
00:38:26,159 --> 00:38:30,119
it shouldn't have come to me some rando guy in

693
00:38:30,119 --> 00:38:33,920
Indonesia trying to convince my wife no there's something to it,

694
00:38:34,280 --> 00:38:36,920
to later find these marks and this, you know, why

695
00:38:36,960 --> 00:38:39,559
weren't the friends convestigators doing this. Why didn't Larry, who

696
00:38:39,599 --> 00:38:42,199
probably knew they were there all along, mentioned this, Right,

697
00:38:42,480 --> 00:38:45,000
it's because people were trying to present the strongest case

698
00:38:45,039 --> 00:38:47,880
they could for what they wanted the world to know

699
00:38:47,960 --> 00:38:50,280
about it. Right, it's not nobody was actually presenting the

700
00:38:50,280 --> 00:38:53,840
evidence as it really sat. Oh, it's just so aggravating.

701
00:38:54,599 --> 00:38:58,519
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, also, I think that explains why the photos

702
00:38:58,639 --> 00:39:02,039
might be edited, because if they couldn't explain the feathers

703
00:39:02,119 --> 00:39:05,119
or the mute, just change the filter and then people

704
00:39:05,159 --> 00:39:06,920
won't see it and you won't have to acknowledge it.

705
00:39:07,079 --> 00:39:09,400
So I totally like, if they're trying to do that,

706
00:39:09,480 --> 00:39:10,360
see why they would do that.

707
00:39:11,199 --> 00:39:13,039
Speaker 2: Well, and the other thing that I discussed in the

708
00:39:13,039 --> 00:39:15,760
book is the piece of evidence that goes missing. So

709
00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:17,760
you know, you don't just have to fudge the photos.

710
00:39:17,760 --> 00:39:20,199
You don't just have to change a filter. You can

711
00:39:20,239 --> 00:39:22,440
just throw evidence away if it doesn't fit your narrowive.

712
00:39:23,000 --> 00:39:26,440
So there was a piece of evidence. It was labeled

713
00:39:26,440 --> 00:39:29,679
States Exhibit twelve. It was plucked out from one of

714
00:39:29,679 --> 00:39:32,400
the steps. It was under a clot of blood, and

715
00:39:32,440 --> 00:39:35,199
it had been stamped in there with immense force. Right,

716
00:39:36,119 --> 00:39:38,960
it was described as gun metal gray on the outside.

717
00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:41,760
Why sh in its interior about a sixteenth of an

718
00:39:41,800 --> 00:39:46,519
inch long, curved and I quote the forensic detective here,

719
00:39:47,280 --> 00:39:52,320
like a mini talon. State's Exhibit twelve was wrapped up

720
00:39:52,400 --> 00:39:54,960
in all this evidence tape and a little container. It

721
00:39:55,000 --> 00:39:59,039
was presented to the jury, right the forensic investigator who

722
00:39:59,039 --> 00:40:02,320
discovered it, Eric ca. He opened the container to show

723
00:40:02,320 --> 00:40:05,039
the jury, poked about for a while in there and

724
00:40:05,079 --> 00:40:10,199
said to the DA, hey, it's not in there. And

725
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:12,800
the da came over and started poking about, and they

726
00:40:12,880 --> 00:40:15,119
take out the cotton wool and they realized, oh my god,

727
00:40:15,159 --> 00:40:18,280
it's been removed. It's not here. Now. The reason they

728
00:40:18,280 --> 00:40:20,800
were showing the jury this to begin with is that

729
00:40:20,840 --> 00:40:22,960
they were alleging it was a piece of the murder weapon.

730
00:40:23,639 --> 00:40:27,679
They were saying that this was a wood metal chip,

731
00:40:28,000 --> 00:40:30,079
so it was either wood or metal, and it had

732
00:40:30,119 --> 00:40:32,440
become lodged in the steel. Well, I think, you know,

733
00:40:32,480 --> 00:40:34,599
it's pretty clear what we're looking at here, even just

734
00:40:34,639 --> 00:40:36,960
in terms of the color. We're talking about what is

735
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:40,000
probably the chip of the tip of the talon. Now

736
00:40:40,039 --> 00:40:43,639
what's frightening as well is that one of the chrime

737
00:40:43,679 --> 00:40:48,440
scene photographers who I interviewed. I asked her, did you

738
00:40:48,480 --> 00:40:50,960
see any evidence that you thought was compatible with a

739
00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:55,000
bird when you were doing the investigation? And she brings

740
00:40:55,039 --> 00:40:58,000
attention to an object that was found embedded in the

741
00:40:58,000 --> 00:41:02,559
back of Kathleen's head in a skull that was, she said,

742
00:41:02,960 --> 00:41:06,639
very similar in appearance to State's Exhibit twelve. This is

743
00:41:06,679 --> 00:41:09,320
a piece of evidence that Larry Pollard had originally said

744
00:41:09,480 --> 00:41:14,519
might represent a chip talent, and now we have separate

745
00:41:14,639 --> 00:41:18,480
corroboration from Angie Powell is her name, that this is

746
00:41:18,519 --> 00:41:21,440
probably another talent chip. That it was very similar in

747
00:41:21,440 --> 00:41:24,119
appearance to State's Exhibit twelve, which, by the sounds of

748
00:41:24,159 --> 00:41:26,199
things is the chip of a talent and which was

749
00:41:26,559 --> 00:41:27,960
discarded by investigators.

750
00:41:28,280 --> 00:41:30,880
Speaker 1: Also, like when you described that moment in the book,

751
00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:34,159
how humiliating as you're, you know, conjuring up this story

752
00:41:34,199 --> 00:41:36,199
to the jury and you're like here it is and

753
00:41:36,239 --> 00:41:39,559
then there's nothing, and you're like, well, moving on, Like

754
00:41:39,800 --> 00:41:41,679
how even that should.

755
00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:44,599
Speaker 2: Be learned to what? Yeah, well you can see the

756
00:41:44,679 --> 00:41:49,239
da is really you know, his nerves get frayed after that,

757
00:41:49,400 --> 00:41:53,800
you know, something fishy. But they both taken completely by surprise.

758
00:41:53,840 --> 00:41:56,480
So whoever had it or threw it away. It wasn't

759
00:41:56,480 --> 00:41:58,400
one of those who I think they wouldn't have brought

760
00:41:58,400 --> 00:42:02,599
it out and presented it to the jury if but

761
00:42:02,639 --> 00:42:04,960
they they certainly to do other things that they were

762
00:42:05,000 --> 00:42:06,320
aware of that they shouldn't have been doing.

763
00:42:07,360 --> 00:42:11,480
Speaker 1: Oh great. So, as you can probably imagine, one of

764
00:42:11,480 --> 00:42:14,159
my favorite chapters of the book was chapter five, which

765
00:42:14,320 --> 00:42:16,719
was kind of like a historical look at owl attacks.

766
00:42:16,760 --> 00:42:18,880
So could you, like as a point of being, like,

767
00:42:19,280 --> 00:42:21,519
it is not out of the realm of possibility that

768
00:42:21,519 --> 00:42:24,199
owls attack humans. So could you give us some of

769
00:42:24,400 --> 00:42:27,760
the most compelling attacks that you found that really felt that,

770
00:42:27,920 --> 00:42:30,880
like it confirmed that owls were capable of this amount

771
00:42:30,880 --> 00:42:31,400
of damage.

772
00:42:32,239 --> 00:42:34,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's the point, right, that ols are

773
00:42:34,320 --> 00:42:36,039
capable of this amount of it, because I don't think

774
00:42:36,079 --> 00:42:40,440
people really doubted ol swoop at humans. Olves might scratch you,

775
00:42:40,440 --> 00:42:44,719
you might get an infection, but nobody is thinking you

776
00:42:44,800 --> 00:42:47,159
might get swooped out and lose an eye, or you

777
00:42:47,239 --> 00:42:49,920
might get swooped at and it hits your jugular, or

778
00:42:49,960 --> 00:42:52,800
you might get swooped at and you lose use that

779
00:42:53,239 --> 00:42:55,559
lose the use of your arm for a week or

780
00:42:55,800 --> 00:42:57,679
a month or whatever it is. You know, like these

781
00:42:57,719 --> 00:43:01,079
are very serious injuries that happened to people. Actually, one

782
00:43:01,119 --> 00:43:04,480
of the more interesting stories happened quite recently. There's a

783
00:43:04,480 --> 00:43:07,000
young boy. There's a photograph of his injuries in the

784
00:43:07,039 --> 00:43:11,119
book there, twelve year old Beckett Shanahan was his name.

785
00:43:12,039 --> 00:43:15,320
Now what's interesting actually is Beckett Shanahan. His father is

786
00:43:15,360 --> 00:43:18,880
a book reviewer for the Boston Globe. And I approached

787
00:43:19,599 --> 00:43:22,360
him asking for permission, you know, to use the photo

788
00:43:22,440 --> 00:43:26,440
and to talk about his son's owl attack, and he,

789
00:43:26,760 --> 00:43:28,440
you know, just wanted to know exactly what I was

790
00:43:28,440 --> 00:43:30,360
going to write. And once he saw what, he said, okay,

791
00:43:30,400 --> 00:43:32,280
well that's pretty accurate. You can write that, you know.

792
00:43:33,199 --> 00:43:34,559
And I said, we would you like to take a

793
00:43:34,559 --> 00:43:36,800
look at the book since your son was attacked by

794
00:43:36,840 --> 00:43:39,079
an owl, and maybe you'd like to read about you

795
00:43:39,119 --> 00:43:42,679
know this, And his response was essentially, oh, it's ridiculous though,

796
00:43:42,960 --> 00:43:47,840
like an owl attacking so even for people, yeah, even

797
00:43:47,920 --> 00:43:51,639
for people who Yeah, So this boy suffered quite a

798
00:43:51,679 --> 00:43:54,000
serious hid injury as well. I'm not sure how he

799
00:43:54,119 --> 00:43:58,239
is today years after the event, but in short, a

800
00:43:58,280 --> 00:44:00,480
great horned owl attack to's face as he was bob

801
00:44:00,519 --> 00:44:04,920
sledding in winter, and his injuries are pretty awful. He

802
00:44:05,000 --> 00:44:09,280
was sent to hospital. His face was terribly ripped and

803
00:44:09,440 --> 00:44:12,239
he was on morphine and you know, really looked a mess.

804
00:44:12,280 --> 00:44:14,880
And apparently, yes, a serious head injury in the aftermath.

805
00:44:14,960 --> 00:44:17,559
Because often what you get is whiplash as well from

806
00:44:17,639 --> 00:44:21,360
these l attacks when they hit you. Most of the

807
00:44:21,480 --> 00:44:25,480
attack victims described as being akin to being struck from

808
00:44:25,480 --> 00:44:28,280
behind by a baseball bat. So they've never been struck

809
00:44:28,440 --> 00:44:31,719
as hard in their life, and so injuries like whiplash

810
00:44:31,840 --> 00:44:35,159
or in Kathleen's case, I think actually possibly a broken

811
00:44:35,199 --> 00:44:41,159
cartilage was part of a whiplash injury. Possibly is quite common, yeah,

812
00:44:41,239 --> 00:44:42,960
I mean in terms of the worst attacks. There was

813
00:44:43,000 --> 00:44:46,480
another fatal attack that happened in nineteen eighty five to

814
00:44:46,519 --> 00:44:50,280
a six foot six trucker called Robert Schmidt. There's not

815
00:44:50,320 --> 00:44:52,199
a lot about this case online. You have to go

816
00:44:52,239 --> 00:44:54,519
through the newspaper archives to find out more about it.

817
00:44:54,519 --> 00:44:58,719
I had to write to the Merced County Coroner's office

818
00:44:58,719 --> 00:45:01,559
to get more details on the case. But essentially it

819
00:45:01,559 --> 00:45:04,599
seems as though a trucker was mauled to death on

820
00:45:04,840 --> 00:45:09,760
a roadside in nineteen eighty five. He was found dead

821
00:45:09,800 --> 00:45:12,440
by a fellow trucker at about six in the morning.

822
00:45:13,039 --> 00:45:15,960
He had scratches all the down the length of his body.

823
00:45:16,159 --> 00:45:20,679
The investigators even felt that they could probably determine the

824
00:45:20,800 --> 00:45:25,079
species of owl, which was a common barn owl. Why

825
00:45:25,119 --> 00:45:27,480
they believed they could do this, I assume it's because

826
00:45:27,519 --> 00:45:29,360
they might have found feathers on the scene or something

827
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:32,159
like that that aren't discussed in the autopsy or whatever.

828
00:45:32,800 --> 00:45:35,159
It's you know, the damage that these animals can do

829
00:45:35,280 --> 00:45:37,119
is very, very serious. I mean, maybe you had a

830
00:45:37,199 --> 00:45:39,360
case that you want to bring up from the book

831
00:45:39,400 --> 00:45:40,159
that stuck with you.

832
00:45:40,960 --> 00:45:44,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, just listening to that chapter, I was like,

833
00:45:44,840 --> 00:45:47,639
from you know, I've never been like, quote unquote attacked

834
00:45:47,840 --> 00:45:50,239
by an owl, but I've worked with barn owls, great horns,

835
00:45:50,239 --> 00:45:53,199
and then you know, smaller owls. But even I would

836
00:45:53,199 --> 00:45:55,920
say one of the more intense interactions of how with

837
00:45:55,960 --> 00:45:58,719
a bird of prey was a broadwing hawk, which are

838
00:45:58,840 --> 00:46:03,519
smaller than bar owls, and it grabbed my finger so

839
00:46:03,840 --> 00:46:07,480
hard and would not let go. So if like a

840
00:46:07,519 --> 00:46:10,480
small bird like that can do that amount of like

841
00:46:10,599 --> 00:46:14,360
grip strength, barred owls and especially great horns are so

842
00:46:14,440 --> 00:46:17,199
much bigger, so it is no surprise to me that

843
00:46:17,239 --> 00:46:20,639
they could cause someone serious damage, and especially great horns

844
00:46:20,719 --> 00:46:21,159
are so.

845
00:46:21,320 --> 00:46:26,119
Speaker 2: Scary, Yeah, terrifying. And I mean I think an average

846
00:46:26,199 --> 00:46:31,360
great horned owl has a grip force of about two

847
00:46:31,360 --> 00:46:33,559
and a half times that of a pit bull on

848
00:46:33,960 --> 00:46:37,320
in the talons. So the grip force of great horned

849
00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:39,039
owl's talents is about two and a half times that

850
00:46:39,119 --> 00:46:42,000
of a pit bull. And of course that's not a

851
00:46:42,079 --> 00:46:45,960
grip per se. That's the resting position because of the

852
00:46:46,000 --> 00:46:49,480
digital tendon locking device, right, so when it's not like

853
00:46:49,519 --> 00:46:52,559
it's holding on for dear life and if it gets tired,

854
00:46:52,639 --> 00:46:55,119
it will just it's never going to get tired. That's

855
00:46:55,400 --> 00:46:58,679
that's clamped shut like that. If you, for example, kill

856
00:46:58,760 --> 00:47:04,159
the bird, that's how it's days. Yeah. So you know,

857
00:47:04,400 --> 00:47:08,639
if it were a barred l as Larry Pollard contends,

858
00:47:09,440 --> 00:47:11,880
the grip force of that is around about the same

859
00:47:11,920 --> 00:47:14,760
as a pit bulls bite. You combine that with needle

860
00:47:14,800 --> 00:47:19,280
sharp talons. That's pretty clear how these injuries on Kathleen's

861
00:47:19,280 --> 00:47:22,000
head would have occurred and why they would be so serious.

862
00:47:22,519 --> 00:47:25,239
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and I mean I've had barn owls like

863
00:47:25,320 --> 00:47:28,079
fly at my face. Luckily they've never like clawed me

864
00:47:28,239 --> 00:47:32,039
or anything. Yeah, it's fine. Uh. And you know, I

865
00:47:32,079 --> 00:47:34,840
can assume if you're from North Carolina and you're familiar

866
00:47:34,840 --> 00:47:38,159
with these owl species, barn owls are not that big.

867
00:47:38,199 --> 00:47:40,000
And maybe I'm just saying that because like I've worked

868
00:47:40,039 --> 00:47:41,920
with eagles and stuff too, so I'm like, to me,

869
00:47:41,960 --> 00:47:45,000
that's a big, scary bird. But barn owls aren't that big.

870
00:47:45,639 --> 00:47:49,800
But also, Kathleen was drinking a lot that night, so

871
00:47:50,119 --> 00:47:52,840
her blood was probably thinned also from alcohol.

872
00:47:53,039 --> 00:47:53,239
Speaker 2: Yeah.

873
00:47:53,320 --> 00:47:55,280
Speaker 1: So when you have a thing attacking your head, which

874
00:47:55,320 --> 00:47:58,480
already bleeds more than like many of the other parts

875
00:47:58,519 --> 00:48:00,440
of your body, and then you've been drink so your

876
00:48:00,480 --> 00:48:03,480
blood's already thin like it, it just doesn't seem out

877
00:48:03,480 --> 00:48:06,320
of the realm of possibility that an owl did this. Yeah.

878
00:48:06,679 --> 00:48:10,960
Speaker 2: Just to be clear, though, she wasn't wasted, yeah, oh yeah,

879
00:48:10,960 --> 00:48:14,880
because that's something that is sometimes presented to support this

880
00:48:15,039 --> 00:48:17,679
full theory that you know, she was so out of

881
00:48:17,719 --> 00:48:20,360
her mind drunk that she fell down the stairs and

882
00:48:20,400 --> 00:48:23,000
that's how you can explain it. Actually, she was just

883
00:48:23,199 --> 00:48:29,440
under the level for driving legally in North Carolina. I think,

884
00:48:29,519 --> 00:48:33,559
oh wow. Blood alcohol was found, so yeah, there was

885
00:48:33,599 --> 00:48:37,199
also a small dose of valum still in a blood stream.

886
00:48:37,239 --> 00:48:38,840
But we don't know when she took that or what

887
00:48:39,239 --> 00:48:41,840
dosage was originally administered or anything. But it wasn't enough

888
00:48:41,840 --> 00:48:45,079
to really zonk you out, like sheah, she would have

889
00:48:45,079 --> 00:48:47,920
felt nice. She would have by the sounds of things,

890
00:48:47,920 --> 00:48:51,440
she was just having a nice night until everything, yeah, terrible.

891
00:48:51,159 --> 00:48:53,639
Speaker 1: Which is wrong that being said, like if she wants

892
00:48:53,639 --> 00:48:56,119
to get hammered at her house, she can. And also like,

893
00:48:56,280 --> 00:48:58,480
plenty of people fall down the stairs sober. Plenty of

894
00:48:58,519 --> 00:49:00,480
people got up the stairs drunk and don't fall down

895
00:49:00,679 --> 00:49:04,000
like it's not like her her fault.

896
00:49:04,320 --> 00:49:06,280
Speaker 2: Don't get really pissed and go running up and down

897
00:49:06,280 --> 00:49:06,719
the stairs.

898
00:49:07,079 --> 00:49:09,880
Speaker 1: No, no, no, absolutely not. Yeah, I would say like one

899
00:49:09,920 --> 00:49:12,400
of the other there were so many attacks that you

900
00:49:12,440 --> 00:49:14,800
covered that I thought were really great. But there was

901
00:49:15,559 --> 00:49:20,719
one where a guy his brother got attacked or no,

902
00:49:20,840 --> 00:49:25,480
his brother survived an encounter with a grizzly bear and

903
00:49:25,519 --> 00:49:28,559
then like what was it like the next year the

904
00:49:28,679 --> 00:49:30,719
brother like got attacked by an owl and he was like,

905
00:49:30,800 --> 00:49:32,599
damn it, I'm not the coolest story anymore.

906
00:49:33,519 --> 00:49:36,559
Speaker 2: I completely forgot about that. So that was in Montana,

907
00:49:36,679 --> 00:49:40,920
that's right, and it's how Kate Davis, an ornithologist, became

908
00:49:40,960 --> 00:49:44,679
involved in this case through her connection with that. But yeah, essentially,

909
00:49:45,639 --> 00:49:48,119
I don't think his injuries were particularly but he really

910
00:49:48,159 --> 00:49:50,559
just sort of got a scrape and the great hornell

911
00:49:50,599 --> 00:49:53,079
flew off. But yes, because they lived in Montana, I

912
00:49:53,119 --> 00:49:57,119
suppose they were a bit outdoorsy. The yes, the brother,

913
00:49:58,079 --> 00:50:01,679
the older brother had been not attacked by a grizzly,

914
00:50:01,719 --> 00:50:03,599
but he came face to face with a grizzly and

915
00:50:03,679 --> 00:50:06,360
cub and luckily they weren't in the mood to fight

916
00:50:06,440 --> 00:50:07,960
and just sort of stood in front of him for

917
00:50:08,000 --> 00:50:11,480
a while. He was completely alone at their mercy, and

918
00:50:11,559 --> 00:50:16,599
they just decided, you don't look delicious, and they skulked on,

919
00:50:17,239 --> 00:50:21,239
very very lucky, and of course that was He thought

920
00:50:21,239 --> 00:50:22,880
that was really cool, and he got to tell all

921
00:50:22,960 --> 00:50:26,000
his friends, I'm grizzly beer's a scared of me, you know,

922
00:50:26,119 --> 00:50:31,000
like the bravest guy in the world. And then yeah,

923
00:50:31,039 --> 00:50:33,360
the next year, his brother was attacked by a great

924
00:50:33,400 --> 00:50:35,920
horned owl, and then he got to claim the bragging

925
00:50:36,000 --> 00:50:38,159
rights as the bravest, coolest guy in the world.

926
00:50:38,679 --> 00:50:41,199
Speaker 1: Yep, as he should. I don't know if you've interacted

927
00:50:41,280 --> 00:50:44,079
like closely with a great horned for any reason, but

928
00:50:44,280 --> 00:50:48,800
like they are, you respectfully give them space and fear

929
00:50:48,840 --> 00:50:51,000
them like they're they're really really intense.

930
00:50:51,039 --> 00:50:55,320
Speaker 2: So I've come into close range with the I think

931
00:50:55,320 --> 00:50:59,840
they're called a Java fish owl. Is that right? Java fish?

932
00:51:00,199 --> 00:51:00,960
Speaker 1: Sure, that's right.

933
00:51:02,199 --> 00:51:04,960
Speaker 2: Sure, Yeah, yeah, totally. They've all got funny names. I'm

934
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:08,000
just giving it a new one. And they are physically,

935
00:51:08,000 --> 00:51:10,599
at least, it's quite similar in appearance to the great

936
00:51:10,599 --> 00:51:14,679
horn els. And yeah, just being near them, having them

937
00:51:14,719 --> 00:51:19,239
watch you and trap you there, Yes, you certainly feel stalked.

938
00:51:19,440 --> 00:51:20,679
You suddenly feel stalked.

939
00:51:21,480 --> 00:51:24,119
Speaker 1: Yeah. I volunteered at a facility that had a great

940
00:51:24,119 --> 00:51:26,599
horned and they were like, don't go in there. We

941
00:51:26,679 --> 00:51:29,039
only go in there when it's summertime. And you can

942
00:51:29,079 --> 00:51:32,000
have a hose to keep her away from you, because

943
00:51:32,079 --> 00:51:34,400
even if you went in with a construction helmet on,

944
00:51:34,960 --> 00:51:37,519
if you turned your back from her, or really even

945
00:51:37,519 --> 00:51:39,840
if you just like weren't looking at her, she'd hit

946
00:51:39,880 --> 00:51:42,920
you in the head. But even wearing a construction helmet,

947
00:51:43,239 --> 00:51:45,119
her hitting you in the head could still knock you out.

948
00:51:45,440 --> 00:51:46,960
And that's just you know, hitting you.

949
00:51:47,159 --> 00:51:49,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've just reminded me of a case that I

950
00:51:49,760 --> 00:51:52,199
didn't get to put in the book because when I

951
00:51:52,280 --> 00:51:56,039
went to try and find the archival material again, I

952
00:51:56,079 --> 00:51:57,800
couldn't find it, so I wouldn't be able to back

953
00:51:57,880 --> 00:52:00,400
up or justify what I'm saying, and in fact, obviously

954
00:52:00,400 --> 00:52:02,800
I can't now either. But take my word for it.

955
00:52:02,840 --> 00:52:06,440
This happened. I think it was in the It was

956
00:52:06,480 --> 00:52:10,639
either the thirties or the sixties, so you've got some choice.

957
00:52:10,639 --> 00:52:10,840
Speaker 1: There.

958
00:52:11,280 --> 00:52:16,039
Speaker 2: A zoo keeper went into the Great Houned owl enclosure

959
00:52:16,639 --> 00:52:21,039
and was attacked by I think it was six seven

960
00:52:21,119 --> 00:52:24,840
eight of these owls all decided to have a go,

961
00:52:25,639 --> 00:52:29,480
and I think I was so surprised that this hadn't

962
00:52:29,599 --> 00:52:35,320
ended fatally. Somehow he was rescued from this absolutely terrible

963
00:52:35,360 --> 00:52:38,239
situation and he spent a long time in hospital. God,

964
00:52:38,280 --> 00:52:39,920
let me see if I can track that down, and

965
00:52:39,960 --> 00:52:43,239
when this goos up on, I'll get you the details

966
00:52:43,239 --> 00:52:46,119
for your socials, because I regretted not being able to

967
00:52:46,119 --> 00:52:47,880
put that one in the book. That was quite a

968
00:52:48,079 --> 00:52:49,239
quite a horror story.

969
00:52:49,280 --> 00:52:53,199
Speaker 1: Really, yeah, OK, even one of them is enough, let

970
00:52:53,239 --> 00:52:59,800
alone like six Yeah, all right, So when we first

971
00:52:59,840 --> 00:53:02,159
were talking about doing this episode, you were saying that

972
00:53:02,199 --> 00:53:07,039
there was new evidence like supporting this theory. So what

973
00:53:07,280 --> 00:53:09,679
is like the newer evidence, or like the new testing

974
00:53:09,719 --> 00:53:11,639
that had been done to support that an owl may

975
00:53:11,679 --> 00:53:12,480
have been involved in this.

976
00:53:13,559 --> 00:53:16,719
Speaker 2: Oh, that is the bird droppings most importantly, I mean

977
00:53:16,760 --> 00:53:21,400
that has been now independently corroborated, independently corroboration. Right, I'm

978
00:53:21,400 --> 00:53:23,719
not getting all of the bird experts together in a

979
00:53:23,800 --> 00:53:26,119
room and forcing them to agree, right. They don't know

980
00:53:26,159 --> 00:53:28,440
that they're all saying this, and they're all coming back

981
00:53:28,440 --> 00:53:34,159
to me saying, look, you know, these look consistent with mutes,

982
00:53:34,239 --> 00:53:37,559
with raptor mutes. Right, So we can't determine exactly what

983
00:53:37,639 --> 00:53:41,239
bird this is from those marks, but we can probably

984
00:53:41,280 --> 00:53:43,800
determine that this is a larger bird, probably some sort

985
00:53:43,840 --> 00:53:46,039
of raptor. But you know, I don't want to go

986
00:53:46,159 --> 00:53:49,400
much further than that. I'm not really on team owl

987
00:53:49,679 --> 00:53:53,920
as such. I try and distance myself now from Larry

988
00:53:53,960 --> 00:53:58,199
and from the whole owl theory sort of description. I

989
00:53:58,400 --> 00:54:00,280
tend to prefer to think if this as a bird

990
00:54:00,280 --> 00:54:03,599
of prey theory. For all I know, they were mucking

991
00:54:03,639 --> 00:54:05,760
around with the captive bird that they shouldn't have had,

992
00:54:06,159 --> 00:54:08,719
and things went badly. For all I know it was

993
00:54:08,760 --> 00:54:11,880
a wild animal attack. I really just don't know. There's

994
00:54:12,039 --> 00:54:13,960
just as much evidence to say that this was a

995
00:54:14,000 --> 00:54:16,199
red tailed hawk as there is to say this was

996
00:54:16,239 --> 00:54:18,280
a barred ol And if I were, in fact to

997
00:54:18,320 --> 00:54:20,119
put money on it, I'd probably put money on red

998
00:54:20,119 --> 00:54:23,559
tailed hawk over bard Al for a few reasons, among

999
00:54:23,599 --> 00:54:25,559
which are the fact that you know, the wounds are

1000
00:54:25,599 --> 00:54:27,239
tried and shaped, and if it were an owl, you

1001
00:54:27,239 --> 00:54:30,039
would probably expect the square of death as it's normally called,

1002
00:54:30,880 --> 00:54:34,159
where you know, you get the four How would you

1003
00:54:34,199 --> 00:54:34,639
describe it?

1004
00:54:34,920 --> 00:54:37,960
Speaker 1: Sort of, yeah, because they can move their toe like

1005
00:54:38,000 --> 00:54:39,920
a toe to the back, so it's like two talents

1006
00:54:39,920 --> 00:54:41,760
in the front, two talents in the back versus three

1007
00:54:41,760 --> 00:54:43,119
in the front and one toe in the back.

1008
00:54:43,199 --> 00:54:46,159
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So I think for hunting that is the

1009
00:54:46,159 --> 00:54:49,519
more typical configuration. Is that, right, it's the square of death.

1010
00:54:49,599 --> 00:54:52,039
So given that we're not looking at a square of

1011
00:54:52,079 --> 00:54:54,159
death on the back of Kathleen's head, we're looking at

1012
00:54:54,159 --> 00:54:58,440
sort of trident shaped scratches. And given that the feathers

1013
00:54:58,480 --> 00:55:00,639
that are visible at the crime scene, and some of

1014
00:55:00,679 --> 00:55:03,119
the better photographs seem to be read and are described

1015
00:55:03,199 --> 00:55:08,519
by witnesses as red material or red matter in different

1016
00:55:08,519 --> 00:55:12,039
places around the house. My suspicions of it we're dealing

1017
00:55:12,199 --> 00:55:16,159
probably with some sort of hawk or falconer over an

1018
00:55:16,199 --> 00:55:17,480
hourl as a matter of fact, and that this was

1019
00:55:17,519 --> 00:55:19,679
some sort of accident, something went wrong, I think, with

1020
00:55:19,760 --> 00:55:22,039
a captive animal, which is how you can explain the

1021
00:55:22,280 --> 00:55:25,440
unusual behavior of Mike Peterson and the family at the scene.

1022
00:55:25,880 --> 00:55:28,360
Why there are so many secrets and lies on both sides.

1023
00:55:28,639 --> 00:55:31,800
I've never really been able to resolve why both the

1024
00:55:31,840 --> 00:55:35,360
defense and the prosecution seemed to be covering something up.

1025
00:55:35,519 --> 00:55:37,440
And I think that's the only explanation I found that

1026
00:55:37,480 --> 00:55:39,480
really makes sense. If this were a wild animal attack,

1027
00:55:39,559 --> 00:55:42,000
then it's sort of blameless, you know. Yeah, So I

1028
00:55:42,000 --> 00:55:44,079
don't see why the defense would be so cagy about

1029
00:55:44,119 --> 00:55:46,320
packing it up, about following the evidence where it leads.

1030
00:55:46,960 --> 00:55:48,760
I'm more inclined now to think this was some sort

1031
00:55:48,800 --> 00:55:51,119
of accident with a captive animal, perhaps still an owl,

1032
00:55:51,159 --> 00:55:52,239
but whatever.

1033
00:55:52,519 --> 00:55:54,679
Speaker 1: Yeah, which would still be so silly because it's like, yeah,

1034
00:55:54,679 --> 00:55:57,320
it might be a like a felony to have a

1035
00:55:57,360 --> 00:56:01,199
bird of prey like captive because they're protected, but like

1036
00:56:01,719 --> 00:56:04,760
that's better than killing your wife. Like I think if

1037
00:56:04,760 --> 00:56:07,159
I was under the scrutiny of like I might have

1038
00:56:07,159 --> 00:56:09,800
done this, like, Okay, well we actually have this bird

1039
00:56:09,840 --> 00:56:12,400
that we're not supposed to have, so sorry, but like,

1040
00:56:13,119 --> 00:56:14,599
I see, I totally see what you're saying.

1041
00:56:14,679 --> 00:56:18,320
Speaker 2: For sure, if it's if it's something like negligent homicide, right,

1042
00:56:18,519 --> 00:56:25,280
and and you are protecting somebody, you might take the fall.

1043
00:56:25,519 --> 00:56:29,800
That's all I'm probably gonna say about that. If it

1044
00:56:29,840 --> 00:56:32,480
were Todd, If Todd had a bird of prey and

1045
00:56:32,559 --> 00:56:34,360
was mucking around with it with his friends, who are

1046
00:56:34,440 --> 00:56:38,159
right who arrived at the scene that night, you know,

1047
00:56:38,199 --> 00:56:40,760
an accident with a bird of prey, Todd might have

1048
00:56:40,800 --> 00:56:43,159
gone down for negligent homicide, could have been put away

1049
00:56:43,199 --> 00:56:45,679
for a few the father decides, luck, I'll take the

1050
00:56:45,719 --> 00:56:49,199
fall for the son, and things just became much hairer

1051
00:56:49,239 --> 00:56:51,239
for everyone involved than it should have become.

1052
00:56:51,800 --> 00:56:55,760
Speaker 1: Mm. Yeah, so okay, So maybe rather than us calling

1053
00:56:55,760 --> 00:56:57,480
it the owl theory, we could just call it the

1054
00:56:57,599 --> 00:57:02,920
raptor theory and you're not play a species specificness on it.

1055
00:57:03,119 --> 00:57:03,840
That sounds better.

1056
00:57:03,840 --> 00:57:07,719
Speaker 2: Well, that's a problem with this case in every respect.

1057
00:57:07,760 --> 00:57:11,440
It's always it's too many people putting too many theories

1058
00:57:11,480 --> 00:57:15,840
out there, when every theory is really seriously underdetermined by

1059
00:57:15,880 --> 00:57:17,599
the evidence, Like, we really need to be a bit

1060
00:57:17,639 --> 00:57:20,760
more simplistic about what we know and what we can establish.

1061
00:57:21,000 --> 00:57:23,800
And I think we can know and establish that somehow

1062
00:57:24,119 --> 00:57:27,480
this woman was killed by a bird. That's really weird,

1063
00:57:27,599 --> 00:57:29,880
and we need to start figuring out exactly what happened

1064
00:57:29,880 --> 00:57:31,599
and why it was covered up the way it was.

1065
00:57:32,639 --> 00:57:35,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, So, given all this evidence that a

1066
00:57:36,119 --> 00:57:38,239
bird of prey could have been responsible for the death

1067
00:57:38,239 --> 00:57:42,239
of Kathleen, how as of today, in twenty twenty four,

1068
00:57:43,000 --> 00:57:46,440
is this case? Is there any movement? Where is Michael

1069
00:57:46,480 --> 00:57:47,679
at How is it going?

1070
00:57:48,119 --> 00:57:52,199
Speaker 2: Well, Michael had been living with his first wife, Patty again,

1071
00:57:52,239 --> 00:57:55,280
they'd moved back and together. He's still live. Patty died

1072
00:57:55,320 --> 00:57:58,719
of a hearts attack last year or the year before,

1073
00:57:58,920 --> 00:58:02,920
now was it us year? And yes, she wasn't at

1074
00:58:02,960 --> 00:58:07,159
the bottom of the stairs. Important to note and yeah,

1075
00:58:07,239 --> 00:58:12,039
good time. And you know, he has no inclination, it

1076
00:58:12,079 --> 00:58:15,559
seems to get any sort of you know, No, he's

1077
00:58:15,559 --> 00:58:19,800
not pursuing the innocence project or anything like that. I

1078
00:58:19,920 --> 00:58:24,119
don't think he's looking to defend his innocence legally, and

1079
00:58:24,119 --> 00:58:26,039
in fact, I think he can't now because he's pled

1080
00:58:26,039 --> 00:58:30,400
guilty to manslaughter. On selford play. So that's where the

1081
00:58:30,400 --> 00:58:33,440
case ends. It was twenty eleven when a new trial

1082
00:58:33,800 --> 00:58:37,920
was called for. It was twenty seventeen when he made

1083
00:58:37,920 --> 00:58:40,840
the Alfred play and since then he's been out. He's

1084
00:58:40,880 --> 00:58:43,000
living in Durham. People see him walking around the town

1085
00:58:43,119 --> 00:58:45,880
doing his daily business. You know he's read the book.

1086
00:58:46,400 --> 00:58:49,039
I know he's read my book and he called me

1087
00:58:49,039 --> 00:58:51,239
a very fine writer, which coming from somebody who's got

1088
00:58:51,239 --> 00:58:53,639
a million dollar advance for one of his books, is

1089
00:58:53,840 --> 00:58:55,840
nice praise. But I probably would have preferred the million

1090
00:58:55,840 --> 00:58:59,719
dollar advance to be fair. But you know, I don't

1091
00:58:59,719 --> 00:59:01,280
think he wants to go back there. I don't think

1092
00:59:01,320 --> 00:59:03,639
anybody involved in the case wants to go back there.

1093
00:59:04,159 --> 00:59:08,639
And the police officers, who I think should be brought

1094
00:59:08,639 --> 00:59:11,719
to account for what happened because there's clear evidence of

1095
00:59:11,760 --> 00:59:16,159
them conspiring tide evidence. They're very hard to track down

1096
00:59:16,760 --> 00:59:19,039
and many of them have moved out of state and

1097
00:59:19,079 --> 00:59:20,880
many of them don't belong to the police anymore, and

1098
00:59:20,880 --> 00:59:22,079
many of them have died as well.

1099
00:59:22,920 --> 00:59:27,039
Speaker 1: Wow, well, there's so much that we couldn't get into

1100
00:59:27,039 --> 00:59:29,760
in this episode because obviously there's a ton of evidence.

1101
00:59:29,840 --> 00:59:33,559
Blood spatter alone, there's ten thousand droplets. So like, there's

1102
00:59:33,599 --> 00:59:36,440
so much more in this book that you go into specifically.

1103
00:59:36,800 --> 00:59:39,079
So where can people find your book?

1104
00:59:39,639 --> 00:59:42,119
Speaker 2: Well, unfortunately, they might have to go to the Devil

1105
00:59:42,440 --> 00:59:47,320
and buy it on Amazon yep, but they can also

1106
00:59:47,800 --> 00:59:51,519
go to the Wild Blue Press website that's the publisher's

1107
00:59:51,519 --> 00:59:56,199
website and they can order it through there. The other

1108
00:59:56,199 --> 00:59:58,800
thing they could do is get on Twitter, where I'm

1109
00:59:58,880 --> 01:00:04,800
quite it seems to just follow the Devil around, don't I? Actually, yeah, yeah,

1110
01:00:04,880 --> 01:00:07,079
so you could phone me on Twitter, you know, under

1111
01:00:07,119 --> 01:00:14,519
the watchful eye of Elon. And yes I post staircase

1112
01:00:14,559 --> 01:00:18,440
related things pretty frequently, but mostly it's just shit posting.

1113
01:00:19,079 --> 01:00:22,880
And yeah, I would really appreciate anyone who did get

1114
01:00:22,880 --> 01:00:25,000
the book. As you said, that's available on audiobook, So

1115
01:00:25,000 --> 01:00:27,159
if you're not much of a reader, but you want

1116
01:00:27,239 --> 01:00:29,840
to become a bit more familiar with the evidence in

1117
01:00:29,880 --> 01:00:33,760
a deep way in this case, I'd really recommend doing that.

1118
01:00:34,519 --> 01:00:39,440
The audiobook is read by oh Tom Lennon, and he

1119
01:00:39,519 --> 01:00:42,719
just does a fantastic job. He's got a really beautiful

1120
01:00:42,760 --> 01:00:45,639
pace that he reads long as and it's very clear

1121
01:00:45,880 --> 01:00:48,480
he doesn't do any silly voices or anything. He doesn't

1122
01:00:48,480 --> 01:00:52,079
do any character voices, but he you know, it's very

1123
01:00:52,079 --> 01:00:55,559
easy to listen to and straightforward, and I'm very glad

1124
01:00:55,639 --> 01:00:57,519
that he was the person who got to read it.

1125
01:00:57,519 --> 01:00:59,760
So it's very easy to listen to. As I'm sure

1126
01:01:00,000 --> 01:01:04,000
can attest to that. You can, yes, thank you, Yes, awesome.

1127
01:01:04,039 --> 01:01:06,119
Speaker 1: And then so people like me who listen to the

1128
01:01:06,159 --> 01:01:09,280
audio book, there's also like we've kind of hinted at

1129
01:01:09,280 --> 01:01:11,599
the online gallery to look at some pictures we've been

1130
01:01:11,599 --> 01:01:13,800
talking about, and that's out wild blue press dot com.

1131
01:01:13,840 --> 01:01:15,280
And I can link all of this in the episode

1132
01:01:15,280 --> 01:01:17,360
of description to make it easy for people to find.

1133
01:01:17,679 --> 01:01:20,559
Speaker 2: Yeah, that would be that would be excellent. Yep, I'd

1134
01:01:20,559 --> 01:01:24,079
really appreciate that. As I said, I probably would have

1135
01:01:24,119 --> 01:01:26,559
preferred the million dollar advance. I'm never going to make

1136
01:01:27,000 --> 01:01:31,239
any money off this book, but keeping I mean, that's

1137
01:01:31,239 --> 01:01:31,960
just a fact of life.

1138
01:01:31,960 --> 01:01:33,639
Speaker 1: I'm never gonna Yeah, passion project.

1139
01:01:34,039 --> 01:01:37,599
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was absolutely pasture, you know, and it disturbed

1140
01:01:37,639 --> 01:01:41,559
my life quite seriously. But you know, if buying what

1141
01:01:41,679 --> 01:01:44,199
buying the book does is it spreads the word. And

1142
01:01:44,239 --> 01:01:45,920
that's the important thing to me right now is you know,

1143
01:01:45,960 --> 01:01:48,360
I want to change public perception about this case. I

1144
01:01:48,440 --> 01:01:50,920
want people to be aware of how badly the police

1145
01:01:50,920 --> 01:01:53,599
were behaving in North Carolina at that time. And just

1146
01:01:53,679 --> 01:01:57,639
for some context if your listeners are familiar, this happened

1147
01:01:57,679 --> 01:02:01,800
around about the same time as the Duke Lacrosse scandal, which,

1148
01:02:01,840 --> 01:02:04,320
if you look into it, the DA at that time

1149
01:02:04,320 --> 01:02:07,679
actually did end up going to prism for one day

1150
01:02:09,440 --> 01:02:12,519
for his crimes against the young men who he accused

1151
01:02:12,519 --> 01:02:17,440
of gang raping a stripper. So wow, this was Things

1152
01:02:17,480 --> 01:02:21,960
were pretty bad legally and judicially there at the turn

1153
01:02:22,000 --> 01:02:24,239
of the twenty fifth century. I have no idea why

1154
01:02:24,280 --> 01:02:27,440
they were so terribly corrupt at this time. I don't

1155
01:02:27,440 --> 01:02:30,039
know if there's still this corrupt, but it's just appalling,

1156
01:02:30,199 --> 01:02:31,159
really really appalling.

1157
01:02:31,880 --> 01:02:34,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, you know, if anything take away from

1158
01:02:34,840 --> 01:02:37,440
this case is like, be more critical when you're presented

1159
01:02:37,480 --> 01:02:39,800
with narratives, which I think applies to so many things,

1160
01:02:39,840 --> 01:02:42,920
but be critical and don't just follow along with whatever

1161
01:02:43,000 --> 01:02:43,760
is presented to you.

1162
01:02:44,039 --> 01:02:47,800
Speaker 2: Ashley, I'm absolutely amazed that you've taken that away from

1163
01:02:47,800 --> 01:02:49,920
the book, because that's what I was hoping that the

1164
01:02:50,559 --> 01:02:52,920
takeaway that this is really when you look at the

1165
01:02:52,920 --> 01:02:57,519
way the media in this case is presented, you'll see

1166
01:02:57,679 --> 01:03:00,480
if you have a very critical eye about it. That is,

1167
01:03:00,719 --> 01:03:04,880
so what's the word? It's so motivated by special concerns

1168
01:03:04,920 --> 01:03:08,920
that are really not an interest in the An interest

1169
01:03:08,960 --> 01:03:11,000
in the truth is not one of the concerns that's

1170
01:03:11,039 --> 01:03:14,840
going on in this case. And so although there might

1171
01:03:14,840 --> 01:03:16,559
be the odd mistake here and there in my book,

1172
01:03:16,719 --> 01:03:18,840
I at least want it to be known that I've

1173
01:03:18,880 --> 01:03:22,039
been doing this just because I've discovered some very very

1174
01:03:22,079 --> 01:03:23,480
strange things that need to be known.

1175
01:03:24,239 --> 01:03:26,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, now more than ever, it's important that if

1176
01:03:26,800 --> 01:03:28,480
we want the truth, we have to dig deeperth and

1177
01:03:28,719 --> 01:03:31,199
just face value of what we're looking at. So thank

1178
01:03:31,239 --> 01:03:32,000
you for writing this.

1179
01:03:32,280 --> 01:03:35,440
Speaker 2: We really can't rely on legacy media anymore. We have

1180
01:03:35,519 --> 01:03:39,440
to rely on people like yourself and podcasters and what

1181
01:03:39,599 --> 01:03:41,639
you can only call the new media, I suppose. Like,

1182
01:03:41,920 --> 01:03:44,280
as I said, I've reached out to probably one hundred

1183
01:03:44,320 --> 01:03:49,119
and twenty journalists in North Carolina and the wider United States,

1184
01:03:49,239 --> 01:03:52,199
and I've had about three replies, all of which have

1185
01:03:52,400 --> 01:03:58,679
ultimately been negative. So wild, it's bizarre, right, Like, this

1186
01:03:58,719 --> 01:04:04,119
evidence is just incredible, and it's about an internationally you know,

1187
01:04:04,440 --> 01:04:09,639
high profile case, and it's a difficult pursy really.

1188
01:04:09,639 --> 01:04:12,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know, not to spoil it because I

1189
01:04:12,400 --> 01:04:14,039
was going to cover it later, but I guess just

1190
01:04:14,079 --> 01:04:16,400
to point out, like, so, there was a case a

1191
01:04:16,559 --> 01:04:19,639
few months ago in Massachusetts, so stayed over for me

1192
01:04:19,960 --> 01:04:23,440
in New Hampshire and a it was reported that a

1193
01:04:23,480 --> 01:04:26,400
woman was attacked by a coyote in a state park.

1194
01:04:26,840 --> 01:04:28,599
So there are all these articles come out that a

1195
01:04:28,679 --> 01:04:30,960
coyote attacked this woman, right, So then at the end

1196
01:04:31,000 --> 01:04:32,719
of each article, it's like, oh, here's what to do

1197
01:04:32,800 --> 01:04:35,920
if you know you live around coyotes, come to find

1198
01:04:35,960 --> 01:04:39,800
out it was actually a dog, But no one went

1199
01:04:39,960 --> 01:04:44,639
back and corrected their articles. Yeah, And I'm like, if

1200
01:04:44,880 --> 01:04:47,199
you literally get new evidence that it wasn't what you

1201
01:04:47,239 --> 01:04:50,079
thought it was, why would you leave the article up

1202
01:04:50,119 --> 01:04:52,639
and not do more journalism? So it just lately seems

1203
01:04:52,679 --> 01:04:55,719
like lazy internet journalism. And that's why I really was

1204
01:04:55,760 --> 01:04:57,559
excited to talk to you more because I was like,

1205
01:04:58,239 --> 01:04:59,920
what are we doing? What are they doing?

1206
01:05:01,199 --> 01:05:04,960
Speaker 2: Yeah. Even so, one of the news articles that I

1207
01:05:05,119 --> 01:05:09,440
quote in the book was discussing the l theory. I

1208
01:05:09,440 --> 01:05:12,199
think it was the Rocky Mount Telegram, and it said

1209
01:05:12,920 --> 01:05:14,880
it was discussing the l theory when the old theory

1210
01:05:14,960 --> 01:05:17,719
was first presented and they said no evidence of a

1211
01:05:17,719 --> 01:05:20,760
bird was found inside the house. So I of course

1212
01:05:20,880 --> 01:05:23,719
wrote them directly and I said, look, you printed this

1213
01:05:23,880 --> 01:05:26,880
in whatever you know, twenty eleven or whatever it was,

1214
01:05:27,199 --> 01:05:29,320
but now there's there's new evidence, and I thought you

1215
01:05:29,400 --> 01:05:31,280
might want to correct this, you know, But of course

1216
01:05:31,280 --> 01:05:32,719
no reply at all, just nothing else.

1217
01:05:33,400 --> 01:05:36,840
Speaker 1: Gross. You mentioned Twitter. Where what's your handle? And where

1218
01:05:36,840 --> 01:05:38,239
can people find you if they want to reach out

1219
01:05:38,280 --> 01:05:38,440
to you.

1220
01:05:38,679 --> 01:05:41,679
Speaker 2: I'm just Titty Smith. Well I'm Titty psychokiller Smith at

1221
01:05:41,719 --> 01:05:44,639
the moment because it's Halloween. But they can find me

1222
01:05:44,800 --> 01:05:48,559
at Smith Titty and that's really the only social media

1223
01:05:48,639 --> 01:05:51,559
I use. Unfortunately, I don't really like to venture out

1224
01:05:51,559 --> 01:05:54,039
into that world of human connection too often.

1225
01:05:54,719 --> 01:05:57,840
Speaker 1: Ye rightfully, so, yeah, I don't scury place.

1226
01:05:58,239 --> 01:06:00,679
Speaker 2: I prefer the birds me too.

1227
01:06:10,159 --> 01:06:13,639
Speaker 1: And that was my interview with Titty Smith. As I

1228
01:06:13,679 --> 01:06:16,400
mentioned up top, you can find all the links to

1229
01:06:16,599 --> 01:06:19,519
his book, the online gallery and whatnot in our show

1230
01:06:19,559 --> 01:06:23,559
notes or the episode description. I also completely forgot uptop

1231
01:06:23,639 --> 01:06:26,199
to acknowledge the fact that we have new intro music

1232
01:06:26,239 --> 01:06:29,159
in New Transition Music. So thank you so much to

1233
01:06:29,320 --> 01:06:32,159
second grade husband Josh Walsh for making our new music.

1234
01:06:32,440 --> 01:06:34,679
I really wanted to revamp the podcast when I came

1235
01:06:34,719 --> 01:06:37,679
back from our kind of two month hiatus, so thank

1236
01:06:37,679 --> 01:06:39,960
you so much Josh for doing that. Thank you Jesse,

1237
01:06:40,079 --> 01:06:43,519
his brother, for editing this. If you want to find

1238
01:06:43,599 --> 01:06:45,679
us on socials, check out the episode description as well

1239
01:06:45,719 --> 01:06:47,639
for links to all of that, and check out our

1240
01:06:47,679 --> 01:06:49,760
website get out a Live podcast dot com where you

1241
01:06:49,800 --> 01:06:51,639
can buy merch We were having an issue with the

1242
01:06:51,639 --> 01:06:53,800
shipping that has been fixed. Thank you so much Ren

1243
01:06:54,039 --> 01:06:56,599
for pointing that out to us. And when I come

1244
01:06:56,639 --> 01:06:59,599
back in two weeks, it will be an episode of

1245
01:06:59,679 --> 01:07:03,280
me interviewing someone that literally had me starstruck. I cannot

1246
01:07:03,320 --> 01:07:06,119
wait for you all to hear it. Stay tuned for that,

1247
01:07:06,440 --> 01:07:08,880
Stay safe out there, and I'll see you in two weeks.