Speaker 1: Astonishing Legends Network Disclaimer. This episode includes the usual amount
Speaker 1: of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect
Speaker 1: around here, but in the event it becomes an unusual amount,
Speaker 1: expect another call from me.
Speaker 2: Hey, everybody, welcome back to Scaret all the time. I'm
Speaker 2: Chris Klari and I'm ed for Cola, And this week
Speaker 2: we are talking about the monster that lurks at the
Speaker 2: very heart of our society. It's a creature that we
Speaker 2: actually designed to serve us, to ensure a fragile peace
Speaker 2: between neighbors and strangers, friends and enemies, the rich and
Speaker 2: the poor, the weak and the powerful. We carefully crafted
Speaker 2: this creature to punish the guilty. But the truth is
Speaker 2: it is flawed. It's easily manipulated and capable of visiting
Speaker 2: immense violence upon the innocent. This brute is not the
Speaker 2: kind of horror that we usually discuss on this show.
Speaker 3: Is it a RoboCop kind of It is a cop
Speaker 3: in some ways.
Speaker 2: It is not a demon or a ghoul, or a
Speaker 2: zombie or a werewolf, or a drug or an accident
Speaker 2: that can tear you limb from limb. It is something
Speaker 2: that we call the justice system. Oh dread insert law
Speaker 2: and order sound here. No way.
Speaker 3: That's really a lot of money, and it.
Speaker 2: Is capable of thrusting almost anyone into a Kafka esque
Speaker 2: nightmare from which there is no escape, because the justice
Speaker 2: system is not always just. Sometimes you wake up and
Speaker 2: someone you've never met has decided that you are a criminal.
Speaker 2: By lunchtime, there's a detective at your door, By Friday,
Speaker 2: your face is on the news, and by next year
Speaker 2: you are in a cage or an electric chair. And
Speaker 2: that is what we're talking about today, the slow motion
Speaker 2: nightmare of being innocent and being told over and over
Speaker 2: and over and over by the people who hold your
Speaker 2: very life and freedom in their hands that you are guilty.
Speaker 2: What are we screwed? When are we? All? The time? Now?
Speaker 2: Which is time for time? Before we start, I just
Speaker 2: want to take a quick second to say, if you
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Speaker 2: show exists because of you, the listener, and we try
Speaker 2: to involve you as much as we can. So we
Speaker 2: thank you, and with that, it's time to start the show.
Speaker 2: All right. So, as far as fears that we've discussed
Speaker 2: on this show, I would say this one is probably
Speaker 2: the one that I've had the most genuine nightmares about.
Speaker 3: I'm having nightmares about you bank in your hand on
Speaker 3: the table and that being in the recording.
Speaker 2: But will you have a nightmare about.
Speaker 3: Being wrong, like like being wrongfully accused or whatever the
Speaker 3: word we're gonna ultimately decide on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's by the time this comes out, we'll
Speaker 2: have decided if we're calling this episode wrongfully accused, falsely accused,
Speaker 2: false imprisonment. There's a couple. I don't know which one
Speaker 2: is best for the SEO, but yes, I don't know
Speaker 2: if it's my general anxiety surrounding life or what. But
Speaker 2: I cannot tell you how many times I have woken
Speaker 2: up I well, I guess the cliche would be in
Speaker 2: a cold sweat. I don't know that I've ever woken
Speaker 2: up in a cold sweat, actually, but I've woken up
Speaker 2: for sure convinced that I was about to spend the
Speaker 2: rest of my life in prison for something that I
Speaker 2: didn't do.
Speaker 3: It sounds like you might have done something I don't
Speaker 3: that you don't remember.
Speaker 2: Maybe I don't know. I don't have that dream. My
Speaker 2: nightmares never cover the details. But I know in my
Speaker 2: nightmares that I've been booked for murders, hit and runs,
Speaker 2: bank robberies, and a bombing that I didn't commit. Sure,
Speaker 2: I've also had dreams of being hauled in the court
Speaker 2: for stuff that's not an actual crime. Like I have
Speaker 2: a faint, fuzzy memory of a dream that I had
Speaker 2: where I was trying to draw something and I used
Speaker 2: the wrong color, and because I used the wrong color,
Speaker 2: I had to go on the run because I was
Speaker 2: going to get like put in jail. I don't remember
Speaker 2: when I had this dream. I just it's a faint memory.
Speaker 2: And I'm pretty sure this didn't actually happen. I don't
Speaker 2: think I ever had any the state, because I drew
Speaker 2: in red and not green. I guess that's not so
Speaker 2: much a nightmare about a false accusation as it is
Speaker 2: maybe a nightmare about a stupid law.
Speaker 3: But whatever.
Speaker 2: I also think maybe maybe my family I don't know.
Speaker 2: My youngest sister shout out Rachel, no, not a criminal,
Speaker 2: but she shares this fear with me. I don't know
Speaker 2: if maybe one of us had it first and passed
Speaker 2: it to the other, or if we just have the
Speaker 2: same Catholic guilt that follows us around. Like you know,
Speaker 2: I do think in general most days of my life
Speaker 2: I have a voice in the back of my head.
Speaker 2: It's like, well, you, you obviously fucked something up. It's
Speaker 2: not I never had this problem. I mean, I have
Speaker 2: a guilty vulture looming over your shoulder.
Speaker 3: The only dreams I have have discussed this, not on
Speaker 3: the show, but in our lives. The only dreams I
Speaker 3: have in our anxiety dreams. You do have the anxiety,
Speaker 3: and I only dream if I'm dreaming, it's an anxiety dream. Yeap,
Speaker 3: Like that's crazy, but that's the truth. But The anxieties
Speaker 3: in the dream are never that I've been wrong fully.
Speaker 2: Accused of anything, right.
Speaker 3: The anxieties are usually very parallel, even if they're metaphors
Speaker 3: in the dream, they're all very parallel things going on
Speaker 3: in my life at that moment.
Speaker 2: Would you like to tell the listeners about the anxiety
Speaker 2: dream that you had last night? About the sinister test.
Speaker 3: I don't know what that was about, And I don't
Speaker 3: know if it was because I knew we were recording
Speaker 3: and I couldn't fall asleep last night and I kept
Speaker 3: waking up every hour, So I don't know if I
Speaker 3: was worried that I was going to be we're record
Speaker 3: we're drinking coffees in this like we're recording this late
Speaker 3: thirty in the morning.
Speaker 2: But h we were out all night with Sarge from
Speaker 2: Crypto Cocktail. Shout out to Cocktail, David Sarge.
Speaker 3: And the dream I had is it we needed to
Speaker 3: rent a school, a classroom in a school, like a
Speaker 3: dirty old school in Boston, and you in it. They
Speaker 3: were going to charge us ten dollars a day, and
Speaker 3: you were fighting them on that rate. But we needed
Speaker 3: the classroom and presumably some students because Chris wanted to
Speaker 3: conduct a test called the sinister test.
Speaker 2: Which I think you're feeling guilty for things you're doing
Speaker 2: my dream. Maybe I don't know what well, I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know what the sinister test could possibly be.
Speaker 3: I know it was like a multiple choice bubble test
Speaker 3: or like they had. It was like a standardized test,
Speaker 3: and you were explaining it to the woman.
Speaker 2: But the woman and who's the woman? Just some woman
Speaker 2: who's like administrator there. She owns the dirty school.
Speaker 3: She owned the dirty school.
Speaker 2: And she kept being I didn't have a shirt on,
Speaker 2: and I wasn't. I was in better shape in this
Speaker 2: dream than.
Speaker 3: I have now, and but she was like, I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: I can't. Your friend has no shirt on, and I said,
Speaker 3: we were running late.
Speaker 4: She said that to me, Yes, you don't have a
Speaker 4: but I was just there and I had you had
Speaker 4: a shirt on, okay, And then she you kept trying
Speaker 4: to explain the sinister test to her, and then she
Speaker 4: was like, I'm sorry, I'm very distracted.
Speaker 3: And then she's like, you need to have a shirt
Speaker 3: on in the school around children, And then I was
Speaker 3: like I didn't. I said we were running late because
Speaker 3: we started the dream in a hotel. We had well,
Speaker 3: we're not. We're not living in this city at that time.
Speaker 3: We had to come here to conduct this test for
Speaker 3: the pod. Yeah, and she said they had a loss
Speaker 3: and found and she gave me a wife beater and
Speaker 3: I was like, okay, thanks.
Speaker 2: So you're looking sick jacked wife beater. Yeah, and you're
Speaker 2: trying to test children.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you're like holding a stack of standardized tests
Speaker 3: that say sinister test. And to this to this day,
Speaker 3: it happened hours ago I was sleeping. Yeah, but to
Speaker 3: this day, I don't know what the sinister test.
Speaker 2: Was, but it certainly wasn't anything that we were going
Speaker 2: to go to jail for. Yeah, well, good, well, maybe
Speaker 2: we get to the end of the trip.
Speaker 3: They were open to every request you made, was you
Speaker 3: had a ten dollar fees.
Speaker 2: I think I think we might need to fun We
Speaker 2: might need to actually if we were doing the sinister
Speaker 2: test for the podcast, we might need to actually invent
Speaker 2: the sinister test and do it for the podcast. But
Speaker 2: I also think I partially have to blame I think
Speaker 2: maybe Hitchcock Movies for my fear of being wrongfully accused. Okay,
Speaker 2: he's probably to thing for a lot of people's fears
Speaker 2: about a lot of things, but Hitchcock famously loved the
Speaker 2: wrong Man trope. At least I was trying to think
Speaker 2: when I was getting ready for the show. At least
Speaker 2: three of his movies that I can think of off
Speaker 2: the top of my head, The Thirty nine Steps, about
Speaker 2: a guy accused of being a spy and on the run,
Speaker 2: the wrong man. Henry Fonda, innocent. Henry Fond is one
Speaker 2: of the all time great actors, so good, and I
Speaker 2: forget if it was Rob.
Speaker 3: I don't like his kid, but I think he's great.
Speaker 2: Jane Fonda. I was thinking the Boy One, Oh, who's
Speaker 2: the Wait, who's the boy one? Exactly? Oh? What did
Speaker 2: he do?
Speaker 3: A million things? Easy rider?
Speaker 2: Oh wait? Why is it hard to remember his? Fucking
Speaker 2: one of most famous actors of all time? I'm thinking
Speaker 2: of Dennis Hopper. He was also in that Peter Fund
Speaker 2: Peter Fond, Yeah, out of Peter like early morning, eight
Speaker 2: thirty coffees. I was gonna cut all of us, you know,
Speaker 2: figuring it out. But no, I I love, love, love,
Speaker 2: love Henry Fond. I do not care for Peter Fonda.
Speaker 2: Is just his performances or not. So nothing he actually did,
Speaker 2: couldn't tell you.
Speaker 3: What he did or anything like that. I just think that,
Speaker 3: like I never was really into him, Like I don't
Speaker 3: like easy Writer.
Speaker 2: I don't like it.
Speaker 3: Just he would show up and stuff, and I'm.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, I don't like easy Ryan. It's fine. It's
Speaker 2: of the time kind of. It's it's the same way
Speaker 2: that like I think kids, you know, forty years from now,
Speaker 2: are gonna be like, the fuck is spring Breakers? I
Speaker 2: hate this man, Like, I feel like there's a similar
Speaker 2: that now counter culture coolness anyway, Third nine Steps wrong
Speaker 2: Man north By Northwest? Sure, and there's one other, is it? Maybe?
Speaker 2: Is it the one that's Man who Knew too Much?
Speaker 2: The Man who Knew too Much? Yeah, has got to be.
Speaker 2: Although I can't remember what that movie's about, but the
Speaker 2: title certainly in it, and Saboteur, I'm pretty sure is
Speaker 2: a guy who a boat gets blown up in a harbor.
Speaker 2: That movie is amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm thinking of Lifeboat.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's also There's no wrong anyway. He also
Speaker 2: had a whole run of films in the UK before
Speaker 2: he came to America, so it's possible there's even more.
Speaker 2: But I've always found it interesting that he was so
Speaker 2: so Hitchcock passed his fear of false imprisonment onto the
Speaker 2: world because when he was a kid he told the
Speaker 2: story I think too in the interviews with Trifoe, I
Speaker 2: have that book over there. Yeah, didn't read it obviously,
Speaker 2: and who knows if it's true or not, because he
Speaker 2: was he was a storyteller. But he says that when
Speaker 2: he was like around five years old, he did something
Speaker 2: wrong and can't remember what it was, or maybe I
Speaker 2: can't remember what it was, but he did something wrong
Speaker 2: and his dad sent him to the local police station
Speaker 2: with a note pinned to his clothes that said to
Speaker 2: put him in a jail cell and tell him this
Speaker 2: is what we do to naughty boys.
Speaker 3: And oh my god, that that's the sinister test.
Speaker 2: And hitch said that it left him with a lifelong
Speaker 2: fear of police and prisons.
Speaker 3: I stole a piece of beef turkey when I was
Speaker 3: a child at a at a place I won't name
Speaker 3: now in case there's a statute.
Speaker 2: Of limitations on. I think, like I think.
Speaker 3: And my dad when we got in the car, was like,
Speaker 3: we're doing that beef jerkey and I was like, I
Speaker 3: had it, And I obviously didn't have any beef turkey,
Speaker 3: and I remember he said some ship that was like
Speaker 3: He's like, we can go back in there and I
Speaker 3: can do the whole thing where it's like my son
Speaker 3: took this and blah blah blah and embarrass you. He's like,
Speaker 3: or I can just tell you that, like stealing is
Speaker 3: what shitty people do, and we're not shitty people, so
Speaker 3: don't fucking do it again. And and I was real
Speaker 3: young and not saying that I never heard swears before,
Speaker 3: but I never heard swears directed at me that weren't
Speaker 3: in like anger, Like of course, yeah, we're three rambunctious
Speaker 3: asshole kids. We've heard swears, but I'm saying I've never
Speaker 3: heard it like directed at me in such a way.
Speaker 2: This is a real it was a more disappointed yeah.
Speaker 2: So it was a core memory for me. And I
Speaker 2: didn't steal beep jerky ever.
Speaker 3: Again. I was like, real, real little yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean that's actually I mean sort of some people
Speaker 2: have called what Hitch's dad did sort of abusive. I think,
Speaker 2: I mean this would have been what nineteen tens, working
Speaker 2: class London. I feel like, as far as punishments of
Speaker 2: that erago, this was probably on the on the less
Speaker 2: abusive side.
Speaker 3: Of things, and his dad knew how to write, so
Speaker 3: they were okay, step ahead.
Speaker 2: We're going to get back to early nineteen hundreds England
Speaker 2: by the end of this episode. And boy, oh boy,
Speaker 2: what a what a terrible place and time. But when
Speaker 2: most people our age, this is where I want to start.
Speaker 2: When most people our Age hear the phrase falsely accused,
Speaker 2: wrongly accused, their brain probably goes to the most high
Speaker 2: profile wrong man or in this case, woman case in
Speaker 2: recent history, which is the story of Amanda Knox. We are.
Speaker 2: That's not where my brain went. But when you said
Speaker 2: the name, you thought Jeffrey Epstein, no more innocent man.
Speaker 3: No, when you said man in Knox, now it came
Speaker 3: rushing back. But that was not top of mind at all.
Speaker 2: What was top of mind for you? I guess I
Speaker 2: should have.
Speaker 3: Felt like I was gonna be put in a fucking
Speaker 3: Lizzie Bordon situation. I thought you were going to ask me,
Speaker 3: what do you think? And I was racking my brain,
Speaker 3: like wrongfully accused?
Speaker 2: Was that the.
Speaker 3: Leslie Nielsen fucking parody movie of the Fugitive? Like I
Speaker 3: was trying to think of what people our age would
Speaker 3: think of for wrongfully accused. But I guess the Central
Speaker 3: Park five, you know, popped in my head.
Speaker 2: Yeah, first I had them on the list that that
Speaker 2: case was awful and fraught with much tension. Yeah, we
Speaker 2: didn't want to get into that. I felt like a
Speaker 2: man in Knox is a good place to start. It's
Speaker 2: a good anchor point for a lot in Italy, lady
Speaker 2: who was in Italy. Yeah, and we're not going to
Speaker 2: take an exhaustive look at this case because a million
Speaker 2: people already have. But I think we would be committing
Speaker 2: a crime of podcasting to it, not at least to
Speaker 2: at least we have to touch on it to start
Speaker 2: this episode. So for anyone who wasn't paying attention, or
Speaker 2: possibly me like ed or this was long enough ago
Speaker 2: at this point that maybe some of our listeners were
Speaker 2: maybe not even born when this happened. On November one,
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven, in Perugia, Perugia, Italy, a twenty
Speaker 2: one year old British exchange student named Meredith Kercher was
Speaker 2: found murdered in the apartment that she shared with three
Speaker 2: other young women. Her throat was slashed and she'd been
Speaker 2: sexually assaulted, and all of Italy was scandalized. Within days,
Speaker 2: two things happened in parallel. First, the actual forensic evidence,
Speaker 2: which included bloody handprints, DNA and footprints, all pointed to
Speaker 2: a guy named Rudy Guede who had been arrested recently
Speaker 2: for burglaries in the town of Perusia. I would even
Speaker 2: say that the evidence pointing to him is a bit
Speaker 2: of an understatement. His ship was all over the place
Speaker 2: in this house. It was the Rudy gued show. On
Speaker 2: the walls, on the floor, he wrote, Rudy wrote here.
Speaker 2: But as the cops started investigating and crawling the crime scene,
Speaker 2: Kircher's American roommate, who at the time was a twenty
Speaker 2: year old Amanda Knox, was outside the house and she
Speaker 2: started acting strangely. She was spotted kissing her boyfriend, doing cartwheels,
Speaker 2: and practicing yoga outside while she waited for the cops
Speaker 2: to follow This act of crime. Sin yeah, and not
Speaker 2: things you do when your roommate's been murdered. Yeh, brtally
Speaker 2: murdered and you're just hanging out outside.
Speaker 3: This isn't fucking banaru no.
Speaker 2: You know of the one of the things that I'm
Speaker 2: sure other people have looked into that I didn't feel
Speaker 2: was super pertinent. Here is what her explanation was for
Speaker 2: doing all of these things. Drugs probably drug probably being young, nervous,
Speaker 2: scared whatever. People. As we'll see throughout this episode, sometimes
Speaker 2: people act in ways that you don't expect them to
Speaker 2: act in bad situations. So her position as an American
Speaker 2: outsider acting weird is enough for Italian police to pull
Speaker 2: her in for an interrogation. Although much like points to interrogation,
Speaker 2: here is an understatement. This was morkin to torture. It
Speaker 2: was fifty hours across five days. They interrogated her in Italian,
Speaker 2: which she didn't speak, or she barely spoke. She had
Speaker 2: no lawyer, and the cops repeatedly slapped her and told
Speaker 2: her that after every answer that she was lying. They
Speaker 2: slapped her physically physically slapped her. Dude. Years later, the
Speaker 2: European Court of Human Rights ruled why they lost the war.
Speaker 2: They ruled that their behavior was so abusive that the
Speaker 2: country of Italy had to pay Amanda damages. I would
Speaker 2: I would demand it, especially since America. Baby, what do
Speaker 2: you mean?
Speaker 3: I'm just feels like shit gets resolved or shit gets
Speaker 3: escalated when there's an American involved in an international crime
Speaker 3: or thing, either we get the hostages back or we
Speaker 3: come for something after.
Speaker 2: Usually tends to be.
Speaker 3: It's like when you have a dual citizenship, seems to
Speaker 3: be from multiple people I've spoken to outside of our country,
Speaker 3: you're gonna want that American embassy when shit goes down.
Speaker 3: What I'm saying is slapping around the American is probably
Speaker 3: not a good look for the country.
Speaker 2: And I don't know, you know, it doesn't seem like
Speaker 2: America swooped in at any point to be like we
Speaker 2: you know, like they were playing by Italy's rules this
Speaker 2: whole time.
Speaker 3: Yes, Nor is this a hostage situation or something with
Speaker 3: a steep department and get involved. It's a local fucking crime. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm just saying that, when this becomes news, you've slapped
Speaker 3: the wrong unfortunately nationality, because we have a very large
Speaker 3: global media circus that we bring.
Speaker 2: Everywhere we go.
Speaker 3: Yes, and that is part of what and then a
Speaker 3: bunch of dick swinging as just being America tends to be.
Speaker 2: Although in this case, the American media circus I think
Speaker 2: did not help. No, I'm not saying it helped.
Speaker 3: Media circus has rarely helped all right, God blast Princess Diana.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying that, like America is just such a
Speaker 3: fucking elbows out bully, that it's like pick and shoes
Speaker 3: and you're gonna beat up for fifty hours, right.
Speaker 2: I think I should also maybe pause here while we're
Speaker 2: off on a bit of a tangent to say that
Speaker 2: forced confessions might be their own fear, because how many
Speaker 2: Netflix stocko maatches are gonna watch where that happens. I mean,
Speaker 2: and again I would I think under duress. I know
Speaker 2: this is hard for people to wrap their head around.
Speaker 2: And maybe this is my Catholic guilt speaking again, but
Speaker 2: I think if I were in a situation because again
Speaker 2: this is an anxiety I've had being falsely accused, and
Speaker 2: I've imagined this like I think, if you if the
Speaker 2: state were high and scary and weird enough, and you
Speaker 2: brought me into a room and told me for hours
Speaker 2: and hours and hours, if not days, that I was
Speaker 2: definitely guilty of something. I don't know that I would
Speaker 2: like be brainwashed and convinced that I was, but I
Speaker 2: do feel like I would start to feel like, well,
Speaker 2: I must have done something.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's why I black out, did I torture
Speaker 3: could fetch off somewhat because if I feel like if.
Speaker 2: Well, not even torture.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying that there's a reason you can't, right,
Speaker 3: because you'll be like, oh, you're gonna stop slapping me
Speaker 3: if I say I did it, fine, I did.
Speaker 2: It right, right, and not even physically torture, but just
Speaker 2: like you know, if they berate you enough and and
Speaker 2: you know, tear into you enough, like I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe it means I'm weak willed or I don't know,
Speaker 2: but I could see myself after a long enough brutal
Speaker 2: enough interrogation being like, yeah, I guess, I guess I
Speaker 2: did do it. But anyway, that is why one of
Speaker 2: our scared all the time rules is always ask for
Speaker 2: a lawyer. You've got to ask for that lawyer, got
Speaker 2: to get that as a lawyer. We'll get to that
Speaker 2: in a second. All right, guys, Well, you know how
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Speaker 2: at takelean dot com. So I'm I'm not a legal
Speaker 2: expert here, a legal eagle, but I'm pretty sure any
Speaker 2: country with a common law Western style justice system has
Speaker 2: to allow you to have a lawyer before you answer
Speaker 2: any question. So if you're ever traveling, go into the
Speaker 2: country as an American citizen. As Ed said, I would
Speaker 2: also say, learn the word for bathroom and learn the
Speaker 2: word for defense attorney, because if you need one, you
Speaker 2: need to be able to ask for one. Just because
Speaker 2: you ask for a answered interpreter, well that too, But
Speaker 2: just because you ask for one also doesn't mean the cops.
Speaker 2: I mean they don't always let you get one easily
Speaker 2: in the States, yeah, and doesn't mean they'll let you
Speaker 2: get one easily overseas. In Amanda's case, part of the
Speaker 2: issue here was that she was never even informed that
Speaker 2: she was a suspect. She was just told we want
Speaker 2: to talk. And I'm sure at some point in the
Speaker 2: fifty hours and five days of me Terrys feel like
Speaker 2: she probably figured like, ooh, I but the police, because
Speaker 2: the police never just want to talk, and that's when
Speaker 2: when she picked up.
Speaker 3: Was it like the night of No, that's a good question,
Speaker 3: because it's not there's sexual assault stuff.
Speaker 2: There's a bunch of shit.
Speaker 3: It feels like you're not gonna maybe get from just
Speaker 3: looking in the room at that moment.
Speaker 2: I mean it was soon. It was soon after they investigated,
Speaker 2: after they like did the after they investigated the crime scene,
Speaker 2: they talked, They brought her in to talk to her. Well,
Speaker 2: the police never just want to talk. And that's and
Speaker 2: that's one of the reasons. And I'm genuinely not being
Speaker 2: political here, but I would implore anybody, uh with children,
Speaker 2: don't teach your kids to blindly trust cops. It's not
Speaker 2: that they're all out to get you, but to assume,
Speaker 2: I think we've all seen enough Netflix documentaries that to
Speaker 2: assume that you're safe because you're innocent is a bad idea. Well,
Speaker 2: I always ask.
Speaker 3: For a lawyer, Okay, you mean blindly trust cops when
Speaker 3: they've brought you in.
Speaker 2: Well or even if even if I think there's even
Speaker 2: before they bring you in, even when they come knock
Speaker 2: on the door, if like if if a cop came
Speaker 2: and knocked on my door.
Speaker 3: Okay, in this situation, this is a cop is talking
Speaker 3: to you. Yeah, Okay, I mean, they're I don't necessarily
Speaker 3: agree with the don't blindly trust cops blanket statement West
Speaker 3: cops to have my best interest necessarily in mind if
Speaker 3: I've been accused or thought to have been accused of something.
Speaker 2: But what I'm saying is, you don't even need but
Speaker 2: I am.
Speaker 3: Gonna I have a healthy respect for cops in the
Speaker 3: sense that I don't want any trouble.
Speaker 2: Well, respect in not wanting trouble is one thing, But
Speaker 2: I'm saying, like the way that I think a lot
Speaker 2: of people get in trouble is a cop comes to
Speaker 2: your door, a crime has been committed. You may not
Speaker 2: even know a crime's been committed, and they say, hey,
Speaker 2: can we ask you a couple questions about something? Immediately
Speaker 2: right there? And this is why it.
Speaker 3: Just happened here I have video footage of it. Somebody
Speaker 3: broke into the house behind my house. The guy jumped
Speaker 3: over and ran through our thing, and the cops came
Speaker 3: to my door and they were like, you have a
Speaker 3: ring camera?
Speaker 2: Is it cool if we look through you?
Speaker 3: Like? Can I see it? What if anyone ran by?
Speaker 2: Sure? And I wasn't like, let me call my lawyer
Speaker 2: or prove to me. Someone ran by He no, no, no,
Speaker 2: I know, I know, and that's and I think that's why.
Speaker 2: Like in that case, that was totally fine. But I
Speaker 2: think there are situations sometimes where this there is more
Speaker 2: going on than you know, and you just say the
Speaker 2: wrong thing and all of a sudden, you know, you
Speaker 2: find yourself in a situation where somebody has decided that
Speaker 2: you look like a pretty good suspect for something in
Speaker 2: this case.
Speaker 3: Now, in that case, I would say instead of don't
Speaker 3: trust the cops, I would just maybe say a scared
Speaker 3: all time rule is check yourself before you wreck yourself.
Speaker 2: Like like just be smart about like.
Speaker 3: Just think two steps head if you can just think
Speaker 3: about you know, am I gonna get myself in hot
Speaker 3: water accidentally?
Speaker 2: It's best it is. Let the lawyers do the talk
Speaker 2: before me. Yeah, I would, I guess I would say sure.
Speaker 2: If they come and knock on your door and say, hey,
Speaker 2: can we check your ring camera, you're probably fine. If
Speaker 2: a cop ever asked you to come in they want
Speaker 2: to talk to you, that's where I would start thinking
Speaker 2: that maybe it's it's time to get a lawyer. Yes,
Speaker 2: they're asking you to come to a police station. Well, right,
Speaker 2: but they don't always say like they didn't come to
Speaker 2: you and say, hey, you're a suspect and a murder
Speaker 2: you want to come down? You know, they're like, you know,
Speaker 2: come on down. We just we gotta we gotta clear,
Speaker 2: we gotta make sure a couple things or whatever, like
Speaker 2: the minute down.
Speaker 3: Into a second location. I don't Yeah, I don't think I'm.
Speaker 2: Never go to a second location.
Speaker 3: If you can carry it, fary it. But yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, my fear that my own brain would turn on
Speaker 2: me in a intense interrogation situation is exactly what happened
Speaker 2: to Amanda. According to an article I found on investigativetv
Speaker 2: dot com you know It's good TV. The cops started
Speaker 2: lying to her. They claimed, quote, we know you are
Speaker 2: at your house. We have irrefutable proof. Knox was put
Speaker 2: in a position of trying to make sense of that.
Speaker 2: She said, that doesn't make any sense to me. I
Speaker 2: have no memory of being at my house. Knox said.
Speaker 2: She then started doubting her own memories, and her self
Speaker 2: doubt became so strong that when the cops typed up
Speaker 2: a confession, she signed it. She said, I just did
Speaker 2: exactly what the police told me to do. I was exhausted.
Speaker 2: I was confused. I didn't know even really what I
Speaker 2: was signing. Her confession named her boss, a Congolese bar
Speaker 2: owner named Patrick Lamumba, as the killer Congolese bar owner
Speaker 2: in Italy, not in the Congo. He's from the Congo.
Speaker 3: Understood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that gets her in even more trouble because Lamumba
Speaker 2: had an airtight alibi.
Speaker 3: In her thing she signed. She has said my boss
Speaker 3: killed my roommate. Yes, she said that her boss did it.
Speaker 3: Part of the theory that.
Speaker 2: The cops were building here that will get to know as.
Speaker 3: She came to that conclusion on her own, unless my
Speaker 3: boss was always being creepy around my roommate.
Speaker 2: Part of what the cops were building to here that
Speaker 2: we'll get into a little bit more in a minute,
Speaker 2: is that what happened to Meredith was some sort of
Speaker 2: like sex game gone wrong, because there had part of
Speaker 2: what part of the that she had dated the bartender. No,
Speaker 2: just part of part of the weird mythos that started
Speaker 2: to grow around Amanda Knox was that, you know, her
Speaker 2: and these three female roommates and her boyfriend, that there
Speaker 2: was a bunch of partner swapping and sex stuff going
Speaker 2: on and in a very kind of virgin horror society,
Speaker 2: like in Italy. That was a very scandalous thing. And
Speaker 2: so part of the case they were building was like
Speaker 2: what men were you bringing around, who were you having
Speaker 2: sex with? Who was Meredith jealous of, and like all
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. So I don't know exactly. Again,
Speaker 2: we're not doing the full deep dive. I don't know
Speaker 2: exactly why they thought that her boss was involved, but
Speaker 2: that was ra sysm. This is a country that gladly
Speaker 2: jumped on board with fascism. I would not be not
Speaker 2: be surprised if that had something to do with it.
Speaker 2: But anyway, Amanda naming her boss in her confession actually
Speaker 2: got her in even more trouble because, no kidding, La
Speaker 2: Mumba had an airtight alibi, so they went to the
Speaker 2: bar even if he didn't. Don't be putting other people's
Speaker 2: names in your signed confession. Well, and I'm also curious again,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure, like you just straight up like, I
Speaker 2: don't like what you just said. I don't know if
Speaker 2: she just signed with the cops, wrote I don't know
Speaker 2: if the cops put his name in there, and she
Speaker 2: ended up taking the fall for that. Well, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: who knows.
Speaker 3: But that's why you know, to quote an old Jerry
Speaker 3: Seinfeldt bit from a stand up becaf, kids are too
Speaker 3: young to remember at bandak not.
Speaker 2: They don't know who.
Speaker 3: No, no, they're not gonna know what checks are or
Speaker 3: how you write checks.
Speaker 2: But he's like, that's.
Speaker 3: Why you put the long line after the number. He's like,
Speaker 3: that way so someone can't write in and a million
Speaker 3: dollars too. Yeah, so you got to whatever the long
Speaker 3: line of her. Her situation here is, you got to
Speaker 3: make sure that people can't write in and matumbo too.
Speaker 2: Well. They talked to everyone else who worked at the bar,
Speaker 2: and everybody said, yeah, no, no, he was here all night.
Speaker 2: He couldn't have done it. So the court then charged
Speaker 2: and convicted Amanda Knox of slander for falsely accusing him
Speaker 2: in court. And this is crazy to this day. Even though,
Speaker 2: as I think most people listening to this spoiler alert,
Speaker 2: she's been cleared of this murder, she is actually still
Speaker 2: convicted of slander against Patrick Lamumba in Italy. So she
Speaker 2: still is a convicted criminal in Italy of this particular piece.
Speaker 2: And the thing, even if she was tricked into doing that,
Speaker 2: I think that's fair. I think it's fair because it's like,
Speaker 2: I don't know, it's fuck it is, it's fucked up.
Speaker 2: But I also just I mean, listen that person.
Speaker 3: I don't think you can drop charges. I think that's
Speaker 3: a made up thing for television. Like if your boyfriend
Speaker 3: beats you up and you know you're afraid of him,
Speaker 3: so you're like, I wanted, I actually don't want to
Speaker 3: press charges. But if there's evidence and the cops have
Speaker 3: it or blah blah blah, they actually that's up to
Speaker 3: the district attorney or something like. It's up to whomever
Speaker 3: would like to press those charges regardless. And so even
Speaker 3: if that guy was like, oh, she got whatever, it
Speaker 3: might still just be up to the whatever the district
Speaker 3: attorney of Italy type of thing. Yeah, Cidy would be,
Speaker 3: who will still just follow through on those charges?
Speaker 2: Well, that's out of her hands. Maybe was as well.
Speaker 2: That was local prosecutor Giuliano Manini who really made Amanda
Speaker 2: Knox his life a living hell. He has since admitted
Speaker 2: that he was operating on not much more than a
Speaker 2: quote gut feeling like I'm hearing, but he was convinced
Speaker 2: that Amanda and her boyfriend at the time, the guy
Speaker 2: she was kissing on outside the house, This guy, Rafael Solasito,
Speaker 2: that these two killed Meredith during some sort of like
Speaker 2: wicked sex game. Also he posits that Rudy gued was
Speaker 2: involved too. But now, who is Rudy and how does
Speaker 2: he why is he in the house?
Speaker 3: Rudy what Rudy was a burglar? Unrelated to the sex
Speaker 3: games of this man's imagination.
Speaker 2: Exactly Who's who Rudy is? The guy who they found
Speaker 2: all of this DNA, bloody hand princes Prince inside, the
Speaker 2: only forensic evidence that was ever found that connected a
Speaker 2: person to this crime.
Speaker 3: He's a just a man of happenstance, like there happened
Speaker 3: to have been a burglary happening whilst but I thought
Speaker 3: Amanda wasn't home originally.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, that's the stories here kind of were all
Speaker 2: over the place.
Speaker 3: So I'm saying, like there's a version which has been
Speaker 3: laid out to me and the cops where presumably this
Speaker 3: house is more than one bedroom. Amanda and fucking Ricky
Speaker 3: Salami whatever his name.
Speaker 2: Was, We'll go with Ricky Salami, Ricky.
Speaker 3: Salami the boyfriend. They're canoodling in her bedroom whilst a
Speaker 3: burglar breaks in and also kills a woman and then
Speaker 3: discover the body. Presumably the cops come and she decides
Speaker 3: at the time to continue with Ricky Salami and some cartwheeling.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's that's about as as sensible of a
Speaker 2: case as the cops ever really put together here. So
Speaker 2: I'm just trying to figure out how everyone's home, you know,
Speaker 2: basically the only person. All that really matters, because we're
Speaker 2: not doing a deep dive into this case. All that
Speaker 2: really matters is that the forensics say that Rudy gued
Speaker 2: was definitely there and involved. Giuliano Menini has a gut
Speaker 2: feeling that Amanda and Raphael were also involved, and so
Speaker 2: he put forward a number of theories about why they
Speaker 2: all may have been there, even though there's never any
Speaker 2: evidence that Amanda was there or not. And we kind
Speaker 2: of get to this a little bit later, but Minini
Speaker 2: is still convinced that, yes, Amanda, even though she's been
Speaker 2: cleared of this crime, she was there and involved somehow,
Speaker 2: But he doesn't know how. He can't prove it. El
Speaker 2: and there's idrosecution's fucking job is to prove beyond the
Speaker 2: shadow of a no. And I don't know that there's
Speaker 2: ever been you know, Amanda has been cleared of all guilt.
Speaker 2: I don't know that there was ever like an airtight
Speaker 2: alibi that she was somewhere else anyway. As recently as
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, in a documentary that re examines the case,
Speaker 2: Minini was still leaning into this theory. He said, I
Speaker 2: have to remind you that her Amanda's behavior was completely inexplicable,
Speaker 2: totally irrational. Amanda was a girl that was very uninhibited.
Speaker 2: She would bring boys home and hearing Meredith's friends. If
Speaker 2: you could imagine a girl different from Amanda in every
Speaker 2: imaginable way, it would have been Meredith.
Speaker 3: But being promiscuous and acting weird is not what's on
Speaker 3: trial here.
Speaker 2: No. But but you know this is again, this is Italy.
Speaker 3: You know, the same reason this asshole twenty thousand years later,
Speaker 3: still sticking to his story. They're a prideful, misogynist and
Speaker 3: race racist country.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The motives put forth by the prosecution were all
Speaker 2: over the place. From the motive that Amanda was in
Speaker 2: competition with Meredith over who was the quote alpha female
Speaker 2: of the house.
Speaker 3: Is that a thing?
Speaker 2: I don't know they invented it.
Speaker 3: I guess I'm surprised they were willing to admit that
Speaker 3: a lady.
Speaker 2: Could be alpha. Yeah. To one motive was that there
Speaker 2: were mounting tensions over claim endliness and lifestyle differences because
Speaker 2: Amanda was like a mess and a crazy lady.
Speaker 3: I didn't no, killing your roommate was an option for that,
Speaker 3: or else I'd be down a bunch of roommates for
Speaker 3: that move.
Speaker 2: Anyway, it almost doesn't really matter what motive the prosecution
Speaker 2: put forward, because once this Mussolini train of justice left
Speaker 2: the station, absolutely nobody could stop it. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: Knox and Ricky Salami are convicted in two thousand and
Speaker 2: nine Slam. They're convicted of the crime. In two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine, they're quitted. In twenty eleven, they are reconvict.
Speaker 3: Slippery Salami he got out of it.
Speaker 2: He did. He's reconvicted in twenty fourteen, so that Slippery
Speaker 2: Salami is up slipped back in the casing. And then
Speaker 2: they were finally fully exonerated in twenty fifteen by the
Speaker 2: Italian Supreme Court, which wrote a report using phrases like
Speaker 2: quote sensational investigative failures end quote guilty omissions by the
Speaker 2: prosecution phrases you really never want to see connected to
Speaker 2: a court.
Speaker 3: Case, or if you're them, you definitely want to see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Amanda and Ricky Slam each ultimately spent
Speaker 2: four years in prison for a crime that everyone with
Speaker 2: eyes could basically see that they didn't commit. No, but wait,
Speaker 2: when does fucking Gweedoak come in? Well? Gweed was always
Speaker 2: in the background because he was I'm saying, was he
Speaker 2: ever yes, a suspect?
Speaker 3: Is he ever convicted?
Speaker 2: Yes? Yes, yes, Well we'll get to that in a second.
Speaker 2: This was a weird little detail about this case. Amanda
Speaker 2: Knox and Menini, the prosecutor, have struck up sort of
Speaker 2: like a weird friendship after all of this.
Speaker 3: The prosecutor and Amanda Ox, Yeah.
Speaker 2: They regularly exchanged greeting cards and personal life updates. Like
Speaker 2: I said earlier, the prosecutor, Menini insists that she was
Speaker 2: president at the scene of the crime. He says, quote,
Speaker 2: Amanda has changed a lot, and I think I can
Speaker 2: say that I know her. We have different ideas about
Speaker 2: the trial that involved us. Yeah, it seemed like that
Speaker 2: was very publicly you had different ideas, But now I
Speaker 2: have a good opinion of her.
Speaker 3: Cool is that going to buy her four years better. No,
Speaker 3: not for in prison.
Speaker 2: For Knox's part, the friendship with Menini is away, she says,
Speaker 2: of defanging a person who is a boogeyman in her
Speaker 2: life for so long, she says, quote, whether directly or indirectly,
Speaker 2: he kept being a presence in my life because he
Speaker 2: was the one who portrayed me as this girl gone
Speaker 2: wild who out of the blue murdered her roommate. My
Speaker 2: goal was to understand him. There was this deep curiosity
Speaker 2: in me to try to understand the person who decided
Speaker 2: that I was a dangerous person who deserved to spend
Speaker 2: the most years of my life in prison. And this
Speaker 2: is this is really just the tip I got married. No, no,
Speaker 2: they did it. Like I said, this is all really
Speaker 2: just the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I'm sure there's thirty documentaries called like a
Speaker 3: Hard Knocks Life or something that will tell you more
Speaker 3: than we're gonna do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like I sort of said earlier too.
Speaker 3: They'll probably use people's real names. They're not like Guido
Speaker 3: the Guinea and Ricky Salami.
Speaker 2: The tabloids were as guilty here as the prosecution when
Speaker 2: it came to portraying Amanda as this dangerous sexy harlot,
Speaker 2: and the case really featured no shortage of racist and
Speaker 2: sexist assumptions and accusations that all kind of added up
Speaker 2: to this over and.
Speaker 3: It makes headlines.
Speaker 2: Yeah, made headlines. Rudy Gweed, as you were asking for
Speaker 2: his part, he was convicted, sentenced to thirty years in prison,
Speaker 2: that was then reduced to sixteen, and he served thirteen
Speaker 2: years with an early release granted in November twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: Is that because they couldn't tie him to the sexual.
Speaker 3: Assault and throat slitting of a woman. I feel like
Speaker 3: you shouldn't get thirteen years for that.
Speaker 2: He served the final year of his sentence to via
Speaker 2: social services and community service. So the final year of
Speaker 2: his reduced, reduced thirteen years was served through community service.
Speaker 3: All right, any Italian vigilanti's a list, And I mean
Speaker 3: we didn't say that.
Speaker 2: No, Yeah, let's not. Legally, we're not encouraging anyone to
Speaker 2: find anybody. But here's the thing that really struck me
Speaker 2: when I was prepping for this episode. Because of the
Speaker 2: media surrounding Amanda Knox, she's sort of treated as the
Speaker 2: modern poster child for false accusations and the and the
Speaker 2: feeling I think a lot of people have is that
Speaker 2: she's this unique miscarriage of justice, that this like that
Speaker 2: this case is so special because this never happens. But unfortunately,
Speaker 2: cases like Amanda's happened all over the world, and more
Speaker 2: often than we would like to think. Now, because I
Speaker 2: can hear some people probably screaming at the podcast already
Speaker 2: and ed you or maybe even thinking this, Yes, the
Speaker 2: common law system we have in many Western countries is
Speaker 2: better than the alternatives. I wasn't thinking anything. Okay, I
Speaker 2: agree with that statement. Probably by common law, I just
Speaker 2: mean the adversarial defence versus prosecution in front of a
Speaker 2: jury system. Okay, those are the cases we're mostly going
Speaker 2: to be looking at in this episode. Obviously, in countries
Speaker 2: with dictators or religious courts, there are plenty of people
Speaker 2: who also find themselves imprisoned or dead for things that
Speaker 2: they didn't do, probably at higher frequency, probably at a
Speaker 2: higher frequency. But I think one of the things that's
Speaker 2: really uncomfortable for us is that our system, the Western system,
Speaker 2: is built on the promise of equality and fairness.
Speaker 3: I mean, they have that statue, they're probably building that statue.
Speaker 2: Was the last time they thought about it, but yeah,
Speaker 2: and you know, if you're in a country run by
Speaker 2: a dictator, you know, maybe it's a little more expected.
Speaker 2: But in the West, these things aren't supposed to happen.
Speaker 2: We have this fairness and justice. We get to the
Speaker 2: truth really, the fact that these things aren't supposed to
Speaker 2: happen but they do. The horror there actually reminds me
Speaker 2: a little bit of our episode about waking up during surgery,
Speaker 2: where it's like, we have access to all this incredible medicine,
Speaker 2: but that doesn't mean that things can't go wrong, and
Speaker 2: that when they do go wrong, the suffering is unimaginable.
Speaker 2: The Innocence Project, a nonprofit that's been working since nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety two to use DNA evidence to claw innocent people
Speaker 2: out of American prisons, has freed more than two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty people in that time, which breaks down to
Speaker 2: about seven people per year, which, make no mistake, is
Speaker 2: an incredible victory, but it fails, I think to illustrate
Speaker 2: how widespread the problem of false accusations and convictions really is.
Speaker 2: Because you hear, oh, they free seven people a year. Okay,
Speaker 2: we've made some mistakes, but that's not six kids are
Speaker 2: killing their parents a week. That's true of you. So
Speaker 2: the kids who kill their parents.
Speaker 3: I mean, the numbers are not as impressive as the
Speaker 3: kids who kill their parents' numbers.
Speaker 2: The scale becomes a little clearer when you look at
Speaker 2: it this way.
Speaker 3: They have eight people working there for.
Speaker 2: Free, kind of h I mean, I don't know what
Speaker 2: the numbers of who works there, but the Innocence Project
Speaker 2: I'm pulling all these numbers from their website. They only
Speaker 2: take cases in which newly discovered or re examined DNA
Speaker 2: evidence could prove the prisoner's innocence. Okay, so they don't.
Speaker 3: They're not. They don't have the resources to fail a
Speaker 3: lot at this. So let's let's go with our best
Speaker 3: foot forward on cases that we actually can maybe help.
Speaker 2: Right, that are very clear, black and white. You know
Speaker 2: we have the DNA or we don't. This was not
Speaker 2: available when you were right, and now it is so narrowing.
Speaker 2: That window means that they only could even theoretically take
Speaker 2: on about five to ten percent of convictions, which is
Speaker 2: about how many people. The number of cases that are
Speaker 2: that hinge on this DNA evidence, narrowing the window to
Speaker 2: just those cases, they still receive somewhere between six to
Speaker 2: eight thousand letters per year. Okay for people who are saying,
Speaker 2: my case hinged on DNA evidence, you guys could get
Speaker 2: me out. Now, of course, it's unlikely that every single
Speaker 2: person writing those letters is innocent.
Speaker 3: Now, my mom is a big Have you tried just
Speaker 3: writing to Steven Spilberg? Yeah, I mean like so yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm sure there is an element of like,
Speaker 3: you know, one hundred percent of the shots you don't take,
Speaker 3: you miss whatever, So yeah, just write to the INNOCENTCE Project.
Speaker 2: But basically what we're looking at is they've they've received
Speaker 2: they received six to eight thousand a year, sixty five
Speaker 2: thousand letters since nineteen ninety two. So you gotta look
Speaker 2: at that and go, of those sixty five thousand letters,
Speaker 2: we have three interns and two unpaid full time employees. Well,
Speaker 2: are there really only two hundred and fifty innocent people
Speaker 2: in that pile? Yeah?
Speaker 3: No, That's why I think it's probably an infrastructural like
Speaker 3: we don't have enough help in money.
Speaker 2: And and again that's sixty five thousand, that's two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty people freed of sixty five thousand requests of
Speaker 2: five to ten percent of convictions. So the other ninety
Speaker 2: percent of convictions where the DNA evidence wouldn't help, there's
Speaker 2: still innocent people there too. I can't even Yeah who
Speaker 2: in prisons, Yeah we have. I think we're the most
Speaker 2: convicted nation.
Speaker 3: On the Earth or something like that. We have more
Speaker 3: there's more people in prison here than yeah capita.
Speaker 2: We have more people in prison than anywhere else on earth.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it actually it seems like there's maybe a
Speaker 3: reason to not find people listen, yeah, if they can
Speaker 3: help it.
Speaker 2: But all of this is why I'm putting a link
Speaker 2: in the show notes so that you can donate to
Speaker 2: the Innocence Project. We're going to donate to the Innocence
Speaker 2: Project in the show's name, and if you feel so inclined,
Speaker 2: either already or by the end of the episode, I
Speaker 2: would encourage you to donate to the Innocence.
Speaker 3: I'll say, I'm fine with donating to the Innocence Project.
Speaker 3: But this is a little bit like when I would
Speaker 3: bring my friend with me to ask my parents if
Speaker 3: he can sleep over for the night. Is this is
Speaker 3: the first time hearing of it, But I am very
Speaker 3: comfortable donating to the Innocence Project.
Speaker 2: What's even scarier than just being falsely accused and ending
Speaker 2: up in prison and begging the Innocence Project to help
Speaker 2: you get out. Is that not everyone who's falsely accused
Speaker 2: gets a long life sentence that they can cross their fingers.
Speaker 2: Now I can do appeal and appeal and appeal. Some
Speaker 2: of these innocent people end up on fucking death row,
Speaker 2: which does.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of those people do it get
Speaker 3: to appeal and appeal and appeal and appeal for a
Speaker 3: long time. I don't know if it's like a Jewish
Speaker 3: burial or something where it's like they gotta be in
Speaker 3: the ground.
Speaker 2: Tomorrow, or something of a window that's not closing.
Speaker 3: I don't know death row. I know how your anti
Speaker 3: death penalty. I was pro death penalty only if the
Speaker 3: person is so objectively guilty. But now in the world
Speaker 3: of AI and like deep fake ability, it's like now
Speaker 3: it seems things are less cut and dry for me,
Speaker 3: because it's going to be harder to tell the difference.
Speaker 2: Get this. In twenty fourteen, a study published in the
Speaker 2: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences took a statistical
Speaker 2: look at death row inmates in the United States between
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three and two thousand and four, their conservative
Speaker 2: estimate was that at least four point one percent of
Speaker 2: people sentenced to death in America are factually innocent. Since
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy three, more than sixteen hundred people have been
Speaker 2: executed in the United States, so the state has murdered
Speaker 2: around sixty five people for something they didn't do. Well,
Speaker 2: that's why I was cut and dry. You need to
Speaker 2: be cut and dry.
Speaker 3: You can't. There can't be anything that's like hinging at
Speaker 3: anything in my version some people.
Speaker 2: But just a would be cutting. So what would be
Speaker 2: cut and dry? Like if you've kind of got were
Speaker 2: these victims skinning? Yeah? Yeah, that's pretty good example. In
Speaker 2: that same span of time, the Death Penalty Information Center
Speaker 2: has documented over two hundred death row exonerations. So they
Speaker 2: put the ratio like this, for every eight people we've
Speaker 2: executed in the modern era, one other person was sentenced
Speaker 2: to die that was found innocent before we got around
Speaker 2: to killing them, which feels like way too many people
Speaker 2: that were.
Speaker 3: But it's better than finding out after we got around
Speaker 3: to killing them.
Speaker 2: Well, sure, yeah it is, But you know, I think
Speaker 2: it's all it's all a strong argument that you know,
Speaker 2: the idea that the state should take lives is a
Speaker 2: it's a difficult pill for me to swallow. But these mistakes,
Speaker 2: I mean the thing I would say that the death penalty,
Speaker 2: I don't see.
Speaker 3: It acting as the deterrent we'd hope it would be,
Speaker 3: because I guess we're not the next day just killing people.
Speaker 2: But I'm saying so, if it's not actively deterring crime.
Speaker 3: Then I don't really see the benefit of it, other
Speaker 3: than if you've got someone who's cut and dry and
Speaker 3: you just want to erase that person, then erase a person,
Speaker 3: I guess, but I don't see that. It's I don't
Speaker 3: see that like people erasure is like, I don't see
Speaker 3: the net benefit of it.
Speaker 2: I will say this, The only thing I'll give you
Speaker 2: is that I would love to read a nineteen seventies
Speaker 2: like paperback pulp series called The People Eraser. I would
Speaker 2: definitely read that book. So these mistakes, though, also aren't new.
Speaker 2: There is old as courts themselves, maybe older, well, definitely older.
Speaker 2: I guess before courts, if you were falsely accused.
Speaker 3: You're getting stoned either way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what happened to you basically came down to how
Speaker 2: fast you could run.
Speaker 3: Exactly, which is why the case I keep any of
Speaker 3: what I said in It's gotta be there can be
Speaker 3: no shadow of doubt, and not through trickery of great
Speaker 3: legal Perry Mason minds. I mean, hey man, everyone was
Speaker 3: standing right there. Everyone was standing right there. Let's just
Speaker 3: erase this person.
Speaker 2: Stories of false accusations and wrongful convictions are, unfortunately the
Speaker 2: story of human justice. One of the earliest cases I
Speaker 2: could find tracks as it so often does on this show,
Speaker 2: back to ancient Greece, the birthplace of democracy, the land
Speaker 2: of philosophers and people who are just as likely to
Speaker 2: make mistakes in matters regarding life and death as we
Speaker 2: are today. As part of their complex and sophisticated society,
Speaker 2: the Greeks employed a board of ten treasurers known as
Speaker 2: the Heleno TAMIAI. These men were the most senior, most trusted,
Speaker 2: being counters in the Greek speaking world, and oversaw the
Speaker 2: funds and taxes that were paid by members of the
Speaker 2: Athenian Empire as tribute to the empire. While not an
Speaker 2: easy job, because from the research I did, it sounds
Speaker 2: like just like people who do this work today. The
Speaker 2: payments came in from all over, sometimes partial, sometimes late,
Speaker 2: you had to go track it down. It was otherwise
Speaker 2: a pretty boring and safe job most of the time.
Speaker 3: Caybe that's safe. I mean money is not a computer.
Speaker 2: Well it wasn't this time, because in four forty BC,
Speaker 2: these financial masterminds made a clerical error that would cost
Speaker 2: them their lives. Somewhere around that time, for forty PC,
Speaker 2: there was an audit of the books, and the audit
Speaker 2: appeared to show that the Heleno TAMIAI had skimmed money.
Speaker 2: The Greeks, in their wisdom, arrested and tried these guys
Speaker 2: one by one and found all ten of them guilty.
Speaker 2: They were each put to death except this last guy, Sosius.
Speaker 2: And that's because at some point in all of this
Speaker 2: someone rechecked the math and it turns out there was
Speaker 2: no money missing at all. Oh no, they were missing.
Speaker 2: Now they're missing nine and they were missing a bead
Speaker 2: on the avacus. Basically, yeah, someone slipped the bead the
Speaker 2: wrong way and nine people died. So the Helena to
Speaker 2: me I had done nothing wrong, as I'm sure they
Speaker 2: each probably loudly proclaimed the court before they were killed.
Speaker 2: Our only source for this story is that this guy
Speaker 2: Antiphon mentioned it in a courtroom speech he wrote for
Speaker 2: someone else's murder trial, which I think we touched on
Speaker 2: these courtroom speeches that people gave.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Cicero, it was in Rome.
Speaker 2: But still, yeah, we have another Ciso story coming up
Speaker 2: here in a minute. He was no, but yeah, So
Speaker 2: we may not have the whole story here. We don't
Speaker 2: have a ton of surviving information about these guys, but
Speaker 2: it must have.
Speaker 3: Been a famous enough event that they was able to
Speaker 3: use it in like his arguments that it was understood
Speaker 3: that people know who the fuck I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And and I thought it was just an interesting
Speaker 2: place to start with the history of false accusations because
Speaker 2: it's a documented case in ancient history of people going
Speaker 2: you're guilty, You're guilty, and them going what are you
Speaker 2: talking about? No, I'm not. And really, back then there
Speaker 2: was not much of a way out of it. I'm
Speaker 2: glad for Sosius's sake that somebody rechecked the math. I
Speaker 2: don't know whose job that was, but luckily that person
Speaker 2: was better at it than these ten guys.
Speaker 3: Just don't or Socio, the birthplace of sociopath. Yeah, Socio
Speaker 3: was better at making the argument that someone should reach
Speaker 3: out than the previous nine people.
Speaker 2: I guess so, yeah, the masterminds of the Greek system
Speaker 2: killed nine guys who really didn't deserve it. But how
Speaker 2: about the Romans. Those guys seem to have a good
Speaker 2: thing going. How would they fare three hundred and sixty
Speaker 2: years later when faced to the case that featured accusations
Speaker 2: even more sinister? What year was the first one? Four
Speaker 2: forty BC? I thought it was three sixty BC. I'm like,
Speaker 2: are we doing Jesus? No? No, no, no, no, no, okay,
Speaker 2: although way, I guess yeah, he would be a pretty
Speaker 2: famous falsely accused guy. Now, the Romans, three hundred and
Speaker 2: sixty years later, were faced to the case that was
Speaker 2: even more sinister than a ripoff sensor test. This actually
Speaker 2: ties into our last episode, or not our last episode,
Speaker 2: but a few episodes ago about kids who killed their parents,
Speaker 2: because the case in question here involves a man named
Speaker 2: Sextus Rossius who is accused of killing his father. But
Speaker 2: let's back up a little. There were actually two Sextuses
Speaker 2: involved here. Sick so awesome that we're doing this on
Speaker 2: no sleep. Extremely confusing.
Speaker 3: Also, it sounds like the guy who tried to try
Speaker 3: a man in Ox may have used the same exact sentence.
Speaker 2: There are two sextuses involved here, Sextus the Junior and
Speaker 2: Sextus the Senior. Okay, though back then they were just
Speaker 2: sextist Rassius and Sextus raw. And I can't believe anybody
Speaker 2: was able to build a functioning society in a world
Speaker 2: where you could just name two people the same thing.
Speaker 2: But in any case, Sexist Senior was a very wealthy
Speaker 2: man who was stabbed to death on the streets of
Speaker 2: Rome while walking home from a dinner one night in
Speaker 2: eighty one BC. Hate to hear it, suspicion fell on
Speaker 2: Sexist Junior.
Speaker 3: That's not where I would have gone.
Speaker 2: And he was where would you have gone? Was walking home? Yeah,
Speaker 2: who're just somebody's they have him like he was a robbery,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean? Like it was a like
Speaker 2: he was held up. Well, when you hear that someone
Speaker 2: was like coming home from work and they were killed
Speaker 2: and like their wallet take it. You don't immediately go
Speaker 2: like I bet their son did. Well, his wallet wasn't taken.
Speaker 2: It said he was rich, his property was We'll get
Speaker 2: to that in a second. Oh jeez, Sexist Junior was
Speaker 2: formally accused of patricide in court not long after. Now
Speaker 2: sexist Junior claimed he had nothing to do with the
Speaker 2: death of his father. If you haven't listened to kids
Speaker 2: who kill their parents, you should go do that, and
Speaker 2: you should learn about the Roman punishment for killing your
Speaker 2: mother or your father. Oh yeah, so you understand that
Speaker 2: sexist Junior was facing the sack. Oh shit, dude, and
Speaker 2: the sack is mean as hell. So in a desperate
Speaker 2: attempt to escape the sack, Sextist hired Cicero Okay, at
Speaker 2: the time, a fresh faced twenty six year old lawyer.
Speaker 2: He would go on, aged Yeah, you would go on
Speaker 2: to become one of the most famous legal minds in
Speaker 2: history and a heavy hitter in Roman politics, partially because
Speaker 2: of the outcome of this trial.
Speaker 3: You know, that's how fucking what's his head? Julius Caesar
Speaker 3: started in the court system, and he would he would
Speaker 3: defend much to the chagrin I feel like of other
Speaker 3: people in the courts and all his other shit. He
Speaker 3: would So basically, the Romans would go and take your place,
Speaker 3: and it'd be like, you're part of the empire. Now
Speaker 3: you have to give us like we get. We would
Speaker 3: still a governor and you pay like this guy taxes essentially,
Speaker 3: and the governor was almost always a piece of shit, right,
Speaker 3: I think that was like Julius Caesar's wasn't culturiouses at
Speaker 3: the time, but I'm saying like, I think that was his.
Speaker 2: He defended people from.
Speaker 3: Those places who had gripes or grievances with their new
Speaker 3: landlords or new installed governors, and which is apparently an
Speaker 3: unpopular thing to do, yes in you know Rome. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And so that's like, so he was like his early
Speaker 3: career was like he's fucking for the people, like he's
Speaker 3: one of us.
Speaker 2: Well, and Cicero faced a similar but he was young,
Speaker 2: I'm saying young like this in his twenties, Cicero faced
Speaker 2: a similar sticky wicket with this murder trial because it
Speaker 2: was also a political minefield. At the time, Rome was
Speaker 2: under the thumb of a dictator named Sulla. Sullah was
Speaker 2: bad news from the beginning. He was a general who
Speaker 2: took power by marching on Rome. He oversaw the massacre
Speaker 2: of six thousand prisoners of war and initiated public lists
Speaker 2: of individuals deemed enemies of the state, who were then
Speaker 2: brutally hunted down and killed yeah, you're supposed to leave
Speaker 2: that army outside of the walls. Over five hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty victims were formally listed, and thousands of others were
Speaker 2: likely murdered from this what was known as a proscription list.
Speaker 2: So that's all important because it was very curious that
Speaker 2: the Rassius family estates were added to the proscription list
Speaker 2: by a man named Lucius Cornelius Chrysogonus, who was a
Speaker 2: powerful freedman or slave who'd been freed and was loyal
Speaker 2: to Sulah the dictator. Okay, so sexist senior is killed.
Speaker 2: I will say this about ancient Rome, it does seem interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah that I might be misremembering this, but it did
Speaker 2: feel like one of those societies that we kind of
Speaker 2: didn't get again for a long long time where it
Speaker 2: was like the only place, it seems like where you
Speaker 2: have stories that was like born a slave, Yeah, ended
Speaker 2: up owning half of downtown in Rome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like they or like born a slave has
Speaker 3: a talent in baking, ended up making the fucking wedding
Speaker 3: cake for the like it's there was a weirdly a
Speaker 3: way to move up sure that society where like you
Speaker 3: just simply wouldn't see in like medieval feudal societies and shit,
Speaker 3: we're like born a slave, slave for life, born a farmer,
Speaker 3: farmer for life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of interesting.
Speaker 3: You run into characters like this guy who was like
Speaker 3: freed slave who's super powerful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this guy, this guy flexed his muscles because
Speaker 2: sexist senior is killed. And then chrysogonists adds his estate
Speaker 2: to this list of property that can be claimed by
Speaker 2: the state. Okay, and then wouldn't you know who bought the.
Speaker 3: Estate at pennies on the dolls?
Speaker 2: Pennies on the dollar chrysogonists, and by we actually know
Speaker 2: the in trouble for that, We well.
Speaker 3: Guy wanted his house back.
Speaker 2: It's his family's house back. No, it's not his family's house.
Speaker 2: Oh I thought the sun bought it back. No, I
Speaker 2: who accused the son bought it for pennies? Yes, that's worse. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you want to hire a lawyer there. And we know
Speaker 2: the numbers. It was worth nearly six million sistercees, which
Speaker 2: I guess was there at that time at the time,
Speaker 2: and chrysagonists snapped it up for around two thousand. Dude,
Speaker 2: that's like the TikTok sale. That's insane.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of seems like crupture there too,
Speaker 3: But I'm saying, like that is a real devaluation of
Speaker 3: something we all knew was worth more. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, according to Cicero, within nine days of Sextus Senior
Speaker 2: being killed, Chrysagonists had purchased the property, placed a relative
Speaker 2: of Sexus's named Titus Rochius Magnus in charge of the property,
Speaker 2: and had Sextus Junior evicted. Okay, but there was a
Speaker 2: member of his family who made out like a bandit. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he's in charge of the property, cousin basically, and there's
Speaker 2: actually there were actually two. So Sextus gets evicted and
Speaker 2: flees Chrysogonus, Titus Magnus, and a third man, confusingly also
Speaker 2: named Titus Rossius Capito.
Speaker 3: I think there was, like I was reading something, there
Speaker 3: was like a thing where everyone had the same name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like like for real, it was like a normal thing,
Speaker 2: so that people knew what lineage you were. Yeah. I
Speaker 2: think they basically just like kind of we've sort of
Speaker 2: flipped first names and last names, where like you know,
Speaker 2: your family lineage is now named by your last name.
Speaker 2: And I think they were doing it by first man
Speaker 2: who knows whatever doing who knows what? What? What these
Speaker 2: three motherfuckers got up to though, was they banded together,
Speaker 2: they went to court and accused Sextus of murdering his father.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so that then they all made out like bandits.
Speaker 2: Yes. Add to that the fact that Sexist Junior was
Speaker 2: not even in Rome the night of the murder, things
Speaker 2: start to look pretty suspicious. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But if you can get him in the sack fast enough,
Speaker 3: which is why I said, it's got to be open
Speaker 3: and shutcase for the for murdering his guys random murder
Speaker 3: the next day, that's a problem, the peason of real buying.
Speaker 2: The problem for Cicero was because Chrysagnus was Slah's boy.
Speaker 2: He couldn't just walk into court and be like, this
Speaker 2: guy did it, this guy orchestrated this murder, the guy
Speaker 2: who's running Rome as his buddy. Yeah, because then Cicero
Speaker 2: himself might not survive the trial.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 2: So, according to a summary of the case that I
Speaker 2: found on Stories of Antiquity, Cicero suggested that Sexist Junior
Speaker 2: neither wanted to nor had the opportunity to kill his father,
Speaker 2: and that he did not have the quote depraved and
Speaker 2: vicious nature to carry out such an act.
Speaker 3: He brings up like thirty witnesses to like character witnesses
Speaker 3: to testify that he's a fucking spineless little bit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was like, this is getting mean.
Speaker 2: On the thirtieth witness, He's like, this is what's gonna
Speaker 2: save your life. Shut up the prosecutor. Although this was
Speaker 2: a little confusing because some places I found said that
Speaker 2: the prosecutor used this argument, and then other places said
Speaker 2: that Cicero used this argument. But at some point one
Speaker 2: side I believe the prosecution brought up a qui bono
Speaker 2: argument or the who benefits argument. Don't even know what
Speaker 2: that okay, Qui bono is a legal phrase that means
Speaker 2: who benefits. It's a way of looking at so pro
Speaker 2: bono means no one for free?
Speaker 3: Yeah for free? Is all I think of. Yeah, sonny bono?
Speaker 2: The argument?
Speaker 3: The problem long enough what it meant.
Speaker 2: The prosecution's argument seems to have been that if the
Speaker 2: upstanding trio of chrysogonists Capito and Magnus had not stepped
Speaker 2: in that sextist Junior would have walked away with the
Speaker 2: spoils of his father's estate. So his argument was, look who,
Speaker 2: look who was to benefit Sexist Junior, and these guys,
Speaker 2: thank God for them coming around to make sure that
Speaker 2: that didn't happen. Okay, But in a defense known as
Speaker 2: the pro rostio, the Rachamon defense, or eighteen different people
Speaker 2: saw eighteen different things, he did in a defense known
Speaker 2: as the pro rascio Amerino defense, that we have it
Speaker 2: survived in its entirety. Cicero added that argument by pointing
Speaker 2: out that no chrysoginist benefits a lot more since he's
Speaker 2: currently sitting on six million sisterices of stolen property. And
Speaker 2: he also took great pains to make sure that his
Speaker 2: argument didn't implicate the dictator Sullah at all. He called
Speaker 2: Sullah a most illustrious and valiant citizen and let the
Speaker 2: question of acquittal of Sextist Junior quote rest with Slah himself.
Speaker 2: A conviction was a threat to the noble institutions that
Speaker 2: Sullah was attempting to restore, and so he had to
Speaker 2: find Sextist Rassius not guilty and therefore accept that that
Speaker 2: chrysogonists had acted wrongly. You know what, did you even
Speaker 2: take over this place by force?
Speaker 3: Four? If not to be a just man man.
Speaker 2: So yeah, there's no evidence that charges were brought against
Speaker 2: either of these other three guys kept the house sexist Junior. Well,
Speaker 2: I'll get that in a second. So there's there's no
Speaker 2: evidence charges were brought against these three guys. No record
Speaker 2: exists of Chrysoceness after the trial, so he may have
Speaker 2: angered Sulah by participating in this. There's also no evidence
Speaker 2: of what happened to Texast Junior after the trial. Some
Speaker 2: I would say most of the historians that I looked
Speaker 2: at for this thought that he would have reinherited his land,
Speaker 2: but there's no evidence one way or the other. We
Speaker 2: do know that that that very house is where a
Speaker 2: man was rendering yeah, bump bum. We do know that Cicero,
Speaker 2: after this case was over, left Rome to what he
Speaker 2: said was to tour Greece for his health, which may
Speaker 2: have been a Roman way of saying I'm gonna lay yeah.
Speaker 2: And then Sullah died two years later, and so Cicero
Speaker 2: was able to turn and become the famous man that
Speaker 2: he did. So normally, this would be the point where
Speaker 2: we would take a finer look at our fears as
Speaker 2: it changes and evolves throughout history. But we're going to
Speaker 2: take a massive jump from the Roman forum to the
Speaker 2: modern era. Okay, there are plenty of cases of false
Speaker 2: accusations in between, not to mention the entire sale and
Speaker 2: witch trials that could fit in here, But the details
Speaker 2: of the modern cases that I want to cover are
Speaker 2: so wild and unbelievable and infuriating.
Speaker 3: That's why it's just an Episode's not been fun so far,
Speaker 3: because it's the infuriating part. Like I hate hearing.
Speaker 2: About people who get fucking fucked over, Yeah, I hate it.
Speaker 2: That's why it's a it's a real fear. Yeah. The
Speaker 2: first case that I want to talk about is known
Speaker 2: to I think most people of our generation basically as
Speaker 2: a punchline O J. Simpson, Well that too, clearly the
Speaker 2: most falsely accused man in history. And when I say, Dingo,
Speaker 2: you say my baby, my baby, do you know where
Speaker 2: that saying comes from or whild Australia it does come
Speaker 2: from a woman? I assume I think it's a lady. Yeah, not,
Speaker 2: I assume that women would have just say I think
Speaker 2: it was a lady and her kid is gone and
Speaker 2: accused the Dingo of of making sure that happened. And
Speaker 2: I think making sure.
Speaker 3: I think it was the dingo has the did eat
Speaker 3: the baby or at least took the baby.
Speaker 2: Do you know what a baby was? Dingo?
Speaker 3: Dingo raised by a dingo?
Speaker 2: Do you know why we think of it as a
Speaker 2: joke because I didn't know this.
Speaker 3: I I don't know why it's thought of as a joke,
Speaker 3: but I do know that it seemingly exists in the
Speaker 3: same weird place in cultural history as when you look
Speaker 3: into the person who burnt their legs with McDonald's coffee,
Speaker 3: it actually they.
Speaker 2: Did deserve the money money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think this is in tandem with that, where
Speaker 3: it was like one of those upon further inspection, we
Speaker 3: should never have been part of monologues.
Speaker 2: Yes. The reason it entered the American lexicon though, and
Speaker 2: I didn't know this, is that there is an episode
Speaker 2: of Seinfeld. Oh yeah, yeah, that's that's what made it
Speaker 2: a popular The Dingo eight my baby, Yeah, came from
Speaker 2: that episode of Seinfeld.
Speaker 3: Double dip came from Seinfeld. YadA, YadA, YadA comes from Seinfeld.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Seinfeld is responsible for like an insane number of
Speaker 2: ubiquitous and culture things.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's pretty wild.
Speaker 2: It's funny, though, I'll put the clip in the show
Speaker 2: notes and you know, famously, I've never watched that much Seinfeld,
Speaker 2: and it's something that I do want to start from
Speaker 2: the beginning someday. My parents when I was growing up,
Speaker 2: it's the best show ever made. That's what I hear.
Speaker 3: I don't know why it's not higher on lists.
Speaker 2: I've never been I've never been a big sitcom guy.
Speaker 2: It was one of my parents ever watched sitcoms, and
Speaker 2: they thought that like Friends in Seinfeld were like dangerous
Speaker 2: to society. Friends was fine.
Speaker 3: Seinfeld's unbelievable. You rewatching parts of one and all of
Speaker 3: the other a million times. Seinfeld's just mind bogglingly good
Speaker 3: and loving it when I was young. It's a thing
Speaker 3: whereupon rewatch, you're like, oh, it's the one with that
Speaker 3: in it, or it's the one with this in it,
Speaker 3: or that's the episode.
Speaker 2: Famously, how Friends episodes, well that's what.
Speaker 3: They're title, but they're fuck them. The The thing is
Speaker 3: is that I bring it.
Speaker 2: Up many reasons I hate Friends. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The real I bring it up though, is when rewatching
Speaker 3: the number of times I was truly blown away by
Speaker 3: the fact that the I sometimes when I think that, oh,
Speaker 3: that's the one with this that's a b story, even
Speaker 3: the same episode that has a equally, that's the one way,
Speaker 3: like there are episodes where you think of them, they're
Speaker 3: each thing is so iconic that they must have been
Speaker 3: their own episodes, but sometimes too iconic. That's the one
Speaker 3: with is in one fucking Episode's I can go all
Speaker 3: there's probably ten twenty thirty billion podcasts about Seinfeld, but
Speaker 3: it's just it's just mind boggling.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Do I think they deserved all the money they got? No?
Speaker 2: I think that that that the fact that.
Speaker 3: All these deals were closed and never opened again to
Speaker 3: the remainder of people making television shows, that's a loss.
Speaker 3: That's a bummer. But holy shit, is it good anyway?
Speaker 3: You've fucked up? Man, I'm not only about Seinfeld the
Speaker 3: whole rest of the episode.
Speaker 2: Now, if you watch the clip, it is just funny?
Speaker 3: Is Elaine Bennas says it?
Speaker 2: Elaine says it. Yeah, But it's something that if you
Speaker 2: watch it now and you weren't alive at the time,
Speaker 2: like you watched the clip, it barely makes sense. You're like,
Speaker 2: why is what? What is she? Like? What the fuck?
Speaker 2: Dingoweight ma baby? But it was a news yeah, at
Speaker 2: the time it was. But if you watched it now
Speaker 2: you'd be like, why is this even a joke? I
Speaker 2: don't understand what's happening.
Speaker 3: Well, I think because, I mean, what else are you
Speaker 3: going to talk about that episode that Jerry was dating
Speaker 3: a seventeen year old.
Speaker 2: In real life. Yeah, I feel like it's better to
Speaker 2: talk about other things than dudes. Anyway. At the time
Speaker 2: that the episode aired, at Lane's line was a reference
Speaker 2: to something that had been in the news, the tragic
Speaker 2: tale of Lyndy Chamberlain. So come with me, listener back
Speaker 2: to August seventeenth, nineteen eighty the Australian outback at Uluru,
Speaker 2: at a place formerly known as Ayr's Rock, which is
Speaker 2: this I'd never heard of it before, but it is
Speaker 2: this massive sandstone monolith right in the center of the country,
Speaker 2: in Land that is about in the center of the country. Yeah,
Speaker 2: there's nothing inhabitable in the center of the country. Yeah, right,
Speaker 2: it's inhospitable, uninhabitable, but it's beautiful. The rock itself. It
Speaker 2: a The best way I can describe it is that
Speaker 2: it almost just looks like a big lump in the
Speaker 2: carpet of the earth, like it just sort of rises
Speaker 2: up and it's huge. And one of the reasons it's
Speaker 2: famous is because when the sun sets, it lights up
Speaker 2: like all these different colors. It's beautiful. But it's at
Speaker 2: this place, in the middle of the summer that a
Speaker 2: Seventh day Adventist pastor named Michael Chamberlain and his wife
Speaker 2: Lindy go camping with their three children. One of their
Speaker 2: three children is a nine week old baby girl named Azaria,
Speaker 2: which seems young. Yeah, you could not have paid me
Speaker 2: to take Felix camping at nine weeks old. At nine
Speaker 2: weeks old in the center, on the center of the sun,
Speaker 2: like on the surface of the sun in the middle. Yeah,
Speaker 2: babies have to feed every two hours. They sleep a lot,
Speaker 2: but they also wake up a lot. Yes, but this
Speaker 2: is their third kid. Is their third kid. They threw
Speaker 2: it in a backpack and said, funny, Yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: I think all the things you dealt with. I think
Speaker 2: by the third kid you need diapers and supply just
Speaker 2: I don't know why you would. But anyway, why does
Speaker 2: their religion matter? Well we'll get to that in a minute, okay.
Speaker 2: According to an article on Famous trials dot Com, quote
Speaker 2: Lindy Cradling Azaria in her arms explored a formation called
Speaker 2: Fertility Cave. Just outside the cave, she looked up uneasily
Speaker 2: to see a dingo staring at her. She would later
Speaker 2: tell a detective that she had the feeling the wild
Speaker 2: dog was quote casing the baby. In any case, did
Speaker 2: bother her that much, because around eight o'clock that night,
Speaker 2: Lindy puts Azaria down in the tent and heads back
Speaker 2: to the campfire to join the adults. Ten minutes later,
Speaker 2: she hears the baby screaming. She rushes to the tent
Speaker 2: and sees the dingo coming out, dragging something behind it,
Speaker 2: and his area is gone. Lindy lets out a scream
Speaker 2: that would eventually become one of the most mock lines
Speaker 2: in history. A Dingo's got my baby.
Speaker 3: Even knowing it's a it's a misnomerk, the one we
Speaker 3: all know is not actually the.
Speaker 2: Thing she said, right, Well she she did. I think
Speaker 2: she did actually say later, A dingo ate my baby? Well,
Speaker 2: she said, A Dingo's got my baby.
Speaker 3: But I'm saying in the moment, I think a dingo
Speaker 3: ate my favorite is the one we all know, Yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 3: I'm saying the way that everybody misquotes like Star Wars Luke, Luke,
Speaker 3: my father, that's not.
Speaker 2: What he said. They misquote or is it a Mandela effect?
Speaker 2: I don't. The only person who would know is upstairs.
Speaker 2: I don't fucking memorize God. Three other campers heard her scream.
Speaker 2: A woman named Sally Love had seen a dingo lurking
Speaker 2: just a few feet behind her near the trash bins
Speaker 2: only minutes earlier. There were dingo tracks all around and
Speaker 2: inside the tent, there were drag marks in the sand,
Speaker 2: and even the chief ranger at Aluu, a guy named
Speaker 2: Derek Roff, had been writing desperate letters to the government
Speaker 2: for two years begging them to deal with the aggressive dingoes.
Speaker 3: And yet there was a tourist who was doing cartwheels nearby,
Speaker 3: and that person was arrested for the baby. Yeah, the baby.
Speaker 2: We should pause for a second here, I think to
Speaker 2: cover what exactly a dingo is, because outside of this
Speaker 2: specific case, the idea that dingoes are dangerous is and
Speaker 2: dingo is not their species. I think it's baby. Just
Speaker 2: what you call it a wild dog? Well, what you're saying,
Speaker 2: so you you do you know what a ding You
Speaker 2: know what a dingo is. It's basically a whild it's
Speaker 2: a wild dog. Yeah, it looks sort of like a coyote,
Speaker 2: fox wolf hybrid. It's cute.
Speaker 3: But I don't know it was something. I'm saying if
Speaker 3: you went to the Museum of History, or if you
Speaker 3: went to the Museum of Natural History in Australia and
Speaker 3: they have a bunch of like stuffed animals, would one
Speaker 3: say dingo or is dingo a colloquial term for kind
Speaker 3: of a wild rough wolf.
Speaker 2: No, it is the scientific name for a dingo, is
Speaker 2: Canis lupus dingo.
Speaker 3: Okay, so it's a fucking dingo. I'm saying it's it's
Speaker 3: not it's not like, uh.
Speaker 2: It does sound like something you call a stupid person
Speaker 2: or like that fucking dingo.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm just saying that I didn't know if it
Speaker 3: was colloquial or it was just like any wild dog.
Speaker 3: That's that's I'm sure you'd be like fucking dingos around here.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there's some you know, crossover just I don't care.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to know if it's called ding it
Speaker 2: is called a dingo. Okay, they are cute. I also
Speaker 2: think coyotes are cute, and everyone has to remind me
Speaker 2: not to go near them when I see them walking
Speaker 2: here on the neighborhood, And that's sort of what happened here.
Speaker 2: According to Wikipedia, tourists in parts of Australia found dingo's
Speaker 2: cute as well, and quote the tourism industry on the
Speaker 2: island encouraged people to approach dingoes without caution, and such
Speaker 2: encounters basically became expected by tourists. People lost their caution
Speaker 2: when dealing with dingoes more and more frequently, and the
Speaker 2: number of reported interactions they call them increased.
Speaker 3: I think I do wonder if it's something where it's like, ah,
Speaker 3: we just need to train the dingoes to be comfortable
Speaker 3: with people versus shooting all the dingo.
Speaker 2: Well yeah. A scientist named Bradley Smith, who had been
Speaker 2: researching wild dog behavior at the Central Queensland University, put
Speaker 2: it simply in twenty thirteen when he said the problem
Speaker 2: is with humans and not with the dingoes. Well, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: These people's ideas like, well, trade them to just be
Speaker 3: comfortable with humans.
Speaker 2: Dogs, the dingo dogs who were called aggressive were simply
Speaker 2: behaving naturally. Some research actually says that the dingo problem
Speaker 2: they were having. Is similar to the problem campers and
Speaker 2: the States have with bears quote bears a fucking no
Speaker 2: joke that we did that eating alive grizzlies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, get me out of the woods.
Speaker 2: It is assumed quote that dingoes might have started to
Speaker 2: regard human food sources like garbage cans, leftover his handouts, whatever,
Speaker 2: as part of their territory, and that attacks on humans
Speaker 2: occurred because the dingoes then see humans as competitors to quote,
Speaker 2: you know, their food, okay, and they want to protect
Speaker 2: their food sources. And we do know. Actually, in this case,
Speaker 2: just moments before the dingo snatched the baby, Michael, the
Speaker 2: dad was entertaining his son Aidan by tossing crusts of
Speaker 2: bread to a dingo that came towards the camp, and
Speaker 2: Lindy actually said, you shouldn't encourage them.
Speaker 3: Okay, you think they're still together, I don't know. That
Speaker 3: led to a bunch of arguments when once their baby
Speaker 3: was dragged.
Speaker 2: Off back to Derek Ruff for a minute, he must
Speaker 2: have seen these warning signs. Maybe the dingoes were having
Speaker 2: food scarcity problems, or they were particularly irritated by the
Speaker 2: presence of people in their territory, but whatever the case,
Speaker 2: one of them snatched Azaria on that tragic night, and
Speaker 2: in February nineteen eighty one, the initial inquest found that
Speaker 2: Azaria had been taken by a dingo. It was open
Speaker 2: and shutcase. But the local cops did not like this explanation.
Speaker 2: One of them, John Lincoln, said, a dingo attack like
Speaker 2: this quote never happened before. That's a fact you can't beat.
Speaker 2: Never ever happened. He also scoffed at the possibility that
Speaker 2: a dog could lug a ten pound baby over hundreds
Speaker 2: of yards. To prove his point, he filled a pail
Speaker 2: with ten pounds of sand and challenged other officers to
Speaker 2: see if they could hold it in their mouth. That's
Speaker 2: not we're not built the same as it. This guy's
Speaker 2: an idiot. This this is some real I mean reading this,
Speaker 2: I was imagining super Troopers. Yeah, like, come on, man,
Speaker 2: a dragon Barba dude, this is it's a barba thing.
Speaker 2: So John Lincoln was just like, he's just a fucking asshole,
Speaker 2: an idiot, asshole, idiot who also dingo attacks had happened
Speaker 2: before a million percent. Is just they didn't get their
Speaker 2: best and brightest in the center of Australia's police force. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and there's so, as with most of the cases we're
Speaker 2: talking about today, this the actual sprawl of this case
Speaker 2: is crazy and long and so much shit.
Speaker 3: So I have noticed there as a common denominator. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a person in a position of power, whether it's
Speaker 3: the prosecutor or a law enforcement person, who is obstinate
Speaker 3: to the point of most people can't understand their judgment.
Speaker 3: To get these people railroaded to begin with, Yeah, someone
Speaker 3: who's you know, my gut told me this and no
Speaker 3: matter what happens, I'm not gonna believe it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, however long it takes.
Speaker 3: Or a person who was just like this lady's clearly
Speaker 3: lying because I'm a flathead who can't understand anything and
Speaker 3: I'm but I also have a badge, so I'm allowed
Speaker 3: to fucking Yeah, you know, say this person needs to
Speaker 3: go jail for I don't know what they did with
Speaker 3: their baby, but a dingo didn't take it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's so, there's there's a bunch of things that
Speaker 2: happened that led to what happened next. But essentially you
Speaker 2: had a bunch of cops who felt there's no way
Speaker 2: this could be accurate. Another investigator who came into the case,
Speaker 2: Detective Sergeant Graham Charlewood, his eyebrows shot up when he
Speaker 2: read notes in the initial report that cleared Lindy of wrongdoing.
Speaker 2: There was a note in there, for instance, the.
Speaker 3: Report that cleared her, or the report that he saw
Speaker 3: that would that he had an issue with that would
Speaker 3: later get her cleared.
Speaker 2: No, the report that the initial inquest that said we
Speaker 2: interviewed everybody, open shutcase that Dingo took the baby. There
Speaker 2: was some notes in that case file that made Graham
Speaker 2: Charles Woods the eyebrows shoot up off his head. One
Speaker 2: of those notes was that when Lindy brought Azaria in
Speaker 2: for a medical checkup recently prior to the yeah, the
Speaker 2: baby was dressed in all black. The examine I mean,
Speaker 2: the examining doctor is said to have been curious enough
Speaker 2: about the name Azaria to look it up in a
Speaker 2: dictionary of names and discovered that it meant an angel
Speaker 2: name sacrifice in the wilderness. I'm I'm is it? Did
Speaker 2: you look it up yourself? It doesn't mean sacrifice in
Speaker 2: the wilderness. It means whom God aids or helped by God.
Speaker 3: As I thought, like, it's probably like azerial or some
Speaker 3: shit like oh like yeah, like that angel or something
Speaker 3: from Dogma.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No. So basically you have one group of cops
Speaker 2: who think that dingoes are super cool and can't carry
Speaker 2: buckets of stand in their mouth or whatever. And then
Speaker 2: this other cop who you can see where this is going.
Speaker 2: It becomes almost a satanic panic kind of thing. He
Speaker 2: starts sniffing around this thing that looks vague.
Speaker 3: All satanic panic, by the way, every one of these
Speaker 3: has felt like a moral panic, Like every one of
Speaker 3: these have had something that says this person is not
Speaker 3: of moral fortitude, whether it's like Amanda Knox is a
Speaker 3: slut or fucking right, like, each person has had something
Speaker 3: that had to do with their own view of what
Speaker 3: of morality. Yeah, that let them put all ten toes
Speaker 3: in the ground that you're not going to change my
Speaker 3: mind on this.
Speaker 2: Well, and that's part of where here it's like we got.
Speaker 3: This devil baby and a lady who's a demon.
Speaker 2: That's part of where the Seventh day Adventist thing starts
Speaker 2: to become important. Because I don't really know much about
Speaker 2: Seventh day Adventists, but I do know from researching this
Speaker 2: case that at the time there were less than forty
Speaker 2: thousand Seventh Day Adventists in Australia, and so it was
Speaker 2: considered this sort of like suspicious religion. No one really
Speaker 2: knew what to make of it, and so the newspaper
Speaker 2: stories that grew out of a lot of these cop
Speaker 2: rumors were nuts. Like obviously there was there were headlines
Speaker 2: that the Chamberlains might have killed their baby as some
Speaker 2: kind of a ritual sacrifice. The news also.
Speaker 3: Reported they it was that like a fucking cave of
Speaker 3: fortill fertility, cave of fertility nearby. It seems like she
Speaker 3: had three kids. Don't think fertility was the problem.
Speaker 2: I don't think so, But.
Speaker 3: I'm saying, like the fact that it has like a
Speaker 3: weird name like that, for like could play up the sacrifice.
Speaker 2: There were also rumors that got reported on that the
Speaker 2: Chamberlains were linked to the Jonestown, the mass suicide that
Speaker 2: had happened a few years earlier, that somehow the Seventh
Speaker 2: Day Adventists church was involved in that, and that the
Speaker 2: that the Chamberlains were also somehow involved in that Australia.
Speaker 2: No Jonestown was in the Guiana.
Speaker 3: But I think I'm saying, like that's not even Oh,
Speaker 3: they were just saying that they might have been perpetrated
Speaker 3: by people of the same religious Yes, they're.
Speaker 2: Trying to make that comparison. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, got
Speaker 2: And it didn't help that Lindy Chamberlain herself sort of
Speaker 2: like Amanda Knox, was enacting weird. Yeah, she was acting weird.
Speaker 2: She was soft spoken, she didn't cry. She wore black
Speaker 2: to a press conference, and that was, you know, the
Speaker 2: secret all they.
Speaker 3: Had at their house and the baby was dressed in black.
Speaker 2: But also wearing black to me is not that weird,
Speaker 2: but people saw it as like a satanic.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying that, Like it's come up twice pre
Speaker 3: and post baby disappearance. I'm just saying that maybe black
Speaker 3: was on sale that year and they bought a bunch.
Speaker 2: She also said some admittedly weird things, like when they
Speaker 2: the cops asked.
Speaker 3: She's like, I didn't even like my baby, but I
Speaker 3: didn't want to see it dragged away by a dingo.
Speaker 2: The cops asked if she would go under hypnosis, stop it.
Speaker 3: You can't with this. That's such satanic, banic shit.
Speaker 2: It is. Her reply was, the church wouldn't allow it,
Speaker 2: and I wouldn't do it. God slew Saul for that.
Speaker 2: Do you know Saul and the Witch of Endoor? In
Speaker 2: this case, Endoor is not a Star Wars reference. Okay,
Speaker 2: it was a place in the Bible, So sure is
Speaker 2: where you got it. That's probably where you got it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So no, the cops didn't know Saul and the Witch
Speaker 2: of Endor, but it sounded real spooky. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Anyway, all of these suspicions pressured the magistrate and coroner,
Speaker 2: this guy Dennis Barrett, to conduct what were.
Speaker 3: They had the body of the baby? No, okay, so
Speaker 3: what's the corner doing? What the fuck this person's task?
Speaker 2: Then they he was leading the inquest into the death
Speaker 2: because they had some of the baby's clothes that were
Speaker 2: ripped and torn. Okay, his black hood, Yeah yeah, they had.
Speaker 2: At his conclusion that he announced in front of television
Speaker 2: cameras was that Azaria quote met her death when attacked
Speaker 2: by a wild dingo whilst asleep in her family's tent.
Speaker 2: Neither of the parents were in any degree whatsoever responsible
Speaker 2: for her death, but there were a number of oddities
Speaker 2: concerning Azaria's clothing that convinced Barrett that quote, the body
Speaker 2: of Azaria was taken from the possession of the dingo
Speaker 2: and disposed of by an unknown method by a person
Speaker 2: or person's name unknown.
Speaker 3: You're saying that the baby was for sure taken by
Speaker 3: a dog, but then someone found the baby and dumped
Speaker 3: it somewhere else something like that, then put a bunch
Speaker 3: of dingo bites in the clothes to say. So, this
Speaker 3: person is saying there was like a weird cover up,
Speaker 3: like like, yes, her her story is true, but it
Speaker 3: doesn't end there.
Speaker 2: And I think I think my interpretation of this is
Speaker 2: that Dennis Barrett at this point was under a good
Speaker 2: deal of political pressure and was trying to find a
Speaker 2: way saw the news finish. The circital is just like, yeah,
Speaker 2: they're innocent, but I don't know. Someone buried the baby
Speaker 2: and something happened and whatever, let's just move on. But
Speaker 2: that would only lead to further questions. Dennis only led
Speaker 2: to further questions, so that question of who these person
Speaker 2: or person's unknown might have been fanned the flames, and
Speaker 2: after finding what they called quote copious amounts of blood
Speaker 2: in the Chamberlain's car, the state ended up charging Lindy
Speaker 2: with murder and charging her husband, Michael as an accessory
Speaker 2: after the fact. This is where I'm going to cut
Speaker 2: through a whole bunch of crazy case building. Basically, their
Speaker 2: theory was that Lindy slit her daughter's throat with nails's
Speaker 2: in the front seat of the car, a theory which
Speaker 2: was roundly rejected by many of the witnesses who were
Speaker 2: at the camp that night, and some of whom again
Speaker 2: saw the dingo. The prosecution could also never really put
Speaker 2: forth a motive again for why Lindy would do Why
Speaker 2: would you do it in a car?
Speaker 3: Whether it be blood everywhere, some.
Speaker 2: Vague gestures that sacrifices and satanism, But they did manage.
Speaker 3: They always say, you know, if you're gonna sacrifice your baby,
Speaker 3: make sure it's in a Chevy or why again, like
Speaker 3: the car, there's like nothing even there's no pomp and
Speaker 3: circumstance that you think of a sacrifice would require. Yeah,
Speaker 3: just in a passenger seat.
Speaker 2: They did manage to construct a wildly convoluted forensic case
Speaker 2: that essentially boiled down to two things. One is that
Speaker 2: most of his area's clothes had been found except for
Speaker 2: a white jacket that they insisted could only have been
Speaker 2: removed by a human That doesn't that to me seems
Speaker 2: even because there's no bite marks. Well, because they we
Speaker 2: couldn't find this white jacket and so part At one
Speaker 2: point the theory was that the white jacket must have
Speaker 2: been used to like clean up the crime scene and
Speaker 2: it had blood on it and then it was disposed of.
Speaker 3: In this family's fashion history, there's no way they even
Speaker 3: owned a white jacket.
Speaker 2: Well, it was on the baby when she disappeared and
Speaker 2: they never found it. So basically the prosecution was like,
Speaker 2: we couldn't find it. We found everything else, Like.
Speaker 3: They don't have little shovels, there's no way they can
Speaker 3: bury it. Yes, they absolutely can, because dog's bury bones.
Speaker 2: Yes. Yes. And two the prosecution had this big claim
Speaker 2: that they found all this fetal blood they called it
Speaker 2: just sprayed everywhere under the dashboard of the car. This
Speaker 2: argument worked in October twenty. On October twenty ninth, nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty two, Lindy was convicted of murder and sentenced to
Speaker 2: life with hard labor. She was pregnant at the time
Speaker 2: and the fertility cave WO worked. Yeah, so there was
Speaker 2: some magic in this shit. She actually gave birth to
Speaker 2: her fourth child behind bars. Her husband Michael received a
Speaker 2: suspended sentence as an accessory to murder. Public sentiment turned
Speaker 2: over the course of this case. I don't know what
Speaker 2: the fuck was up with Australia, but by the time
Speaker 2: this one was convicted, I'm Halloween almost people were literally
Speaker 2: like applauding the state, the state people in bars. It
Speaker 2: was like people were glued to their TVs.
Speaker 3: I mean she there is an interview with her on
Speaker 3: the news that that quote comes from the dingo eate
Speaker 3: the baby, Yeah, like the exasperated. I don't remember how
Speaker 3: it's using Seinfeld now because it's been while sin i've
Speaker 3: seen that episode, but I think the dingo ate my
Speaker 3: baby is the like exasperated, like no one's listening to me,
Speaker 3: the dingo.
Speaker 2: Ate my baby.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think that that became the cultural meme
Speaker 3: at the time. I do not know why they would
Speaker 3: vilify this woman other than I think there's like Commonwealth
Speaker 3: countries don't they have like that tall poppy syndrome bullshit, right,
Speaker 3: like where they don't like anyone who's too rich or
Speaker 3: too popular or too like what in America we look
Speaker 3: up to that where other countries they want to cut
Speaker 3: it down. Yeah, And so maybe it was just like,
Speaker 3: get this lady off the fucking news.
Speaker 2: I don't know. They really didn't like her. Someone even
Speaker 2: invented a card game called dingo Ate the Baby, which
Speaker 2: I found is still for sale on the Upper Deck
Speaker 2: Cards website. Huh. If you want to know the description,
Speaker 2: it's this. Dingo Ate the Baby is a fast paced
Speaker 2: game for two to five players, lasting twenty to thirty minutes.
Speaker 2: The goal each day is to collect enough cards within
Speaker 2: your ranch in an attempt to reach the total value
Speaker 2: needed for that day without going over. This seems simple enough,
Speaker 2: but other players will attempt to sabotage your ranch, using animals, babies,
Speaker 2: sunlight and darkness to scare, chase, overpopulate, and even eat
Speaker 2: things within your ranch. Bullet point designed by industry legend
Speaker 2: Mike Elliott, dingo Ate the Baby is a brilliant variation
Speaker 2: on Rock, Paper Scissors, babies scaring elephants, elephants stomping lions,
Speaker 2: lions eating dingos, and of course Dingo's eating babies. Stop
Speaker 2: it is. You can go buy this right now.
Speaker 3: We don't have it. We have to donate the money
Speaker 3: to the Yeah sorry, sorry Innocents project. We had to
Speaker 3: buy Dingo the baby with that same money.
Speaker 2: Part of the reason that this was also fresh in
Speaker 2: the minds of people in the early nineties is that
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty six, and here's the good news, a tourist, well,
Speaker 2: this isn't the good news. A tourist named David Brett
Speaker 2: fell to his death while climbing a luru. But while
Speaker 2: police were searching the scrub below a luru, looking, ironically enough,
Speaker 2: for bones of his that dingoes might have dragged away,
Speaker 2: because that's what dingoes do. White jacket, they found a
Speaker 2: tiny blood stained jacket near a dingo layer. It was azarias,
Speaker 2: the exact piece of clothing. The prosecution said could never
Speaker 2: have been removed by an animal, but it was real,
Speaker 2: and it had been removed, and it was sitting in
Speaker 2: front of the dingo layer for years. And all that
Speaker 2: baby blood that the cops found in the feet, it
Speaker 2: was not from a baby and it was not even blood.
Speaker 2: It was paint emulsion. The tests that had been conducted
Speaker 2: on this substance, we're just incredibly poorly done.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, did DuPont fill your baby with We have
Speaker 3: to ask everybody, did your baby have DuPont in it?
Speaker 2: And yeah, So between those two pieces of information, which
Speaker 2: the baby blood thing. Wait, so this was eighty she
Speaker 2: got this was eighty six. No, No, she was convicted
Speaker 2: in eighty She was convicted in eighty two. Okay, so
Speaker 2: she's four years yeah, four years breaking rocks. Yep. But
Speaker 2: then she was out within five days, I would fucking hope.
Speaker 2: So her convictions were quashed in nineteen eighty eight. Thank god.
Speaker 3: By the way, anyone could have been like, this is
Speaker 3: a this is such an embarrassment for us just to
Speaker 3: get rid of the jacket, like oh yeah, someone actually
Speaker 3: was like, hey, we found the jacket. Yeah, and not
Speaker 3: you know, the thin blue line of it all or
Speaker 3: something where it's gonna be like just fucking get.
Speaker 2: Rid of it.
Speaker 3: We didn't, you know, we don't want to look like idiots.
Speaker 2: She was given uh one point three million dollars in compensation.
Speaker 3: Oh man, it sucks to be in Australia and America.
Speaker 3: That would be like two hundred million dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well in nineteen ninety two, that was It's true,
Speaker 2: we didn't have.
Speaker 3: Like billionaires until like a day ago we did, But
Speaker 3: I mean it's not You watch a movie from just
Speaker 3: ten years ago and like the highest.
Speaker 2: Every super duper rich character.
Speaker 3: In it was worth like one hundred million dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's still so she got paid. But it took
Speaker 2: until twenty twelve, thirty two years for a final inquest
Speaker 2: to finally issue a corrected death certificate saying that a
Speaker 2: dingo killed Azaria m So it was a long road
Speaker 2: to justice. And I had to talk about this case
Speaker 2: because even though it's a crazy fucking thing, uh, and
Speaker 2: it's not the true nightmare of just someone being like,
Speaker 2: you know, I think this person killed their kid or whatever.
Speaker 2: It's basically what happened. They were just like And the
Speaker 2: fact that the fact that the first inquest was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: didn't go eat the baby. Everybody saw the didn't go
Speaker 2: eat the baby. There's footprints of the dingo where it
Speaker 2: ate the baby, Like, didn't go eat the baby. And
Speaker 2: then some fucking idiot was like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you had that idiot cop. And then you had
Speaker 3: just a bumbling attorney type person who, for whatever reason,
Speaker 3: under political pressure, said something extra stupid, added that extra
Speaker 3: step that was gonna be unnecessary.
Speaker 2: And that's where I could feel like my stomach I
Speaker 2: can put myself in those shoes and feel my stomach
Speaker 2: sinking of like.
Speaker 3: That's because you don't walk through life every single day.
Speaker 3: We should be, but we don't walk through life every
Speaker 3: single day being like, oh, how much of my life
Speaker 3: can be ruined because other people are fucking idiots, Like
Speaker 3: just truly human error, and like it took me a
Speaker 3: long time to realize, Like I'm not the smartest person
Speaker 3: by a fucking stretch, but like I meet people every
Speaker 3: single day where I'm like, are you actively reminding yourself
Speaker 3: to breathe with each breath?
Speaker 2: Like there are fucking people I meet where I'm like, Jesus, Chris, well,
Speaker 2: how do you? How do you get through the day's part?
Speaker 3: And that's when I realized, like kids, most adults are
Speaker 3: fucking idiots, So don't do anything adults.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's or your boss, your job. I've
Speaker 2: worked people, I've worked for people who were dumb.
Speaker 3: Shit.
Speaker 2: The fact that these people that we look to is
Speaker 2: like being the arbiters of justice are clearly so motivated
Speaker 2: by their own impulses and instincts and just drive forward
Speaker 2: on this stuff that if you're Lindy Chamberlain, you're sitting
Speaker 2: there going what the fuck did I do to God
Speaker 2: or the universe that like every you know, every time
Speaker 2: one of these motherfuckers opens their mouth, you're like, that's
Speaker 2: not it's just not what happened, and they're like, yeah
Speaker 2: it did. The state says it did, and that's what's
Speaker 2: gonna happen. Now.
Speaker 3: Did you ever see the net Central blocks?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah? To me is a top fear.
Speaker 2: It might be as scared all the time watch along.
Speaker 3: At some point it's a it's a ridiculous film that
Speaker 3: only the beginning where she goes to pizza dot net
Speaker 3: to order a pizza. Oh yeah, uh wild first shot too,
Speaker 3: like from like satellite shop. But anyway, the hey I'm
Speaker 3: a person and they're like, actually I just a race
Speaker 3: that you ever existed, Yeah, is fucking terrifying. But it
Speaker 3: also must feel a little bit like that same feeling
Speaker 3: must go into I must be crazy because everyone is
Speaker 3: saying I did this, or everyone is and I'm not.
Speaker 3: Must be the same level of Sandra Bullock being like,
Speaker 3: I've lived at one two three Bana Street my entire life,
Speaker 3: this is my shial security number and this is that
Speaker 3: and then pulling up the computer to be like, ma'am,
Speaker 3: you didn't. But also you're wanted by the FBI for
Speaker 3: a bunch of heinous crimes. We're arresting you. And it
Speaker 3: was like, no, just someone changed the computer thing.
Speaker 2: I did none of those things, but like that to
Speaker 2: me is so so scary. Yeah. Well in nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: five when that movie came out and you thought that
Speaker 2: could actually happen, and people were like, fuck, all right,
Speaker 2: we're gonna wrap things up with the case that I
Speaker 2: find the most disturbing because it doesn't have anything to
Speaker 2: do with the.
Speaker 3: Fruit flying here. It's fucking bothering me. I find that disturbing.
Speaker 2: It doesn't have anything to do with the media dog
Speaker 2: piling on an innocent person. It wasn't an ancient accounting error,
Speaker 2: it wasn't confused cops bubbling around the outback. It's probably
Speaker 2: the least likely to happen in a this could happen
Speaker 2: to U way, but it is the most fucked up
Speaker 2: in a I can't believe this actually happened way. So
Speaker 2: this takes us back to notting Hill in nineteen forty nine.
Speaker 2: So not the Hugh Grant version of notting Hill. This
Speaker 2: was more rotting Hill. Npteen nine, nineteen forty nine, England,
Speaker 2: England bombed out England. Timothy Evans was a twenty four
Speaker 2: year old Welsh truck driver who couldn't read or write,
Speaker 2: living in the top floor apartment at ten Rillington Place
Speaker 2: in notting Hill. One description I read of ten Rillington
Speaker 2: Place in notting Hill in nineteen forty nine describes it
Speaker 2: as such quote. Each unit consisted of only two rooms
Speaker 2: and shared interior stairways and hallways. There was no indoor plumbing.
Speaker 2: All residents shared a wash house in the small, unruly backyard,
Speaker 2: which contained a sink and copper for heating water, with
Speaker 2: an outdoor toilet beside it. The flats were illuminated by
Speaker 2: coal gas fed into the units by jets in the wall. Okay,
Speaker 2: two things. All of this was written in the ad.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately you could not read how bad the situation was
Speaker 3: when he agreed to move in here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, two, it's me losing for apartments.
Speaker 3: Jets in the walls man. That Just like I told you,
Speaker 3: I was watching a silent film, yeah, like nineteen twelve
Speaker 3: or something where they had a gas heater that had
Speaker 3: like a hose coming out of the wall that you
Speaker 3: can swap the hose out for other types of accessories
Speaker 3: like other appliances could also use that gas hose, and
Speaker 3: it was.
Speaker 2: Just like, what a different time. Yeah, but this was
Speaker 2: forty years after that, almost, so you think they'd be
Speaker 2: beyond that. No. This was a bleak, post war working
Speaker 2: class neighborhood. And Timothy Evans was a bleak post war
Speaker 2: working class guy. He had a learning disability, a bit
Speaker 2: of a drinking problem, which today I imagine we would
Speaker 2: probably call a severe drinking problem yea, and he constantly
Speaker 2: fought with his wife, Beryl over their lack of money.
Speaker 2: They had a one year old daughter named Geraldine, and
Speaker 2: Beryl was pregnant with their second child. Their neighbor downstairs
Speaker 2: was a quiet, balding, soft spoken man named John Reginald
Speaker 2: Holliday Christie. What's his hair situation have to do with anything?
Speaker 2: He was his post office clerk and a former wartime
Speaker 2: special constable. He'd been in some minor legal trouble decades
Speaker 2: earlier for theft and assault, but he went by Reg and,
Speaker 2: like most guys who go by Reg, seemed pretty cool
Speaker 2: in reality. Though Reg Christie was a serial killer. He'd
Speaker 2: already murdered and buried two women. Ruth first, I'll.
Speaker 3: Tell you right now if you're I don't know where
Speaker 3: he's killing him, but if you're dragon bodies places, it's
Speaker 3: best to not be on the top floor.
Speaker 2: So the first floor for Reg makes sense. First, love
Speaker 2: of Rege makes sense. His first two murders, Ruth first, prostitutes, right,
Speaker 2: I don't know if they were prostitutes, but Ruth first. Actually,
Speaker 2: her last name is f U E Rst. I don't
Speaker 2: know if that's pronounced first, but she was first. And
Speaker 2: Muriel Edie in the garden at ten Rillington Place. And
Speaker 2: he'd done this during the Blitz, which I'm sure was
Speaker 2: an incredible time to be an active serial killer. Sure,
Speaker 2: if you're not familiar with the Blitz, the Germans bombed
Speaker 2: London for like sixty days in a row, so you
Speaker 2: could probably get away with pretty much anything you fucking wanted. Yeah,
Speaker 2: people were otherwise occupied. Yeah, Anyway, the Evans, Timothy and
Speaker 2: Beryl had no idea about Reg and his proclivities.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they usually don't tell people, no.
Speaker 2: And when Beryl found out she was pregnant again with
Speaker 2: this second child.
Speaker 3: When they don't have any money and they're climbing up
Speaker 3: and down eighteen flights of stairs.
Speaker 2: They were desperate for help. Abortion was illegal in the US,
Speaker 2: but good old Rege was ever the helpful neighbor, and
Speaker 2: he claimed that he'd had some medical training from the
Speaker 2: Great War World War One, which he was a veteran of,
Speaker 2: and offered to perform a discreet abortion procedure on Beryl,
Speaker 2: and they agreed to let him help. On November eighth,
Speaker 2: Timothy Evans came home to find Christy waiting on the
Speaker 2: stairs of the apartment with a horrific story. The procedure
Speaker 2: had failed and Beryl was dead. He took Timothy upstairs.
Speaker 2: Christy is Reg. Yes, sorry, yeah, Reg Christy. Timothy came
Speaker 2: home to find Reg Christy waiting on the stairs with
Speaker 2: a horrific story. The procedure had failed and Beryl was dead.
Speaker 2: Rege took Timothy upstairs and showed him Beryl's body on
Speaker 2: the bed. Geraldine was still in a crib nearby, alive,
Speaker 2: and Reg told Timothy that he needed to run because
Speaker 2: if anyone ever found out that this abortion had happened
Speaker 2: and that Beryl had died, they would both rot in prison.
Speaker 2: So we're gonna you and I are on the run.
Speaker 2: Unlikely partnership. No, Timothy, You're on the run. And Reg
Speaker 2: told him I'll take care of everything. You get out
Speaker 2: of town for a while. Okay, So what he meant was,
Speaker 2: you know, I'll bury the body, you get out of
Speaker 2: town whatever. Okay, So Timothy left Geraldine behind because Reg
Speaker 2: said that he would. I forget exactly who he said
Speaker 2: he was going to give him to, but there was
Speaker 2: a plan for Geraldine. He left Geraldine behind and ran
Speaker 2: to stay with relatives in Wales. After a couple of
Speaker 2: weeks of being in Wales, Timothy's guilty conscience, I guess,
Speaker 2: got to him. He walked into a police station in
Speaker 2: Wales and blurted out, I have disposed of my wife.
Speaker 2: When the detective incredulously asked what he meant, Timothy replied,
Speaker 2: I have put her down the drain.
Speaker 3: Okay, there's a cop working there, being like, you can't
Speaker 3: put a person down the drain.
Speaker 2: Well by draine, did he meant like a sewer drain,
Speaker 2: not like the sink.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I don't know how incredulous the
Speaker 3: cops there were, just like in Australia, this is the
Speaker 3: same Commonwealth.
Speaker 2: That's true. That's true, which is.
Speaker 3: A guy who's like, tell that guy to get out
Speaker 3: of here, I've you can't. I have a I have
Speaker 3: a sack of pennies.
Speaker 2: I'll show you.
Speaker 3: It's a shape of a woman. Yeah, we can't get
Speaker 3: this down the drade.
Speaker 2: Well, Timothy told the police which Draine, he put her down,
Speaker 2: and they went to go recover her body, but didn't
Speaker 2: find anything. No rats touck her. Clearly Timothy wasn't telling
Speaker 2: the truth. Again, he was not. He was had he
Speaker 2: had a learning disability, he was not fully functioning guy.
Speaker 2: I kind of imagine him almost like that guy from
Speaker 2: Making a Murderer, the nephew.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know, the guy who was actually arrested.
Speaker 2: The guy. The guy who was actually arrested the nephew
Speaker 2: had a tough go of it too. Yeah, and in
Speaker 2: something Massy Yeah yeah, Brandon Massey. So anyway, clearly Timothy
Speaker 2: wasn't telling the truth about what happened to his wife
Speaker 2: or where she was not.
Speaker 3: Clearly he just didn't know. But to the cops, they're like,
Speaker 3: this guy's wasting her time.
Speaker 2: Well, the cops, the cops were like, why did you
Speaker 2: come into the police station and say you've disposed of
Speaker 2: your wife and told us to go look at Draine
Speaker 2: where she is what's going on? Where's your wife? And
Speaker 2: at that point he said, well, this is what actually happened,
Speaker 2: and he gave up Bredge. He gave up redg Regg
Speaker 2: did you a favor? Well, Rege was about to undo
Speaker 2: that favor real quick because when the police searched ten
Speaker 2: Rillington place, they found the bodies of Beryl and Geraldine
Speaker 2: hidden in the back wash house. Both of them had
Speaker 2: been strangled. Jeraldine's the baby, Geraldine's the baby and so.
Speaker 3: But also this guy, he's not maybe bright enough to
Speaker 3: have realized that the abortion procedure does not include like
Speaker 3: bruising around the neck and stuff. He wouldn't have noticed.
Speaker 2: I don't think he noticed exactly. No, what the investigators
Speaker 2: managed to somehow completely missed was a human thigh bone
Speaker 2: that reg Christie was using to hold up his garden
Speaker 2: fence and something like ed gean shit right there. And
Speaker 2: they didn't put two and two together about the fact
Speaker 2: that local kids a few months I believe it was earlier,
Speaker 2: had found a human skull in a nearby lot and
Speaker 2: turned it into the police. And that skull belonged to
Speaker 2: Muriel Eddie, who was one of his first victims.
Speaker 3: Extra surprising to me is no one was like, Hey,
Speaker 3: our apartment building stinks.
Speaker 2: Oh fucking stinks. There's a dead baby and woman who
Speaker 2: had been on the first floor for a while. That's
Speaker 2: how bad in a non ac rotting hill smell rotting
Speaker 2: hills dud. So the cops didn't piece any of that together,
Speaker 2: but they did focus on Timothy, who was illiterate, terrified,
Speaker 2: and gave multiple wandering confessions that all conflicted with each other.
Speaker 2: He eventually signed a confession that historians now believe was
Speaker 2: manufactured by the police. Yeah, you know, don't ever sign it.
Speaker 3: That's the thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the real problem there. But he retracted everything
Speaker 2: before trial and pointed the finger exactly where it belonged
Speaker 2: at reg said, this guy did it. The last time
Speaker 2: I saw my daughter alive was with him. But bah bah.
Speaker 2: The trial opened in January nineteen fifty and the article
Speaker 2: that I read said under British law at the time,
Speaker 2: Timothy was only charged with the murder of Geraldine, which
Speaker 2: seems odd, But I don't know. Britain in the fifties,
Speaker 2: maybe it was legal to kill your wife.
Speaker 3: I think it might have been. But also it might
Speaker 3: have something to do with like well, she died doing
Speaker 3: something that was illegal, so maybe in the gates her existence,
Speaker 3: I don't know, you know what I mean, It wasn't like, listen,
Speaker 3: this friendly neighbor tried to will add a abortion to
Speaker 3: his crimes, right, and like a botched abortion is not
Speaker 3: the same as killing a woman. Apparently I could see
Speaker 3: that being a thing in the eyes.
Speaker 2: Of the law, right Weirdly, Yeah, According to a legal
Speaker 2: article I found online, quote Timothy took the stand in
Speaker 2: his own defense and was the only witness called by
Speaker 2: the defense. He denied killing Beryl and Geraldine, and further
Speaker 2: testified that he only became aware of his daughter's death
Speaker 2: when he was told about it by the police, which
Speaker 2: he also said is part of why he confessed, because
Speaker 2: once he found out his daughter was dead, he didn't
Speaker 2: care about anything anymore and just confessed. He was not
Speaker 2: great on the stand the normally aren't. And yeah, and
Speaker 2: he was not a guy primed to do well on
Speaker 2: the stand, and things would get so much worse for
Speaker 2: him when the prosecution called their star witness, reg Christie.
Speaker 2: Are we even allowed?
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess, right, But like it just seems
Speaker 3: like if it's the defendant and the plaintiff are the witnesses.
Speaker 3: I know, you put your hand up and you say,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna tell the truth. I don't know how often
Speaker 3: people when they get in that stand actually do, and like,
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, you can still lie.
Speaker 2: I just don't know why we would.
Speaker 3: It just seems weird that if your only witnesses are
Speaker 3: the two people whose names are on the fucking document.
Speaker 2: I mean, reg was a World War One vet, he
Speaker 2: was professional older, he was an ex cop. He was
Speaker 2: considered very respectable. I don't know why he was living
Speaker 2: in this slum that apparently there.
Speaker 3: Because twenty years earlier he was convicted of a bunch
Speaker 3: of shit, remember.
Speaker 2: Well right, but that was before he went to war. Anyway,
Speaker 2: the cops in this case trusted this guy. They put
Speaker 2: him on the stand, and you know it's his word
Speaker 2: against There are rotting corpses in his apartment.
Speaker 3: I think you lost the opportunity to be an upstanding citizen,
Speaker 3: even if you just said you found them there.
Speaker 2: Well, they weren't in his apartment. They were in the
Speaker 2: back so like the yard, Yeah, they were like in
Speaker 2: the shed in the back is where he put the bodies.
Speaker 2: Does he have access to the shed probably there you go.
Speaker 3: Don't believe it? Where'd you fucking say?
Speaker 2: Now? It took the jury thirty five minutes to decide
Speaker 2: that Timothy Evans deserved the death sentence. He was executed
Speaker 2: at Pentonville Prison on March ninth, nineteen fifty at twenty
Speaker 2: five years old, and died swearing he was innocent. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: reg Christie went right back to ten Rillington Place and
Speaker 2: turned it into a slaughterhouse. By nineteen fifty two, he'd
Speaker 2: strangled his own wife, Ethel and hid her under the floorboards.
Speaker 3: And now it's like doublin demnity shit or whatever. They're
Speaker 3: not double demiti now it's like double Jeopardy shit where
Speaker 3: it's like no, because he wasn't the one convicted of.
Speaker 2: Well, right, he was also only accused of murdering well
Speaker 2: he wasn't. Yeah, he wasn't huge.
Speaker 3: So if he had gotten off for the crime, then
Speaker 3: he can do it with a community or whatever.
Speaker 2: But over the next few months he murdered three more women,
Speaker 2: Kathleen Maloney, Rita Nelson and Hectorina McLennon by gassing them.
Speaker 2: I assume with the jets in the apartment. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe and stuffing their bodies into a kitchen alcove that
Speaker 2: he wallpapered over. In March nineteen fifty three, he moved out,
Speaker 2: didn't take the bodies with him. I A rat dies
Speaker 2: in your wall.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's a fucking problem.
Speaker 2: I'm telling you. This is how bad I think this
Speaker 2: area probably I think, yeah, just industrial. Yeah, he moved out,
Speaker 2: didn't take the bodies with him, and the new tenant
Speaker 2: decided to peel back the wallpaper and he found the
Speaker 2: three women's bodies. There's an alcove back here, Yeah, he
Speaker 2: found the three boys.
Speaker 3: Told there's place at nelcove.
Speaker 2: In this hidden alcove. Christy was caught and confessed to everything,
Speaker 2: including Beryl Evans's murder, although he never admitted to killing Geraldine.
Speaker 2: And he was hanged on July fifteenth, nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 2: So this guy got a quick trial. He moved out
Speaker 2: in March nineteen fifty three and was hanged on July fifteenth.
Speaker 3: And what sounds like our boy, the Welsh Welsh dude
Speaker 3: also got a quick trial. Unfortunately, this seems like these people.
Speaker 3: There was no sleep for the hangman in this now,
Speaker 3: no no no, But also nineteen fifty we hang in people.
Speaker 2: Yep, in nineteen fifty fifty something fifty three.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like we're weird.
Speaker 2: The space race is happening. True, that's fifty fifty seven,
Speaker 2: but it seems seems late. Yeah, let's see when was
Speaker 2: the last person hanged. The last judicial hanging in the
Speaker 2: United States took place on January twenty fifth, nineteen ninety six.
Speaker 2: Something tells me it's not New England in Delaware. That's
Speaker 2: close though, Yeah, Delaware. Yeah, being the smallest state wasn't
Speaker 2: enough for you. You had to have another thing. Well,
Speaker 2: reg Christie had eight things, eight kills to his name,
Speaker 2: including Ethel, Beryl and Geraldine. And then four of these
Speaker 2: other murders only happened because Timothy Evans had already been
Speaker 2: killed for the crime that he didn't commit, and everybody
Speaker 2: assumed open and shutcase. Some of they should add Timothy
Speaker 2: to his kill list. True, Yeah, I mean it is
Speaker 2: literally like a serial killer. That's why this case is
Speaker 2: so insane to me. A serial killer got a man
Speaker 2: in a big man, Yeah, an innocent man convicted for
Speaker 2: crimes that he committed and got away with it. And
Speaker 2: so I think you should add Timothy to his body count. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I agree. The Evans case eventually became a cornerstone of
Speaker 2: the movement to end the death penalty in Britain, and
Speaker 2: alongside a bunch of other cases, it served as strong
Speaker 2: proof of why an irreversible punishment like the death penalty
Speaker 2: is a disaster are when you allow it to be
Speaker 2: part of a system. They got to be open shut,
Speaker 2: got to be open shut. The UK suspended the death
Speaker 2: penalty in nineteen sixty five, abolished it in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 2: and Timothy Evans was granted a royal pardon in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty six. Didn't help him, No, couple of years too
Speaker 2: late to help Timothy Evans, and also didn't leave anyone behind.
Speaker 2: The whole family was obliterated, so the bloodline ends there.
Speaker 2: So who is this for? Yeah? Like what a grand
Speaker 2: child was?
Speaker 3: Like my grandfather's finally exonerated.
Speaker 2: I guess it was sort of the state, like just
Speaker 2: performative right by him. Performative, performative bullshit. Yeah, but we've
Speaker 2: been performing for a long time here on this episode,
Speaker 2: I think it's about time we hit the fear tier. Ed,
Speaker 2: where do you place being falsely accused on your fear tier?
Speaker 3: Unlike you which is to say that I've definitely did something.
Speaker 3: Now I dream about it every fucking night. I still
Speaker 3: I guess you have to place it it like at
Speaker 3: eight minimum, yeah, because you're only not falsely accused until
Speaker 3: you are.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so it's like I don't even think that
Speaker 2: I can do anything.
Speaker 3: I don't even know if I can live my life
Speaker 3: in such a way where I can avoid it. Like
Speaker 3: what the fuck was a friend of a friend just
Speaker 3: recently on Instagram had posted a story of like or
Speaker 3: they were on a podcast or something talking about how
Speaker 3: the cafe they write at and work at all the time,
Speaker 3: like all the time, they're always in there, DM them
Speaker 3: on Instagram to accuse them of stealing a book from
Speaker 3: their like little library thing they have in the cafe.
Speaker 2: Holy shit, And he was like, yeah, I didn't steal
Speaker 2: the book, and they were like, don't come back.
Speaker 3: But then eventually was like, well someone who works here
Speaker 3: said they saw you leave, and then.
Speaker 2: It was a cookbook or something something like like not
Speaker 2: even the life. It was like.
Speaker 3: A price of property to the to the cafe. And
Speaker 3: he was like, well I didn't or whatever, And then
Speaker 3: I guess later the another person from that account, the
Speaker 3: official like cafe account DMed them to be like, hey,
Speaker 3: we looked at the security footage, and I think what
Speaker 3: happened was the guy who took the book. You were
Speaker 3: walking by them at the exact moment they took the book,
Speaker 3: and so it's literally is a little bit of a
Speaker 3: bigger gentleman, and so it's like he may have like
Speaker 3: it fully eclipsed that person, so the book went missing.
Speaker 3: They looked up, they didn't see that person. They just
Speaker 3: saw you leaving, the dingling of the bell, and now
Speaker 3: you're getting DMS being like, give us back our book.
Speaker 2: Then this is not death penalty, but this is.
Speaker 3: Certainly a person who was just living in their life
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden, even if it's as minor
Speaker 3: as an insanely small as this, it's just like, hey,
Speaker 3: I'm being accused of stealing, like like finger pointedly, we
Speaker 3: saw there's a person here who saw you leave and
Speaker 3: then look down and the book was gone. And so
Speaker 3: that's why I say it has to be an a
Speaker 3: because this person was just living their life at a
Speaker 3: place that they go.
Speaker 2: To all the time. Yeah, and that's all it takes.
Speaker 2: And if there is a particularly gut feeling type prosecutor.
Speaker 3: And if there was no security camera where they were
Speaker 3: able to see that you walk by at the same moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it can come from it's just the witness. It
Speaker 2: can come for anybody. A wee we.
Speaker 3: I did some mock trial thing in high school and
Speaker 3: there was they did something where like they had someone
Speaker 3: come into the room and like tell us something. We
Speaker 3: didn't know this person. It was just like, hey, we've
Speaker 3: an announcement, and then they left or whatever, and then
Speaker 3: like fifteen minutes later they were like, hey, what color
Speaker 3: shirt was that guy wearing and hot whatever? And then
Speaker 3: like half the fucking class got it wrong. Half the
Speaker 3: class fully was under the impression he had glasses. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And then they had the guy come back in.
Speaker 2: We didn't know.
Speaker 3: It was like part of a little trap, right, and
Speaker 3: the guy and it was like, oh, he didn't have glasses.
Speaker 3: It was like a not a purple shirt like the
Speaker 3: things that people remembered. And we were like twenty witnesses
Speaker 3: in the glass at that moment, and it was like, fuck,
Speaker 3: I don't I would never believe a witness testimony, not
Speaker 3: even because they're lying.
Speaker 2: They just misremember. And that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: This kid if there wasn't a security camera footage for
Speaker 3: this guy, it's just that witness testimony.
Speaker 2: If I saw him take the book, Well you know
Speaker 2: what that was that they did to you in school?
Speaker 2: The sigh up, the sinister test. Oh shit, senisor test,
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen. We bring it back around for you
Speaker 2: every time. If you're driving, look in the back seats
Speaker 2: your car right now. Boom, Yeah, I put it in eight.
Speaker 2: False accusations are very scary to me. Our system is
Speaker 2: not prepared to deal with them particularly well.
Speaker 3: And by the way, to the point we've been making
Speaker 3: the second story or throw whatever, the ancient story. It
Speaker 3: really false acquisite acquisitions, false acquisitions, but it's called stealing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: false accusations whatever, even easier if you can get two
Speaker 3: friends in on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it's like three people said you did this when
Speaker 3: you never did. Is even crazier because it's like, well,
Speaker 3: three people said it. So like the guy who said, oh,
Speaker 3: we wanted to kill his dad to take the house,
Speaker 3: there was three.
Speaker 2: People on the other bench, all of them lying. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And good on Cicero for making this get away with it.
Speaker 2: Is a real one, dude.
Speaker 3: Every time that guy comes up in this pod. Who
Speaker 3: knows if anything ancient history is even real, but.
Speaker 2: It's all Harry Potter probably yeah, but he's great.
Speaker 3: But anyway, you were saying, it's an eight.
Speaker 2: For you, it's an eight for me. It's very it's
Speaker 2: very frightening. It can happen to anyone for any reason,
Speaker 2: and I just hope that it never does. So until
Speaker 2: next time, I falsely accuse you of being a terrible host.
Speaker 2: He's pointing at me.
Speaker 3: If you can't if you're watching, he's not saying it
Speaker 3: to the person who's listening.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's true, but you might be a terrible host's eds,
Speaker 2: do you have a false accusation for me?
Speaker 3: No, you're great, Thank you, Ed, And I would never
Speaker 3: accuse you. I would never accuse you more than your
Speaker 3: own mind. Is it sounds like with these dreams.
Speaker 2: I'm tortured enough. Until next time, I'm Chris Calari and
Speaker 2: I'm Edvcola. The show is Scared all the Time. We'll
Speaker 2: talk you soon, Bye bye. Scared All the Time is
Speaker 2: co produced by Chris Calari and.
Speaker 3: Edvacola, written by Chris Calari, edited by Edvacola.
Speaker 2: Additional support and Keeper of Sanity is test fightful. Our
Speaker 2: theme song is the track Scared by Perpetual Stu and
Speaker 2: mister Disclaimer is.
Speaker 3: And just a reminder, you can now support the podcast
Speaker 3: on Patreon. You get all kinds of cool shit in return,
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Speaker 3: from ad free episodes, producer credits, exclusive access, and exclusive merch.
Speaker 2: So go sign up for a Patreon and Scared All
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