Speaker 1: Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence, and is
Speaker 1: not intended for all audiences.
Speaker 2: Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3: Why don't you ask him how many people he's raised
Speaker 3: him and how many people he's murdered?
Speaker 4: Why didn't you bring him to justice?
Speaker 5: Hi?
Speaker 6: This is episode three hundred and fourteen of Sword and Scale,
Speaker 6: a show that reveals it the worst monsters sometimes don't
Speaker 6: need a bunch of dubstep. I'm your host, Mike Boudet,
Speaker 6: or sometimes it's the Bidet, or sometimes it's just that
Speaker 6: nazi or that racist or that misogynist over there, the
Speaker 6: one that hosts that show that nobody likes. Anyway, I'm
Speaker 6: here not to talk about politics, but I'm just going
Speaker 6: to play some jams today, because you know what, that's
Speaker 6: all I've ever wanted to do. I just wanted to
Speaker 6: be a DJ, just wanted to play some tunes.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 6: Well, people listened and praised me for So that's what
Speaker 6: we're doing. That's nice, isn't it. Gotta love that jazz guitar.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah.
Speaker 6: They say that when you get tired of what it
Speaker 6: is you're doing, when you when you get sick of it,
Speaker 6: you should probably stop doing it. Well, the people would
Speaker 6: say that are fucking morons because you still have a
Speaker 6: mortgage and some electric bills and whatnot. So here we
Speaker 6: are again, and we're going to tell you a murder story.
Speaker 6: Yes we are. Unfortunately, somebody has to die for your entertainment,
Speaker 6: you fucking weirdos. But uh, it is what you've come
Speaker 6: to expect when you come here, or isn't it. I
Speaker 6: guess that's my fault. I guess everything is my fault.
Speaker 6: I keep doing bad things. I'm such an unempathetic jerk.
Speaker 6: You know, I would probably just quit deleet my show, right.
Speaker 6: It would throw a parade. Actually, that's a good reason
Speaker 6: to keep going. November twenty fifth, twenty seventeen, it was
Speaker 6: just after four o'clock in the afternoon in Lake Worth, Florida,
Speaker 6: at the Try Rail station. An employee was frantically pacing
Speaker 6: in his booth as he called nine one one. A
Speaker 6: crisis was looming on the train tracks.
Speaker 8: You know, my name's Charlie and I'm calling them Try
Speaker 8: Rail and I'm here for one of our passing trains.
Speaker 8: Reported that just north, about one hundred feet north of
Speaker 8: the seventh Avenue North crossing in Lake Worth, so we
Speaker 8: have a crossing there just west of I ninety five.
Speaker 8: There's somebody lying down about ten feet.
Speaker 9: East of the east.
Speaker 8: Tracks, lying on the ground. We don't know if it's
Speaker 8: if it's a body, or if it's a you know,
Speaker 8: somebody just sleeping or whatever. I do have security on
Speaker 8: the way. One second, wait, all go ahead.
Speaker 6: As the caller was on the phone, one of his
Speaker 6: colleagues came into the booth. He had more to report
Speaker 6: on this mysterious body.
Speaker 5: So we shot everything out, all right, See the radio
Speaker 5: that was about that something.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's okay, exactly right, right, So seventh Avenue north
Speaker 8: and world well on the railroad tracks, the Tryrail tracks.
Speaker 6: The body on the side of the tracks was covered
Speaker 6: in blood, his legs and arms splayed out. It wasn't
Speaker 6: clear whether he was dead or alive just yet, and
Speaker 6: no one could get close enough because the trains were
Speaker 6: still rolling into the station one by one. Panic set
Speaker 6: in as the Tryrail employees tried to figure out what
Speaker 6: had happened. If he'd been hit by a train, this
Speaker 6: could be a major problem. Terrible optics. We know how
Speaker 6: important pr is these days. The crew had no choice
Speaker 6: but to call an emergency and try to shut things
Speaker 6: down as quickly as they could.
Speaker 1: And is he breathing? You?
Speaker 7: You know what I do?
Speaker 5: Okay, Okay, So I'm going to get the terminated.
Speaker 4: But near the Triro seeking.
Speaker 5: Near the triro track, there's a meal covered in blood. Okay,
Speaker 5: sar east the west side of the track. He's kind
Speaker 5: of the track, Sure, Charlie.
Speaker 1: Is he breathing? Sure?
Speaker 5: Did you know if can you ask your guy there
Speaker 5: down the radio?
Speaker 7: They just call him.
Speaker 8: This came from a passing train.
Speaker 5: Uh, that's all they had.
Speaker 8: First They said, you know, it looked like maybe a
Speaker 8: body or somebody sleeping there. And then the second train
Speaker 8: just went by. And you heard what I did from
Speaker 8: the disk backer about this MT Just get there.
Speaker 5: Your guys from east and there get breathing. Another call
Speaker 5: and he said that the guy spuntily deceased and he's
Speaker 5: uh got hit.
Speaker 6: By trains kept rolling through the station. Those calls flooded in.
Speaker 6: At the same moment, another passenger dialed nine one one
Speaker 6: from his cell phone.
Speaker 5: I'm taking the train down from the West Bombach station down.
Speaker 5: There was a dead man on the side.
Speaker 1: Of the train.
Speaker 5: I saw him from the window. To gu go, was
Speaker 5: a dead guy on the side of the road. Yeah,
Speaker 5: an office right now on the train on top to him.
Speaker 8: Okay, have been here on the trains?
Speaker 5: No, No, he was running on the ground, was looking
Speaker 5: out the windows, were going into the Lakeport station, just
Speaker 5: above Lake Wart station. There was the man here. He
Speaker 5: got shot and before he got hit by the trains. Okay,
Speaker 5: so this is that's the lake Ward Tirol station, above
Speaker 5: the Lake Wart station along the tracks where we're slowing
Speaker 5: down coming into station or the dead manerside to call
Speaker 5: blody double feedo.
Speaker 6: Passengers had gathered around the collar. How could they not
Speaker 6: after miles of gravel and green bushes. They rolled into
Speaker 6: the city station and just as the train picked up
Speaker 6: speed again. There it was a bloody mess just off
Speaker 6: the tracks.
Speaker 5: It looks like I would grow up in tracking. Got
Speaker 5: hit by the north down train.
Speaker 7: I stand up when I need to get the panetics
Speaker 7: on the line.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 6: The train kept going. The body was now a memory
Speaker 6: in the distance, but that image was unshakable.
Speaker 5: Get talking to the opposite here on the train. There's
Speaker 5: already people on the way to take care of it. Dude, sir,
Speaker 5: there is no address. I'm on the am Kink train
Speaker 5: hitting out hit above blake Work to date hit. There
Speaker 5: was a man on the other side of the track.
Speaker 5: I went looking out the one day he said it.
Speaker 5: From what I could say, he was early mess up.
Speaker 5: Can you tell me? Are you just north of Lakeworth Road?
Speaker 5: Actually no, I'm on the train with just north of
Speaker 5: Blakeworth day along the train tracks, along the train track
Speaker 5: on the on the north out side of the train,
Speaker 5: on the other side track. He was playing ate up
Speaker 5: and he was a mess up exactly, I mean literally,
Speaker 5: probably can't go off the train.
Speaker 6: Passengers talked in groups, trading half formed memories of the
Speaker 6: body they thought they saw as the train sped on. Meanwhile,
Speaker 6: tri Rail employees were still on the phone with nine
Speaker 6: one one, trying to make sense of it all. What
Speaker 6: most passengers didn't know is that this wasn't just a
Speaker 6: one off tragedy. In cities across America, the edges of
Speaker 6: public infrastructure like train tracks, underpasses and wooded areas, I've
Speaker 6: quietly become home for those with nowhere else to goose.
Speaker 5: That's another call.
Speaker 8: What's another call that I guess all that he was
Speaker 8: read by the tracks for your driver said, yeah, about
Speaker 8: ten the east of the tracks. We do have a
Speaker 8: train drop a shruckdown at this time?
Speaker 1: And he didn't say if he could sell about some
Speaker 1: how old this male was.
Speaker 5: A description or anything like that. I'm not a fanic nothing.
Speaker 6: The Palm Beach sheriff arrived at the train station. They
Speaker 6: hiked up the tracks towards the bloody man. The closer
Speaker 6: they walked, the more obvious it became. This man hadn't
Speaker 6: been hit by a train. He'd been butchered. He lay
Speaker 6: sprawled on the cobblestones, blood soaking the rocks beneath his head.
Speaker 6: His blue eyes stared skyward, frozen in fear. The victim
Speaker 6: had a fatal stab wound to the neck, the source
Speaker 6: of all the blood. He also had defensive wounds on
Speaker 6: the fingers of both hands, a laceration to his left
Speaker 6: hand and his stomach, and a slice to his right jawline.
Speaker 6: It was brutal. His T shirt, his khaki shorts, his
Speaker 6: bare feet. The man looked like someone's middle aged dad
Speaker 6: who'd wandered off the beach and walked straight into hell.
Speaker 6: Blood covered every inch of them. His officers moved up
Speaker 6: the tracks. They spotted a pair of sunglasses. A few
Speaker 6: steps later, they found it a four foot long broad
Speaker 6: sword slick with blood. Think of a brave heart. The
Speaker 6: officers paused. The sword was ornate, It had a woven
Speaker 6: silver handle with two floral designs at the edges. It
Speaker 6: looked like something out of a Scottish museum. Yet here
Speaker 6: it was lying on the dirty rocks by the train tracks,
Speaker 6: covered in blood. Nothing about the victim fit the weapon,
Speaker 6: but the blood, the sword, it all pointed to something
Speaker 6: very deliberate. That's when officers heard it, voices drifting from
Speaker 6: the trees just beyond the tracks. So they started walking,
Speaker 6: and as they did, they found themselves following a trail
Speaker 6: of blood towards the sounds. In the brush. About seventy
Speaker 6: five feet north of where the body was found, the
Speaker 6: police discovered a small homeless encampment. The camp wasn't accidental,
Speaker 6: It was laid out with intention. There was distance between
Speaker 6: the tents and shared resources. This wasn't just survival, it
Speaker 6: was strategy. In twenty seventeen, sleeping in public was criminalized
Speaker 6: in Palm Beach County, a place where lots of very
Speaker 6: wealthy people live, so the people here stayed out of
Speaker 6: sight and far from the law. There was one large
Speaker 6: tent on the far north side of the camp, tucked
Speaker 6: away in trees like a little plastic cottage. About twenty
Speaker 6: feet down from that was another tent set up in
Speaker 6: the same neat and organized fashion as the first one.
Speaker 6: The police drew their weapons and announced themselves. Two couples
Speaker 6: emerged from the tents with their hands up and shocked faces.
Speaker 6: After things cooled down, the police started recording.
Speaker 10: All right, who who would like to speak with me?
Speaker 10: So you're pick all right, how about we go this
Speaker 10: way Europe? All right, Hi, I'm Paul. Excuse me, I'm Paul.
Speaker 10: My hands are dirty, Okay, I'm sorry. Can what is
Speaker 10: your first name? Tasha?
Speaker 7: T A s h A.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me who resides in this location?
Speaker 11: As far as I know, it's just Robert and I
Speaker 11: on this first heads okay, and it's greed and it's
Speaker 11: got like a black tarp uh that's got the bis
Speaker 11: queen plastic piece on.
Speaker 7: Top of it.
Speaker 11: And then pretty good distance away you have the walk
Speaker 11: and path through in between as a generator.
Speaker 7: After the generator is the white and blue tag. Okay.
Speaker 12: So your tenant is the furthest north north, okay.
Speaker 1: All right, So then you pass a generator who do
Speaker 1: you get to next?
Speaker 7: I get to which I thought her name was Gladys?
Speaker 13: Okay, today what's her name? That's how close we stay
Speaker 13: his names. And then I know Kenny because he work
Speaker 13: with Robert. He lives with Carol.
Speaker 6: According to Tasha McGraw, the camp was quite spread out.
Speaker 6: Tasha and Robert Pellettier shared a generator with another homeless couple,
Speaker 6: Carol Thompson and Kenny Schmid, but that was about all
Speaker 6: they shared.
Speaker 12: Robert and Tasha, Carol slash, Gladys and Kenny. And then
Speaker 12: who else is here?
Speaker 11: I know that somewhere this way there was a guy
Speaker 11: named Chris, and I only know of him because.
Speaker 7: He is I guess, Jarrett. This is what I was told.
Speaker 11: That was my guess, because he spends hours on and
Speaker 11: yelling get.
Speaker 7: Out of my ask get out of my house. I said, no,
Speaker 7: I you know, and I mean he.
Speaker 11: Does it continuously until he wears himself one passes out.
Speaker 6: The man with turret syndrome. Chris lived far far off
Speaker 6: in the brush, away from the two couples who shared
Speaker 6: the generator, but he was loud, always screaming and making
Speaker 6: a fuss, so Tasha heard him even if she didn't
Speaker 6: see him.
Speaker 1: So, Tasha, I'm sure you know why we're here.
Speaker 11: I have no idea, Okay, all right, I'll be honest
Speaker 11: with you, being a woman.
Speaker 7: Uh huh.
Speaker 11: I am curious and probably should be smiling because there's
Speaker 11: the characters here, which means there's probably something serious it's happened.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you have no idea why we're here.
Speaker 7: I heard somebody yelling earlier.
Speaker 11: One it was Chris. Probably I lose shot at top.
Speaker 11: I was holding clothes, maybe three point thirty, and I
Speaker 11: could be Robert would be if I looked in my phone,
Speaker 11: I could tell you exactly what time I heard Kelly,
Speaker 11: because I was texting at the time that they yelling.
Speaker 11: And I said to Robert, I think Chris has gotten out, okay.
Speaker 11: And we came to the door and listened, and he said,
Speaker 11: I see it. He's like, I think it's just Chris
Speaker 11: and doctor cleaning.
Speaker 6: Life at the small encampment was relatively calm, except for Chris.
Speaker 6: Though his tent was far away and hidden beneath some brush.
Speaker 6: He still came out, but he was one of the
Speaker 6: people that Tasha stayed clear of. She'd only been on
Speaker 6: the streets for a few months and still had a job.
Speaker 6: She went to. All the couples at the camp were
Speaker 6: living a pretty normal existence beyond the fact that they
Speaker 6: were homeless and living in the woods and houses made
Speaker 6: of nylon.
Speaker 11: These four people, Kenny and Carol and Robert and I
Speaker 11: stay away from the the you know, he is hanging
Speaker 11: out in front of the store.
Speaker 7: None of us shrink or do drugs. We can't. We
Speaker 7: get we work, break, we.
Speaker 11: Eat, We have a generator at the TV and all
Speaker 11: those things, because that's what we spend our money on,
Speaker 11: not on drinking and drunks.
Speaker 7: Okay, my car was.
Speaker 11: Just recently Toad and I've been back here for just
Speaker 11: a few months.
Speaker 7: Okay.
Speaker 11: I leave that four in forty five in the morning.
Speaker 11: I work at the labor.
Speaker 14: Hall and I'm likely to get by.
Speaker 7: Six or six thirty at night. I'm working in Belglade.
Speaker 10: So wow, Okay, is there anybody else that you know
Speaker 10: of that stays here or lives here or anything like that? No, Okay,
Speaker 10: does anybody ever have any people over?
Speaker 7: No? Okay, I would never bring anybody.
Speaker 6: I have to say. If all this is true, Tasha
Speaker 6: is pretty incredible. She's got some serious spiritual serenity. We
Speaker 6: could all use a piece of She is homeless, living
Speaker 6: in a tent in the woods. Her car has been
Speaker 6: towed and she clearly can't get it back. But here
Speaker 6: she is making the best of it, still getting up
Speaker 6: at four forty five am to go to work. I
Speaker 6: mean that's admirable to the public. Homeless encampments soften conjure
Speaker 6: images of chaos and danger, and although that's true to
Speaker 6: some extent, that's not always the full story. People like
Speaker 6: Tasha are holding down jobs, folding laundry by flashlight, and
Speaker 6: doing their best to live quiet, invisible lives.
Speaker 1: What does Chris look like?
Speaker 11: As far as the only way, the only way I
Speaker 11: know what he looks like is because they described it
Speaker 11: to me, and I remember seeing work.
Speaker 7: He ass some kind of tattoo on his forehead. I
Speaker 7: believe the tribals on his forehead.
Speaker 1: It look like a propeller.
Speaker 11: I think it's more like a tribal thing. It could
Speaker 11: be a propeller. I know it's not a tear drop,
Speaker 11: but it's right smagg center of his forehead, and it's
Speaker 11: not tiny, it's big.
Speaker 7: It's a good site too.
Speaker 11: I think I know Chris, and that he had longer hair,
Speaker 11: and he always more Spandex shorts.
Speaker 6: The officer knew Chris from the streets. It was hard
Speaker 6: not to. He looked like Iggy Pop if Iggy Pop
Speaker 6: wore spandex and hiking boots and rode a scooter around
Speaker 6: town with his mullet blowing in the wind. What a sight.
Speaker 6: Chris had a big tattoo in the center of his
Speaker 6: forehead that looked like a swastika or maybe a plane propeller.
Speaker 6: Nothing says I want to be homeless forever than a
Speaker 6: tattoo on your face. He wore a snake pendant around
Speaker 6: his neck and a thick gold Superman ring on his finger.
Speaker 6: Most days, he didn't bother to put on a shirt.
Speaker 6: While one officer talked with Tasha, a few others made
Speaker 6: their way down to Chris's tent. When they got to
Speaker 6: his spot, they noticed a large sword hanging by the
Speaker 6: door like a do not enter sign. The camp had
Speaker 6: become sort of a no go zone, not officially but practically.
Speaker 6: Police didn't patrol it. Why would they. Until this moment,
Speaker 6: they hadn't even known that it existed. As the officers
Speaker 6: got closer, they could hear Chris inside his tent. When
Speaker 6: he finally came out, he was screaming. He attacked me,
Speaker 6: He attacked me. Chris's hand was bloody and so swollen
Speaker 6: it looked like a baseball man. It had been wrapped
Speaker 6: up in a bandage that was soaked with blood. The
Speaker 6: officers cuffed him. As they sat him on the ground,
Speaker 6: they suddenly noticed the trail of blood that they had
Speaker 6: originally he followed. It led straight to Chris's tent. How's
Speaker 6: that for detective work. It was a strange irony, a crime,
Speaker 6: this loud in a place built to be silent. If
Speaker 6: it hadn't spilled onto the train tracks, the world may
Speaker 6: have never found out about it. Off the tri rail
Speaker 6: tracks in Lakeworth, Florida, passengers on various trains had noticed
Speaker 6: the dead body of a middle aged man out on
Speaker 6: the tracks. Train traffic was halted as the police investigated
Speaker 6: what happened to this unassuming victim who looked like he
Speaker 6: belonged at a Palm beach casino instead of butchered by
Speaker 6: the railroad tracks. Next to the victim's body was the
Speaker 6: murder weapon of four foot long sword. If I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 6: that maybe the first sword murder we've told on sword
Speaker 6: and Scale, which is kind of weird. Following the blood
Speaker 6: trail from the victim's body, the police discovered a small
Speaker 6: homeless encampment where three tents were set up. Two of
Speaker 6: the tents were inhabited by couples, and the furthest tent
Speaker 6: was owned by a man named Chris. A very wild
Speaker 6: man named Chris. He was known on the streets for
Speaker 6: his erratic behavior and ridiculous appearance. The police took Chris
Speaker 6: up to the Fire and Rescue to get his hand
Speaker 6: injury looked at, and while they did, the other officers
Speaker 6: continued to question the couples at the encampment. They started
Speaker 6: talking with the other couple, Carol and Kenny.
Speaker 15: Okay, so Carol, what's been going on today? How the
Speaker 15: day start out? What's what have you been doing?
Speaker 7: All?
Speaker 8: Well?
Speaker 7: As normal, we always wake up to Chris screaming home.
Speaker 15: He wakes up screaming. Is that a normal occurrence? He's schizophrenic? Okay,
Speaker 15: at least that's a peel so normal day.
Speaker 16: Well, day, we went to dunkin Donuts, came back and
Speaker 16: this is what Mara were intent watching TV when the
Speaker 16: Shris who showed up.
Speaker 6: Carol and her husband spent most of their time shuffling
Speaker 6: back and forth from the dunkin Donuts to their tent. Inside,
Speaker 6: they had set up a makeshift kitchen and bedroom where
Speaker 6: they tried to stay away from Chris's chaos. As Carol
Speaker 6: put it, he was unstable, but over time the chaos
Speaker 6: became routine. So when he knocked on their tent, and
Speaker 6: I say knocked because I don't know what else to say,
Speaker 6: when he knocked on their tent asking for an ACE bandage,
Speaker 6: she didn't think much of it.
Speaker 15: You guys went to dunkin Donuts today, you were here
Speaker 15: watching TV?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 15: How long ago would you say that he came up
Speaker 15: and asked for an ace bandage? I don't know what
Speaker 15: time it is, Okay, it's five two hours ago, maybe
Speaker 15: two hours ago? Two hours ago?
Speaker 7: Okay? Did he What was he wearing? Do you know?
Speaker 7: He had no shirt on? And I think sweatpants. You
Speaker 7: know what color sweatpants? I think they were blue? Okay,
Speaker 7: I'm only I'm blinded more, I show no problem.
Speaker 16: So, but he asked for an eight spandage for his
Speaker 16: rich medium and his spandish and you left them?
Speaker 1: Oh? Really?
Speaker 7: Yeah? Are you guys close with him?
Speaker 15: Does he talk to you or is it just kind
Speaker 15: of like a I mean you guys obviously know him,
Speaker 15: or I mean we try to averread him. Okay, okay,
Speaker 15: it's those problems. Would you say he's does he scare
Speaker 15: you or at times?
Speaker 7: Jesus? Okay?
Speaker 1: Got it?
Speaker 15: How about before that, did Chris say that he was
Speaker 15: having any conflicts with anybody?
Speaker 7: Did he ask he has intercomfist with people inside his head?
Speaker 8: Oh?
Speaker 7: Okay, He's always yelling at somebody to get out.
Speaker 16: He's gonna kill him. He's always always yelling at somebody
Speaker 16: to get out. Trespassing. You're doing this, you're doing that.
Speaker 16: They're all diagnosed.
Speaker 7: I don't know if he stagnosed schizophronic, but I'll tell
Speaker 7: you what if he isn't definitely run? Does he take
Speaker 7: any medication?
Speaker 6: Excitements, Tasha, I thought Chris had Turets syndrome, but Carol
Speaker 6: assumed he was schizophrenic. Needless to say, none of these
Speaker 6: people were mental health professionals. Put it that way, Chris
Speaker 6: woke the whole camp up every morning screaming about trespassers
Speaker 6: or people who were trying to hurt him. He lived
Speaker 6: in his own head, which was a dark neighborhood that
Speaker 6: he could never crawl out of. But even his chaos
Speaker 6: had rules. He stayed mostly to his corner and others
Speaker 6: stayed to theirs. There was a kind of internal logic
Speaker 6: to the camp, full of invisible boundaries and unspoken understandings.
Speaker 6: But still Carol was scared of Chris. Tasha was too.
Speaker 6: Being the two women in the camp, Chris made them
Speaker 6: nervous when the men weren't around. By the way, who's
Speaker 6: the Karen responsible for getting rid of mental institutions? Remember
Speaker 6: when all these people were housed and cared for, but
Speaker 6: then something happened and somebody got hurt, so we got
Speaker 6: rid of all of them. I know one of you
Speaker 6: Karens out there was responsible, at least one of your
Speaker 6: grandma Karents with a PhD. What a fucking idiot. Just
Speaker 6: because a patient dies in the hospital doesn't mean you
Speaker 6: get rid of all hospitals. These so called experts really
Speaker 6: are useless, aren't They probably should have bottomized her instead
Speaker 6: of taking doctor Karen's advice.
Speaker 7: All the men back here, which would be Kenny and Robert,
Speaker 7: told him, do not come this way. We have women
Speaker 7: that live here.
Speaker 14: We don't want to see you and since, and he's
Speaker 14: respected that and made away because I'm new.
Speaker 6: For the most part, Chris kept to himself and stayed
Speaker 6: clear of the couple's area, but whenever Chris did come
Speaker 6: knocking at their tents, the men would deal with them.
Speaker 6: Residents told police that earlier that afternoon, Chris had barged
Speaker 6: into the camp asking for an ace bandage. Carol's husband, Kenny,
Speaker 6: had given him one.
Speaker 7: He asked you for an eighth bandage his right hand,
Speaker 7: then for one of his hand. I went watch camp
Speaker 7: tells of one what hand on? No problem?
Speaker 1: After that?
Speaker 2: After we ate was watching TV one other and the
Speaker 2: train stopped right okay, and then took off again. I figured, okay,
Speaker 2: he's playing stupid games again and train and stop because
Speaker 2: that's the one time they stopped.
Speaker 6: I don't know if you caught that, but listen carefully.
Speaker 6: Kenny said that earlier that day he heard the train
Speaker 6: stop near their camp, which was one hundred feet north
Speaker 6: of the station itself. He assumed that it was because
Speaker 6: of this little game Chris usually played. He insinuated that
Speaker 6: Chris would often go to the train tracks and get
Speaker 6: close to the train, causing it to halt like a
Speaker 6: suicidal game of Chicken. I guess when you're homeless, you
Speaker 6: got to entertain yourself somehow, even if usually it's at
Speaker 6: society's expense.
Speaker 7: What does Chris look like? Describe nothing?
Speaker 2: Tall, maybe six too, skinny, long, dark hair.
Speaker 7: Weird okay, long dark hair, very weird. Okay? What makes
Speaker 7: him weird? He gets fine?
Speaker 2: Okay, He's got like twelve He's got a whole family
Speaker 2: of invisible friends.
Speaker 6: It was hard to take anything Chris said with any credibility.
Speaker 6: He was always ranting and raving, fighting with the so
Speaker 6: called invisible friends in his head. Then Carol remembered something
Speaker 6: strange about Chris coming over and asking for a bandage.
Speaker 7: Christie, come over to our tent before you guys did
Speaker 7: come up? Okay, said somebody who's tried to rape him.
Speaker 7: Somebody's tried to rape him. It's something we've heard millions
Speaker 7: of times over.
Speaker 2: He did say someone tried to raping Oh okay. When
Speaker 2: he was getting the a spanies, I said who, he
Speaker 2: said out? Okay, Yeah, what I'm saying. I live with
Speaker 2: him next door, screaming at all hours, and knives about him.
Speaker 2: His ghost was sticking something glass or mouth or something.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 6: Though, the officer was shocked. Carol and Kenny were unfazed.
Speaker 6: They'd heard rape accusations from Chris many times, mostly about
Speaker 6: the ghosts who were trying to shove things into his
Speaker 6: backside orifice. So like every other outburst from Chris, they
Speaker 6: turned their backs and zipped up their tent. I mean,
Speaker 6: what else could they do? But now there was a
Speaker 6: man who had been stabbed to death in the place
Speaker 6: that Chris liked to go and try to halt the trains.
Speaker 6: According to Kenny, the only man who had weapons in
Speaker 6: their camp was Chris.
Speaker 7: Does he have any weapons or anything is a weapon?
Speaker 2: He's got all kinds of swords, knives, staring stars all wow.
Speaker 7: Okay, I don't worry about him.
Speaker 15: Does he have any well, you say, knives and throwing
Speaker 15: these stars? He have like swords and they got swords
Speaker 15: all kinds oh geezh. Any kind of sword, remember, any
Speaker 15: one specifically? Any kind of swords like big swords or
Speaker 15: anything like five big swords.
Speaker 6: When the police investigated Chris's tent, it was filled with
Speaker 6: weapons and a few cats, poor things. Chris has display knives,
Speaker 6: samurai swords, throwing stars, and other exotic weapons all over
Speaker 6: the edges of the inside of his little home. He
Speaker 6: had a blow up mattress, a makeshift kitchen complete with
Speaker 6: about nine bottles of vitamins, a boombox, a television, a
Speaker 6: DVD player, a microwave, and a little matt at his
Speaker 6: front door. Have cozy. Maybe this was a tent in
Speaker 6: the woods, but it was also his home and most
Speaker 6: damning of all. Inside chris tent, they found the sheath
Speaker 6: to the samurai sword that had been used to kill
Speaker 6: the victim. Chris's real name was George Christopher Livingston. What
Speaker 6: a name sounds like some sort of old timey explorer
Speaker 6: instead of a homeless nut. He was fifty one years
Speaker 6: old and had been on the streets of Lake Worth
Speaker 6: for years. In fact, Tasha's partner Robert, had known Chris
Speaker 6: for a long time.
Speaker 17: Tell me about Chris. Well, I've known Chris for the
Speaker 17: better part of I don't know, for four or five
Speaker 17: years now, okay. And he's always been somewhat less than cohesive.
Speaker 1: Okay. Have you been living with him for four or
Speaker 1: five years? I've just known him. I've never lived with him.
Speaker 17: There was a time a few years back when the
Speaker 17: radio station was all wooded areas we stayed there.
Speaker 1: Chris burned that down, so we got jettisons from that.
Speaker 1: I remember that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Chris had burned down the last encampment Robert lived in.
Speaker 6: It was such a big fire that the officer remembered
Speaker 6: it too. Chris was always in trouble with the law,
Speaker 6: but it was never anything big enough to get him
Speaker 6: behind bars. Unfortunately, it was just a hindrance, a drain
Speaker 6: on society. The man needed some serious help. He was
Speaker 6: mentally unstable. Stories like Chris's aren't rare. Untreated mental illness,
Speaker 6: no steady psychiatric care, and a legal system that sees
Speaker 6: the need for help but not the kind it can give.
Speaker 6: According to court records, his own parents had kicked him
Speaker 6: out of their home due to repeated violence, which is
Speaker 6: how he ended up on the streets in nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 6: Things spiraled from there. In twenty twelve, he'd been arrested
Speaker 6: in Boyton Beach while hanging around a children's park with
Speaker 6: a large hunting knife. When the officers took him off
Speaker 6: the premiss and searched him, he asked why they didn't
Speaker 6: also take his taser. It was stuffed into his spandex shorts.
Speaker 1: And around that time.
Speaker 17: You know, we'd have conversations from time to time, nothing
Speaker 17: terribly extensive, but you know you can tell he's not
Speaker 17: playing with the full deck, he claims.
Speaker 1: You know, who have been struck by lightning.
Speaker 17: And there was a time I'd come home and find
Speaker 17: dead raccoons laid out of my doorstep, you know, like
Speaker 17: the health you know.
Speaker 1: Oh, I thought you could make a nice fat out
Speaker 1: of him.
Speaker 10: Can you imagine so other than Chris and you and Tascha,
Speaker 10: who else lives here in this in this woods?
Speaker 1: Here?
Speaker 17: Kenny and Carroll are here? Okay, Dave Beckett. I don't,
Speaker 17: to be honest with you, I don't venture much past
Speaker 17: my own tank. The only reason I know Kenny and
Speaker 17: Carroll is because we have a you know, a business
Speaker 17: arrangement sharing the.
Speaker 6: Generators, a business arrangement. Imagine living in the age of
Speaker 6: AI and you have a business arrangement involving a generator.
Speaker 12: So the other person that you mentioned, Dave, what's stayed
Speaker 12: less him? And you know that for sure, not with
Speaker 12: a degree of certainty. Okay, but that's the name I've heard, okay,
Speaker 12: reference to him? What's on more than one ocasion?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 12: What is Dave's not Dave's story, but about how old
Speaker 12: is he? Can you describe him at all? Well?
Speaker 1: He similar to my look a little shorter, okay, but
Speaker 1: he's got the gray beard. Where's a ball camp all
Speaker 1: the time? About how old? Early in the mid fifties,
Speaker 1: I would.
Speaker 6: Guess Dave had been in and out of the camp.
Speaker 6: Like Tasha. He worked at the Labor Hall. In case
Speaker 6: you don't know, the Labor Hall is a temporary staffing
Speaker 6: agency that helps people pick up blue collar work throughout
Speaker 6: the area.
Speaker 18: One was lesson he saw Dave dick well or have
Speaker 18: you even seen him dack? See, I'm not sure it
Speaker 18: was Dave that I saw Chris encountering.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 17: I know at one point we had gotten back from
Speaker 17: the beach. I guess sometime between one thirty and two thirty,
Speaker 17: Tasha and myself thank you.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, who's willing?
Speaker 7: All right?
Speaker 1: Tasha sad between in that area, and.
Speaker 17: We went into the tent and pretty much sorting through
Speaker 17: clothes that decided what to take to wash and whatnot.
Speaker 1: At one point I.
Speaker 17: Had to run to Sitco and get some gas for
Speaker 17: the generator. But at some point after we were home,
Speaker 17: I couldn't nail down a specific time. Two people I recognized.
Speaker 17: The second one was Chris ran past the tent. Okay,
Speaker 17: it appeared that Chris was chasing somebody. I thought it
Speaker 17: might have been Dave, but I wasn't.
Speaker 7: Certain to see what the guy was wearing. And he
Speaker 7: was chasing like a blur build into like a.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 17: The reason I'm not entirely certain Dave is because he
Speaker 17: was wearing I don't know one specifically, but it was
Speaker 17: brighter colors than I'm used to seeing him. He's usually
Speaker 17: a camouflage or a darker colored Okay, you know, but
Speaker 17: it seemed to me like he might have been wearing
Speaker 17: a T shirt. It was light and come maybe I
Speaker 17: don't know if it looked like it was light blue
Speaker 17: with orange sleeves.
Speaker 6: The dead Man on the Tracks matched Dave's description perfectly.
Speaker 6: The gray beard, mid fifties, bright blue shirt with orange sleeves.
Speaker 1: I thought it was Dave. Ran past the tent first.
Speaker 17: Now, Dave's more often than not drunk, so it wasn't
Speaker 17: with any real speed that he ran by the tent,
Speaker 17: more of us, and then you know, three seconds behind
Speaker 17: him came Chris, just yelling, yelling something like I was
Speaker 17: going to marry her.
Speaker 1: You raped her or something. I don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a big commotion, but it was enough to
Speaker 1: catch my attention. Tasha and I both stood up and
Speaker 1: what the hell's going on?
Speaker 15: Right?
Speaker 17: We walked out, and we actually walked as far as
Speaker 17: the train tracks here and could see down here some altercation.
Speaker 17: But it didn't look it didn't look too violent or
Speaker 17: too serious. It just looked like a couple of guys
Speaker 17: shoving each other. Okay, anybody look for me. Well, I
Speaker 17: could see one of them was Chris. We saw one
Speaker 17: of them ass well, one of ri it's wearing.
Speaker 6: We have to put this into perspective, because I know
Speaker 6: what you're thinking. If you heard two men rush past
Speaker 6: your home screaming at one another, you'd probably follow the
Speaker 6: noise to see what was going on, and if you
Speaker 6: saw them getting into it, you'd contemplate calling the police.
Speaker 6: But Robert and Tasha were homeless and squatting in the
Speaker 6: woods during this time. In twenty seventeen, there was an
Speaker 6: ordinance that made it illegal to set up permanent shelters
Speaker 6: on public property. Though their camp was hidden deep in
Speaker 6: the woods, it still wasn't allowed. Robert and Tasha didn't
Speaker 6: want to bring any attention, let alone the police, to
Speaker 6: their encampment. This is probably why they just all did
Speaker 6: their best to ignore Chris's outbursts and roll with the punches.
Speaker 6: The idea that you would call the cops for help
Speaker 6: concerning anything was preposterous. You don't do that when you're
Speaker 6: breaking the law yourself. It's the wild West out there,
Speaker 6: which raises a broader question about the growing homeless population.
Speaker 6: Encampments are now a major issue in cities nationwide. For years,
Speaker 6: most advocacy groups and academics have followed the consistent philosophy
Speaker 6: provide housing regardless of sobriety or mental health status, and
Speaker 6: homelessness will decline, But the Cicero Institute challenges that view.
Speaker 6: The public policy think tank argues that the housing first
Speaker 6: model has failed and instead supports banning unauthorized street camping
Speaker 6: and reallocating funds from permanent housing to short terms shelters
Speaker 6: and treatment programs. Here's Devin Kurtz, public safety policy director
Speaker 6: from the Cicero Institute.
Speaker 19: Criminological literature, there's a lot of talking about, oh, well,
Speaker 19: this is a very visible population, which allows it to
Speaker 19: be you know, policed more than the other communities, and
Speaker 19: there's some truth to that, but there's also this this
Speaker 19: sort of wild West component where if you get an
Speaker 19: encampment that's far enough out, there's you know, no one
Speaker 19: coming to help, and there's no one surveilling it.
Speaker 7: So these have at times.
Speaker 19: Become you know, no go zones for law enforcement, and
Speaker 19: it ends up until there's a fire or until there's
Speaker 19: a murderer. It's sort of just spt in its own.
Speaker 6: This encampment in our story had definitely become a no
Speaker 6: go zone. The cops were unaware of it until the
Speaker 6: murder occurred. But how do you police something that's buried
Speaker 6: deep in the woods and no one even knows it's there.
Speaker 6: The Cicero Institute's hallmark policy is the prohibition of street camping.
Speaker 6: Most nonprofits are very unhappy with the fact that they
Speaker 6: have passed encampment bands in nineteen states and the.
Speaker 19: Framing by critics, and they usually come and they protest
Speaker 19: the hearings and they protest our office as they did
Speaker 19: a couple of weeks ago, and this criminalizes holmossness and
Speaker 19: ultimately leads to mass incarceration of them and saddles them
Speaker 19: with criminal.
Speaker 1: Records, etc. Etc.
Speaker 19: The reality could be further from the truth. This is
Speaker 19: trying to respond to the obvious need for a community
Speaker 19: to regulate the existence of encampments in our community. If
Speaker 19: there's a camp on the sidewalk in front of your
Speaker 19: house or in front of your business, obviously there needs
Speaker 19: to be some mechanism by which law enforcement and the
Speaker 19: city and county and the state can ensure that is
Speaker 19: dealt with in a way that is certainly compassionate. But
Speaker 19: I would argue that we're not experiencing a homelessness crisis
Speaker 19: that's particularly unusual, as much as we are experiencing a
Speaker 19: crisis and unsheltered homelessness. What we're seeing in certain states
Speaker 19: is this population doubling.
Speaker 6: Robert, Tasha, Carol, Kenny, and Chris were a part of
Speaker 6: this unsheltered population, tucked away in a no go zone
Speaker 6: of society's fringe. The crime happened in there, hidden the world,
Speaker 6: and if the victim's body hadn't been left by the
Speaker 6: side of the train tracks, maybe nobody would have ever
Speaker 6: known that this happened. In fact, Robert was the only
Speaker 6: one who witnessed the fight begin.
Speaker 7: What was occurring when you saw them standing there.
Speaker 17: Well, what I saw was whoever the other gentleman was
Speaker 17: possibly gave with us back to defense, Chris shoving them
Speaker 17: against defense.
Speaker 7: There was a shove back. Okay, did you see anything else?
Speaker 1: A little you know where they grab each other's elbows,
Speaker 1: and you know who I thought was? Dave ran that
Speaker 1: way and Chris came back this way, and Kaus and
Speaker 1: I went back into the tanks. Okay.
Speaker 17: A few minutes later, Chris showed up just outside the tent,
Speaker 17: asking if we had an ace bandage for.
Speaker 7: Him that he could call.
Speaker 1: Okay, did he have any any blood or anything on him?
Speaker 12: I didn't see any signs of blood. Well, okay, does
Speaker 12: anybody here in this camp you carry any weapons.
Speaker 1: Other than Chris?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: Okay, what does Chris have?
Speaker 17: Well, Chris has a cachet of weapons in there, swords, knives,
Speaker 17: an assortment of knives, Chinese throwing stars, Okay, a collection
Speaker 17: he's rabbit proud of.
Speaker 6: Everyone knew about Chris's tent of weapons. It was almost
Speaker 6: as infamous as he was.
Speaker 12: Did you see him Chris using any of those weapons
Speaker 12: tonight while this incident.
Speaker 1: Was going on.
Speaker 17: When he ran past my tent, it looked like he
Speaker 17: had like a MARIAI sord possibly in his hand. Again,
Speaker 17: I didn't get a really good look. I'm just speculating,
Speaker 17: but he had something that had some length to it
Speaker 17: and was silvery in color. Chris had chested yes.
Speaker 1: When Dave walked away from my Again I'm not sure
Speaker 1: it was Dave. I'm just guessing. But whoever it was
Speaker 1: that walked away back here.
Speaker 17: When they walked that way, they had something in their
Speaker 17: hands too, But from where I stood, it looked like
Speaker 17: it might have just been a stick.
Speaker 1: If you saw a picture Dave, would you be able
Speaker 1: to say, yes, that's him, Yes, I will.
Speaker 6: That's when the officer brought over a picture of the
Speaker 6: victim and showed it to Robert.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's Dave, Okay, so without the beard.
Speaker 6: Robert had said that Chris was screaming when he chased
Speaker 6: Dave past their tent, something about a woman he was
Speaker 6: going to marry, and that David raped her. But then
Speaker 6: Chris had told Carol and Kenny that someone had tried
Speaker 6: to rape him. It was all just the mumblings of
Speaker 6: a man who spritally needed psychiatric medication. But Dave Beckett
Speaker 6: had been slaughtered to death with a four foot long sword.
Speaker 6: Dave may have been a homeless drunk, but he was
Speaker 6: still a person who lost his life and the police
Speaker 6: had to find out why. In his years of being homeless,
Speaker 6: Chris had been charged with a few misdemeanors for carrying
Speaker 6: illegal weapons. Maybe this whole murder was a manic episode,
Speaker 6: a full break from reality where the hallucinations took the lead.
Speaker 6: Or maybe David pushed him, provoked something dark that needed
Speaker 6: to finally come out, because that's the thing. For as
Speaker 6: crazy as Chris was, his criminal record was pretty minimal,
Speaker 6: and every time he was arrested for something, he cooperated
Speaker 6: and just mumbled incoherently to his imaginary pals. Chris did
Speaker 6: what Chris did. He rode around on his scooter and
Speaker 6: his spandex shorts, talking about the ghost in his asshole.
Speaker 6: He was out of his mind. The women were frightened
Speaker 6: of him, because well, why wouldn't you be? I mean,
Speaker 6: I'm frightened of him. Wouldn't you be frightened of him?
Speaker 6: If you lived in the woods in a nylon tent,
Speaker 6: next to a screaming man with nothing but a thin
Speaker 6: layer of cloth to protect you. The potential of danger
Speaker 6: was there? But Chris had no track record of physically
Speaker 6: assaulting or sexually assaulting anyone within the homeless community. He
Speaker 6: just had zero social awareness, like someone freshly released from
Speaker 6: an asylum dropped into the world without a map. Dave,
Speaker 6: on the other hand, had a reputation.
Speaker 7: I always caught him, Dave. I did not saw you
Speaker 7: as last name.
Speaker 14: I know him.
Speaker 11: He worked out of the labor hall with me since
Speaker 11: twenty fifteen. I heard he lived in one of these
Speaker 11: tents bad here.
Speaker 10: I have.
Speaker 11: I've never seen him back here except for my very
Speaker 11: first day, three to six months ago. That's when Robert
Speaker 11: came out and said, you are not welcome here to Dave.
Speaker 7: To Dave, okay, why would you not welcome because I'm here, okay,
Speaker 7: And he has a bad reputation. And since that day,
Speaker 7: I have never heard he is.
Speaker 11: Even we've passed by getting our Chucks cash because we
Speaker 11: all had to go to the same place to get
Speaker 11: our Chucks cash.
Speaker 14: He won't even look at me. He looks away. They
Speaker 14: wanted the people that when women.
Speaker 11: See him, they make the hair on the back of
Speaker 11: your next stand up, okay, And that's when you want
Speaker 11: to back away.
Speaker 7: And so that's why I never spoken.
Speaker 6: Throughout the Lake Worth homeless social circles. It was known
Speaker 6: as a sexual predator. Many women had been assaulted by him,
Speaker 6: and these rumors circled around the streets. According to the
Speaker 6: court records, Dave had been in trouble with the low
Speaker 6: since two thousand and three. He's got two felonies under
Speaker 6: his belt, one for drug possession and another for driving
Speaker 6: with a revoked license, as well as a bunch of
Speaker 6: misdemeanors for trespassing, theft, public intoxication, and indecent exposure. In
Speaker 6: twenty eleven, he was arrested forget this, possession of a
Speaker 6: Burmese python without a license and improper caging allowing escape. Now,
Speaker 6: a Burmese python is one of the most terrifying snakes
Speaker 6: on the planet. It's also one of the largest, and
Speaker 6: for some reason, they are infamous in Florida. Now, I
Speaker 6: don't know why this man had a python or what
Speaker 6: he was doing with it, but it fits, doesn't it?
Speaker 6: In any case, the records are sealed, but you can
Speaker 6: just imagine a homeless guy with a python. What a sight. Anyways,
Speaker 6: the python was a rare one, but most of Dave's
Speaker 6: just had to do with indecent exposure and even masturbating
Speaker 6: in public. One time he was seen masturbating on the
Speaker 6: side of I seventy five. That'll wake you up on
Speaker 6: the way to work. Then Tasha told the police something
Speaker 6: that made them question who the victim in this whole
Speaker 6: thing actually was.
Speaker 20: It was a rumor, and this is all just a
Speaker 20: rumor that he almost I have a friend named Robert Crofton,
Speaker 20: and different Robert. He goes by vou that there was
Speaker 20: a rumor maybe six months ago that he had beat
Speaker 20: up Robert Crofton and sent him to the del Ray
Speaker 20: Menie and her way to beat him, and that was
Speaker 20: just a rumor.
Speaker 6: Tasha said that Dave had raped and beat a male
Speaker 6: friend of her so badly that he had to be hospitalized.
Speaker 6: Was Chris actually a victim? A target of ace? Sexually aggressive,
Speaker 6: drunken deviant. Dave was dead, so his side of the
Speaker 6: story died with him. Now all that was left was Chris.
Speaker 6: When the body of Dave Beckett had been discovered slaughtered
Speaker 6: on the side of the tri rail tracks in Lakeworth, Florida,
Speaker 6: HeSE had followed the blood trail to a small encampment
Speaker 6: of five people, two couples and an infamous, unhinged man
Speaker 6: everyone knew as Chris Davi had been murdered with a
Speaker 6: four foot long sword. As police interviewed the residents of
Speaker 6: the encampment, they discovered that Dave and Chris had been
Speaker 6: seen fighting down by the tracks earlier that afternoon. Chris
Speaker 6: had told the other residents that David tried to rape him,
Speaker 6: but no one took it seriously because Chris was always
Speaker 6: saying things of that nature. But Dave had a reputation
Speaker 6: as a sexual predator and had even recently beat and
Speaker 6: raped another homeless man, sending him to the hospital for treatment.
Speaker 6: Now it was time to hear what Chris had to say.
Speaker 6: After paramedics took care of his hand, he was ready
Speaker 6: to start talking.
Speaker 4: So basically, I'm called it.
Speaker 7: I'm expected with the sheriff talkers because you've been detained
Speaker 7: for quite a while.
Speaker 1: We were handcooked.
Speaker 7: I'm going to read your Marinda Wanting all right, have
Speaker 7: you ever been reading Marinda Wannings? She liked the legal
Speaker 7: leens by Noda. You know me mind, if I just
Speaker 7: do my job and the detective Oliver you can call
Speaker 7: me Sean, call me Dick. Where're going out there?
Speaker 3: And the rug to make you have a right to
Speaker 3: landslide it. Yeah, but I'm going to be actually verbad
Speaker 3: him into a policy because it's in Mini versus Arizona.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: The nineteen Serienz Chris stated the exact law that created
Speaker 6: the Miranda warning Miranda versus Arizona. In nineteen ninety six,
Speaker 6: the Supreme Court ruled in Miranda via Arizona that police
Speaker 6: must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them. Ernesto
Speaker 6: Miranda confessed to a crime without knowing he could stay
Speaker 6: silent or ask for a lawyer, so the court said
Speaker 6: that violated his constitutional right. This decision created the Miranda warning.
Speaker 6: The rights you've heard read over and over and over
Speaker 6: for the last ten years on this podcast and for
Speaker 6: the last sixty in the real world.
Speaker 7: How did you give it? The point where he was
Speaker 7: entry with the sword twenty twenty, Focus at your sword.
Speaker 1: It's out of your.
Speaker 3: Tentpole one day, Wison expirdess. Even when you did it
Speaker 3: to me, I did it too, almost along ago. But
Speaker 3: he didn't want to do with this, I say, and
Speaker 3: I'll get it to your ed.
Speaker 7: You gave me, George, somebody that majority told me that
Speaker 7: you were great.
Speaker 3: Now I tried them out, but I'll try to make
Speaker 3: some time. I try to like a symbolic gesture, and yeah,
Speaker 3: that a man that own.
Speaker 6: Chris admitted that he was skeptical of Dave, but he
Speaker 6: had been hanging around and he'd given Dave the sword
Speaker 6: as some sort of symbolic gesture, like here's my weapon
Speaker 6: from my collection, protect yourself on the street, that sort
Speaker 6: of thing. But then Chris told detectives that he was
Speaker 6: scared of Dave because Dave did weird things that made
Speaker 6: him crazy. Chris felt like he needed to stay away.
Speaker 3: Say you told me earlier and I had to never
Speaker 3: premeditate slaying man do to reverse psychology guy.
Speaker 4: When I was injured, I couldn't help.
Speaker 3: Him anymore when he had injured his sales, because I
Speaker 3: know behind decided.
Speaker 4: I turned my back on when he saw when he
Speaker 4: and the injuries occurred.
Speaker 3: To me, I would know long in a fan Namatau.
Speaker 6: But it obviously wasn't the end of his statement. Chris
Speaker 6: kept trying to explain that Dave was a sexual predator.
Speaker 6: He had raped and hurt other women on the streets,
Speaker 6: and Chris was fed up with it. Then he heard
Speaker 6: some woman that Chris had declared he wanted to marry.
Speaker 6: This is what Robert heard when Dave and Chris came
Speaker 6: running by his tent earlier that day. But Chris's story
Speaker 6: was bouncing back and forth as he tried to explain himself.
Speaker 6: His main point was that Dave was secretly gay. Chris
Speaker 6: knew that Dave had raped other men in his tent.
Speaker 6: Then he started coming on to Chris, and that changed
Speaker 6: the course of their relationship.
Speaker 3: I was essentially her asked how he the comments about
Speaker 3: my jimetaria where it was pretty for man. I knew
Speaker 3: that he was one sexil. He's had many unstian I
Speaker 3: am not. He has a prohivision. In the state of Florida,
Speaker 3: it is not legal and numerous man has did.
Speaker 4: Haven't realized you're claiming something in the stats time, I am.
Speaker 4: I feel the right now.
Speaker 7: Explain I didn't.
Speaker 3: Why didn't you haven't been able to explay not on
Speaker 3: So they explained it because I do not have to
Speaker 3: explain myself.
Speaker 7: Do if in your self defense?
Speaker 6: Remember what Tasha told police Gene, a man who had
Speaker 6: also been raped, beaten, and hospitalized by Dave. Without this
Speaker 6: rumor from Tasha, Chris's self defense could have been viewed
Speaker 6: as pure fiction, the ramblings of a crazy person, something
Speaker 6: the voices in his head told him to say. But
Speaker 6: maybe there was some truth to all this. Maybe this
Speaker 6: time Dave had tried to rape him.
Speaker 7: You said you can yourselfing, would you asked you a questions?
Speaker 7: If you're to answer, you put yourself on the shore?
Speaker 3: Why don't you ask him how many people he's raped him?
Speaker 3: And how many people he's murdered? Okay, well what does
Speaker 3: that look me look like? What does that make, especially
Speaker 3: rape and murder myself? Doesn't I use somebody else?
Speaker 4: How many?
Speaker 7: Just because they did that to someone else?
Speaker 3: Is?
Speaker 4: Why didn't you bring him to justice? I always known
Speaker 4: the person of jurisdiction. I don't were you born in Florida?
Speaker 1: I don't know who care?
Speaker 4: I mean, that's a good that's.
Speaker 7: A good start with Dave slipped through the cracks.
Speaker 1: It happened.
Speaker 3: How many other people are twenty five years of cracks? Yes, hey,
Speaker 3: he's looking at his system is not perfect, and I
Speaker 3: agree with that system is not perfect. But you're blaming
Speaker 3: self defense in all the askers. I don't want to
Speaker 3: claim anything. I mean, I'm going to be incriminated either
Speaker 3: way by you to particularize other's here as very different. Yes, okay,
Speaker 3: I didn't realize he's dead. I didn't realize anything about it.
Speaker 17: Man.
Speaker 3: I just feel a little defend myself and other people
Speaker 3: you equally, as my sales out of your life would
Speaker 3: have been threat this little moment.
Speaker 6: Chris had slipped through the cracks when it came to
Speaker 6: his mental health, he should have been institutionalized or at
Speaker 6: least seeing a psychiatrist, given a couple of pills or something.
Speaker 6: But Dave slipped through the cracks when it came to
Speaker 6: his sexual crimes, and Chris was angry. Maybe he wasn't
Speaker 6: just a crazy man yelling at the moon for no reason.
Speaker 6: Maybe he knew something about the man he killed that
Speaker 6: justified his actions.
Speaker 1: Have given you a chance to.
Speaker 4: Put the sword on the other foot. That's my advice
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 18: Well.
Speaker 1: I can't. I didn't.
Speaker 7: I don't live your life.
Speaker 4: I didn't.
Speaker 7: I didn't know that is I didn't live that.
Speaker 1: Okay, you do.
Speaker 4: What is your question that will help you disposed clarify?
Speaker 7: He did not consider it I murdering.
Speaker 3: Need for this a true I was not premedicated or
Speaker 3: soul impulsive would have been like an actor. You know
Speaker 3: what a credible credible threat is. It only requires a
Speaker 3: criminal content for it. Yes, an aggravated assault or a felony. Right,
Speaker 3: and once he saw you running after swords, he didn't
Speaker 3: have this or you don't know what they know.
Speaker 1: We've got statements from them.
Speaker 9: They saw you running after him with Okay, well there
Speaker 9: is the aggressor why were you after.
Speaker 1: Him the sword?
Speaker 7: After this? Where did that?
Speaker 4: I took it back?
Speaker 7: Where did that happen?
Speaker 4: And then he took it back? Actually when I took
Speaker 4: it back and then I gave.
Speaker 19: It to him.
Speaker 6: But the detective needed to decipher the facts based on
Speaker 6: the physical evidence. The evidence was a dead man slaughtered
Speaker 6: by sword and an assailant with a giant defensive wound
Speaker 6: on his hand.
Speaker 7: You said he fell on his sword. He had the sword.
Speaker 3: I gave it to him, okay, when I said, look,
Speaker 3: he's not going to ease it on me and you
Speaker 3: or here, and I'll turn my back on him and West.
Speaker 3: I don't know if he ran after me or what.
Speaker 3: I don't know what happened. See, That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: Hope.
Speaker 4: You know your journal and when someone when your.
Speaker 7: Life is threatened.
Speaker 3: You're going to react, but you don't remember exactly late
Speaker 3: how you do what you do, but you're alive, makes
Speaker 3: you're fighting for your life.
Speaker 6: How annoying is this guy? I mean, why why?
Speaker 7: Why?
Speaker 6: Why is he out on the street? Oh yeah, Karen,
Speaker 6: and are virtue signaling out of sight, out of mind?
Speaker 7: Ain't that right?
Speaker 6: Karen?
Speaker 4: I'm not gonna be murdered in my sleep by then?
Speaker 1: How are you?
Speaker 7: How are you fighting for your life?
Speaker 4: But where I just told you a lot?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm consistently when i'm when I get stressed out,
Speaker 3: I began to wait internally because all an injury happened
Speaker 3: twenty two or three years ago. I was swept all
Speaker 3: light mean and told and you're clausing it to hemorrhoids
Speaker 3: and it's internally building.
Speaker 4: Now, that's not good.
Speaker 6: This guy thinks his hemorrhoids were caused by lightning. Lightning.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying that you're you're you're in a miscondo.
Speaker 1: You're talking.
Speaker 3: You don't understand, you're in your handhead by baba intent.
Speaker 3: That is criminal And it wasn't ill will against me
Speaker 3: because what it have to do, I wasn't what could
Speaker 3: be exactly do your appear anything and everything he could
Speaker 3: to suade me from other than a heterosexual being a homosexual.
Speaker 4: Body or ing whage the things.
Speaker 3: He didn't walk out, and he's exposes in Italian you're
Speaker 3: anate right in front of me. I want to ask please,
Speaker 3: as many times I ask him, he never respected. West
Speaker 3: said that please do not wear we wall. I expose
Speaker 3: you're urinate.
Speaker 4: He does. If I'll never respect anything in.
Speaker 7: The woods, right, you go deeper in the woods.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't obsess myself with any kind of sensaire de man,
Speaker 3: especially when it this is Thomas sense at.
Speaker 6: How passive is this cop? Yeah, I know I'm bitching
Speaker 6: a lot, but my God slapped the cuffs on him already.
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm all for due process and it's off defense.
Speaker 6: But perhaps maybe mister Garrison here is better suited for
Speaker 6: a career track in botany rather than law enforcement. I mean, Jesus, man,
Speaker 6: grow some assertiveness. This unassertive detective was not going to
Speaker 6: get a straight answer about anything, not mumbling the way
Speaker 6: he was anyway. Chris said that Dave had tried to
Speaker 6: rape him and was making sexual remarks, but the truth
Speaker 6: about how the sword was passed between these two men
Speaker 6: was unclear, and without a witness we saw every inch
Speaker 6: of that murder, there was no real way to figure
Speaker 6: out what exactly happened. Then Chris said this about Dave,
Speaker 6: which mirrored exactly what Tasha had told the detectives. She
Speaker 6: and other women felt, I know, and okay.
Speaker 3: You ever feel when you when you can turn her
Speaker 3: back on someone because they feel like they're looking over
Speaker 3: your should or a girl they.
Speaker 4: Want that sport, you can feel her that stuff.
Speaker 7: That's what's going on.
Speaker 14: My role by one of the people of that when
Speaker 14: women see him, they may they are on the back
Speaker 14: of your neck, stand.
Speaker 7: Out there, okay, And that's when you want to back away.
Speaker 7: And so that's why I never spoke.
Speaker 3: When he swung the swords, and I don't know what
Speaker 3: happen because the sword's air in.
Speaker 4: My hand.
Speaker 9: How do you get the sword? You already said that
Speaker 9: you took it back from him. You said he swung
Speaker 9: at you.
Speaker 3: So when someone's trying to kill you, you're adrenaline doesn't
Speaker 3: allow you to decipher every critical fact.
Speaker 1: But they never got confused.
Speaker 9: You never ate the sword, give my sword, you said
Speaker 9: you didn't you said, you tried to give it to him,
Speaker 9: and then you took it back, and then from that
Speaker 9: point on you've never said that you gave me back
Speaker 9: the sword.
Speaker 4: I'm not trying to complicate this, it's simple.
Speaker 9: Would just be truthful, That's all I asked. Be truthful,
Speaker 9: don't try it doesn't be competent. You got accept responsibility
Speaker 9: for your actions. You understand that you're a grown man.
Speaker 9: Now I'll defend him, I said, okay, how you have
Speaker 9: a sword? How are you defending yourself? It's your sword
Speaker 9: and running after him? We're running after him a sortance.
Speaker 4: I gave it back to him.
Speaker 6: Chris couldn't remember who had the sword first, or how
Speaker 6: it all unfolded. Maybe adrenaline and mental illness blurred all
Speaker 6: the details. His life had always been driven by fight
Speaker 6: or flight instincts. How could you really, I believe recount
Speaker 6: events when he lived each day assuming the world was
Speaker 6: against him. But what he did explain was that ever
Speaker 6: since Dave had started coming around the camp, he had
Speaker 6: been making sexual advances towards Chris, and then it finally
Speaker 6: hit a breaking point. The officer wanted to know why
Speaker 6: Chris didn't just pack up and leave his answer was simple.
Speaker 6: I was here first. He said, yes, Chris adlone Dave
Speaker 6: the sword. That much was true. But when they got
Speaker 6: in that scuffle down on the tracks, Dave swung at
Speaker 6: him with the blade and Chris lost it.
Speaker 3: I don't know whether it was the blade, his face
Speaker 3: or both. Look, once I was threatened, once he swung.
Speaker 4: At me, that was it. I knew they intended.
Speaker 7: It's oord. Where were you when he spent it?
Speaker 4: Further, I mean bet winging the tents, your name of
Speaker 4: my key?
Speaker 1: How did you get that to her attorney? Would you?
Speaker 6: But why why would Chris give someone who he deemed
Speaker 6: a sexual menace a sword? Was he ever really playing
Speaker 6: with a full deck?
Speaker 1: Little David?
Speaker 7: You have not told me to deal with you. You
Speaker 7: saving what justifications you've had to use a sword on?
Speaker 1: Say?
Speaker 4: You said don't anger? You will say that again? You
Speaker 4: were not there, so and I did not tell you
Speaker 4: that's what happened.
Speaker 7: So you all, I know he's dead. You know it's
Speaker 7: your sword, and you're injured.
Speaker 9: To clink the sword put you and you have David
Speaker 9: blood on, you have dag blood probably an atten.
Speaker 3: I don't ask to ask you a questions. I mean
Speaker 3: you're asking all these questions. I'm asking you one question
Speaker 3: you have. Are you a homosexual?
Speaker 7: Doesn't matter? Okay, that's what I hear.
Speaker 3: If you are, you know what, it doesn't matter to
Speaker 3: me these questions you ask me anymore, and I don't
Speaker 3: mean it in disrespect.
Speaker 1: Fine.
Speaker 4: If you wasn't answer yet, have nothing to say and
Speaker 4: I will not answer.
Speaker 3: I want my attorney, then paramouch and you're a detective Oliver, Yes, okay, I'm.
Speaker 7: Sending your pat you don't want you want to?
Speaker 4: Well, I can also have you take any custody.
Speaker 3: I told the United States Department of Justice and the
Speaker 3: United States Department of Defense. Wonder why this went on
Speaker 3: for twenty five years. Why they didn't serve I death
Speaker 3: wanted their self and execute him. I do not know,
Speaker 3: but I do not have to disclose and hit more
Speaker 3: information to you. Hold on, so you should respect that
Speaker 3: it because as a man, I respect you and your profession.
Speaker 1: Goodbye.
Speaker 6: This guy's got a real problem with gays anyway. Why
Speaker 6: does he talk like Eugene Porter from the Walking Debt?
Speaker 4: Take do you know what goodbye means?
Speaker 3: You still didn't answer, by I don't want to the
Speaker 3: Jurisdiction anymore, remove yourself from poll eas County fourth week.
Speaker 1: You think I'm a kidding.
Speaker 4: Were dismissed? Relieve have you said it a dozen times?
Speaker 7: Don't speak to.
Speaker 4: Me anymore.
Speaker 7: If you feel like.
Speaker 3: Talking again to rouse may aggravate me and cause internal
Speaker 3: bleeding again.
Speaker 7: Lead inside.
Speaker 4: I'm bleeding in the neck, end of chest now thanks
Speaker 4: to you the portrait cook.
Speaker 7: Do you understand plain English? If you understand, yes, No.
Speaker 1: People come to sleep.
Speaker 4: It happen to maly more job, we'll.
Speaker 7: Be putting a little bit more allowed it. I don't
Speaker 7: want to hurt you. Can you go in and you
Speaker 7: already did, can be moving any further? People, I don't
Speaker 7: want to hurt you, right, I'm serious.
Speaker 4: I don't want to hurt you.
Speaker 7: Be and leave and let her do her job.
Speaker 6: That's when Chris turned away and let the female officer
Speaker 6: put him in the squad car. He was done talking.
Speaker 6: He was done trying to explain what had happened. The
Speaker 6: stress had caused him quote unquote internal bleeding from his
Speaker 6: previous injuries. How exhausting are these nuts? I mean, I
Speaker 6: know how our audience just loves to be perceived as compassionate,
Speaker 6: But at what point are you willing to admit what
Speaker 6: a drain on society these people are. They provide nothing,
Speaker 6: not a single benefit whatsoever to society, yet they demand
Speaker 6: everything from it. It's just so insanely tiring. Crazy people
Speaker 6: can just they can just drive you crazy. You know,
Speaker 6: it's contagious. There isn't a lot of great data on
Speaker 6: homelessness and crime, but according to Devon from the Cistero Institute,
Speaker 6: AI is slowly helping us get there. If it were me,
Speaker 6: a simple avatar would do.
Speaker 7: All the work.
Speaker 6: Slap chop it, I say, but that's why I'm never
Speaker 6: getting elected anyway. Here's Devon arguing that statistics don't always
Speaker 6: match the cultural narrative.
Speaker 19: But in terms of heart data, the best we have
Speaker 19: is a report from San Diego District Attorney's office that
Speaker 19: did an analysis They re leased it two years ago
Speaker 19: on almost diess and crime, and they found that un
Speaker 19: sheltered homeless people to those people who were living on
Speaker 19: the street, were hundreds of times as likely to commit crimes.
Speaker 4: Like arson, robbery, etc.
Speaker 19: And they were dozens of is likely to be victims
Speaker 19: of similar crimes including homicide, sexual assault, robbery, etc. So
Speaker 19: what we're seeing is the case that you described. If
Speaker 19: two homeless people getting into a anti social spiral ultimately
Speaker 19: an interaction that led to one of them killing the other,
Speaker 19: that is the majority of the violence that we're seeing
Speaker 19: in homeless encampments. There's this rhetoric by activists that's, oh,
Speaker 19: people are coming into these humblest encampments and they're robbing
Speaker 19: them and taking advantage of them. Well, those people tend
Speaker 19: to be other homeless people.
Speaker 6: The narrative around homelessness has long been rooted in the
Speaker 6: idea that housing is a human right. What a dumb idea. Obviously,
Speaker 6: some karen came up with that. Who's never had to
Speaker 6: compete for limited resources? Somebody actually has to pay for it.
Speaker 6: Oh so I get to work twice as hard to
Speaker 6: subsidize someone else's generator based business arrangement. Okay, sure, but
Speaker 6: that better mean we put all these people in a
Speaker 6: locked facility and never let them out. I mean, would
Speaker 6: housing alone have helped someone like Dave or Chris? Giving
Speaker 6: Dave a bed wouldn't have stopped him from sexually assaulting people.
Speaker 6: Maybe a temporary shelter might have limited Chris's stockpile of
Speaker 6: weapons and kept it from growing into the unregulated arsenal
Speaker 6: it became, but both were deeply disturbed individuals, misfits with
Speaker 6: serious mental health issues. They needed more than a roof
Speaker 6: over their heads. Sure, others at the camp would have
Speaker 6: gladly taken housing, but are they representative of the unsheltered
Speaker 6: population at large. I mean, we don't really know. The
Speaker 6: data just isn't there. It's hard to track a population
Speaker 6: and constant motion, both by nature and by necessity or illness.
Speaker 6: Then there's the darker question no one actually wants to ask,
Speaker 6: do we even care that Dave was murdered? I'll be honest.
Speaker 6: I don't think I even need to be honest. You
Speaker 6: might actually be able to guess what I'm gonna say.
Speaker 6: The question is, will you be honest, Karen? How much
Speaker 6: do you actually care past the virtue signaling tweet or
Speaker 6: the dollar you handed to that stinky man outside the
Speaker 6: Starbucks so he'd leave you alone. Until the Karens of
Speaker 6: the world with the ability to vote start being honest
Speaker 6: with themselves, actual tangible solutions that don't involve rotating blades
Speaker 6: will continue to remain out of reach. Dave Beckett was
Speaker 6: anknown sexual predator with the public New was only the
Speaker 6: tip of a likely much uglier Iceberg. Did Chris, in
Speaker 6: his own twisted way, do society a favor. Don't you
Speaker 6: dare roll your eyes, Karen, because ultimately, whose job is
Speaker 6: it to manage adults who are incapable of managing themselves?
Speaker 6: Christ and Dave weren't just homeless. They were rejected by
Speaker 6: their families, shunned by their peers, even outcasts within the
Speaker 6: homeless community itself. The sad truth is that most people
Speaker 6: living on the streets aren't victims of circumstance. It's a
Speaker 6: great story to tell, and it keeps getting perpetuated by media,
Speaker 6: But those people put themselves there through their own actions.
Speaker 6: That may not be true all over the world, but
Speaker 6: here in America, the land of opportunity, you have no
Speaker 6: excuse for ending up homeless unless you want to, not
Speaker 6: permanently anyway. That's just an uncomfortable fact that Karens who
Speaker 6: want to feel good about being lazy and shitty to
Speaker 6: everyone around them refuse to accept. Why demand accountability when
Speaker 6: you can just virtue signal feel good about yourself. The
Speaker 6: humans in this camp and many others like it, were
Speaker 6: pushed so far to the margins. The only people left
Speaker 6: to deal with them were each other, and this time
Speaker 6: it ended in murder. So the question lnkers, if society
Speaker 6: had stepped in sooner, not just with housing, but with
Speaker 6: real accountability instead of virtue signaling, would Dave still be alive?
Speaker 6: I think you probably already know the answer to that. Well,
Speaker 6: I'm going to get a lot of hate mail this week.
Speaker 6: It's a good thing. I don't read any of it.
Speaker 6: As a matter of fact. Why do I even have
Speaker 6: an email address? Haven't gotten anything other than Nigerian scammers
Speaker 6: and carts for the last ten years. Way that's gonna
Speaker 6: do it for another one of these silly murder shows
Speaker 6: you guys seem to love for some reason. I hope
Speaker 6: you enjoyed that one. We'll be back before you know it,
Speaker 6: probably over the weekend with another one. They just keep happening, folks.
Speaker 6: People are shit. Speaking of which, head on over to
Speaker 6: our store to support us if you want to. We've
Speaker 6: got some people are shit merch which we can't advertise
Speaker 6: on YouTube because that's a dirty word, and all kinds
Speaker 6: of other stuff. Go check out store dot swordscale dot
Speaker 6: com if you haven't signed up for plus. That's where
Speaker 6: you get all the goodies, extra episodes, commercial free, lots
Speaker 6: of good stuff in there, so go check that out
Speaker 6: at Swordinscale dot com and download our iOS or Android app.
Speaker 6: We've made lots and lots of improvements. It's way better,
Speaker 6: much more stable, got a lot more features in there,
Speaker 6: so check it out if you haven't in a while.
Speaker 6: And I think that's gonna do it. That's my sales pitch.
Speaker 6: Thanks again for joining us, Thanks for being a plus member.
Speaker 6: If you are, we love you guys. Well, I don't
Speaker 6: love anyone other than myself because I'm a narcissist.
Speaker 7: But you know what I mean.
Speaker 6: I appreciate you so just our staff. Oh I almost forgot.
Speaker 6: This episode was written by Miss Barbara Way, one of
Speaker 6: our producers here that's been with us for a long time.
Speaker 6: She's great. That's gonna do it. Thanks again. Until next time,
Speaker 6: stay safe and stay out of the homeless camps.
Speaker 1: B