1
00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:03,919
Speaker 1: I want you to stop whatever you are doing right now,

2
00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:07,639
just for a second and really picture a very specific

3
00:00:07,679 --> 00:00:08,519
scenario with me.

4
00:00:08,839 --> 00:00:10,080
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm picturing it.

5
00:00:10,240 --> 00:00:13,279
Speaker 1: Imagine walking through the front door of a perfectly normal,

6
00:00:13,919 --> 00:00:17,719
quiet suburban home. Right, It's exactly the kind of house

7
00:00:17,760 --> 00:00:20,039
you pass by every single day on your way to

8
00:00:20,079 --> 00:00:22,120
work or running to the grocery store.

9
00:00:22,239 --> 00:00:24,359
Speaker 2: Just a totally average house exactly.

10
00:00:24,480 --> 00:00:28,440
Speaker 1: You step inside and the environment is completely mundane. The

11
00:00:28,519 --> 00:00:31,199
curtains are drawn to keep out the afternoon sun. The

12
00:00:31,239 --> 00:00:34,119
living room furniture is arranged around to television. There's a

13
00:00:34,159 --> 00:00:36,960
pair of shoes tuck neatly by the door. Everything is

14
00:00:37,039 --> 00:00:38,719
completely undeniably in.

15
00:00:38,679 --> 00:00:40,560
Speaker 2: Its place, which is usually comforting. Right.

16
00:00:41,320 --> 00:00:44,520
Speaker 1: But as you walk through this totally familiar setting, your

17
00:00:44,560 --> 00:00:48,560
eyes land on one seemingly ordinary object. Maybe it's a

18
00:00:48,560 --> 00:00:52,039
stack of floral teacups resting precariously on a wooden side table.

19
00:00:53,079 --> 00:00:56,759
Or maybe it's a brightly colored plastic child's toy left

20
00:00:56,759 --> 00:00:59,719
in the middle of a hallway rug, or just a

21
00:00:59,719 --> 00:01:02,600
plain piece of hotel stationary sitting on a kitchen counter

22
00:01:02,679 --> 00:01:03,479
next to a pen.

23
00:01:03,600 --> 00:01:04,879
Speaker 2: Just everyday items.

24
00:01:05,239 --> 00:01:08,799
Speaker 1: Yes, and in your own home, you wouldn't blink twice

25
00:01:08,920 --> 00:01:12,480
at any of these things, but in this specific context,

26
00:01:12,519 --> 00:01:16,840
in this specific house, that entirely normal object instantly and

27
00:01:16,959 --> 00:01:20,920
violently shifts the atmosphere in the room from a sanctuary

28
00:01:21,239 --> 00:01:24,079
to a place of utter paralyzing terror.

29
00:01:24,200 --> 00:01:25,760
Speaker 2: Oh wow, Yeah, it's.

30
00:01:25,560 --> 00:01:28,239
Speaker 1: Not blood that makes your stomach drop. It's not gore

31
00:01:28,480 --> 00:01:32,239
or a shattered window that haunts you. It is the quiet, lingering,

32
00:01:32,799 --> 00:01:34,920
suffocating implication of human intent.

33
00:01:35,000 --> 00:01:36,239
Speaker 2: A intent is everything.

34
00:01:36,480 --> 00:01:39,760
Speaker 1: It is the realization that someone looked at a mundane

35
00:01:39,799 --> 00:01:41,959
object and decided to completely weaponize it.

36
00:01:42,159 --> 00:01:45,879
Speaker 2: That is the precise moment. The everyday environment is just

37
00:01:46,120 --> 00:01:49,680
entirely inverted because the psychology of our surroundings dictates that

38
00:01:49,719 --> 00:01:53,000
we assign safety to the familiar. When an offender takes

39
00:01:53,000 --> 00:01:56,640
the familiar and corrupts it, the psychological shockwave is often

40
00:01:56,680 --> 00:01:59,879
far more devastating than the physical violence itself because.

41
00:01:59,680 --> 00:02:01,400
Speaker 1: It just Droi's the foundational concept of.

42
00:02:01,319 --> 00:02:03,439
Speaker 2: Sanctuary exactly, It completely shatters it.

43
00:02:03,560 --> 00:02:06,640
Speaker 1: Well, welcome to Thrilling Threads. Today. Our mission is to

44
00:02:06,680 --> 00:02:12,319
embark on a deep, incredibly unsettling exploration through criminal history, archives,

45
00:02:12,680 --> 00:02:15,560
forensic reports, and behavioral analyses.

46
00:02:15,759 --> 00:02:17,719
Speaker 2: It's a heavy one today, it really is.

47
00:02:18,360 --> 00:02:21,719
Speaker 1: We are going to examine the creepiest, most unnerving items

48
00:02:21,840 --> 00:02:24,400
ever recovered from violent crime scenes.

49
00:02:24,439 --> 00:02:27,599
Speaker 2: And we should clarify we aren't talking about obvious things, right, No.

50
00:02:27,960 --> 00:02:29,919
Speaker 1: We are going out of our way today to avoid

51
00:02:29,919 --> 00:02:33,639
the obvious. We aren't talking about firearms or bladed weapons.

52
00:02:33,199 --> 00:02:34,879
Speaker 2: No knives, no guns exactly.

53
00:02:35,199 --> 00:02:38,080
Speaker 1: We are talking about the psychology of objects. We are

54
00:02:38,080 --> 00:02:41,800
looking at the exact moments where the totally mundane is

55
00:02:41,919 --> 00:02:46,000
deliberately and meticulously transformed into the monstrous.

56
00:02:46,360 --> 00:02:49,280
Speaker 2: It is critical to understand that we are doing this

57
00:02:49,400 --> 00:02:54,360
to decode the behavioral residue left behind by these offenders.

58
00:02:54,400 --> 00:02:56,520
Speaker 1: The behavioral residue I like that phrase.

59
00:02:56,360 --> 00:02:58,599
Speaker 2: Yeah, because every object left at a crime scene is

60
00:02:58,639 --> 00:03:02,199
a piece of communication. Sometimes it's a taunt, sometimes it's

61
00:03:02,240 --> 00:03:05,560
a physical necessity for their delusion, and sometimes it's an

62
00:03:05,719 --> 00:03:10,199
unconscious projection of their own fractured mind. By analyzing these

63
00:03:10,240 --> 00:03:14,280
specific items, we bridge the gap between understanding what happened

64
00:03:14,319 --> 00:03:17,120
and the far more terrifying question of why it happened.

65
00:03:17,479 --> 00:03:19,919
Speaker 1: You might think you know what makes a crime scene terrifying.

66
00:03:20,479 --> 00:03:23,120
You know, you picture the yellow tape, the flashing police.

67
00:03:22,840 --> 00:03:24,800
Speaker 2: Lights, the chaos of a struggle.

68
00:03:25,000 --> 00:03:27,960
Speaker 1: Right, But I guarantee you, by the end of this conversation,

69
00:03:28,639 --> 00:03:31,159
you will never look at a pair of sneakers, a

70
00:03:31,240 --> 00:03:34,759
kitchen pot, or a simple handwritten note the exact same way.

71
00:03:34,800 --> 00:03:35,800
Speaker 2: Again, you really won't.

72
00:03:36,280 --> 00:03:38,960
Speaker 1: I want to dive straight into this concept of weaponizing

73
00:03:38,960 --> 00:03:43,000
the mundane, specifically focusing on items that were never designed

74
00:03:43,039 --> 00:03:48,240
to hurt anyone, but were intentionally utilized to exert psychological control.

75
00:03:48,360 --> 00:03:49,479
Speaker 2: Okay, let's get into it.

76
00:03:49,840 --> 00:03:53,960
Speaker 1: Let's look at the Golden State killer, Joseph DiAngelo. This

77
00:03:54,000 --> 00:03:57,159
is a man who terrorized California for years, but his

78
00:03:57,240 --> 00:04:00,639
most chilling signature weapon wasn't his physical strength.

79
00:04:00,840 --> 00:04:03,159
Speaker 2: No, it wasn't. It was dinnerware, the tea cups, and

80
00:04:03,159 --> 00:04:03,719
the plates.

81
00:04:04,039 --> 00:04:04,360
Speaker 1: Yes.

82
00:04:04,639 --> 00:04:07,319
Speaker 2: In the Annals of Criminal Profiling, this is a detail

83
00:04:07,319 --> 00:04:10,520
that stands out because of its specific, highly calculated brand

84
00:04:10,520 --> 00:04:11,199
of sadism.

85
00:04:11,479 --> 00:04:12,680
Speaker 1: It's just so twisted.

86
00:04:12,919 --> 00:04:15,599
Speaker 2: D'Angelo would break into these homes in the dead of night,

87
00:04:15,680 --> 00:04:19,680
awaken the couples, and bind them. But securing them physically

88
00:04:19,800 --> 00:04:22,160
just wasn't enough to satisfy his need for.

89
00:04:22,160 --> 00:04:24,079
Speaker 1: Control, right, he had to take it further.

90
00:04:24,199 --> 00:04:27,360
Speaker 2: He would go into their kitchen, take ceramic plates or

91
00:04:27,399 --> 00:04:30,800
teacups from their cupboards, and stack them precariously on the

92
00:04:30,839 --> 00:04:31,920
backs of the bound.

93
00:04:31,639 --> 00:04:35,279
Speaker 1: Men, and he would deliver this ultimatum that is just

94
00:04:36,240 --> 00:04:41,279
pure psychological torture. He would lean in and whisper, well,

95
00:04:41,480 --> 00:04:45,240
I'm paraphrasing here, but basically, if I hear these dishes rattle,

96
00:04:45,920 --> 00:04:48,360
I am going to kill your wife, and then I'm

97
00:04:48,360 --> 00:04:49,759
going to come back in here and kill you.

98
00:04:49,879 --> 00:04:50,720
Speaker 2: It's horrifying.

99
00:04:50,839 --> 00:04:53,519
Speaker 1: When you read the police reports. The detail it always

100
00:04:53,560 --> 00:04:56,199
stops me dead in my tracks is that when authorities

101
00:04:56,199 --> 00:04:59,720
finally arrived, sometimes hours after DiAngelo had loved the house,

102
00:05:00,240 --> 00:05:03,680
those precarious stacks of china were often still standing perfectly

103
00:05:03,680 --> 00:05:04,600
balanced on the backs of.

104
00:05:04,600 --> 00:05:07,040
Speaker 2: These men hours later. It's unbelievable.

105
00:05:07,120 --> 00:05:09,319
Speaker 1: Let's really think about the biology and the psychology of that.

106
00:05:09,720 --> 00:05:12,199
Your sympathetic nervous system is screaming at you to fight

107
00:05:12,279 --> 00:05:12,639
or flee.

108
00:05:12,800 --> 00:05:14,040
Speaker 2: Your body wants to move.

109
00:05:14,160 --> 00:05:17,360
Speaker 1: You have adrenaline flooding your veins, causing your muscles to

110
00:05:17,480 --> 00:05:21,519
naturally tremor, and yet the terror is so absolute that

111
00:05:21,560 --> 00:05:24,759
these men force their bodies into a state of statuesque

112
00:05:24,759 --> 00:05:28,639
paralysis for hours. Yeah, it reminds me of the andient

113
00:05:28,639 --> 00:05:32,040
parable of the Sword of Damicles. You know, the agonizing

114
00:05:32,120 --> 00:05:33,959
fear of impending doom, right.

115
00:05:33,879 --> 00:05:36,120
Speaker 2: Where the sword is hanging by a single horse hair.

116
00:05:36,279 --> 00:05:40,120
Speaker 1: Exactly. The sheer agony isn't the blade cutting your skin.

117
00:05:40,240 --> 00:05:44,439
The pure, unadulterated agony is the anticipation of the blade falling.

118
00:05:45,399 --> 00:05:48,160
DiAngelo used teacups to build a sort of damicalles in

119
00:05:48,160 --> 00:05:49,199
a suburban bedroom.

120
00:05:49,600 --> 00:05:53,120
Speaker 2: That analogy perfectly captures the mechanism of his terror. He

121
00:05:53,199 --> 00:05:56,800
was effectively turning the victim's own body into an alarm system.

122
00:05:56,839 --> 00:05:59,279
Oh yeah, yeah, And in doing so, he forced the

123
00:05:59,319 --> 00:06:03,959
victim to become a passive, unwilling accomplice in their own subjugation. Wow,

124
00:06:04,000 --> 00:06:06,639
this is a crucial concept in victimology. He didn't just

125
00:06:06,680 --> 00:06:09,639
want to physically overpower them. He wanted to dominate their

126
00:06:09,680 --> 00:06:12,120
mind so completely that they would police themselves.

127
00:06:12,160 --> 00:06:13,279
Speaker 1: They became their own jailers.

128
00:06:13,639 --> 00:06:17,720
Speaker 2: Exactly. The sensory deprivation of lying in the dark, unable

129
00:06:17,759 --> 00:06:21,000
to see, straining your ears to hear if a piece

130
00:06:21,000 --> 00:06:24,360
of ceramic shifts even a millimeter against another piece.

131
00:06:24,160 --> 00:06:26,319
Speaker 1: Of ceramic, it's just sickening to think about.

132
00:06:26,519 --> 00:06:29,680
Speaker 2: It induces a state of hyper arousal that causes deep,

133
00:06:30,000 --> 00:06:35,240
deep psychological trauma. And utilizing their own dishes, items intimately

134
00:06:35,240 --> 00:06:39,319
associated with family meals, holidays, and domestic comfort is a

135
00:06:39,360 --> 00:06:40,639
profound violation.

136
00:06:41,079 --> 00:06:43,560
Speaker 1: He corrupted the very symbols of their safe home.

137
00:06:43,639 --> 00:06:44,759
Speaker 2: He absolutely did.

138
00:06:44,879 --> 00:06:46,879
Speaker 1: I'm trying to wrap my head around the efficiency of

139
00:06:46,920 --> 00:06:51,360
that cruelty because it requires zero physical exertion on his part.

140
00:06:51,439 --> 00:06:53,480
Once the cups are stacked right, he's free to do

141
00:06:53,519 --> 00:06:56,319
whatever he can, freely roam the house knowing the husband

142
00:06:56,360 --> 00:06:58,560
is locked in the self made prison of muscle tension.

143
00:06:58,720 --> 00:07:01,639
Speaker 2: It's a very organized, a stematic approach to terror.

144
00:07:01,839 --> 00:07:04,439
Speaker 1: But if we were talking about outsourcing terror and the

145
00:07:04,480 --> 00:07:08,439
bizarre efficiency of psychological destruction, we have to transition into

146
00:07:08,480 --> 00:07:09,759
a different medium entirely.

147
00:07:09,959 --> 00:07:10,759
Speaker 2: Okay, where we're going.

148
00:07:10,879 --> 00:07:14,759
Speaker 1: I want to discuss audio, specifically the audio cassette tape

149
00:07:14,800 --> 00:07:18,040
recovered from David Parker Ray, the man the media dubbed

150
00:07:18,319 --> 00:07:19,360
the Toy box Killer.

151
00:07:19,680 --> 00:07:23,519
Speaker 2: Ah Yes, the discovery of his orientation cassette.

152
00:07:23,720 --> 00:07:24,439
Speaker 1: That tape.

153
00:07:24,480 --> 00:07:28,160
Speaker 2: Within forensic psychology and law enforcement circles, this is widely

154
00:07:28,160 --> 00:07:31,519
considered one of the most fundamentally disturbing pieces of evidence

155
00:07:31,560 --> 00:07:32,439
ever cataloged.

156
00:07:32,959 --> 00:07:36,519
Speaker 1: The very phrase orientation cassette makes my skin crawl because

157
00:07:36,519 --> 00:07:38,360
it sounds like something you get on your first day

158
00:07:38,360 --> 00:07:38,600
of a.

159
00:07:38,560 --> 00:07:40,360
Speaker 2: Corporate job, and some's so mundane.

160
00:07:40,800 --> 00:07:45,240
Speaker 1: Right. Investigators found this standard, cheap plastic cassette tape that

161
00:07:45,399 --> 00:07:48,000
Ray would play for the women he had abducted right

162
00:07:48,040 --> 00:07:52,120
as they were regaining consciousness inside his customized soundproof trailer.

163
00:07:52,279 --> 00:07:53,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, his toy box.

164
00:07:53,639 --> 00:07:56,319
Speaker 1: The tape itself is just a piece of plastic housing

165
00:07:56,360 --> 00:08:00,040
magnetic ribbon. But what is recorded on it is the

166
00:07:59,839 --> 00:08:02,439
systematic dismantling of human hope.

167
00:08:02,480 --> 00:08:05,480
Speaker 2: What strikes behavioral analysts the most isn't just the existence

168
00:08:05,480 --> 00:08:08,759
of the tape or even the horrific explicit acts at details.

169
00:08:09,040 --> 00:08:10,480
It is a vocal delivery.

170
00:08:10,560 --> 00:08:12,160
Speaker 1: The tone of his voice.

171
00:08:11,959 --> 00:08:17,000
Speaker 2: On this tape. Ray's voice is remarkably calm. It is detached, steady,

172
00:08:17,399 --> 00:08:19,160
and terrifyingly bureaucratic.

173
00:08:19,240 --> 00:08:20,879
Speaker 1: Bureaucratic is the perfect word for it.

174
00:08:21,160 --> 00:08:25,839
Speaker 2: He explains in exhaustive professional detail, exactly where they are,

175
00:08:26,240 --> 00:08:29,000
what the rules of their captivity are, and the precise

176
00:08:29,120 --> 00:08:31,759
mechanized devices they are going to be subjected to.

177
00:08:32,039 --> 00:08:33,519
Speaker 1: Wait, let me stop you right there, because this is

178
00:08:33,519 --> 00:08:37,159
where my brain hits a wall. Sure, I understand sadism,

179
00:08:37,559 --> 00:08:41,840
I understand the drive to inflict pain. But I struggle

180
00:08:41,879 --> 00:08:44,919
with the medium here. Why a tape?

181
00:08:45,039 --> 00:08:45,960
Speaker 2: That's a great question.

182
00:08:46,399 --> 00:08:50,000
Speaker 1: Was this purely about laziness and efficiency? Did he just

183
00:08:50,000 --> 00:08:52,799
get tired of repeating his twisted manifesto to every new

184
00:08:52,879 --> 00:08:56,559
victim so he opted for a standardized, pre recorded introduction.

185
00:08:56,720 --> 00:08:59,120
You'd think that right, Or was it something deeper. Was

186
00:08:59,159 --> 00:09:01,799
he sitting there in that trailer, hitting the play button

187
00:09:02,080 --> 00:09:04,600
and actively savoring the fact that a two dollars piece

188
00:09:04,639 --> 00:09:07,559
of plastic was breaking their minds before even head lifts

189
00:09:07,559 --> 00:09:07,919
a finger.

190
00:09:08,080 --> 00:09:10,799
Speaker 2: It is absolutely the latter. It raises a fascinating and

191
00:09:10,840 --> 00:09:14,679
horrifying point about the ritualization of violence. The ritualization for

192
00:09:14,840 --> 00:09:19,000
organized defenders like David Parker Ray, the psychological dismantling of

193
00:09:19,039 --> 00:09:22,480
the victim is the primary objective. The physical violence is

194
00:09:22,519 --> 00:09:25,840
almost a secondary byproduct of the absolute power he derived

195
00:09:25,840 --> 00:09:26,600
from their terror.

196
00:09:26,879 --> 00:09:29,039
Speaker 1: So the tape was the main event. In a way.

197
00:09:29,279 --> 00:09:33,519
Speaker 2: By recording it, he achieved two things. First, he standardized

198
00:09:33,559 --> 00:09:37,519
the terror, ensuring that every victim received the exact, same, flawless,

199
00:09:37,600 --> 00:09:41,960
uninterrupted dose of psychological poison without him ever stumbling over

200
00:09:42,000 --> 00:09:43,720
his words, were losing his train of thought.

201
00:09:43,799 --> 00:09:47,399
Speaker 1: He wanted a perfect performance every time exactly second.

202
00:09:47,480 --> 00:09:51,080
Speaker 2: And more importantly, that tape allowed him to remove himself

203
00:09:51,200 --> 00:09:54,000
from the role of the active speaker and step into

204
00:09:54,039 --> 00:09:55,159
the role of the spectator.

205
00:09:55,240 --> 00:09:57,480
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I never thought of it like that.

206
00:09:57,639 --> 00:10:00,519
Speaker 2: He could sit back, watch the collar drain from their faces,

207
00:10:00,600 --> 00:10:03,279
watch the panic set in, and consume their terror as

208
00:10:03,320 --> 00:10:07,639
an audience member. It elevated his own perceived godlike control.

209
00:10:07,960 --> 00:10:10,720
Speaker 1: So the tape did the heavy lifting of inducing panic,

210
00:10:11,039 --> 00:10:14,960
allowing him to simply observe the collapse precisely. The bureaucracy

211
00:10:15,000 --> 00:10:17,240
of it is what I can't shake the idea of

212
00:10:17,240 --> 00:10:20,559
someone treating unimaginable sadism with the same tonal delivery as

213
00:10:20,600 --> 00:10:24,279
an airline safety demonstration. It's the complete and total absence

214
00:10:24,279 --> 00:10:24,799
of empathy.

215
00:10:24,879 --> 00:10:26,720
Speaker 2: It is entirely devoid of human feeling.

216
00:10:27,080 --> 00:10:30,759
Speaker 1: But a cassette tape only captures the voice. What happens

217
00:10:30,759 --> 00:10:34,360
when the perpetrators need to document their crimes requires a

218
00:10:34,480 --> 00:10:36,080
visual element that takes us.

219
00:10:36,039 --> 00:10:38,000
Speaker 2: To a whole new level of documentation.

220
00:10:38,360 --> 00:10:42,000
Speaker 1: This leads us to the remote California compound belonging to

221
00:10:42,080 --> 00:10:45,600
Leonard Lake and Charles Ang in the mid nineteen eighties.

222
00:10:45,840 --> 00:10:48,320
Speaker 2: This is a textbook example of a case where the

223
00:10:48,360 --> 00:10:53,159
discovery of physical media fundamentally altered the entire scope, trajectory,

224
00:10:53,320 --> 00:10:55,960
and emotional toll of a police investigation.

225
00:10:56,679 --> 00:11:00,000
Speaker 1: Lake and Ang murdered a staggering number of people, somewhere

226
00:11:00,080 --> 00:11:01,759
between eleven and twenty five victims.

227
00:11:01,840 --> 00:11:03,679
Speaker 2: Yeah, the exact number is still uncertain.

228
00:11:03,840 --> 00:11:07,360
Speaker 1: When authorities finally rated Lake's remote cabin, they uncovered a

229
00:11:07,440 --> 00:11:11,279
hidden bunker structure. It was, for all intents and purposes,

230
00:11:11,279 --> 00:11:12,519
a purpose build dungeons.

231
00:11:12,559 --> 00:11:13,480
Speaker 2: It's horrifying.

232
00:11:13,720 --> 00:11:16,759
Speaker 1: But the detail that elevated this from a horrific discovery

233
00:11:16,799 --> 00:11:20,279
to a generational trauma for the investigators involved was a

234
00:11:20,320 --> 00:11:24,240
collection of VHS cassettes chillingly labeled m Ladies.

235
00:11:24,480 --> 00:11:29,679
Speaker 2: Those tapes they contained vivid, grainy, irrefutable documentation of Linkening

236
00:11:29,720 --> 00:11:31,879
psychologically and physically tormenting their.

237
00:11:31,759 --> 00:11:33,679
Speaker 1: Victims, just sitting there on a shelf.

238
00:11:33,759 --> 00:11:36,840
Speaker 2: Right up until the moment a detective slid one of

239
00:11:36,840 --> 00:11:39,879
those VHS tapes into a player. They were working a

240
00:11:40,000 --> 00:11:44,720
very complex, massive missing persons and suspected homicide case. They

241
00:11:44,720 --> 00:11:47,679
were dealing with the aftermath of violence, but.

242
00:11:47,679 --> 00:11:49,600
Speaker 1: The moment they hit play, they weren't dealing with the

243
00:11:49,639 --> 00:11:50,639
aftermath anymore.

244
00:11:50,919 --> 00:11:55,759
Speaker 2: Precisely, the tapes shifted the paradigm. The investigators were suddenly

245
00:11:55,799 --> 00:11:58,720
thrust into the room while the crimes were actively occurring.

246
00:11:59,039 --> 00:12:01,120
Speaker 1: That has to cause PTSD for the cops.

247
00:12:01,279 --> 00:12:03,879
Speaker 2: Oh, without a doubt, they were forced into a position

248
00:12:03,960 --> 00:12:08,639
of helplessness watching the victims in their final, most terrifying moments.

249
00:12:08,879 --> 00:12:12,519
Speaker 1: It turns the detective into an involuntary witness and for lakening.

250
00:12:13,200 --> 00:12:16,279
What was the psychological purpose? Were these purely trophies? Do

251
00:12:16,320 --> 00:12:18,200
they sit around watching these like home movies?

252
00:12:18,799 --> 00:12:22,159
Speaker 2: Yes. In the context of criminal behavior, these tapes are

253
00:12:22,200 --> 00:12:25,799
categorized as high value trophy. High value trophies, we distinguish

254
00:12:25,840 --> 00:12:29,000
between a souvenir and a trophy. A souvenir helps the

255
00:12:29,039 --> 00:12:32,879
offender remember the experience, like taking a victim's piece of jewelry. Okay,

256
00:12:32,919 --> 00:12:36,200
that makes sense, But a trophy represents a victory. It

257
00:12:36,279 --> 00:12:40,080
is proof of conquest. The tapes were irrefutable proof of

258
00:12:40,120 --> 00:12:42,519
their total domination over these individuals.

259
00:12:42,720 --> 00:12:47,840
Speaker 1: They created a permanent, excruciating witness to the suffering they inflicted.

260
00:12:47,679 --> 00:12:51,840
Speaker 2: Exactly allowing them to repeatedly consume the power dynamic long

261
00:12:52,000 --> 00:12:53,519
after the victim was deceased.

262
00:12:53,799 --> 00:12:56,759
Speaker 1: That concept of needing an audience even if the audience

263
00:12:56,840 --> 00:12:59,720
is just yourself. Rewatching the tape brings up a deeply

264
00:12:59,799 --> 00:13:02,879
un settling parallel to our modern era. How so because

265
00:13:02,919 --> 00:13:06,480
Lake and Ang tape their victims. But in nineteen ninety six,

266
00:13:06,840 --> 00:13:09,759
a man named Ricardo Lopez weaponized the camera in a

267
00:13:09,759 --> 00:13:13,240
completely different way. He didn't tape his victims. He taped himself.

268
00:13:13,559 --> 00:13:16,320
Speaker 2: Ah Ricardo Lopez often referred to in the media as

269
00:13:16,320 --> 00:13:17,360
the Byork Stalker.

270
00:13:17,559 --> 00:13:18,240
Speaker 1: Yes exactly.

271
00:13:18,279 --> 00:13:21,039
Speaker 2: He was a pest exterminator living in Florida who developed

272
00:13:21,039 --> 00:13:24,879
a severe, dangerous, and ultimately legal obsession with the Icelandic

273
00:13:24,960 --> 00:13:25,799
musician b York.

274
00:13:25,919 --> 00:13:26,960
Speaker 1: It's a wild case.

275
00:13:27,200 --> 00:13:29,039
Speaker 2: When he learned through the media that she was in

276
00:13:29,080 --> 00:13:34,639
a romantic relationship, his obsession metastasized into violent rage. He

277
00:13:34,679 --> 00:13:39,200
constructed a complex explosive device disguised as a book, which

278
00:13:39,200 --> 00:13:42,320
he mailed to her residence in London, intending to kill

279
00:13:42,480 --> 00:13:43,840
or severely disfigure her.

280
00:13:44,080 --> 00:13:46,399
Speaker 1: But the bombing plot is only half of the horror here.

281
00:13:47,000 --> 00:13:50,759
Alongside constructing this device, Lopez set up a video camera

282
00:13:50,840 --> 00:13:54,120
in his apartment and began recording a video diary.

283
00:13:53,919 --> 00:13:55,639
Speaker 2: A very extensive diary, and.

284
00:13:55,600 --> 00:13:57,559
Speaker 1: We are not talking about a few five minute clips.

285
00:13:57,759 --> 00:14:01,799
He recorded over twenty hours of footage spread across eleven

286
00:14:01,840 --> 00:14:02,440
different tapes.

287
00:14:02,519 --> 00:14:03,120
Speaker 2: Exhaustive.

288
00:14:03,320 --> 00:14:07,000
Speaker 1: He filmed his daily life, his twisted motivations, his intense

289
00:14:07,039 --> 00:14:10,240
self loathing, the actual construction of the acid bomb, and

290
00:14:10,279 --> 00:14:13,320
in the final agonizing tape, he shaves his head, paints

291
00:14:13,360 --> 00:14:16,159
his face, and takes his own life on camera. It

292
00:14:16,200 --> 00:14:18,399
was the discovery of his body and these tapes that

293
00:14:18,440 --> 00:14:21,879
alerted the police to the bomb, which Scotland Yard miraculously

294
00:14:21,919 --> 00:14:22,879
intercepted just in.

295
00:14:22,840 --> 00:14:23,840
Speaker 2: Time, carlyon Time.

296
00:14:24,039 --> 00:14:26,759
Speaker 1: What I find so jarring about the Lopez takes is

297
00:14:26,759 --> 00:14:31,480
how they predate our current culture of constant self surveillance. Today,

298
00:14:32,039 --> 00:14:35,480
vlogging is the norm. People document what they eat, what

299
00:14:35,559 --> 00:14:37,000
they buy, their morning routines.

300
00:14:37,120 --> 00:14:38,320
Speaker 2: It's everyday behavior now.

301
00:14:38,600 --> 00:14:42,240
Speaker 1: But watching Lopez feels like peering into a psychological black hole.

302
00:14:42,639 --> 00:14:46,440
It is deeply, profoundly unsettling to watch a human being

303
00:14:46,919 --> 00:14:51,919
willingly eagerly document their own real time descent into a

304
00:14:52,000 --> 00:14:55,480
homicidal delusion. Why did he need to film them?

305
00:14:55,600 --> 00:14:59,279
Speaker 2: Lopez's tapes are one of the most profound psychological artifacts

306
00:14:59,279 --> 00:15:01,840
we have of a mind and collapsing inward. The camera

307
00:15:01,919 --> 00:15:03,200
served multiple.

308
00:15:02,759 --> 00:15:04,519
Speaker 1: Functions for him, Okay, like what.

309
00:15:04,519 --> 00:15:07,559
Speaker 2: First, it was a surgate companion. He was profoundly isolated,

310
00:15:07,559 --> 00:15:10,240
and the lens gave him someone or something to talk to.

311
00:15:10,480 --> 00:15:12,399
Speaker 1: That's incredibly sad, in a very dark.

312
00:15:12,240 --> 00:15:15,240
Speaker 2: Way, it is. But more importantly, the camera validated his

313
00:15:15,320 --> 00:15:18,320
existence and his grandiosity. In his mind, his pain and

314
00:15:18,360 --> 00:15:21,759
his rage were of monumental importance, and monumental events must

315
00:15:21,799 --> 00:15:22,960
be recorded for history.

316
00:15:23,080 --> 00:15:25,440
Speaker 1: He thought he was doing something historically significant.

317
00:15:25,759 --> 00:15:30,120
Speaker 2: Exactly, he was giving a masterclass on his own psychological deterioration.

318
00:15:30,840 --> 00:15:34,960
He weaponized the camera to ensure that his delusion, his manifesto,

319
00:15:35,159 --> 00:15:38,399
would outlive his physical body. He wanted the world to

320
00:15:38,480 --> 00:15:40,879
understand the depth of his perceived agony.

321
00:15:41,000 --> 00:15:45,679
Speaker 1: He curated his own destruction, which honestly provides a really

322
00:15:45,799 --> 00:15:49,279
dark but perfect bridge to our next area focus.

323
00:15:49,360 --> 00:15:50,159
Speaker 2: Okay, let's pivot.

324
00:15:50,320 --> 00:15:53,240
Speaker 1: If audiotapes in video diaries are attempts to capture a

325
00:15:53,240 --> 00:15:56,559
fleeting moment of terror or a timeline of madness, what

326
00:15:56,759 --> 00:15:59,679
happens when a killer's delusion demands something more.

327
00:15:59,519 --> 00:16:01,840
Speaker 2: Tangible You mean physical objects, right?

328
00:16:02,159 --> 00:16:05,000
Speaker 1: What happens when they feel a compulsion to preserve the

329
00:16:05,039 --> 00:16:07,360
physical reality of the victims themselves.

330
00:16:07,759 --> 00:16:12,360
Speaker 2: They transition from creating media to curating literal galleries of horror.

331
00:16:12,440 --> 00:16:16,519
This is the psychology behind trophies, mementos, and the physical preservation.

332
00:16:16,039 --> 00:16:18,480
Speaker 1: Of death, which is just it's a whole different level.

333
00:16:18,279 --> 00:16:20,120
Speaker 2: It really is. It is one thing to commit a

334
00:16:20,159 --> 00:16:23,159
heinous act and immediately flee the scene to evade capture.

335
00:16:23,320 --> 00:16:26,440
It is an entirely different level of psychological complexity to

336
00:16:26,519 --> 00:16:30,080
intentionally collect catalog and preserve pieces of the crime.

337
00:16:30,320 --> 00:16:32,840
Speaker 1: I look at a killer who flees the scene as

338
00:16:32,879 --> 00:16:36,879
someone driven by panic or a temporary urge. But a collector,

339
00:16:37,600 --> 00:16:40,759
a collector is patient, a collector is building an archives. Yes,

340
00:16:41,000 --> 00:16:46,919
and Dennis Rader, the BTK killer, is the quintessential horrifying.

341
00:16:46,399 --> 00:16:50,919
Speaker 2: Example of this raider evaded capture for decades, terrorizing Wichitac

342
00:16:50,960 --> 00:16:54,159
hans Is from the nineteen seventies until his eventual arrest

343
00:16:54,200 --> 00:16:55,360
in two thousand and five.

344
00:16:55,519 --> 00:16:56,919
Speaker 1: He was a ghost for so long.

345
00:16:57,000 --> 00:17:00,519
Speaker 2: When investigators finally executed search warrants on his property, they

346
00:17:00,600 --> 00:17:04,519
uncovered his hidden archives. He had taken hundreds of polaroids

347
00:17:04,519 --> 00:17:08,079
of his victims, often posing them in various stages of distress,

348
00:17:08,119 --> 00:17:10,839
bondage and post mortem decomposition, and the.

349
00:17:10,799 --> 00:17:13,640
Speaker 1: Places he chose to hide these photos are just as

350
00:17:13,680 --> 00:17:16,400
disturbing as the photos themselves. He didn't just have a

351
00:17:16,400 --> 00:17:17,240
secret safe.

352
00:17:17,000 --> 00:17:19,000
Speaker 2: In his basement, No, he had them everywhere.

353
00:17:19,079 --> 00:17:21,400
Speaker 1: He hid them in the false bottoms of filing cabinets

354
00:17:21,400 --> 00:17:24,559
at his municipal compliance office. He hid them inside the

355
00:17:24,559 --> 00:17:27,039
walls of his local church, where he was a respected

356
00:17:27,079 --> 00:17:30,680
congregation leader. It's wild he was literally surrounded by his

357
00:17:30,759 --> 00:17:33,880
trophies while going about his mundane daily life.

358
00:17:34,000 --> 00:17:38,559
Speaker 2: The locations speak to his intense need for compartmentalization, But

359
00:17:38,680 --> 00:17:42,759
the psychological utility of the photos themselves is the core.

360
00:17:42,640 --> 00:17:44,400
Speaker 1: Issue here right Why he needed them.

361
00:17:44,519 --> 00:17:49,119
Speaker 2: During his extensive interrogations and subsequent psychological profiling, Raider was

362
00:17:49,200 --> 00:17:53,319
remarkably candid. He explained that he used these polaroids to,

363
00:17:53,920 --> 00:17:56,599
in his own exact words, facilitate his imagination.

364
00:17:56,960 --> 00:18:01,240
Speaker 1: Facilitate his imagination. That is such a sterile, clinical way

365
00:18:01,680 --> 00:18:04,680
to describe something so demonic. I want to dig into that.

366
00:18:05,279 --> 00:18:08,359
How exactly does a polaroid act as a facilitation tool

367
00:18:08,359 --> 00:18:09,200
for a mind like his?

368
00:18:09,599 --> 00:18:12,960
Speaker 2: To understand this, we have to look at the neurological feedback.

369
00:18:12,559 --> 00:18:14,720
Speaker 1: Loop of addiction, Okay, addiction.

370
00:18:14,519 --> 00:18:17,279
Speaker 2: For psychopathic serial offenders. The act of murder is the

371
00:18:17,359 --> 00:18:20,720
ultimate high, a surge of absolute power and dominance. But

372
00:18:20,839 --> 00:18:23,359
by its very nature, the act is transient. It ends,

373
00:18:23,759 --> 00:18:26,640
the victim dies, the adrenaline fades, and the killer is

374
00:18:26,720 --> 00:18:29,759
left with a baseline reality that feels empty. By comparison,

375
00:18:30,000 --> 00:18:33,559
the photograph acts as a synthetic substitute. It is a

376
00:18:33,599 --> 00:18:38,119
psychological battery. Whenever Raider felt his sense of power waning,

377
00:18:38,559 --> 00:18:42,000
he would retrieve these photos, plug into that battery, and

378
00:18:42,119 --> 00:18:43,880
ritually relive the crime.

379
00:18:44,160 --> 00:18:46,240
Speaker 1: Wow. Plug into the battery.

380
00:18:46,440 --> 00:18:50,240
Speaker 2: The visual stimulus allowed his brain to endlessly replay and

381
00:18:50,279 --> 00:18:54,240
manipulate the scenario, essentially allowing him to repeatedly violate the

382
00:18:54,319 --> 00:18:57,839
victim in his mind for years after their physical death.

383
00:18:57,920 --> 00:19:01,079
That is, I mean, that's just evil organized killers. The

384
00:19:01,119 --> 00:19:03,680
memory of the act, the ability to control the narrative

385
00:19:03,720 --> 00:19:05,920
of the memory, is often just as important as the

386
00:19:06,000 --> 00:19:06,759
murder itself.

387
00:19:06,799 --> 00:19:09,680
Speaker 1: So the photo isn't a memory, it's a tool to

388
00:19:09,759 --> 00:19:13,880
reinflict the crime internally. That makes a horrifying kind of sense,

389
00:19:13,960 --> 00:19:16,880
it does. But if Rader used photos as a battery

390
00:19:16,960 --> 00:19:19,200
to recharge his ego, what do we make of an

391
00:19:19,200 --> 00:19:22,799
offender whose collection grows so massive it practically overtakes their

392
00:19:22,839 --> 00:19:23,680
physical environment.

393
00:19:24,039 --> 00:19:24,279
Speaker 2: Ah.

394
00:19:24,400 --> 00:19:28,079
Speaker 1: Yes, because Rader hit his photos carefully. Lonnie Franklin Junior,

395
00:19:28,079 --> 00:19:30,920
the Grim Sleeper, basically wallpapered his life with them.

396
00:19:31,200 --> 00:19:34,720
Speaker 2: Franklin operated in the shadows of south central Los Angeles

397
00:19:34,759 --> 00:19:39,359
for over two decades. He targeted highly vulnerable women, and

398
00:19:39,440 --> 00:19:42,200
his crimes went tragically unconnected for years.

399
00:19:42,319 --> 00:19:43,400
Speaker 1: That's such a tragic case.

400
00:19:43,559 --> 00:19:47,519
Speaker 2: When a DNA familial match finally led Task Force investigators

401
00:19:47,519 --> 00:19:50,599
to his doorstep, they executed a search warrant on his

402
00:19:50,720 --> 00:19:54,319
property and opened his garage. The cash of evidence they

403
00:19:54,400 --> 00:19:56,319
uncovered was staggering in its volume.

404
00:19:56,400 --> 00:19:59,519
Speaker 1: They found over one thousand photos and hundreds of hours

405
00:19:59,519 --> 00:20:03,359
of video footage hidden in that garage, images of women

406
00:20:03,400 --> 00:20:07,640
in various states of unconsciousness, severe distress, or worse, over

407
00:20:07,680 --> 00:20:10,319
a thousand. The police actually had to take the unprecedented

408
00:20:10,319 --> 00:20:12,799
step of releasing nearly one hundred and eighty of these

409
00:20:12,799 --> 00:20:15,759
photos to the public, just desperately pleading for help to

410
00:20:15,920 --> 00:20:18,640
identify all these unknown women, to figure out who was

411
00:20:18,680 --> 00:20:20,279
still alive and who was a victim.

412
00:20:20,400 --> 00:20:22,599
Speaker 2: It was a massive undertaking for law enforcement.

413
00:20:22,680 --> 00:20:24,960
Speaker 1: But I want to challenge something here. We just talked

414
00:20:24,960 --> 00:20:27,680
about the survival instinct of a killer hiding his crimes.

415
00:20:27,880 --> 00:20:31,279
How does the urge to collect override the basic primal

416
00:20:31,319 --> 00:20:32,680
instinct to hide the evidence.

417
00:20:32,839 --> 00:20:33,920
Speaker 2: That's the real puzzle.

418
00:20:34,079 --> 00:20:36,599
Speaker 1: Think about a normal garage. You have some tools, maybe

419
00:20:36,599 --> 00:20:39,640
some old paint cans, a box of holiday decorations. We

420
00:20:39,720 --> 00:20:43,880
build photo walls in our living rooms to celebrate life, birthdays,

421
00:20:43,920 --> 00:20:46,279
family vacations, graduations.

422
00:20:45,720 --> 00:20:46,799
Speaker 2: Simile milestones.

423
00:20:46,920 --> 00:20:50,599
Speaker 1: To see that entirely normal human impulse to document one's

424
00:20:50,640 --> 00:20:56,119
life inverted into this sprawling, monstrous gallery of death. It's paralyzing.

425
00:20:56,720 --> 00:20:59,559
He lived mere feet away from his own personal museum

426
00:20:59,599 --> 00:21:03,799
of a trial. How did the sheer volume not terrify

427
00:21:03,880 --> 00:21:05,200
him into destroying it all?

428
00:21:05,359 --> 00:21:08,319
Speaker 2: It is a phenomenal question, and it speaks to the

429
00:21:08,359 --> 00:21:13,119
concept of normalization within a fractured psyche, normalization. Over decades

430
00:21:13,119 --> 00:21:17,799
of successfully evading capture, Franklin's fear of apprehension likely diminished,

431
00:21:17,920 --> 00:21:21,359
replaced by a profound arrogance. The sheer volume of the

432
00:21:21,359 --> 00:21:24,799
collection indicates that the documentation was no longer just a trophy.

433
00:21:25,200 --> 00:21:28,359
It had become the primary fabric of his reality.

434
00:21:27,960 --> 00:21:29,559
Speaker 1: So it was just part of his everyday life.

435
00:21:29,599 --> 00:21:32,079
Speaker 2: For Franklin, destroying the photos would have been akin to

436
00:21:32,119 --> 00:21:35,480
erasing his own identity and his life's work. The collection

437
00:21:35,759 --> 00:21:36,519
was his legacy.

438
00:21:36,759 --> 00:21:39,000
Speaker 1: That word legacy, it's chilling.

439
00:21:39,240 --> 00:21:42,880
Speaker 2: He normalized the presence of this horrific evidence because in

440
00:21:42,960 --> 00:21:47,079
his mind those photos represented his ultimate success and dominance.

441
00:21:47,680 --> 00:21:51,240
He had completely detached from the societal reality, where those

442
00:21:51,240 --> 00:21:53,480
photos represent a lethal liability.

443
00:21:53,680 --> 00:21:57,160
Speaker 1: That detachment from reality is a perfect segue, because if

444
00:21:57,160 --> 00:22:00,119
we are exploring the preservation of death, we have to

445
00:22:00,119 --> 00:22:03,200
look at cases where the preservation goes far beyond photography

446
00:22:03,839 --> 00:22:06,319
and enters the realm with a physical form itself.

447
00:22:06,519 --> 00:22:09,559
Speaker 2: This is where things get truly bizarre, It really does.

448
00:22:10,279 --> 00:22:12,799
Speaker 1: This leads us to a deeply confusing case out of

449
00:22:12,880 --> 00:22:15,960
Russia involving a man named Anatoley Mosfin.

450
00:22:16,319 --> 00:22:20,759
Speaker 2: This case continually challenges behavioral analysts because the underlying motivations

451
00:22:20,799 --> 00:22:21,920
are so unique.

452
00:22:21,640 --> 00:22:23,000
Speaker 1: It's hard to even categorize him.

453
00:22:23,079 --> 00:22:27,640
Speaker 2: In twenty eleven, Russian authorities rated the cramped, cluttered apartment

454
00:22:27,640 --> 00:22:30,759
of Mossfin, who was a well regarded academic, a linguist

455
00:22:30,799 --> 00:22:33,839
and a historian who specialized in Celtic history and local

456
00:22:33,920 --> 00:22:37,000
burial rights. A very smart guy on paper, very intelligent.

457
00:22:37,279 --> 00:22:40,000
When officers entered his living space, they found what appeared

458
00:22:40,000 --> 00:22:43,400
to be a massive, eccentric collection of large antique.

459
00:22:42,960 --> 00:22:44,319
Speaker 1: Dolls to sit around his apartment.

460
00:22:44,440 --> 00:22:48,240
Speaker 2: They were dressed in knee high boots, elaborate dresses, and

461
00:22:48,319 --> 00:22:52,119
their faces and hands were carefully wrapped in thick fabric.

462
00:22:52,400 --> 00:22:56,200
Speaker 1: But they weren't dolls. As the investigators got closer, the

463
00:22:56,319 --> 00:22:59,799
smell and the texture gave it away. They realized they

464
00:22:59,799 --> 00:23:03,359
were looking at the mummified remains of twenty six young girls.

465
00:23:03,400 --> 00:23:04,039
Speaker 2: Twenty six.

466
00:23:04,680 --> 00:23:08,480
Speaker 1: Mosvin had spent years actively digging up the fresh graves

467
00:23:08,480 --> 00:23:11,759
of children from local cemeteries, bringing their bodies back to

468
00:23:11,799 --> 00:23:16,599
his apartment, and painstakingly mummifying them using salt and baking soda.

469
00:23:16,640 --> 00:23:18,319
Speaker 2: And he didn't just store them in a closet.

470
00:23:18,519 --> 00:23:21,880
Speaker 1: No, he lived his daily life with them. He installed

471
00:23:21,960 --> 00:23:24,599
music boxes inside their chest cavity so they would sing.

472
00:23:24,799 --> 00:23:26,799
He threw them birthday parties. He sat them on his

473
00:23:26,839 --> 00:23:28,000
sofa to watch television.

474
00:23:28,000 --> 00:23:29,400
Speaker 2: It's an uncanny tableau.

475
00:23:29,680 --> 00:23:31,720
Speaker 1: I have to push back on the standard true crime

476
00:23:31,799 --> 00:23:34,519
narrative here. Usually when we talk about a man with

477
00:23:34,559 --> 00:23:37,079
an apartment full of corpses, we are talking about a

478
00:23:37,079 --> 00:23:40,799
sadistic serial killer. But Moscovin didn't kill these girls. He

479
00:23:40,880 --> 00:23:41,759
dug them up right.

480
00:23:41,799 --> 00:23:44,519
Speaker 2: He was a grave robber, not a murderer, based.

481
00:23:44,279 --> 00:23:46,319
Speaker 1: On everything we know about how lovingly he thought he

482
00:23:46,400 --> 00:23:50,039
was preserving them. Where is the line here? Is he

483
00:23:50,200 --> 00:23:56,279
irredeemably evil or is he just completely terrifyingly detached from reality?

484
00:23:56,400 --> 00:23:59,960
How does the legal and psychological system classify a crime

485
00:24:00,599 --> 00:24:03,880
where the intent was in his twisted mind an act

486
00:24:03,920 --> 00:24:04,319
of care.

487
00:24:05,039 --> 00:24:07,960
Speaker 2: You've hit on the exact debate that forensic psychologists and

488
00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:10,400
the Russian legal system grappled with for months.

489
00:24:10,519 --> 00:24:11,240
Speaker 1: It's a tough one.

490
00:24:11,359 --> 00:24:16,440
Speaker 2: Standard criminal profiling categorizes grave robbing or corpse mutilation under

491
00:24:16,440 --> 00:24:20,880
the umbrella of sexual sadism or necrophilia. But Moskvin did

492
00:24:20,880 --> 00:24:22,039
not fit those profile.

493
00:24:22,279 --> 00:24:24,039
Speaker 1: No, he didn't seem to have those motives.

494
00:24:24,160 --> 00:24:28,960
Speaker 2: During his psychiatric evaluations, his logic, while completely detached from reality,

495
00:24:29,039 --> 00:24:32,400
was internally consistent. He claimed that he felt immense sorrow

496
00:24:32,400 --> 00:24:34,559
for these children who had been abandoned in the cold,

497
00:24:34,680 --> 00:24:35,279
dark earth.

498
00:24:35,400 --> 00:24:36,440
Speaker 1: He felt sorry for them.

499
00:24:36,480 --> 00:24:38,799
Speaker 2: He stated he was waiting for science to eventually find

500
00:24:38,799 --> 00:24:41,319
a way to reanimate the dead, and in the meantime,

501
00:24:41,400 --> 00:24:43,759
he was bringing them into his home to keep them warm,

502
00:24:43,880 --> 00:24:45,759
to keep them company and to care for them.

503
00:24:46,000 --> 00:24:49,960
Speaker 1: So, in his completely fractured logic, he was actually performing

504
00:24:49,960 --> 00:24:50,880
an act of salvation.

505
00:24:51,240 --> 00:24:55,839
Speaker 2: Precisely, it is a singular, extreme example of severe delusion,

506
00:24:56,000 --> 00:25:00,400
manifesting as horrific desecration. He lacked the malicious in to

507
00:25:00,400 --> 00:25:03,440
harm the living, but his profound schizophrenia led to an

508
00:25:03,519 --> 00:25:05,640
incomprehensible violation of the dead.

509
00:25:05,759 --> 00:25:07,200
Speaker 1: It's just so sad.

510
00:25:07,160 --> 00:25:10,200
Speaker 2: He was ultimately ruled unfit to stand trial and committed

511
00:25:10,200 --> 00:25:13,480
to a psychiatric facility. It challenges our standard definitions of

512
00:25:13,519 --> 00:25:17,200
a crime scene because his motive wasn't violence or destruction.

513
00:25:17,759 --> 00:25:21,440
It was a grotesque, desperately misguided form of preservation born

514
00:25:21,480 --> 00:25:23,680
out of profound loneliness and mental illness.

515
00:25:23,799 --> 00:25:26,799
Speaker 1: It is the ultimate tragedy of the Uncanny Valley. The

516
00:25:26,880 --> 00:25:29,880
attempt to make death look like life only highlights the

517
00:25:29,920 --> 00:25:32,880
horror exactly. But if we're talking about homes filled with

518
00:25:32,920 --> 00:25:35,960
the physical remnants of the dead, there is one historical

519
00:25:36,000 --> 00:25:38,759
case that casts a long, dark shadow over everything else.

520
00:25:39,119 --> 00:25:41,880
You cannot talk about the physical preservation of human remains

521
00:25:42,119 --> 00:25:45,799
without analyzing the butcher of Plainfield ed guine.

522
00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:49,000
Speaker 2: Ed Gains, Wisconsin farmhouse in the late nineteen fifties remains

523
00:25:49,039 --> 00:25:51,160
the ultimate literal house of horror.

524
00:25:51,279 --> 00:25:51,920
Speaker 1: It's infamous.

525
00:25:52,160 --> 00:25:56,079
Speaker 2: When local police entered his pitch black, dilapidated home searching

526
00:25:56,119 --> 00:25:59,559
for a missing hardware store owner named Bernice Warden, they

527
00:25:59,559 --> 00:26:02,799
didn't just find a victim, they found an entire environment

528
00:26:02,880 --> 00:26:03,960
constructed from death.

529
00:26:04,319 --> 00:26:07,519
Speaker 1: It's the stuff of literal nightmares. It is the real

530
00:26:07,559 --> 00:26:12,240
life inspiration for Norman Bates in Psycho, leather Face in

531
00:26:12,319 --> 00:26:15,759
the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Buffalo Bill in Silence of

532
00:26:15,799 --> 00:26:16,279
the Lambs.

533
00:26:16,480 --> 00:26:19,039
Speaker 2: His influence on horror cinema is massive.

534
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:24,400
Speaker 1: Investigators found furniture, clothing, and everyday household items crafted entirely

535
00:26:24,440 --> 00:26:27,920
from human remains. He had bowls fashioned from human skulls,

536
00:26:28,319 --> 00:26:31,839
chairs upholstered with human skin, a waste basket made of skin,

537
00:26:32,079 --> 00:26:34,200
and articles of clothing made from the flesh of women

538
00:26:34,240 --> 00:26:36,039
he had exhumed from local graveyards.

539
00:26:36,119 --> 00:26:39,640
Speaker 2: What is most fascinating about Gain from spatial and psychological

540
00:26:39,680 --> 00:26:43,039
standpoint is how he completely reversed the normal human process

541
00:26:43,039 --> 00:26:45,160
of habitation and boundary setting.

542
00:26:45,160 --> 00:26:46,319
Speaker 1: Boundary setting, what do you mean?

543
00:26:46,799 --> 00:26:49,920
Speaker 2: Usually a functional human being maintains a strict boundary between

544
00:26:49,960 --> 00:26:52,720
their safe living space and the refuse or decay of

545
00:26:52,759 --> 00:26:55,640
the outside world. You clean your house, you take your

546
00:26:55,720 --> 00:26:57,880
trash out to the dump, you bury the dead.

547
00:26:58,160 --> 00:27:00,680
Speaker 1: All right, we keep the inside clean and the outside out.

548
00:27:01,079 --> 00:27:05,680
Speaker 2: He's suffering from severe isolation and undiagnosed psychotic disorders. Following

549
00:27:05,680 --> 00:27:08,920
the death of his domineering mother, did the exact opposite.

550
00:27:09,079 --> 00:27:11,519
He went out into the world to the local graveyards,

551
00:27:11,839 --> 00:27:14,640
dug up the decaying dead, and brought the dump into

552
00:27:14,680 --> 00:27:15,359
his living room.

553
00:27:15,759 --> 00:27:19,119
Speaker 1: He erased the boundary between the graveyard and the home exactly.

554
00:27:19,519 --> 00:27:23,680
Speaker 2: His home became an externalized, physical reflection of his completely

555
00:27:23,720 --> 00:27:28,039
fractured internal mind. He lived entirely alone, boarding up the

556
00:27:28,119 --> 00:27:31,319
rooms his mother used to occupy, keeping them in pristine

557
00:27:31,359 --> 00:27:34,839
condition like a museum, while he lived an absolute squalor

558
00:27:34,920 --> 00:27:38,440
in the remaining rooms, surrounded by his macabre creations.

559
00:27:38,640 --> 00:27:40,559
Speaker 1: So his house was literally his brain.

560
00:27:40,920 --> 00:27:44,400
Speaker 2: In his isolation, the boundary between the living world, the dead,

561
00:27:44,599 --> 00:27:48,839
and his own morbid obsessions dissolved completely. His environment wasn't

562
00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:51,519
just a place he lived, It was a physical manifestation

563
00:27:51,599 --> 00:27:52,599
of his psychosis.

564
00:27:53,119 --> 00:27:56,440
Speaker 1: It is deeply unsettling to consider how our physical environments

565
00:27:56,480 --> 00:27:59,440
reflect our internal mental states, which brings us to a

566
00:27:59,480 --> 00:28:02,720
transition that I find possibly the most heartbreaking aspect of

567
00:28:02,720 --> 00:28:03,680
this entire discussion.

568
00:28:03,680 --> 00:28:04,680
Speaker 2: Where are we heading now?

569
00:28:04,960 --> 00:28:09,200
Speaker 1: Because trophies and mementos, Green's skin furniture, Franklin's photo walls,

570
00:28:09,559 --> 00:28:13,519
raiders polaroids, They are usually hidden the way Gen's farmhouse

571
00:28:13,599 --> 00:28:17,799
was isolated. Franklin's garage was padlog raidar used false bottoms

572
00:28:17,799 --> 00:28:18,359
and cabinets.

573
00:28:18,359 --> 00:28:19,640
Speaker 2: They kept their secret secret.

574
00:28:19,880 --> 00:28:23,039
Speaker 1: But sometimes the horror is placed right out in the open.

575
00:28:23,720 --> 00:28:27,039
Sometimes it is woven into the very fabric of society,

576
00:28:27,480 --> 00:28:32,680
directly corrupting symbols of childhood, innocence, community trust, and spiritual peace.

577
00:28:33,000 --> 00:28:36,640
Speaker 2: The corruption of safe sanctuaries. This is a recurring theme

578
00:28:36,720 --> 00:28:41,319
in criminal behavior that creates an intense, lingering psychological dissonance

579
00:28:41,359 --> 00:28:42,240
for the general public.

580
00:28:42,319 --> 00:28:43,759
Speaker 1: It really messes with people's heads.

581
00:28:43,880 --> 00:28:47,319
Speaker 2: We as a society rely heavily on certain archetypes, symbols,

582
00:28:47,319 --> 00:28:51,759
and institutions to signify safety and predictability. When an offender

583
00:28:51,880 --> 00:28:55,640
violates those symbols, the shockwave goes far beyond the immediate victims.

584
00:28:55,720 --> 00:28:57,680
It traumatizes the collective psyche.

585
00:28:57,759 --> 00:28:59,960
Speaker 1: And I can think of no case that symbolizes this

586
00:29:00,039 --> 00:29:03,480
specific cultural dissonance more intensely than John Wayne Gacy in

587
00:29:03,519 --> 00:29:04,240
The Clownsuits.

588
00:29:04,440 --> 00:29:07,240
Speaker 2: Gaysey is a terrifying case study in the duality of

589
00:29:07,279 --> 00:29:12,079
a psychopath in the nineteen seventies. To all outward appearances,

590
00:29:12,240 --> 00:29:15,240
he was a pillar of his suburban Chicago community.

591
00:29:15,279 --> 00:29:16,319
Speaker 1: He was a respected guy.

592
00:29:16,400 --> 00:29:19,880
Speaker 2: It was a highly successful local contractor. He was actively

593
00:29:19,920 --> 00:29:23,880
involved in local politics and the Democratic Party, and most famously,

594
00:29:23,960 --> 00:29:26,799
he volunteered his weekends to dress up as Pogo the

595
00:29:26,839 --> 00:29:30,480
Clown to entertain children at neighborhood block parties and local

596
00:29:30,519 --> 00:29:31,720
pediatric hospitals.

597
00:29:31,920 --> 00:29:34,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was the friendly neighborhood guy. And all the

598
00:29:34,839 --> 00:29:39,240
while he was operating a literal graveyard beneath the floorboards of.

599
00:29:39,160 --> 00:29:41,000
Speaker 2: His home, a literal mass grave.

600
00:29:41,119 --> 00:29:44,000
Speaker 1: He was hiding twenty nine corpses in the crawl space

601
00:29:44,000 --> 00:29:47,119
of his house and tossing several others into the nearby

602
00:29:47,160 --> 00:29:50,480
de Plain River. Yeah. When investigators finally pieced the clues

603
00:29:50,519 --> 00:29:53,400
together and executed a search worn on his home, the

604
00:29:53,440 --> 00:29:57,960
smell of decay was overpowering. But alongside the unimaginable physical

605
00:29:58,000 --> 00:30:01,680
horror of excavating the human remains, they found his custom

606
00:30:01,720 --> 00:30:06,599
made Pogo the Clown costumes hanging neatly in his bedroom closet. Now.

607
00:30:06,640 --> 00:30:09,880
Speaker 2: Obviously, owning a brightly colored clown suit is not illegal.

608
00:30:09,519 --> 00:30:09,920
Speaker 1: Of course not.

609
00:30:10,200 --> 00:30:13,440
Speaker 2: But finding those roughle outfits, the oversized shoes, and the

610
00:30:13,480 --> 00:30:16,480
makeup kits sitting near feet away from a trapdoor leading

611
00:30:16,480 --> 00:30:19,759
to a mass grave adds a layer of nightmarish irony

612
00:30:19,799 --> 00:30:21,240
that is difficult to process.

613
00:30:22,039 --> 00:30:22,559
Speaker 1: It is the.

614
00:30:22,519 --> 00:30:25,720
Speaker 2: Ultimate collision of a manufactured persona of joy, with the

615
00:30:25,720 --> 00:30:27,519
reality of absolute predation.

616
00:30:28,240 --> 00:30:29,920
Speaker 1: I want to look at the cultural impact of that

617
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:34,279
discovery because it fundamentally altered the American psyche think about

618
00:30:34,319 --> 00:30:38,640
the timeline. Before Gacy was arrested, clowns were almost universally

619
00:30:38,640 --> 00:30:42,400
seen as figures of unadulterated joy, of childhood, innocence, of

620
00:30:42,480 --> 00:30:43,680
harmless circus fund.

621
00:30:43,559 --> 00:30:45,079
Speaker 2: They are just goofy entertainers.

622
00:30:45,279 --> 00:30:48,240
Speaker 1: The widespread media coverage of the clown suits hanging above

623
00:30:48,240 --> 00:30:53,000
the crawl space permanently assassinated that archetype. It solidified the

624
00:30:53,039 --> 00:30:57,480
evil clown trope and pop culture forever. Steen King's It

625
00:30:57,640 --> 00:30:59,000
was published just a few years later.

626
00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:00,720
Speaker 2: The timing is undeniable.

627
00:31:00,799 --> 00:31:03,319
Speaker 1: Whenever we see a creepy clown movie now, that virtual

628
00:31:03,440 --> 00:31:06,440
fear traces its roots directly back to the very real

629
00:31:06,519 --> 00:31:09,359
juxtaposition of Pogo the Clown and John Wayne Gacy. It

630
00:31:09,400 --> 00:31:11,640
wasn't just physical evidence of a crime, It was a

631
00:31:11,680 --> 00:31:14,240
public execution of a cultural symbol of innocence.

632
00:31:14,519 --> 00:31:17,640
Speaker 2: It boils down to the ultimate betrayal of trust. In

633
00:31:17,680 --> 00:31:21,319
Youngin's psychology, the clown or the fool is a boundary crosser.

634
00:31:21,720 --> 00:31:24,279
They are allowed to break societal rules for the sake

635
00:31:24,319 --> 00:31:28,279
of entertainment. The clown mask is designed to elicit immediate,

636
00:31:28,400 --> 00:31:32,200
unearned trust from the most vulnerable members of society. Children

637
00:31:32,640 --> 00:31:36,480
Gaysey utilized that mask as the ultimate camouflage for a predator.

638
00:31:36,640 --> 00:31:39,079
It's sickening when the public realized that the mask of

639
00:31:39,160 --> 00:31:42,279
ultimate safety was hiding the face of ultimate evil. The

640
00:31:42,319 --> 00:31:45,200
resulting cultural fear was profound and lasting.

641
00:31:45,480 --> 00:31:48,440
Speaker 1: Betrayal of trust is the exact right phrase, and we

642
00:31:48,480 --> 00:31:51,480
see another massive betrayal of trust, but operating on a

643
00:31:51,480 --> 00:31:55,680
completely different frequency, a spiritual level, with the Heaven's Gate cult.

644
00:31:55,960 --> 00:31:59,039
Speaker 2: In March of nineteen ninety seven, police entered a sprawling

645
00:31:59,279 --> 00:32:03,160
rented man in the affluent neighborhood of Rancho Santa Fe, California.

646
00:32:03,400 --> 00:32:04,720
Speaker 1: I remember seeing this on the news.

647
00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:07,960
Speaker 2: What they discovered was the aftermath of the largest mass

648
00:32:08,000 --> 00:32:12,160
suicide in United States history on domestic soil, Thirty nine

649
00:32:12,200 --> 00:32:15,119
members of the Heaven's Gate cult had systematically taken their

650
00:32:15,160 --> 00:32:18,119
own lives, driven by the belief that their souls would

651
00:32:18,160 --> 00:32:22,279
evacuate their physical vessels and board an extraterrestrial spacecraft they

652
00:32:22,319 --> 00:32:24,839
believed was trailing the Hailbop Comet.

653
00:32:25,039 --> 00:32:26,680
Speaker 1: I was just a kid when this happened, but the

654
00:32:26,839 --> 00:32:30,200
video footage shot by the investigators walking through that house

655
00:32:30,640 --> 00:32:34,440
is burned into my brain because it absolutely devides everything

656
00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:37,279
your brain expects a mass casualty scene to look like.

657
00:32:37,519 --> 00:32:39,480
Speaker 2: It was so bizarrely calm.

658
00:32:39,720 --> 00:32:42,680
Speaker 1: When you hear the phrase thirty nine bodies, your mind

659
00:32:42,720 --> 00:32:47,319
immediately conjures images of chaos, violence, blood, and panic. But

660
00:32:47,400 --> 00:32:50,440
what the police found was the exact opposite. They found

661
00:32:50,480 --> 00:32:51,799
immaculate uniformity.

662
00:32:52,000 --> 00:32:55,440
Speaker 2: Yes, the pristine, quiet, orderly nature of the scene is

663
00:32:55,440 --> 00:33:00,000
what makes it so profoundly eerie and unsettling to behavioral analysts.

664
00:33:00,119 --> 00:33:02,599
Took the poison in waves over the course of three days.

665
00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:05,880
The surviving members cleaned up after the deceased, posed their

666
00:33:05,920 --> 00:33:08,519
bodies and covered them Before taking the poison themselves.

667
00:33:08,559 --> 00:33:09,799
Speaker 1: They cleaned up after each other.

668
00:33:10,039 --> 00:33:14,279
Speaker 2: Each member was dressed in identical stark black shirts and sweatpants.

669
00:33:14,839 --> 00:33:17,119
They were laid out on bunk beds or mattresses on

670
00:33:17,160 --> 00:33:20,680
the floor. Their faces and torsos were neatly covered with

671
00:33:20,759 --> 00:33:23,000
identical square purple shrouds.

672
00:33:23,079 --> 00:33:24,160
Speaker 1: It's so ritualistic.

673
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:26,759
Speaker 2: They all had packed luggage bags placed neatly at the

674
00:33:26,759 --> 00:33:30,240
foot of their beds, and perhaps most famously, every single

675
00:33:30,279 --> 00:33:33,079
one of them was wearing brand new, identical black and

676
00:33:33,119 --> 00:33:34,920
white Nike decade.

677
00:33:34,519 --> 00:33:38,440
Speaker 1: Sneakers, Those matching snakers sticking out from under the purple cloths.

678
00:33:38,920 --> 00:33:43,400
It's an iconic, devastating image. The juxtaposition of a global

679
00:33:43,480 --> 00:33:47,759
corporate athletic brand whose slogan is just do it utilized

680
00:33:47,759 --> 00:33:50,240
as the uniform for a mass cosmic suicide.

681
00:33:50,319 --> 00:33:51,000
Speaker 2: It's surreal.

682
00:33:51,200 --> 00:33:52,799
Speaker 1: I want to ask you, why does the lack of

683
00:33:52,839 --> 00:33:55,359
a struggle make it so much worse? Why does the

684
00:33:55,359 --> 00:33:58,880
peacefulness of the scene induce more dread than a vinyl one?

685
00:33:58,960 --> 00:34:02,279
Speaker 2: Because it forces us to confront the terrifying invisible power

686
00:34:02,359 --> 00:34:05,759
of coercive control and extreme isolated.

687
00:34:05,200 --> 00:34:06,880
Speaker 1: Belief systems cours of control.

688
00:34:06,960 --> 00:34:09,320
Speaker 2: A violent crime scene is something we can rationalize on

689
00:34:09,400 --> 00:34:12,880
a primal level. There was an attacker, There was a victim,

690
00:34:12,960 --> 00:34:15,840
and the victim's survival instincts kicked in and they fought back.

691
00:34:16,400 --> 00:34:18,559
It aligns with our understanding of human nature.

692
00:34:18,679 --> 00:34:20,000
Speaker 1: It makes logical sense to us.

693
00:34:20,079 --> 00:34:23,280
Speaker 2: But the Heaven's Gate scene was a highly organized, surreal,

694
00:34:23,599 --> 00:34:29,360
meticulously planned tableau. The uniformity, the matching nikes, the identical shrouds,

695
00:34:29,400 --> 00:34:32,800
the packed lovage indicates a complete and total surrender of

696
00:34:32,920 --> 00:34:37,920
individual ego and the survival instinct to a shared lethal delusion.

697
00:34:38,159 --> 00:34:39,079
Speaker 1: They just gave up.

698
00:34:39,199 --> 00:34:42,119
Speaker 2: It is deeply unsettling because the silence of that house

699
00:34:42,239 --> 00:34:45,079
is a testament to the fact that psychological manipulation and

700
00:34:45,079 --> 00:34:47,760
the corruption of faith can be just as lethal and

701
00:34:47,880 --> 00:34:51,599
far more efficient than any physical weapon. They trusted their leader,

702
00:34:51,679 --> 00:34:54,719
Marshall Applewhite, so completely that they put on their matching shoes,

703
00:34:54,800 --> 00:34:57,119
lay down in their bunk beds, and willingly went to

704
00:34:57,119 --> 00:34:57,760
sleep forever.

705
00:34:57,920 --> 00:35:01,639
Speaker 1: It's the weaponization of belief and from the corruption of faith,

706
00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:04,599
we unfortunately have to look at the absolute corruption of

707
00:35:04,639 --> 00:35:08,480
a symbol of pure global childhood innocence. I am talking

708
00:35:08,480 --> 00:35:10,480
about the Hello Kitty doll case from Hong Kong in

709
00:35:10,559 --> 00:35:11,440
nineteen ninety nine.

710
00:35:11,679 --> 00:35:15,519
Speaker 2: This is a case of extreme, prolonged cruelty that shocked

711
00:35:15,519 --> 00:35:16,599
the entire world.

712
00:35:16,800 --> 00:35:18,400
Speaker 1: It's really hard to even hear about.

713
00:35:18,519 --> 00:35:21,559
Speaker 2: A twenty three year old nightclub hostess named Fan man

714
00:35:21,719 --> 00:35:25,559
U was abducted by three Triad members over a relatively

715
00:35:25,639 --> 00:35:28,800
minor financial dispute. She was held captive in a busy

716
00:35:28,840 --> 00:35:33,280
apartment complex and subjected to weeks of unimaginable escalating torture,

717
00:35:33,360 --> 00:35:35,039
which eventually resulted in her death.

718
00:35:35,079 --> 00:35:38,719
Speaker 1: It is brutal. It's a story of horrific dehumanization. But

719
00:35:38,800 --> 00:35:41,760
what places this specific case into our discussion today is

720
00:35:41,800 --> 00:35:44,840
the psychology of how they chose to dispose of her remains.

721
00:35:44,920 --> 00:35:46,239
Speaker 2: Right the disposal method.

722
00:35:46,400 --> 00:35:49,519
Speaker 1: After she died, her captors dismembered her body. They then

723
00:35:49,559 --> 00:35:53,639
took a large Hello Kitty Mermaid doll, a massive plush

724
00:35:53,719 --> 00:35:58,400
toy that is globally recognized as an icon of extreme cuteness, softness,

725
00:35:58,480 --> 00:36:01,880
and childhood sweetness, and they severed the stuffed head, remove

726
00:36:01,920 --> 00:36:03,920
the stuffing, and placed her skull inside it.

727
00:36:03,920 --> 00:36:04,880
Speaker 2: It's so morbid.

728
00:36:05,039 --> 00:36:07,480
Speaker 1: They literally sowed the plush doll back up with her

729
00:36:07,480 --> 00:36:09,840
remains hidden inside, and left it in the apartment.

730
00:36:10,119 --> 00:36:13,840
Speaker 2: The drawing juxtaposition here is what investigators focus on. The

731
00:36:13,840 --> 00:36:16,639
perpetrators didn't just want to hide the evidence. They could

732
00:36:16,639 --> 00:36:19,440
have disposed of the remains in any number of covert ways.

733
00:36:19,599 --> 00:36:20,480
Speaker 1: They had other options.

734
00:36:20,559 --> 00:36:24,800
Speaker 2: They deliberately chose a vessel that represented the absolute antithesis

735
00:36:25,039 --> 00:36:26,199
of their brutal actions.

736
00:36:26,280 --> 00:36:26,800
Speaker 1: Why do that?

737
00:36:26,840 --> 00:36:31,159
Speaker 2: Though Hello Kitty is soft, harmless, and innocent, by utilizing

738
00:36:31,199 --> 00:36:35,039
it as a grotesque disposal method, they demonstrated a complete

739
00:36:35,159 --> 00:36:38,679
and utter contempt for the victim's humanity, even in death.

740
00:36:39,280 --> 00:36:41,719
It was a mocking gesture, so it was an insult.

741
00:36:41,920 --> 00:36:44,760
It takes an object explicitly designed to bring comfort and

742
00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:47,920
joy to a child and permanently taints it, turning it

743
00:36:47,960 --> 00:36:51,599
into a literal container for torture and death. It highlights

744
00:36:51,599 --> 00:36:54,599
a depth of depravity where the killers are actively mocking

745
00:36:54,639 --> 00:36:56,320
the concept of innocence itself.

746
00:36:56,599 --> 00:36:59,639
Speaker 1: It's the ultimate profanity. They took something soft and filled

747
00:36:59,639 --> 00:37:02,920
it with hold horror, and keeping with this terrible theme

748
00:37:02,960 --> 00:37:06,079
of childhood toys being corrupted by violence, we have to

749
00:37:06,119 --> 00:37:08,920
talk about the nineteen ninety one murder of Lucille Johnson

750
00:37:08,960 --> 00:37:11,519
in Utah and the chilling presence of the legos.

751
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:14,320
Speaker 2: Lucille Johnson was a seventy eight year old woman, a

752
00:37:14,360 --> 00:37:18,039
grandmother who was brutally beaten and strangled to death in

753
00:37:18,079 --> 00:37:19,360
the living room of her own home.

754
00:37:19,599 --> 00:37:20,239
Speaker 1: Just awful.

755
00:37:20,480 --> 00:37:23,920
Speaker 2: But what stood out immediately to the crime scene investigators

756
00:37:24,360 --> 00:37:27,760
was a detail that felt completely incongruous with the violent

757
00:37:27,800 --> 00:37:30,960
struggle that had taken place. Scattered all over the floor

758
00:37:31,000 --> 00:37:34,639
around her body, mere inches from the violence, were brightly

759
00:37:34,719 --> 00:37:36,599
colored plastic lego bricks.

760
00:37:36,760 --> 00:37:40,920
Speaker 1: For twenty three years, this case was completely cold. Detectives

761
00:37:40,920 --> 00:37:43,440
had no idea who killed her, and they had absolutely

762
00:37:43,480 --> 00:37:46,320
no idea why a pile of children's toys was left

763
00:37:46,320 --> 00:37:48,320
at the scene of an elderly woman's murder.

764
00:37:48,360 --> 00:37:49,719
Speaker 2: It was a bizarre mystery.

765
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:53,480
Speaker 1: It wasn't until DNA and advanced fingerprint technology caught up

766
00:37:53,519 --> 00:37:57,079
in twenty fourteen that they finally cracked it. They identified

767
00:37:57,079 --> 00:38:00,400
the killer as a man named John Sansing, but the

768
00:38:00,440 --> 00:38:03,400
bombshell was that the tiny fingerprints found on the legos

769
00:38:03,639 --> 00:38:04,599
didn't belong to him.

770
00:38:04,840 --> 00:38:07,960
Speaker 2: The forensic analysis concluded that the fingerprints on the toys

771
00:38:08,000 --> 00:38:11,679
belonged to Sansung's son, his son. Further investigation revealed the

772
00:38:11,679 --> 00:38:15,679
horrifying truth. Sansing had brought his young toddler aged son

773
00:38:15,760 --> 00:38:18,800
with him to Lucille Johnson's house on the day of

774
00:38:18,840 --> 00:38:19,400
the murder.

775
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:22,599
Speaker 1: Let's really sit with the gravity of that. While this

776
00:38:22,679 --> 00:38:26,400
man is committing a heinous, brutal, physically exhausting murder of

777
00:38:26,400 --> 00:38:29,920
an elderly woman, he had given his own toddler a

778
00:38:29,960 --> 00:38:32,079
pile of legos to play on the floor of the

779
00:38:32,159 --> 00:38:33,119
exact same room.

780
00:38:33,320 --> 00:38:35,119
Speaker 2: It's almost impossible to picture.

781
00:38:35,039 --> 00:38:38,639
Speaker 1: The cognitive dissonance required to process that visual is pure torment.

782
00:38:39,519 --> 00:38:43,280
Imagine a young child innocently snapping together red and blue

783
00:38:43,360 --> 00:38:47,840
plastic blocks, entirely unaware of or tragically ignoring, the extreme

784
00:38:47,920 --> 00:38:51,119
violence happening mere feet away. Yeah, it is the literal

785
00:38:51,199 --> 00:38:54,840
visual representation of innocence colliding with pure evil in the

786
00:38:54,880 --> 00:38:59,079
exact same physical space. The legos themselves are completely neutral,

787
00:38:59,119 --> 00:39:02,400
innocent objects, but they serve as a permanent physical marker

788
00:39:02,440 --> 00:39:05,960
of the most severe parental failure and moral bankruptcy imaginable.

789
00:39:06,239 --> 00:39:09,360
Speaker 2: It forces us to consider the silent collateral damage of

790
00:39:09,440 --> 00:39:13,559
violent crime. That child unknowingly present at a murder, leaving

791
00:39:13,559 --> 00:39:16,880
his tiny fingerprints on toys at a bloody crime scene.

792
00:39:16,960 --> 00:39:18,360
Speaker 1: It's devastating to that kid.

793
00:39:18,519 --> 00:39:21,280
Speaker 2: It corrupts the sanctity of childhood play in the most

794
00:39:21,360 --> 00:39:26,280
unimaginable way. It shows how the perpetrator compartmentalized his reality.

795
00:39:26,760 --> 00:39:29,559
He was acting as an active murderer and a passive

796
00:39:29,599 --> 00:39:31,079
babysitter simultaneously.

797
00:39:31,280 --> 00:39:33,760
Speaker 1: It really highlights how evil doesn't just happen in dark

798
00:39:33,800 --> 00:39:37,239
cinematic alleys. It happens in living rooms. It happens right

799
00:39:37,239 --> 00:39:38,079
next to play mats.

800
00:39:38,159 --> 00:39:40,920
Speaker 2: It brings the horror right into the domestic sphere, which

801
00:39:40,960 --> 00:39:41,440
brings us.

802
00:39:41,360 --> 00:39:43,519
Speaker 1: To our next segment. And I think this explores one

803
00:39:43,519 --> 00:39:49,039
of the most primal fears we have grotesque infrastructure. What

804
00:39:49,239 --> 00:39:52,679
happens when the domestic environments we rely on to survive

805
00:39:53,199 --> 00:39:58,039
our kitchens, our plumbing, our basements are utilized for unspeakable acts,

806
00:39:58,519 --> 00:40:01,320
When the architecture of the home itself becomes the horror.

807
00:40:01,719 --> 00:40:04,559
Speaker 2: The home, structurally speaking, is supposed to be our ultimate

808
00:40:04,599 --> 00:40:05,840
refuge from the dangers of.

809
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:07,559
Speaker 1: The outside world, our safe place.

810
00:40:07,719 --> 00:40:11,000
Speaker 2: When an offender utilizes the very infrastructure of domestic life

811
00:40:11,000 --> 00:40:14,559
to facilitate, commit or conceal their crimes, it violates one

812
00:40:14,559 --> 00:40:17,480
of the most fundamental societal contracts we have. It turns

813
00:40:17,480 --> 00:40:18,760
the shelter into a trap.

814
00:40:19,079 --> 00:40:23,079
Speaker 1: And Catherine Knight is a terrifying, almost mythic example of this.

815
00:40:23,760 --> 00:40:26,119
She was the first Australian woman to be sentenced to

816
00:40:26,119 --> 00:40:29,320
life without parole, and when you examine the crime scene,

817
00:40:29,480 --> 00:40:33,320
it is immediately viscerally obvious why the courts threw away

818
00:40:33,320 --> 00:40:33,679
the key.

819
00:40:34,199 --> 00:40:36,840
Speaker 2: In February of two thousand, police arrived at the home

820
00:40:36,840 --> 00:40:40,440
of her partner, John Price, after his coworkers grew concerned

821
00:40:40,440 --> 00:40:42,920
when he failed to show up for work. The scene

822
00:40:42,960 --> 00:40:46,280
the officers encountered upon entering the house was beyond anything

823
00:40:46,320 --> 00:40:48,000
their training could have prepared them for.

824
00:40:48,559 --> 00:40:49,960
Speaker 1: They walked into a slaughterhouse.

825
00:40:50,559 --> 00:40:53,639
Speaker 2: Knight had stabbed Price to death during a domestic dispute,

826
00:40:53,760 --> 00:40:56,679
but the murder was merely the prologue to her actions.

827
00:40:57,239 --> 00:41:01,320
She then meticulously flayed his body, skin him and hung

828
00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:03,239
the pelt from a door frame in the hallway.

829
00:41:03,360 --> 00:41:06,679
Speaker 1: The hallway is horrific, but the true horror, the discovery

830
00:41:06,679 --> 00:41:09,800
that elevates this from a brutal domestic homicide to a

831
00:41:09,880 --> 00:41:13,000
level of almost ancient mythic evil, was waiting for them

832
00:41:13,000 --> 00:41:13,559
in the kitchen.

833
00:41:13,559 --> 00:41:14,960
Speaker 2: The kitchen scene is infamous.

834
00:41:15,280 --> 00:41:18,639
Speaker 1: Police noticed a large pot boiling on the stove, and

835
00:41:18,679 --> 00:41:22,199
when seasoned veteran officers approached and peered inside, the boiling water.

836
00:41:22,519 --> 00:41:26,400
They saw John Price's decapitated head cooking alongside a medley

837
00:41:26,440 --> 00:41:27,159
of vegetables.

838
00:41:27,239 --> 00:41:28,639
Speaker 2: It's just beyond belief.

839
00:41:28,960 --> 00:41:31,960
Speaker 1: And nearby, set up neatly on the dining room table

840
00:41:32,280 --> 00:41:35,960
were plates of prepared food with handwritten place cards bearing

841
00:41:36,000 --> 00:41:39,280
the names of Price's adult children. She had cooked his

842
00:41:39,400 --> 00:41:42,159
flesh and was actively intending to serve him to his

843
00:41:42,199 --> 00:41:43,920
own children when they came home for dinner.

844
00:41:44,280 --> 00:41:46,960
Speaker 2: Let's unpack the psychology of the home here, please do.

845
00:41:47,239 --> 00:41:50,159
The kitchen is universally recognized as the heart of a home.

846
00:41:50,760 --> 00:41:53,960
It is a place of nourishment, of warmth, of family gathering,

847
00:41:54,000 --> 00:41:57,400
and of care. Catherine Knight didn't just murder her partner.

848
00:41:57,679 --> 00:42:02,480
She orchestrated a culinary nightmare. She weaponized the tools of domesticity,

849
00:42:02,519 --> 00:42:05,480
the stove, the cooking pots, the dinner plates, the place

850
00:42:05,559 --> 00:42:09,280
cards to commit and act a profound taboo breaking vengeance.

851
00:42:09,360 --> 00:42:11,639
Speaker 1: It's the ultimate perversion of a home cooked meal.

852
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:15,760
Speaker 2: It is the media complex fully realized in Greek mythology.

853
00:42:15,880 --> 00:42:18,840
Medea killed her own children to punish her betraying husband.

854
00:42:19,400 --> 00:42:21,760
Knight intended to feed a father to his children.

855
00:42:22,039 --> 00:42:23,639
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's a perfect comparison.

856
00:42:24,000 --> 00:42:28,000
Speaker 2: Transforming a family dinner table into a cannibalistic trap shatters

857
00:42:28,039 --> 00:42:31,159
any concept of a safe domestic life. It is the

858
00:42:31,280 --> 00:42:35,239
ultimate perversion of the nurturing female archetype. She took the

859
00:42:35,320 --> 00:42:38,079
role of the homemaker and inverted it into the role

860
00:42:38,119 --> 00:42:40,960
of the destroyer, using the infrastructure of the kitchen to

861
00:42:41,000 --> 00:42:42,079
execute her vengeance.

862
00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:45,800
Speaker 1: And while Knight's crime was an overt theatrical display right

863
00:42:45,840 --> 00:42:50,000
in the heart of the home, other offenders utilized the invisible,

864
00:42:50,159 --> 00:42:54,559
hidden infrastructure of a building to conceal their crimes. This

865
00:42:54,639 --> 00:42:58,119
brings us to the grim claustrophobic case of Dennis Nilssen

866
00:42:58,199 --> 00:43:00,519
in London in nineteen eighty three.

867
00:43:00,360 --> 00:43:04,079
Speaker 2: The blocked drains at twenty three Cranley Gardens. This case

868
00:43:04,119 --> 00:43:07,480
exposes our vulnerability to the shared infrastructure of urban living.

869
00:43:08,159 --> 00:43:11,119
The residents of this multi unit apartment building began complaining

870
00:43:11,119 --> 00:43:13,800
to their landlord about a foul smell and their plumbing

871
00:43:13,840 --> 00:43:14,360
backing up.

872
00:43:14,519 --> 00:43:16,920
Speaker 1: The landlord does what any landlord does. He calls a plumber.

873
00:43:17,400 --> 00:43:20,480
The plumber arrives, goes to the exterior drain cover, pops

874
00:43:20,480 --> 00:43:22,719
it open, and he's expecting to pull out a mass

875
00:43:22,760 --> 00:43:25,760
of tangled hair mobe. Some congealed soap or tree roots,

876
00:43:25,760 --> 00:43:26,800
standard plumbing issues.

877
00:43:27,079 --> 00:43:30,519
Speaker 2: Instead, he finds the drain clogged with small bones and

878
00:43:30,559 --> 00:43:31,719
a fleshy substance.

879
00:43:31,800 --> 00:43:32,480
Speaker 1: A nightmare.

880
00:43:32,559 --> 00:43:36,199
Speaker 2: When the authorities were called and a pathologist conclusively identified

881
00:43:36,199 --> 00:43:39,880
the material as human remains, it was a shockingly simple

882
00:43:39,920 --> 00:43:42,760
matter of tracing the plumbing pipes directly up to the

883
00:43:42,800 --> 00:43:45,760
top floor flat, which was occupied by Dennis Nilsen.

884
00:43:46,079 --> 00:43:49,480
Speaker 1: Milson, a former police officer and civil servant, had been

885
00:43:49,559 --> 00:43:52,599
luring young men back to his apartment, murdering them and

886
00:43:52,679 --> 00:43:55,400
dissecting them. But he didn't have a car to dispose

887
00:43:55,400 --> 00:43:58,000
of the bodies, so he u's the plumbing right, So

888
00:43:58,079 --> 00:44:01,039
he literally began flushing their remains down the toilet piece

889
00:44:01,079 --> 00:44:04,280
by piece for months, until the sheer volume of human

890
00:44:04,360 --> 00:44:07,920
material caused the municipal pipes of the Victorian house to

891
00:44:08,000 --> 00:44:09,159
clog under the pressure.

892
00:44:09,280 --> 00:44:10,400
Speaker 2: It's incredibly grim.

893
00:44:10,599 --> 00:44:11,960
Speaker 1: I look at this case and it makes me look

894
00:44:12,000 --> 00:44:16,239
at my own apartment building differently. We are surrounded by pipes, vents,

895
00:44:16,239 --> 00:44:19,039
and wires that connect us to our neighbors. We never

896
00:44:19,079 --> 00:44:21,719
think about the invisible infrastructure in our walls or the

897
00:44:21,800 --> 00:44:24,679
drains under our streets. Until they'd stop working.

898
00:44:24,719 --> 00:44:27,719
Speaker 2: That is the core terror of the Nilsen case. He

899
00:44:27,840 --> 00:44:31,039
utilized the functional anonymity of the city's sewer system to

900
00:44:31,119 --> 00:44:34,880
erase his victims. He relied on the mundane mechanics of

901
00:44:35,039 --> 00:44:37,480
urban infrastructure to swallow his crimes.

902
00:44:37,840 --> 00:44:39,199
Speaker 1: It's disgusting to think about.

903
00:44:39,360 --> 00:44:43,159
Speaker 2: It is a disgustingly stark reminder that the terrifying secrets

904
00:44:43,199 --> 00:44:45,800
of a serial killer can be flowing right through the

905
00:44:45,840 --> 00:44:47,800
pipes in the walls of your own home.

906
00:44:48,280 --> 00:44:51,599
Speaker 1: And when we talk about utilizing infrastructure for disposal and processing,

907
00:44:52,320 --> 00:44:54,880
you absolutely have to examine Jeffrey Dahmer.

908
00:44:55,079 --> 00:44:58,760
Speaker 2: When Milwaukee police finally broke into Dahmer's apartment in July

909
00:44:58,920 --> 00:45:02,239
of nineteen ninety one, they found a litany of horrors,

910
00:45:02,360 --> 00:45:04,880
heads in the refrigerator, skulls in the closet.

911
00:45:04,719 --> 00:45:06,280
Speaker 1: House of horrors, But one of.

912
00:45:06,280 --> 00:45:10,000
Speaker 2: The most imposing terrifying items from a logistical standpoint was

913
00:45:10,039 --> 00:45:14,320
a massive fifty seven gallon blue plastic drum sitting openly

914
00:45:14,360 --> 00:45:15,559
in the corner of his bedroom.

915
00:45:15,639 --> 00:45:18,920
Speaker 1: A fifty seven gallon vat filled with a highly corrosive,

916
00:45:19,039 --> 00:45:22,599
powerful acid solution, which he was actively using to dissolve

917
00:45:22,599 --> 00:45:25,079
the torsos and remains of three victims.

918
00:45:24,760 --> 00:45:26,000
Speaker 2: Just sitting there in his bedroom.

919
00:45:26,239 --> 00:45:27,920
Speaker 1: I want to focus on a quote from the medical

920
00:45:27,920 --> 00:45:31,480
examiner on the case. They famously said that processing Dahmer's

921
00:45:31,519 --> 00:45:34,960
apartment felt less like working a standard crime scene and

922
00:45:35,039 --> 00:45:39,920
more like quote, dismantling someone's museum. And I would take

923
00:45:39,960 --> 00:45:43,199
that a step further. It was like dismantling a processing plant.

924
00:45:43,360 --> 00:45:46,760
Speaker 2: That is an incredibly accurate assessment. The blue acid vat

925
00:45:46,840 --> 00:45:52,880
represents a premeditated, logistical, almost corporate approach to murder. Dahmer

926
00:45:53,000 --> 00:45:55,760
wasn't just acting on impulse. He had set up an

927
00:45:55,840 --> 00:46:00,000
industrial scale disposal facility within the confines of a standard

928
00:45:59,800 --> 00:46:01,599
unit apartment complex.

929
00:46:01,800 --> 00:46:05,400
Speaker 1: Consider the logistics required. He had to source a specialized

930
00:46:05,480 --> 00:46:07,719
fifty seven gallon chemical drum.

931
00:46:07,480 --> 00:46:08,360
Speaker 2: Which isn't easy.

932
00:46:08,519 --> 00:46:10,880
Speaker 1: He had to purchase gallons of investrial strength acid from

933
00:46:10,920 --> 00:46:14,639
chemical supply companies transported in his car, carry it up

934
00:46:14,639 --> 00:46:17,480
the stairs, and figure out the ventilation to avoid suffocating

935
00:46:17,559 --> 00:46:20,360
himself from the fumes, all while living side by side

936
00:46:20,360 --> 00:46:23,679
with unsuspecting neighbors who are complaining about the smell. It

937
00:46:23,800 --> 00:46:27,000
is a dark mirror of corporate supply chain logistics applied

938
00:46:27,039 --> 00:46:27,960
to human destruction.

939
00:46:28,360 --> 00:46:31,760
Speaker 2: It's the banality of evil mixed with hardware store procurement,

940
00:46:32,000 --> 00:46:35,559
which leads me directly to Dean Corel, the candy man,

941
00:46:36,000 --> 00:46:37,960
And I really want to push back on a narrative

942
00:46:37,960 --> 00:46:40,800
we often hear in True Prime, this idea of crimes

943
00:46:40,800 --> 00:46:43,199
of passion or killers who just snap.

944
00:46:43,480 --> 00:46:45,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, the excuse gets thrown around a lot.

945
00:46:45,559 --> 00:46:49,519
Speaker 2: Corel, along with two teenage accomplices, murdered at least twenty

946
00:46:49,519 --> 00:46:52,239
eight young men in Texas in the early nineteen seventies.

947
00:46:52,760 --> 00:46:55,800
When police searched his properties, they found this clywood board,

948
00:46:56,159 --> 00:46:59,199
a custom built torture board with metal handcuffs and ropes

949
00:46:59,239 --> 00:47:03,679
permanently attack hatched, designed specifically to restrain his victims by

950
00:47:03,760 --> 00:47:04,760
all four limbs.

951
00:47:05,000 --> 00:47:07,039
Speaker 1: Here is my question, and I want you to break

952
00:47:07,039 --> 00:47:10,000
this down for me. When we see an offender literally

953
00:47:10,079 --> 00:47:13,719
building a structure, going to the lumberyard, measuring the plywood,

954
00:47:13,920 --> 00:47:17,400
buying the heavy duty hardware, pre drilling the holes, screwing

955
00:47:17,400 --> 00:47:20,320
in the handcuffs, what does that tell us about their

956
00:47:20,320 --> 00:47:24,599
psychological methodology? Because that's not snapping. They are literally constructing

957
00:47:24,679 --> 00:47:25,960
architecture for their crimes.

958
00:47:26,079 --> 00:47:27,840
Speaker 2: It tells us everything we need to know about the

959
00:47:27,840 --> 00:47:31,719
difference between a disorganized, reactive offender and a highly organized,

960
00:47:31,760 --> 00:47:36,199
sadistic predator. You are exactly right. A crime of passion

961
00:47:36,400 --> 00:47:39,400
is an explosion of emotion in a specific moment. It

962
00:47:39,480 --> 00:47:44,239
is chaotic, right. Constructing a torture board is proactive, patient,

963
00:47:44,320 --> 00:47:47,639
and methodical. It requires a trip to the hardware store.

964
00:47:48,000 --> 00:47:50,119
It requires measuring tapes and levels.

965
00:47:50,280 --> 00:47:51,599
Speaker 1: Ye had to sit there and build it.

966
00:47:51,599 --> 00:47:54,079
Speaker 2: It requires a person to sit quietly in their garage

967
00:47:54,119 --> 00:47:57,840
with their own thoughts, visualizing exactly how they are going

968
00:47:57,920 --> 00:48:02,440
to inflict maximum pain, and then meticulously building the physical

969
00:48:02,480 --> 00:48:05,960
apparatus to make that dark fantasy a reality.

970
00:48:06,440 --> 00:48:09,239
Speaker 1: It is a terrifyingly premeditated project.

971
00:48:09,480 --> 00:48:12,559
Speaker 2: In profiling, we look at this as the ultimate expression

972
00:48:12,599 --> 00:48:16,360
of the killer's signature. When an offender engages in carpentry

973
00:48:16,360 --> 00:48:19,920
to facilitate murder, they are demonstrating a complete and total

974
00:48:19,960 --> 00:48:21,440
commitment to their sadism.

975
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:22,920
Speaker 1: So the board is proof.

976
00:48:23,239 --> 00:48:26,079
Speaker 2: The board is irrefutable proof that the torture wasn't an

977
00:48:26,159 --> 00:48:29,719
accidental byproduct of a robbery gone wrong. The prolonged culture

978
00:48:29,880 --> 00:48:32,800
was the entire purpose of the crime. They are acting

979
00:48:32,800 --> 00:48:35,079
as the engineers of their own dark fantasies.

980
00:48:35,320 --> 00:48:37,719
Speaker 1: Is chilling to think of someone whistling while they sand

981
00:48:37,760 --> 00:48:39,360
down the edges of a torture device.

982
00:48:39,599 --> 00:48:40,400
Speaker 2: It really is.

983
00:48:40,679 --> 00:48:43,639
Speaker 1: But you know, for some perpetrators keeping their crimes a secret,

984
00:48:43,960 --> 00:48:46,800
locking it away in their own infrastructure, dissolving it in

985
00:48:46,800 --> 00:48:49,199
a vat, or bearing it in a crawl space, it

986
00:48:49,400 --> 00:48:53,599
just isn't enough. The ego demands more. They desperately want

987
00:48:53,639 --> 00:48:55,920
to communicate, They want to taunt, They want to leave

988
00:48:55,920 --> 00:48:59,519
a permanent, visible mark on the world, which leads us.

989
00:48:59,440 --> 00:49:04,239
Speaker 2: To our final segment, Cipher's taunts and Manifesto's the killer's voice.

990
00:49:04,599 --> 00:49:07,000
When the physical evidence of a crime scene is accompanied

991
00:49:07,000 --> 00:49:10,679
by the written word, it provides a direct, albeit highly manipulated,

992
00:49:10,719 --> 00:49:13,559
and unreliable window into the offender's mind.

993
00:49:14,039 --> 00:49:16,280
Speaker 1: Let's start with what is arguably the most famous and

994
00:49:16,320 --> 00:49:19,599
most endlessly debated note in modern criminal history, the John

995
00:49:19,639 --> 00:49:21,280
Beney Ramsey ransom note.

996
00:49:21,480 --> 00:49:24,320
Speaker 2: The murder of six year old John Benet in Boulder, Colorado,

997
00:49:24,440 --> 00:49:27,239
in nineteen ninety six remains a source of massive public

998
00:49:27,280 --> 00:49:30,519
interest and intense forensic debate, and a large part of

999
00:49:30,559 --> 00:49:33,280
that debate centers on the bizarre nature of the primary

1000
00:49:33,320 --> 00:49:35,840
piece of evidence, the two and a half paid handwritten

1001
00:49:35,880 --> 00:49:38,199
a ransom note found by her mother Patsy Ramsey on

1002
00:49:38,239 --> 00:49:38,920
the staircase.

1003
00:49:39,280 --> 00:49:43,639
Speaker 1: The note is a masterclass in behavioral anomalies. First, the

1004
00:49:43,719 --> 00:49:47,639
demands are oddly specific, exactly one hundred eighteen thousand dollars,

1005
00:49:48,239 --> 00:49:51,880
which happened to mirror the father's exact holiday bonus. It

1006
00:49:51,960 --> 00:49:54,480
is signed by a fictitious small foreign faction.

1007
00:49:54,599 --> 00:49:55,639
Speaker 2: It's very theatrical.

1008
00:49:55,760 --> 00:49:57,920
Speaker 1: But the detail that has always made my stomach turn

1009
00:49:58,320 --> 00:50:01,199
is the physical reality of the note it's creation. The

1010
00:50:01,239 --> 00:50:03,159
note was written on a pad of paper taken from

1011
00:50:03,199 --> 00:50:06,199
a desk inside the home, using a sharpie pen from

1012
00:50:06,239 --> 00:50:08,519
that same desk. Okay, I want to place the listener

1013
00:50:08,519 --> 00:50:11,920
in this scenario. Imagine being an intruder. You break into

1014
00:50:12,000 --> 00:50:15,840
a large house, You commit a horrific, loud, messy crime

1015
00:50:15,880 --> 00:50:18,480
in the basement, and then you just hang around. You stay,

1016
00:50:18,800 --> 00:50:20,679
You sit down at a desk in the quiet house,

1017
00:50:21,000 --> 00:50:22,880
knowing the parents are sleeping right up stairs, and you

1018
00:50:22,960 --> 00:50:26,679
take the time to write out a rambling, dramatic, moviesque manifesto.

1019
00:50:27,119 --> 00:50:28,360
You even write a practice draft.

1020
00:50:28,360 --> 00:50:32,320
Speaker 2: First, the psychology of the lingering intruder is deeply problematic

1021
00:50:32,320 --> 00:50:37,920
for investigators. It contradicts standard criminal behavior. Most burglars or

1022
00:50:37,960 --> 00:50:40,960
intruders are driven by a desperate need to minimize their

1023
00:50:40,960 --> 00:50:44,639
time on the scene to avoid detection. Every second spent

1024
00:50:44,679 --> 00:50:47,159
in the house exponentially increases the risk of.

1025
00:50:47,119 --> 00:50:49,920
Speaker 1: Capture, so writing a draft makes no sense.

1026
00:50:50,119 --> 00:50:52,519
Speaker 2: To sit and write a draft and then carefully write

1027
00:50:52,559 --> 00:50:55,480
out a final two and a half page letter suggests

1028
00:50:55,480 --> 00:50:58,679
as an incredibly bizarre level of comfort or compulsion that

1029
00:50:58,760 --> 00:51:00,800
overrides the basics revival.

1030
00:51:00,519 --> 00:51:02,559
Speaker 1: Instinct or suggests something else entirely.

1031
00:51:02,880 --> 00:51:05,880
Speaker 2: Of course, as many FBI analysts and law enforcement officials

1032
00:51:05,880 --> 00:51:09,880
have heavily theorized over the decades, this massive anomaly strongly

1033
00:51:09,920 --> 00:51:12,960
points to the possibility that the note was entirely staged,

1034
00:51:13,320 --> 00:51:16,360
staged by someone already living in the home, completely comfortable

1035
00:51:16,360 --> 00:51:18,960
in the environment, utilizing the note to cover up an

1036
00:51:19,000 --> 00:51:21,079
accidental death or an internal crime.

1037
00:51:21,480 --> 00:51:24,519
Speaker 1: Regardless of who held the pen, the stationary itself is

1038
00:51:24,559 --> 00:51:27,119
the focal point of the mystery. It is a physical

1039
00:51:27,159 --> 00:51:30,599
object intended to dictate a false narrative to the police.

1040
00:51:30,559 --> 00:51:33,719
Speaker 2: A physical object intended to dictate a false narrative.

1041
00:51:33,960 --> 00:51:36,760
Speaker 1: And speaking of dictating narratives, we have David Berkowitz, the

1042
00:51:36,800 --> 00:51:39,320
son of Sam who paralyzed New York City in the

1043
00:51:39,320 --> 00:51:41,079
summer of nineteen seventy seven.

1044
00:51:40,960 --> 00:51:44,199
Speaker 2: Berkovitz targeted young couples in parked cars, shooting them with

1045
00:51:44,239 --> 00:51:47,679
a forty four callible revolver. The random nature of the

1046
00:51:47,719 --> 00:51:51,960
attacks caused widespread systemic panic across the Burroughs, but the

1047
00:51:52,039 --> 00:51:55,840
dynamic of the manhunt shifted drastically when authorities found a

1048
00:51:55,880 --> 00:51:59,440
handwritten letter left at a crime scene addressed directly to

1049
00:51:59,599 --> 00:52:01,800
NYPS Captain Joseph Birelli.

1050
00:52:02,079 --> 00:52:05,480
Speaker 1: It is a terrifying piece of correspondence. He identifies himself

1051
00:52:05,519 --> 00:52:07,840
as the son of Sam, He mocks the police for

1052
00:52:07,880 --> 00:52:10,599
their inability to catch him, and he writes at length

1053
00:52:10,599 --> 00:52:13,400
about his father Sam, wanting blood, demanding blessed.

1054
00:52:13,440 --> 00:52:14,599
Speaker 2: It's a very famous letter.

1055
00:52:15,119 --> 00:52:17,559
Speaker 1: But when you actually read the letter, what strikes me

1056
00:52:17,639 --> 00:52:21,480
isn't the sense of criminal mastermind brilliance. It's how unpolished

1057
00:52:21,519 --> 00:52:25,599
and chaotic it is. It's full of block lettering, strange misspellings,

1058
00:52:25,920 --> 00:52:29,880
grammatical errors, and incoherent rambling thoughts that jump from topic

1059
00:52:29,920 --> 00:52:32,559
to topic. It's not the work of a supervillain. It

1060
00:52:32,639 --> 00:52:36,360
is a raw glimpse into a deeply troubled, fragmented mind.

1061
00:52:36,559 --> 00:52:40,639
Speaker 2: The Brelli letter demystified him in a way, while simultaneously

1062
00:52:40,679 --> 00:52:43,639
making him scarier to the public. It showed he was

1063
00:52:43,719 --> 00:52:48,960
not a calculated assassin, but a chaotic, unpredictable individual driven

1064
00:52:49,000 --> 00:52:52,239
by profound, unyielding delusions.

1065
00:52:51,880 --> 00:52:53,320
Speaker 1: And he wanted everyone to know it.

1066
00:52:53,400 --> 00:52:56,159
Speaker 2: The handwritten taunt is an exercise and power. He couldn't

1067
00:52:56,159 --> 00:52:58,599
control his own mind, but by writing that letter and

1068
00:52:58,679 --> 00:53:01,280
ensuring it made the front page of the newspapers, he

1069
00:53:01,440 --> 00:53:04,599
was forcing the entire city of New York to interact

1070
00:53:04,639 --> 00:53:05,599
with his psychosis.

1071
00:53:05,960 --> 00:53:07,400
Speaker 1: And then we have a case that I want to

1072
00:53:07,440 --> 00:53:11,800
debate with you. The Lipstick Killer William Aarons, operating in

1073
00:53:11,880 --> 00:53:15,800
Chicago in the nineteen forties. He murdered three people, but

1074
00:53:16,400 --> 00:53:19,079
he is most famous for the message he left scrolled

1075
00:53:19,079 --> 00:53:21,719
on the living room wall of one of his victim's apartments,

1076
00:53:22,039 --> 00:53:23,280
written in her own lipstick.

1077
00:53:23,639 --> 00:53:25,039
Speaker 2: Yes the lipstick message.

1078
00:53:25,079 --> 00:53:27,480
Speaker 1: It read, for Heaven's sake, catch me before I kill more.

1079
00:53:27,519 --> 00:53:30,920
I cannot control myself, So I have to ask, when

1080
00:53:30,920 --> 00:53:33,159
you analyze a message like that, how do you interpret it?

1081
00:53:33,639 --> 00:53:36,199
On one hand, people say it's theatrical, but I have

1082
00:53:36,280 --> 00:53:38,280
a really hard time buying that it's purely theater.

1083
00:53:38,400 --> 00:53:40,159
Speaker 2: You think it's genuine if you are.

1084
00:53:40,079 --> 00:53:43,159
Speaker 1: A narcissist trying to build a brand. You write I

1085
00:53:43,199 --> 00:53:46,440
am a god. You don't write I cannot control myself.

1086
00:53:46,880 --> 00:53:50,360
That sounds like genuine terror at your own compulsions. Why

1087
00:53:50,440 --> 00:53:53,199
are we so quick to dismiss the possibility that a

1088
00:53:53,239 --> 00:53:56,519
monster can be terrified of their own reflection? Is it

1089
00:53:56,559 --> 00:53:59,559
a genuine plea for help from a fractured mind or

1090
00:53:59,639 --> 00:54:01,679
is it just manipulative mockery?

1091
00:54:02,000 --> 00:54:06,559
Speaker 2: That is one of the eternal unresolved debates in behavioral analysis.

1092
00:54:06,639 --> 00:54:09,320
You make a very strong point about the vulnerability of

1093
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:09,840
the wording.

1094
00:54:10,000 --> 00:54:12,039
Speaker 1: It just feels too pathetic to be bragging.

1095
00:54:12,199 --> 00:54:16,000
Speaker 2: On one hand, serial offenders often experience an escalating compulsion

1096
00:54:16,039 --> 00:54:18,800
that feels entirely out of their conscious control, a sort

1097
00:54:18,800 --> 00:54:22,599
of psychological pressure cooker. The message could indeed be a

1098
00:54:22,679 --> 00:54:25,880
rare moment of lucidity, a fleeting instant where the conscious

1099
00:54:25,920 --> 00:54:30,440
mind begs society to stop the subconscious monster. However, many

1100
00:54:30,480 --> 00:54:35,440
profilers argue the opposite. Psychopaths are incredibly adept at theatricality

1101
00:54:35,480 --> 00:54:39,400
and manipulation. Writing a melodramatic plea in a victim's lipstick

1102
00:54:39,440 --> 00:54:42,360
is incredibly cinematic. It is tailored for the front page

1103
00:54:42,360 --> 00:54:43,480
of the Chicago Tribune.

1104
00:54:43,519 --> 00:54:44,920
Speaker 1: They know it'll make a good headline.

1105
00:54:44,960 --> 00:54:48,960
Speaker 2: It feeds the killer's ego by creating a compelling, tragically

1106
00:54:49,000 --> 00:54:52,400
conflicted persona for the public to obsess over. They want

1107
00:54:52,400 --> 00:54:55,159
to be seen as a complex jeckyal and Hide figure

1108
00:54:55,519 --> 00:54:58,440
rather than just a brutal thug. Given what we know

1109
00:54:58,519 --> 00:55:00,800
about the deep narcissistic trad it's required to take a

1110
00:55:00,880 --> 00:55:05,519
human life, many analysts lean heavily towards theatrical manipulation. The

1111
00:55:05,639 --> 00:55:08,679
killer wants to direct the audience's emotional response.

1112
00:55:08,960 --> 00:55:12,280
Speaker 1: It's morbid brand building. Yeah, and sadly, sometimes a killer's

1113
00:55:12,280 --> 00:55:15,400
communication isn't a taunt after the fact, but a clear

1114
00:55:15,480 --> 00:55:19,599
warning beforehand that is tragically misinterpreted. Let's look at the

1115
00:55:19,639 --> 00:55:21,760
Camp Scott murders in nineteen seventy seven.

1116
00:55:22,039 --> 00:55:26,159
Speaker 2: This is a profoundly tragic case where context completely masked

1117
00:55:26,199 --> 00:55:29,039
a lethal threat. Three young girl scouts were murdered in

1118
00:55:29,079 --> 00:55:32,159
their tent at Camp Scott in Oklahoma. But what haunts

1119
00:55:32,199 --> 00:55:34,719
everyone involved is what happened less than two months prior

1120
00:55:34,719 --> 00:55:37,320
to the killings. A camp counselor returned to her tent,

1121
00:55:37,480 --> 00:55:41,199
found her personal belongings ransacked, and discovered a handwritten note

1122
00:55:41,199 --> 00:55:42,440
inside a donut box, and.

1123
00:55:42,440 --> 00:55:45,000
Speaker 1: The note wasn't vague. It literally read we are on

1124
00:55:45,039 --> 00:55:47,320
a mission to kill three girls in tent one.

1125
00:55:47,599 --> 00:55:50,079
Speaker 2: The counselor took it to the camp director, but it

1126
00:55:50,119 --> 00:55:54,320
was universally dismissed as a cruel, tasteless prank. No sweeping

1127
00:55:54,320 --> 00:55:57,199
security actions were taken, and the camp opened as scheduled.

1128
00:55:57,360 --> 00:55:58,599
Speaker 1: That is just heart wrenching.

1129
00:55:58,960 --> 00:56:02,840
Speaker 2: The tragedy of Heinz site is agonizing here. The note

1130
00:56:02,920 --> 00:56:06,000
was a literal blueprint of the crime i' MacB promise,

1131
00:56:06,639 --> 00:56:09,239
but because it was delivered in the specific environment of

1132
00:56:09,239 --> 00:56:12,760
a summer camp, a place inherently associated with childhood pranks,

1133
00:56:12,880 --> 00:56:16,719
dramatic ghost stories, and harmless mischief, it wasn't given the

1134
00:56:16,719 --> 00:56:20,920
way it deserved. The innocent context blinded the adults to

1135
00:56:20,960 --> 00:56:22,079
the very real threat.

1136
00:56:22,480 --> 00:56:25,840
Speaker 1: Killers absolutely know how to use symbols in context. Let's

1137
00:56:25,920 --> 00:56:28,320
run through some of the macob calling cards and signatures

1138
00:56:28,440 --> 00:56:31,920
offenders leave behind to assert their dominance. Take the Bellway

1139
00:56:31,960 --> 00:56:35,719
snipers John al Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, who completely

1140
00:56:35,760 --> 00:56:38,880
paralyzed the Washington DC area for three weeks in two

1141
00:56:38,880 --> 00:56:41,760
thousand and two. They were shooting people at random from

1142
00:56:41,800 --> 00:56:43,800
the modified trunk of a Chevy Caprice.

1143
00:56:44,159 --> 00:56:47,119
Speaker 2: The extreme distance and the use of a vehicle provided

1144
00:56:47,119 --> 00:56:50,800
them with near total anonymity, but their egos still craved

1145
00:56:50,880 --> 00:56:54,320
recognition and interaction with the authorities. At one of the scenes,

1146
00:56:54,400 --> 00:56:56,679
tuck near the woods, they left a death tarot card

1147
00:56:57,079 --> 00:56:59,400
and on it they wrote a message for the police.

1148
00:56:59,760 --> 00:57:03,159
Speaker 1: Call me God, Call me God. It's the ultimate expression

1149
00:57:03,159 --> 00:57:05,840
of the megalomania we were just discussing. They held the

1150
00:57:05,840 --> 00:57:08,039
power of life and death from the trunk of a car,

1151
00:57:08,079 --> 00:57:11,559
completely unseen, and they used a mystical symbol of fate,

1152
00:57:11,800 --> 00:57:15,360
the tarot card, to assert their perceived divinity over the

1153
00:57:15,400 --> 00:57:18,320
public and law enforcement. It's all about power, and we

1154
00:57:18,360 --> 00:57:22,280
see another intensely symbolic signature with Richard Ramirez, the Nightstalker.

1155
00:57:22,719 --> 00:57:26,119
He terrorized California in the mid eighties, breaking into homes,

1156
00:57:26,519 --> 00:57:29,280
and he had an obsessive fascination with satanic imagery.

1157
00:57:29,559 --> 00:57:33,800
Speaker 2: Ramirez openly embraced satanic symbols, utilizing them largely for their

1158
00:57:33,840 --> 00:57:38,000
intense shock value and their ability to inflict maximum psychological

1159
00:57:38,039 --> 00:57:41,239
fear on his victims and the public. During one of

1160
00:57:41,239 --> 00:57:43,960
his early assaults, he stole a victim's lipstick and drew

1161
00:57:44,000 --> 00:57:47,679
two large pentagrams on her bedroom walls. Later, after murdering

1162
00:57:47,719 --> 00:57:50,239
a couple, he drew another pentagram on the wall and

1163
00:57:50,280 --> 00:57:51,519
wrote the phrase.

1164
00:57:51,400 --> 00:57:55,719
Speaker 1: Jack the knife, leaving a symbol of pure cultural malevolence

1165
00:57:56,079 --> 00:57:59,360
right at the scene. He wanted the victims and the

1166
00:57:59,360 --> 00:58:02,119
police who were later to believe they were dealing with

1167
00:58:02,159 --> 00:58:04,079
a literal demon, not just a man.

1168
00:58:04,480 --> 00:58:06,320
Speaker 2: He was playing a character.

1169
00:58:06,320 --> 00:58:09,320
Speaker 1: And sometimes the message isn't symbolic at all, it's brutally

1170
00:58:09,480 --> 00:58:13,000
painfully literal, like the case of Prince Hepburn in the Bahamas.

1171
00:58:13,360 --> 00:58:16,719
Speaker 2: Hepburn violently murdered his girlfriend. When police arrived at the

1172
00:58:16,719 --> 00:58:18,960
bloody scene, they didn't have to search for the murder weapon.

1173
00:58:19,000 --> 00:58:21,559
They found the bloody machete left plainly at the scene,

1174
00:58:22,000 --> 00:58:24,199
but Hepburn had used the broad blade of the weapon

1175
00:58:24,239 --> 00:58:26,719
as a billboard. On one side of the machete, he

1176
00:58:26,760 --> 00:58:29,519
had scrawled in marker, this is what cheaters get.

1177
00:58:29,679 --> 00:58:33,840
Speaker 1: It's so morbidly vindictive. He used the very instrument that

1178
00:58:34,000 --> 00:58:38,559
ended her life to retroactively justify the murder and leave

1179
00:58:38,599 --> 00:58:41,519
a crude warning for the man he suspected she was seeing.

1180
00:58:42,320 --> 00:58:44,559
It is the weapon serving double duty as a.

1181
00:58:44,519 --> 00:58:46,400
Speaker 2: Manifesto that's a very apt description.

1182
00:58:46,760 --> 00:58:49,760
Speaker 1: And taking that vindictive need to communicate into the modern

1183
00:58:49,760 --> 00:58:53,280
digital age, we have David Kallak, the so called four

1184
00:58:53,360 --> 00:58:55,920
Chan murderer. In twenty fourteen.

1185
00:58:55,719 --> 00:58:59,239
Speaker 2: Kailak murdered his ex girlfriend in their apartment, and rather

1186
00:58:59,320 --> 00:59:02,599
than fleeing or calling the authorities, he immediately took to

1187
00:59:02,639 --> 00:59:06,559
the Internet to broadcast his crime. He uploaded gruesome, undeniable

1188
00:59:06,599 --> 00:59:09,800
photos of her body to the anonymous four Chan message boards,

1189
00:59:10,119 --> 00:59:13,039
treating a real world murder as sensational content for an

1190
00:59:13,039 --> 00:59:14,320
anonymous online audience.

1191
00:59:14,360 --> 00:59:17,079
Speaker 1: He posted terrible things alongside the photos, like it's way

1192
00:59:17,079 --> 00:59:18,840
harder to strangle someone to death than the looks on

1193
00:59:18,880 --> 00:59:21,920
the movies. And inside the physical house, he wrote messages

1194
00:59:21,960 --> 00:59:24,000
on the window blinds and on her driver's license. He

1195
00:59:24,039 --> 00:59:26,360
just took a black marker and wrote the word dead.

1196
00:59:26,559 --> 00:59:29,400
Speaker 2: Writing dead on a driver's license is a profound, calculated

1197
00:59:29,440 --> 00:59:32,159
act of erasure. Think about what a license is. It

1198
00:59:32,239 --> 00:59:35,519
is state sanctioned proof of identity. It proves you exist

1199
00:59:35,519 --> 00:59:38,519
and have a place in society. By scrolling that word

1200
00:59:38,559 --> 00:59:42,000
across her photo, he wasn't just killing her physically. He

1201
00:59:42,079 --> 00:59:46,039
was administratively and symbolically attempting to cancel out her existence

1202
00:59:46,199 --> 00:59:48,800
entirely wow erasing her identity.

1203
00:59:48,360 --> 00:59:52,639
Speaker 1: Completely simultaneously by posting to four chan, he was desperately

1204
00:59:52,639 --> 00:59:56,320
boosting his own infamy. Seeking validation from the darkest corners

1205
00:59:56,360 --> 00:59:57,400
of the Internet.

1206
00:59:57,199 --> 01:00:00,000
Speaker 2: And seeking infamy and power isn't just an adult compulsion.

1207
01:00:00,480 --> 01:00:04,599
We see it manifest in children, specifically Mary Bell, Written's

1208
01:00:04,639 --> 01:00:07,639
youngest female serial killer. She was only an eleven year

1209
01:00:07,639 --> 01:00:09,960
old girl in the late nineteen sixties when she murdered

1210
01:00:10,000 --> 01:00:10,719
two young boys.

1211
01:00:11,119 --> 01:00:14,840
Speaker 1: Bill's psychology is incredibly complex, heavily rooted in severe childhood

1212
01:00:14,840 --> 01:00:17,280
trauma and maternal abuse, but what is striking for our

1213
01:00:17,320 --> 01:00:21,079
discussion is her behavior. Immediately following the murders. She and

1214
01:00:21,079 --> 01:00:24,239
a friend broke into a local nursery, vandalized the property,

1215
01:00:24,440 --> 01:00:26,800
and left haunting notes for the police. One of them

1216
01:00:26,800 --> 01:00:30,159
explicitly read, I murders that I may come back. It

1217
01:00:30,280 --> 01:00:33,039
is deeply chilling to hear those words coming from the

1218
01:00:33,039 --> 01:00:36,199
mind of an eleven year old. The general consensus among

1219
01:00:36,320 --> 01:00:40,039
psychologists is that she was intentionally teasing and provoking the

1220
01:00:40,079 --> 01:00:43,079
police because they hadn't caught her yet. She was a

1221
01:00:43,159 --> 01:00:46,239
child playing a lethal, real world game of hide and seek.

1222
01:00:46,639 --> 01:00:49,639
Using these notes as a way to feel intellectually superior

1223
01:00:49,719 --> 01:00:51,400
to the adults investigating the case.

1224
01:00:51,719 --> 01:00:55,159
Speaker 2: It is a grotesque mimicry of adult power dynamics played

1225
01:00:55,199 --> 01:00:58,599
out by a profoundly damaged child who had never experienced

1226
01:00:58,639 --> 01:01:00,320
healthy control in her own life.

1227
01:01:00,440 --> 01:01:03,079
Speaker 1: And finally, when we discuss writings left at crime scenes,

1228
01:01:03,440 --> 01:01:06,880
we must analytically acknowledge the Manson family murders in the

1229
01:01:06,880 --> 01:01:09,800
summer of nineteen sixty nine. Over the course of their

1230
01:01:09,800 --> 01:01:13,119
two night crime spree, the followers left multiple messages written

1231
01:01:13,119 --> 01:01:15,480
in the victim's own blood on the walls and doors.

1232
01:01:15,760 --> 01:01:19,079
Speaker 2: At the Hinman scene, they wrote political piggy. At the

1233
01:01:19,119 --> 01:01:21,679
Tait residence, the word pig was written on the front door,

1234
01:01:21,960 --> 01:01:24,840
and at the La Bianca home they wrote Rise Death

1235
01:01:24,880 --> 01:01:28,719
to Pigs and the famously misspelled helter skelter on the refrigerator.

1236
01:01:29,000 --> 01:01:31,719
Speaker 1: Looking at this purely from a behavioral analysis standpoint, these

1237
01:01:31,719 --> 01:01:36,199
writings are fascinating because they represent a completely fabricated motive.

1238
01:01:36,880 --> 01:01:39,960
The phrase political piggy and the other messages were orchestrated

1239
01:01:40,000 --> 01:01:43,440
by Charles Manson as part of a highly convoluted, delusional

1240
01:01:43,519 --> 01:01:47,920
strategy to incite a nationwide race war. He wanted the

1241
01:01:47,920 --> 01:01:51,280
police to find these culturally charged phrases and blame the

1242
01:01:51,360 --> 01:01:54,480
murders on the Black Panthers or other political groups. We

1243
01:01:54,519 --> 01:01:56,920
are just looking at this as a historical artifact of

1244
01:01:56,960 --> 01:02:01,800
forensic misdirection, without taking any sides on the political ideologies themselves,

1245
01:02:01,960 --> 01:02:05,519
but rather analyzing the attempt to use tense cultural language

1246
01:02:05,559 --> 01:02:06,840
to create chaos.

1247
01:02:07,119 --> 01:02:10,079
Speaker 2: That is exactly the mechanism at play. The bloody writings

1248
01:02:10,119 --> 01:02:12,960
were not spontaneous acts of passion by the killers at

1249
01:02:12,960 --> 01:02:16,639
the scene. They were highly calculated theatrical elements dictated prior

1250
01:02:16,719 --> 01:02:19,320
to the crimes by Manson. His goal was to sew

1251
01:02:19,360 --> 01:02:22,840
maximum societal panic and provide forensic misdirection. There were a

1252
01:02:22,880 --> 01:02:26,199
false flag operation written in blood, utilizing the tense political

1253
01:02:26,280 --> 01:02:29,320
language of the late nineteen sixties to serve a purely chaotic,

1254
01:02:29,400 --> 01:02:30,239
violent agenda.

1255
01:02:30,559 --> 01:02:33,400
Speaker 1: It was a false flag that thankfully failed to ignite

1256
01:02:33,400 --> 01:02:36,960
his apocalyptic vision, but it succeeded in leaving a permanent

1257
01:02:37,000 --> 01:02:40,519
scar on American history. Now, let's pivot to a different

1258
01:02:40,519 --> 01:02:44,519
type of communication, messages that weren't meant to misdirect blame,

1259
01:02:44,960 --> 01:02:49,480
but were meant to be inherently unsolvable. Cipher's the idea

1260
01:02:49,480 --> 01:02:52,199
of a killer communicating in a code. We all know

1261
01:02:52,239 --> 01:02:55,079
the Zodiac Killer's cryptograms, but there is a lesser known,

1262
01:02:55,199 --> 01:02:57,920
highly bizarre case, Ricky McCormick.

1263
01:02:58,159 --> 01:03:00,440
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety nine, the body of fourty one year

1264
01:03:00,480 --> 01:03:03,360
old Ricky McCormick was found dumped in a Missouri cornfield.

1265
01:03:03,519 --> 01:03:06,519
He had been murdered, but when investigator searched his clothing

1266
01:03:06,679 --> 01:03:09,360
inside his pockets, they found two pieces of paper filled

1267
01:03:09,360 --> 01:03:13,480
with seemingly random, highly structured strings of letters, numbers, and punctuation.

1268
01:03:13,880 --> 01:03:16,559
Speaker 1: It wasn't just gibberish. It had the clear cadence of

1269
01:03:16,599 --> 01:03:20,800
a cipher And here's what makes this case legendary. The

1270
01:03:20,840 --> 01:03:25,039
FBI's Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit has been staring at

1271
01:03:25,039 --> 01:03:28,079
these two pieces of paper for decades. These are the

1272
01:03:28,119 --> 01:03:30,800
best code breakers in the world, people who crack at

1273
01:03:30,880 --> 01:03:34,639
terrorist communications and cartel codes, and they still cannot decode

1274
01:03:34,679 --> 01:03:38,360
Ricky McCormick's notes. The FBI actually took the rare step

1275
01:03:38,599 --> 01:03:41,760
of releasing the notes to the public, crowdsourcing the problem,

1276
01:03:41,960 --> 01:03:43,639
begging armchair salutes for help.

1277
01:03:43,719 --> 01:03:45,639
Speaker 2: It's one of their greatest unsolved puzzles.

1278
01:03:45,679 --> 01:03:48,320
Speaker 1: This brings up something so fundamental about human nature. We

1279
01:03:48,400 --> 01:03:51,679
have this innate, burning desire to solve puzzles. We want order,

1280
01:03:51,719 --> 01:03:54,960
we want answers, we hate open loops. And the ultimate

1281
01:03:55,000 --> 01:03:57,400
tragedy here is that the key to potentially solving a

1282
01:03:57,400 --> 01:03:59,920
man's murder, perhaps the name of his killer or the

1283
01:04:00,119 --> 01:04:02,360
reason for his death, is sitting right in front of us,

1284
01:04:02,599 --> 01:04:05,360
locked behind an unbreakable code he carried in his own pocket.

1285
01:04:05,599 --> 01:04:09,440
Speaker 2: It's maddening, it is incredibly frustrating for law enforcement. A

1286
01:04:09,519 --> 01:04:13,480
cipher is a psychological barrier. It holds the tantalizing promise

1287
01:04:13,480 --> 01:04:17,280
of truth while actively denying access to it. Whether McCormick

1288
01:04:17,320 --> 01:04:20,119
wrote it himself as a personal shorthand or his killer

1289
01:04:20,159 --> 01:04:23,159
placed it there as an ultimate taunt, the cipher acts

1290
01:04:23,159 --> 01:04:26,480
as a permanent lock on justice. It proves that sometimes

1291
01:04:26,639 --> 01:04:29,480
the evidence doesn't speak, it actively refuses to.

1292
01:04:29,800 --> 01:04:33,199
Speaker 1: We have two more incredibly bizarre physical signatures to cover

1293
01:04:33,320 --> 01:04:36,400
before we wrap up today's exploration. The verse takes us

1294
01:04:36,400 --> 01:04:39,320
to the Boston strangler in the early nineteen sixties. He

1295
01:04:39,440 --> 01:04:43,159
murdered thirteen women, and his signature was the murder weapon itself.

1296
01:04:43,679 --> 01:04:46,960
Speaker 2: He notoriously used his victim's own nylon stockings or articles

1297
01:04:46,960 --> 01:04:49,760
of clothing to strangle them. But the chilling detail that

1298
01:04:49,800 --> 01:04:52,840
elevated his crimes to a level of distinct psychological horror

1299
01:04:53,239 --> 01:04:55,639
is what he did afterward. He didn't just pull the

1300
01:04:55,639 --> 01:04:57,840
ligatures tight and leave them. He took the time to

1301
01:04:57,840 --> 01:05:01,440
tie the stockings into elaborate flowing bow under the victim's chins.

1302
01:05:01,960 --> 01:05:04,920
As one historical writer famously described it, it was tied

1303
01:05:05,000 --> 01:05:06,760
like a circus clown's bow tie.

1304
01:05:07,000 --> 01:05:10,400
Speaker 1: It's that macar of theatricality we keep coming back to.

1305
01:05:10,400 --> 01:05:14,480
To commit a violently intimate murder, expending immen's physical energy

1306
01:05:14,719 --> 01:05:17,920
to strangle someone, and then in the immediate aftermath, taking

1307
01:05:17,960 --> 01:05:21,639
the time to delicately, meticulously tie a decorative bow. It's

1308
01:05:21,679 --> 01:05:25,679
a grotesque mockery of femininity, of gift wrapping, of care.

1309
01:05:26,639 --> 01:05:29,440
It's posing the victim for the audience of the police.

1310
01:05:29,519 --> 01:05:33,159
Speaker 2: It demonstrates a terrifying post offense behavior. The killer felt

1311
01:05:33,159 --> 01:05:36,440
completely unhurried. He wasn't panicked about being caught in the moment.

1312
01:05:37,000 --> 01:05:40,320
Tying a delicate bow requires fine motor skills, which means

1313
01:05:40,360 --> 01:05:43,400
his adrenaline had settled. He was in total control of

1314
01:05:43,400 --> 01:05:45,840
the aftermath, claiming ownership of the scene and.

1315
01:05:45,840 --> 01:05:49,000
Speaker 1: Speaking of the aftermath, of a scene. Let's travel back

1316
01:05:49,000 --> 01:05:51,400
in time to nineteen twenty two to a remote farm

1317
01:05:51,440 --> 01:05:55,760
in Bavaria, Germany. The hinter Kaifk murders a family of

1318
01:05:55,800 --> 01:05:58,000
five and their new maid, all brutally killed in their

1319
01:05:58,039 --> 01:06:00,880
barn and home with a mattock, a farming tool. The

1320
01:06:00,880 --> 01:06:03,039
case remains completely unsolved to this day.

1321
01:06:03,400 --> 01:06:06,119
Speaker 2: It is one of the most famous unsolved mysteries in

1322
01:06:06,159 --> 01:06:09,440
European history, and it is famous largely because of the

1323
01:06:09,559 --> 01:06:13,920
deeply unsettling, almost supernatural clues leading up to the crime.

1324
01:06:14,559 --> 01:06:17,400
In the days prior, the patriarch of the family, Andreas Kruber,

1325
01:06:17,760 --> 01:06:20,719
noticed a strange newspaper from Munich on the property that

1326
01:06:20,760 --> 01:06:23,639
no one in the family had purchased. He heard unexplained

1327
01:06:23,639 --> 01:06:26,599
footsteps in the attic. They found scratches on the lock

1328
01:06:26,679 --> 01:06:27,440
of the tool shed.

1329
01:06:27,880 --> 01:06:30,480
Speaker 1: But the creepiest detail, the one that gives everyone absolute

1330
01:06:30,559 --> 01:06:34,719
chills when they hear it, involves the snow. Gruber found

1331
01:06:34,760 --> 01:06:37,960
a single set of human footprints in the fresh winter snow.

1332
01:06:38,559 --> 01:06:40,920
They let out from the dense, dark edge of the forest,

1333
01:06:41,199 --> 01:06:44,280
walking directly to the farmhouse, and there were absolutely zero

1334
01:06:44,360 --> 01:06:45,599
footprints leading away.

1335
01:06:45,960 --> 01:06:49,480
Speaker 2: It is the physical, real world manifestation of a dose story.

1336
01:06:50,039 --> 01:06:53,679
The footprints proved definitively that someone had arrived from the woods,

1337
01:06:53,960 --> 01:06:56,119
but the lack of an exit trail meant the threat

1338
01:06:56,199 --> 01:07:00,320
was already inside the perimeter. It's the creeping, suffocating realizeation

1339
01:07:00,400 --> 01:07:02,719
that the monster is already in the house, hiding in

1340
01:07:02,760 --> 01:07:04,199
the attic, waiting for nightfall.

1341
01:07:04,519 --> 01:07:08,360
Speaker 1: It's terrifying because it's a clue that confirms your worst paranoia.

1342
01:07:09,119 --> 01:07:11,239
And for our final item today, we are going to

1343
01:07:11,239 --> 01:07:13,280
look at a piece of physical evidence that wasn't a

1344
01:07:13,320 --> 01:07:17,159
cipher and wasn't a taunt, but was a brilliant, profoundly

1345
01:07:17,280 --> 01:07:21,599
gross act of forensic misdirection. I'm talking about Ted Katsinski,

1346
01:07:21,880 --> 01:07:22,719
the un of Armer.

1347
01:07:22,800 --> 01:07:26,760
Speaker 2: Katsinski was a former mathematics professor and a verifiable genius

1348
01:07:26,760 --> 01:07:32,000
who waged a nearly two decade solitary bombing campaign against universities, airlines,

1349
01:07:32,000 --> 01:07:35,599
and individuals involved with modern technology. Living off the grid

1350
01:07:35,639 --> 01:07:39,639
in a Montana cabin, he was incredibly meticulous about forensic countermeasures.

1351
01:07:39,920 --> 01:07:43,000
He knew exactly how the FBI analyzed bomb fragments.

1352
01:07:43,119 --> 01:07:46,039
Speaker 1: In one of his explosive packages, investigators found a crucial

1353
01:07:46,079 --> 01:07:49,280
piece of biological evidence, a single strand of human hair

1354
01:07:49,400 --> 01:07:52,039
tucked inside the device. They thought they had a massive break,

1355
01:07:52,280 --> 01:07:55,360
but it wasn't his hair. Katsinski had intentionally gone into

1356
01:07:55,360 --> 01:07:59,360
a dirty public bus station bathroom, scrounged around, collected random

1357
01:07:59,400 --> 01:08:02,239
strands of hair left behind by complete strangers, and place

1358
01:08:02,280 --> 01:08:05,159
them inside the bomb, specifically to throw the FBI off

1359
01:08:05,159 --> 01:08:05,440
his scent.

1360
01:08:05,760 --> 01:08:09,280
Speaker 2: This is a perfect culminating example of a brilliant, angry

1361
01:08:09,320 --> 01:08:14,519
mind utilizing deeply unsettling misdirection. It highlights the terrifying intersection

1362
01:08:14,599 --> 01:08:18,840
of high intelligence and complete mortal detachment. He understood forensic

1363
01:08:18,880 --> 01:08:21,840
science well enough to know the FBI would exhaustively analyze

1364
01:08:21,880 --> 01:08:25,359
the hair for DNA and demographic profiling, and he cold

1365
01:08:25,399 --> 01:08:30,000
bloodedly used the biological detritus of a random, innocent citizen

1366
01:08:30,119 --> 01:08:34,319
to send federal investigators on a massive, expensive, wild goose chase.

1367
01:08:34,880 --> 01:08:36,960
Speaker 1: It really makes you think about the vulnerability of our

1368
01:08:37,000 --> 01:08:40,600
physical existence. Imagine the FBI knocking on your front door,

1369
01:08:40,880 --> 01:08:43,880
treating you as a prime suspect in a domestic terrorism case,

1370
01:08:44,239 --> 01:08:46,600
all because your stray hair from a Greyhound bus station

1371
01:08:46,760 --> 01:08:50,359
sink ended up inside a bomber's device. The level of calculation,

1372
01:08:50,439 --> 01:08:53,159
the sheer paranoia required to think of that countermeasure is

1373
01:08:53,239 --> 01:08:53,880
just astounding.

1374
01:08:54,159 --> 01:08:57,039
Speaker 2: If we pull all of these disparate threads together from

1375
01:08:57,039 --> 01:09:00,319
the nineteen twenties to the modern digital age, we see

1376
01:09:00,319 --> 01:09:05,000
a fascinating and deeply disturbing journey of human behavior. We've

1377
01:09:05,039 --> 01:09:09,800
traveled from the psychological manipulation of sensory deprivation using balanced teacups,

1378
01:09:10,239 --> 01:09:13,840
through the desperate preservation of nightmares and polaroids and dolls,

1379
01:09:14,439 --> 01:09:18,319
down into the corrupted, invisible infrastructure of pipes and kitchens,

1380
01:09:18,359 --> 01:09:23,560
and finally into the twisted, calculated language of ciphers, bloody manifestos,

1381
01:09:23,600 --> 01:09:24,720
and planted evidence.

1382
01:09:25,119 --> 01:09:27,800
Speaker 1: It really is a journey through the absolute darkest, most

1383
01:09:27,800 --> 01:09:30,520
complex parts of the human mind. And as we wrap

1384
01:09:30,600 --> 01:09:32,720
up this exploration into the archives, I want to leave

1385
01:09:32,760 --> 01:09:36,640
you the listener with one final lingering thought to Mollover.

1386
01:09:37,000 --> 01:09:39,479
We've spent the last hour talking about teacups. We've talked

1387
01:09:39,479 --> 01:09:41,800
about a pair of Nike sneakers. We've talked about a

1388
01:09:41,840 --> 01:09:45,479
piece of hotel stationery, a child's lego block, a cooking pot,

1389
01:09:45,720 --> 01:09:49,439
a Hello Kitty doll. Here is the undeniable truth. None

1390
01:09:49,479 --> 01:09:52,920
of these objects are inherently evil. They are completely totally neutral.

1391
01:09:53,119 --> 01:09:55,479
They're just plastic ceramic paper and fabric.

1392
01:09:55,520 --> 01:09:56,600
Speaker 2: They're just things, right.

1393
01:09:57,279 --> 01:10:00,680
Speaker 1: It is solely the human intent that imbues them with horror.

1394
01:10:01,479 --> 01:10:04,439
It is the context that transforms them from the mundane

1395
01:10:05,039 --> 01:10:07,920
into the monstrous. It makes you wonder, as you sit

1396
01:10:07,960 --> 01:10:09,560
in your house right now, or as you walk down

1397
01:10:09,560 --> 01:10:12,039
the street, take a look at the objects around you,

1398
01:10:12,960 --> 01:10:16,359
how much of our safe, everyday environment is just waiting

1399
01:10:16,399 --> 01:10:18,359
to be completely reframed by context.

1400
01:10:18,439 --> 01:10:19,359
Speaker 2: It's a haunting thought.

1401
01:10:19,560 --> 01:10:22,720
Speaker 1: We've covered a lot of dark, heavy, and psychologically complex

1402
01:10:22,800 --> 01:10:25,000
ground today and I genuinely want to know where you

1403
01:10:25,039 --> 01:10:28,199
stand on all of this. Which of these objects, scenes,

1404
01:10:28,279 --> 01:10:31,640
or psychological concepts do you find the absolute most disturbing?

1405
01:10:32,439 --> 01:10:35,600
Is it the calculated psychological terror of David Parker Ray's

1406
01:10:35,600 --> 01:10:39,119
audio tapes? Is it the taunting, unhinged notes left by

1407
01:10:39,119 --> 01:10:42,279
the lipstick killer? Or is it the corrupted, innocent items

1408
01:10:42,319 --> 01:10:45,199
like the legos left beside a terrible crime. Leave a

1409
01:10:45,239 --> 01:10:47,199
comment below and let us know your thoughts. We want

1410
01:10:47,199 --> 01:10:48,319
to hear your perspective on this.

1411
01:10:48,760 --> 01:10:51,399
Speaker 2: It is always fascinating to see which elements resonate most

1412
01:10:51,439 --> 01:10:54,359
strongly with different people, as it speaks volumes about our

1413
01:10:54,399 --> 01:10:58,439
own individual psychological fears, boundaries, and how we define safety.

1414
01:10:58,800 --> 01:11:01,079
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Thank you, thank so much for joining us on

1415
01:11:01,159 --> 01:11:05,479
this intense exploration today here on Thrilling Threads. We appreciate

1416
01:11:05,479 --> 01:11:08,000
you taking the time to unravel these mysteries with us,

1417
01:11:08,239 --> 01:11:11,000
and we will catch you next time. Stay curious and

1418
01:11:11,079 --> 01:11:11,680
stay safe.