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Speaker 1: Picture this for a second. You are standing right in

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the center of a municipal police evidence room, and the

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air in there is just stagnant. It's heavy with that

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smell of old paper, decaying cardboard dust, and just the

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sheer weight of time.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that highly specific archival smell.

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Speaker 1: Exactly all around you, stretching from the floor to the ceiling,

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are rows upon rows of identical archival boxes. To the

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naked eye, they look entirely unremarkable, a barcode, a sharpie scrawl,

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maybe a faded date from the nineteen seventies or eighties.

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But inside one of these specific boxes, gathering dust for

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over thirty years is a secret. Now, I want you

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to imagine the person who actually put that secret there.

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They are out in the world, living their life, going

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about their day, yeah, drinking their morning coffee, going to

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their kids' soccer game, celebrating the holidays, and they are utterly,

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deeply convinced that they have outsmarted the entire world.

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Speaker 2: They believe the book is permanently closed.

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Speaker 1: But then decades later, something shifts, an invisible speck of data,

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a microscopic drop of DNA, maybe a sudden slip of

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the tongue or a completely unexpected confession brings the entire

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facade crashing down.

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Speaker 2: It's a really fascinating thought experiment, and I think it

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really gets to the core of what we're doing here today.

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I agree, because to live with a secret of that magnitude,

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particularly a violent secret, it requires a highly specific kind

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of psychological compartmentalization.

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Speaker 1: It really does.

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Speaker 2: It requires a level of hubris that is genuinely difficult

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for the average person to even comprehend. We tend to

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think of secrets as heavy burdens that naturally force their

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way out.

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Speaker 1: Guilt will just consume you, exactly.

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Speaker 2: But the reality is that the truth possesses this terrifying

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silent patience. It doesn't need to shout. It can wait

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in those cardboard boxes for ten, twenty, or even fifty years.

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Speaker 1: Well, welcome to Thrilling Threads. I'm so glad you're joining

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us today because we are embarking on a massive, meticulous

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exploration into those exact shadows. We really are unraveling ten infamous,

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heavily researched true crime mysteries that went completely unsolved for years,

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sometimes decades, until shocking, often deeply scientific breakthroughs finally brought closure.

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Speaker 2: And to you listening right now, consider yourself the third

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person at this table with us. Absolutely, we want you

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to really lean in to examine the pieces of these

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puzzles alongside us. If you've ever looked at a cold

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case and wondered, how does someone just vanish? Or how

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does a killer just walk away? This is for you.

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Speaker 1: We aren't here for the grim, gratuitous details either, No,

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not at all. We are here to understand the mechanics

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of how the truth eventually forces its way to.

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Speaker 2: The surface, which I think is a really important distinction

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to make right up front. The analytical framework we're establishing

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today isn't about sensationalizing tragedy. It is a complex study

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in three distinct areas. First, human psychology, both of the

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perpetrator and the public. Second, the rapid, almost science fiction

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level evolution forensic science over the last few decades.

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Speaker 1: It's wild how fast it moved.

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Speaker 2: It really is. And third, the relentless, heartbreaking determination of

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families and advocates who simply refused to be silenced by

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an apathetic system.

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Speaker 1: We are relying strictly on established facts, court records, and

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meticulous investigative reports to understand precisely how these seemingly impenetrable

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walls of secrecy finally crumpled.

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Speaker 2: So let's get into it.

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Speaker 1: Let's start by looking at cases where the victims weren't

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hidden in some remote wilderness, but right under the perpetrator's noses.

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The proximity factor, Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about

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the psychological toll of maintaining that kind of physical proximity

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to your own crime. To explore this, I want to

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take you to a quiet, upscale, suburban neighborhood in Jericho,

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New York.

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Speaker 2: Okay.

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Speaker 1: The date is September second, nineteen ninety nine. A homeowner

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who had recently purchased the property makes a horrifying discovery

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in the crawl space of his house. It's a massive

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fifty five gallon steel drum.

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Speaker 2: I'd point out right away that just the physical presence

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of a fifty five gallon steel drum in a residential

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crawl space is a massive anomaly.

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Speaker 1: It's totally bizarre, right.

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Speaker 2: Because these are industrial containers. They weigh upwards of forty

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pounds empty and hundreds of pounds when full. They're used

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for transporting bulk chemicals or industrial waste, not.

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Speaker 1: Something you keep next to the holiday decorations exactly.

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Speaker 2: To find one tucked away beneath the floorboards of a

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suburban home immediately suggests premeditated concealment. It requires significant physical

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effort to maneuver it into that tight space.

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Speaker 1: It's not something you just accidentally leave behind when you move.

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And when investigators finally managed to open this sealed drum,

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they found the mummified remains of a pregnant woman, surrounded

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by plastic pellets in a very distinct green dye.

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Speaker 2: The dye is a crucial detail.

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Speaker 1: It is now the police immediately trace the drum itself.

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It bore the markings of a company called Melrose Plastics,

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and when they looked into Melrose Plastics, they found that

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the co owner of the company was a man named

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Howard Elkins.

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Speaker 2: Who just happened to be the former owner of the house.

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Speaker 1: He was the former owner of the very house where

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the drum was found.

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Speaker 2: The connection is immediate there, but the timeline is what

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makes this case so staggering. The forensic turning point didn't

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actually come from the drum itself, but from a seemingly

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impossible piece of evidence found inside it.

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Speaker 1: This part always gets me.

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Speaker 2: Right alongside the remains investigators discovered a rotting, severely water

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damaged address.

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Speaker 1: Book, which feels like something straight out of a movie.

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I mean, for those who might not know what exactly

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are the forensic odds of a paper book surviving inside

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a sealed steel drum alongside decomposing remains for literally decades.

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Speaker 2: The odds are vanishingly small. The internal environment of a

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sealed drum containing biological material is highly corrosive. You have moisture,

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shifting temperatures and the chemical byproducts of decomposition. It should

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be soup papers should disintegrate into illegible mush within a year. However,

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the unique combination of the plastic pellets and that specif

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sif a chemical green dye seemed to have inadvertently created

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a slightly preservative environment. Forensic experts in nineteen ninety nine

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had to use incredibly delicate processes basically freeze drying the

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pages and using specialized lighting to reveal indentations and feeded ink.

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Speaker 1: And they managed to lift a single legible name, Raina Merriquin.

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She was a twenty eight year old immigrant from El Salvador.

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She had been an employee at Melrose Plastics and she

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had been missing since nineteen sixty.

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Speaker 2: Nine, nineteen sixty nine.

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Speaker 1: That means she was in that barrel, in that crawl

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space for thirty years. Think about that for a sec

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reg thirty years of Howard Elkins living in that house.

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He raised a family there. He walked across the floorboards,

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knowing exactly what was directly beneath his feet.

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Speaker 2: Well, it's easy to assume that would slowly drive a

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person mad with guild. The psychology of someone like Elkins

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suggests the exact opposite. It points to a profound, chilling dissociation.

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Speaker 1: How does someone even do that?

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Speaker 2: The sheer arrogance required to leave the barrel behind when

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he eventually sold the house and moved to Florida in

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the nineteen nineties is staggering. Was he simply too old

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and frail to move it? Did he believe that because

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he had gotten away with it for three decades he

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was somehow invincible.

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Speaker 1: It's a classic manifestation of perpetrator privilege, isn't it.

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Speaker 2: Completely He was shielded by his socioeconomic status, his position

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as a business owner, and his facade as a respectable

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family man. No one was looking at.

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Speaker 1: Him, and when police finally tracked Elkins down, in Florida

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and interviewed him. He was defensive, uncooperative, and claimed he

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didn't remember anything about a fifty five gallon drum, of course,

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but he knew the walls were closing in. Shortly after

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that police interview, before they could even arrest him, Elkins

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purchased a shotgun and took his own life.

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Speaker 2: He took the coward's way out.

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Speaker 1: He did and subsequent DNA test and confirmed what the

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police already suspected. The fetus inside rain Amerquin was the

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biological child of Howard Elkins.

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Speaker 2: It paints a very clear, very dark picture of the motive.

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You have a married executive engaging affair with a vulnerable employee.

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She becomes pregnant, and he calculates that eliminating her is

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preferable to facing the social and financial consequences of his infidelity.

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Speaker 1: There's a detail that has stayed with me ever since

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I read the case files. Among the few legible items

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recovered from that address book, there was a message believed

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to be written by Raina, possibly referencing the fact that

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she had recently called Elkin's house and revealed the affair

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to his wife. Yeah that message, The translated message simply said,

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don't be mad, I told the truth.

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Speaker 2: It is a devastating sentence, don't be mad, I told

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the truth. It encapsulates the entire tragedy of the power dynamic.

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Speaker 1: It really does.

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Speaker 2: It is a plea for understanding and mercy from a

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person in a highly vulnerable position, directed as someone who

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held absolute financial and social power over her. The Rain

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American case forces us to recognize that monsters don't always

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hide in the woods.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes they hide behind manicured lawns and corporate titles. Percise So,

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we've looked at a secret buried beneath the house. But

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what happens when the secret isn't contained in a barrel

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but scattered out in the vast open.

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Speaker 2: Desert a completely different kind of isolation.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to pivot to a case that absolutely

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paralyzed the public from twenty ten to twenty thirteen, the

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disappearance of the mix Stay family.

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Speaker 2: The Mixed Day case is fundamentally terrifying because of the

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complete absence of a precipitating event.

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Speaker 1: There was just nothing.

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Speaker 2: In February twenty ten, the family Joseph, his wife Summer,

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and their two young boys, Gianny and Joseph Junior, simply

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vanished from their home in Fallbrook, California. There was no

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ransom note, no signs of a break in, just silence.

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Speaker 1: I want you to picture the scene that Joseph's brother

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found when he finally went to check on the house.

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The doors were locked tight, so he had to literally

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climb through an open window to get inside, right, and

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what he found was eerie, precisely because it was so normal.

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There were eggs left on the kitchen counter, there were

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two bowls of popcorns sitting on the futon in the

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living room, it'd smack exactly, and the family, these beloved dogs,

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Bear and Digger, were left outside in the backyard with

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no food or water. As someone who has pets, that

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detail alone screams that this wasn't a planned vacation.

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Speaker 2: Oh absolutely not.

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Speaker 1: People who love their dogs do not just abandon them

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to starve.

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Speaker 2: You're touching on a critical behavioral indicator there. Leaving the

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dogs uncared for alongside the perishable food left out immediately

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points away from a voluntary orchestrated disappearance.

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Speaker 1: It screams foul play.

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Speaker 2: It does, however, because there was absolutely no physical crime scene,

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no blood, no signs of a struggle, no missing valuables.

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The investigation was effectively paralyzed from day one.

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Speaker 1: They had nothing to go on.

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Speaker 2: Law enforcement had no forensic starting point. Yeah, and when

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you have a vacuum of evidence, human nature rushes in

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to fill it with speculation.

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Speaker 1: And the speculation was wild for three years. The prevailing theory,

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even pushed by some in law enforcement, was that the

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family had fled to.

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Speaker 2: Mexico, based on very flimsy evidence.

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Speaker 1: Based on incredibly grainy, low quality border surveillance footage that

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showed a family of four walking across the border.

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Speaker 2: Which is a perfect example of peridolia.

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Speaker 1: What's that again, It's.

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Speaker 2: The psychological phenomenon where the mind perceives a familiar pattern

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where none actually.

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Speaker 1: Exists, like seeing faces in clouds exactly.

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Speaker 2: People wanted the mix stays to be alive, so they

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looked at a blurry cluster of pixels and convinced themselves

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it was Joseph in summer. The lack of a physical

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crime scene allowed this false narrative to take root, which

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tragically diverted resources and attention for years.

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Speaker 1: The sheer vastness of the desert acted as a silent

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accomplice to the crime.

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Speaker 2: It swallowed them up.

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Speaker 1: But that silence finally broke On November eleventh, twenty thirteen,

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a motorcyclist riding off road in a desolate stretch of

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the Mohave Desert near Victorville noticed something unusual in.

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Speaker 2: The dirt, a chance discovery.

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Speaker 1: It turned out to be the shallow buried remains of

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the entire Mixday family, along with a rusted sledgehammer. Suddenly,

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the narrative of a family fleeing to mexic Co evaporated.

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This was a brutal quadruple homicide.

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Speaker 2: The reality was much darker.

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Speaker 1: But the breakthrough didn't point to a random desert cartel

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or a stranger in the night. It pointed right back

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to Joseph Mixstay's inner circle.

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Speaker 2: Right Once the remains were discovered, investigators finally had a

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forensic anchor. They could analyze cellular tower data from the

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area around the gravesite, and they could look closer at

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the financial records surrounding the exact time of the.

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Speaker 1: Disappearance, and that led them somewhere very specific.

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Speaker 2: It led them directly to Charles Merritt, a business associate

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who manufactured custom water features for Joseph's company.

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Speaker 1: The motive was incredibly basic. Wasn't it just financial greed?

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Speaker 2: Entirely? Forensic accounts discovered that Merritt had been writing checks

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to himself from Joseph's business.

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Speaker 1: Account, so he was stealing from him.

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Speaker 2: Yes. When Joseph realized money was missing and planned to

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confront him, Merritt murdered the entire family to cover his

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tracks and continue looting the business.

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Speaker 1: The terror of betrayal by a known associate is chilling.

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Think about the logistics of that. This wasn't a boogeyman.

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This was a guy Joseph worked with, a guy who

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had been to their house, a guy who knew his children's.

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Speaker 2: Names, someone they trusted.

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Speaker 1: When investigators were secretly observing Merit right before his arrest,

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one of them noted to me, it looked like a

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broken man. He knew he was done.

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Speaker 2: It's an important pivot in how we perceive danger. We

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are biologically wired to fear the unknown, the stranger lurking in.

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Speaker 1: The dark alley right stranger danger.

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Speaker 2: But statistically, victims of violent crime are far more likely

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to be harmed by someone in their immediate circle, someone

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they trust. The mix staycase is a grim reminder of

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that reality.

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Speaker 1: That's a scary thought.

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Speaker 2: It also highlights how a staged or absent crime scene

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can completely mislead both the public and the police. Mary

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nearly got away with annihilating an entire family simply because

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he understood that without a runeful of evidence, the police

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have a very hard time proving a negative.

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Speaker 1: It just shows you how terrifyingly fragile are our safety

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can be. We lock our doors against the outside world,

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but sometimes the threat is the person we invite inside.

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And speaking of being misled by the scene of a crime,

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that leads us into our next major theme, the tragedy

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of false narratives. We're going to explore how initial assumptions,

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whether they are made by seasoned police detectives or thousands

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of amateur sleuths online, can wildly derail the truth and

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cause profound secondary trauma to the victim's families.

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Speaker 2: This is such a critical issue in modern true crime.

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Speaker 1: Let's look at the heartbreaking case of the acclaimed filmmaker

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and actress Adrian Shelley.

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Speaker 2: Adrian Shelley was a brilliant creative force. Many listeners might

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know her best for writing, directing, and co starring in

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the beloved two thousand and seven film Waitress, such a

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great movie it is. Her death on November first, two

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thousand and six was an absolute shock to the independent

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film community in New York and to everyone who knew her.

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Speaker 1: She was found dead in her Manhattan office apartment in

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Abingdon Square, and the initial response from law enforcement is

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what makes this case so deeply frustrat To.

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Speaker 2: Analyze frustrating is an understatement.

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Speaker 1: The scene was assessed and the police officially ruled it

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a suicide. She was found hanging from a shower rod.

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The police looked at that environment and immediately drafted a

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narrative that fit the most obvious, superficial visual evidence.

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Speaker 2: They took the path of least resistance.

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Speaker 1: But her husband, Andy Ostroy, categorically refused to accept this.

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He knew his wife, He knew she was incredibly happy,

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her career was peaking, she loved her young daughter, and

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she was not in a psychological state to take her

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own life.

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Speaker 2: I'd argue that Andy Ostroy's defiance is the single reason

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we know the truth today.

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Speaker 1: I completely agree.

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Speaker 2: This case is a textbook example of confirmation bias in

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an initial police investigation, when investigators arrive at a scene

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that superficially resembles a suicide. There is a very strong

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cognitive heuristic, a mental shortcut to interpret all subsequent evidence

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through that specific lens.

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Speaker 1: They just stopped looking for anything else.

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Speaker 2: It's not necessarily malicious. It's how the human brain processes

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complex information. They see a hanging, their brain solves the puzzle,

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and they subconsciously stopped looking for anomalies. But Ostroy's intimate,

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qualitative knowledge of his wife's psychological state fundamentally contradicted their

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physical findings.

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Speaker 1: I want to share a detail that really underscores why

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Andy Ostroi fought so relentlessly. Our sources note that Adrianne

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used to write these beautiful, spontaneous poems for him.

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Speaker 2: Oh wow.

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Speaker 1: He recalled one where she wrote, don your face is

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a brilliant moon in my empty room. Your love is

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like a beating drum.

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Speaker 2: That's beautiful.

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Speaker 1: It is so profound, so full of vibrant life and connection.

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When you contrast that deep, expressive love with the absolute

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tragedy of a botched initial police ruling that tried to

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label her death as a despairing suicide, it's just infuriating.

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Speaker 2: The juxtaposition is heartbreaking, but it fueled his advocacy. Because

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Ostroy pushed back so hard, literally demanding that the police

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re examined the apartment, He forced them to look at

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the scene with out the blinder of their initial assumption.

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Speaker 1: He made them do their jobs.

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Speaker 2: He did, and when forensic teams finally looked closely at

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the details they had previously dismissed as irrelevant, they found

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a singular, vital piece of evidence, a dusty footprint in

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the bathroom right.

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Speaker 1: And not just any footprint. It was a clear impression

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of a rebox sneaker left in gypsum dust, which did

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not match any footwear owned by Adrian or her husband.

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Speaker 2: The presence of gypsum dust was the key.

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Speaker 1: There because of the construction.

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Speaker 2: Exactly it indicated. Construction. Police tracked that specific sneaker tread

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to a construction site right downstairs in the same building,

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and that print led them directly to a nineteen year

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old worker named Diego Pilco.

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Speaker 1: Pilco ultimately confessed the reality was that he had been

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stealing from the building. Adrian caught him or confronted him

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about the noise, and he attacked her.

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Speaker 2: Just a horrific escalation.

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Speaker 1: He killed her and then in a panic he staged

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the scene to look like a suicide to cover his tracks.

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He was sentenced to twenty five years in prison.

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Speaker 2: If we look at the broader implications, Adrian Shelley's case

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is a stark warning about the danger of heuristic thinking

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in forensic science.

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Speaker 1: It really is.

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Speaker 2: It highlights the absolutely vital role of family advocacy. If

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Andy Astroid had been intimidated by the authority of the police,

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if he had accepted their expert conclusion, Diego Pilko would

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have walked away without a doubt. Furthermore, Adrian's legacy would

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have been forever shadowed by a completely false narrative of suicide.

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Her family fought not just for justice, but for the

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truth of who she was.

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Speaker 1: It really makes you wonder how many cases out there

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are permanently closed because there isn't an Andy Astroid fighting

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to reopen them.

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Speaker 2: That's the chilling part.

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Speaker 1: But police aren't the only ones who create false narratives.

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Sometimes we do the public the Internet.

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Speaker 2: We could be our own worst enemies.

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Speaker 1: And that brings us to the deeply unsettling, highly publicized

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mystery of Alisa Lamb in twenty thirteen.

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Speaker 2: I would categorize the Alisa Lamb case as perhaps the

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quintessential example of how the modern Internet eCos system can

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completely lose the thread of reality in favor of a sensationalized,

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crowdsourced horror story.

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Speaker 1: For context, Alisa Lamb was a twenty one year old

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Canadian college student. She was traveling alone down the West

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Coast and ended up in Los Angeles, staying at the

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notorious Cecil Hotel.

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Speaker 2: A place with a lot of dark history.

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Speaker 1: She went missing for three weeks, and her body was

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eventually found inside one of the massive water tanks on

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the roof of the hotel. But before she was found,

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the LAPD released a piece of surveillance footage from a

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hotel elevator, hoping the public could help identify her last movements.

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And if you were online in twenty thirteen, you remember

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this video was everywhere.

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Speaker 2: The footage is undeniably unsettling to watch without context, he

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really is? It showed Lamb exhibiting highly erratic behavior. She

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steps into the elevator, presses a vertical column of buttons,

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steps back into the corner, peers out into the hallway

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as if hiding from someone, and makes very unusual swed

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gestures with her hands.

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Speaker 1: For walking away, and the Internet immediately lost all sense

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of perspective. People were downloading the videos, slowing it down,

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analyzing it frame by frame.

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Speaker 2: Looking for clues that weren't there.

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Speaker 1: Because the Cecil Hotel has a very dark history. It

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had housed serial killers like Richard Ramirez, and there had

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been numerous tragedies there over the decades, the Internet echo

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chamber instantly defaulted to the most extreme cinematic.

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Speaker 2: Theories that wanted it to be a movie.

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Speaker 1: People claimed she was experiencing a supernatural encounter. There were

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massive Reddit threads arguing she was possessed or playing some

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paranormal elevator game, or that the hotel staff was involved

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in a massive conspiracy to murder her.

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Speaker 2: It's fascinating from a sociological standpoint, how quickly the Internet

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frenzy discarded the most statistically probable explanations.

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Speaker 1: Why do you think that happens?

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Speaker 2: It's a phenomenon driven by algorithmic reinforcement. Social media platforms

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prioritize engagement, and ghost caught on tape generates vastly more

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engagement than young woman experiencing a medical emergency.

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Speaker 1: That is so true. It's all about clicks.

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Speaker 2: Exactly the reality of the Elisa Lamb case was not

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a horror movie. It was a profound, deeply relatable human tragedy.

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Speaker 1: When the autopsy and toxicology reports finally came out, the

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truth was devastatingly grounded. Alisa Lamb suffered from bipolar.

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Speaker 2: One disorder, a very serious condition.

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Speaker 1: The toxicology reports showed that she was not taking her

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prescribed medication properly. She had traces of her antidepressants, but

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the mood stabilizers and antipsychotics she needed were absent from

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her system.

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Speaker 2: And we need to understand the physiological reality of that.

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Speaker 1: Please break that down for us.

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Speaker 2: The combination of a highly stressful new environment, the disrupted

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sleep patterns that are typical of budget travel, and the

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sudden cessation of critical psychiatric medication is a well documented

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trigger for severe manic or psychotic.

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Speaker 1: Episodes, the perfect storm.

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Speaker 2: It is. Individuals in the grip of such an episode

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can experience profound paranoia and hallucinations. The investigation concluded that,

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driven by this internal crisis, she accessed the roof, which

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was remarkably easy to do via a fire escape, climbed

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onto the water tank, opened the heavy lid, got inside,

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and tragically drowned, likely succumbing to hypothermia.

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Speaker 1: It really forces us to look in the mirror as

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consumers of these stories. I think about how true crime communities,

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in their insatiable pursuit of a spooky mystery, completely stripped

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Alisa Lamb of her humanity.

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Speaker 2: They turned her into content.

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Speaker 1: She wasn't a character in a ghost story. She was

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a daughter, a sister, a student experiencing a terrifying medical

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emergency in an unfamiliar place. We turned her mental health

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crisis into a viral campfire tale.

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Speaker 2: I'd agree, and I think it raises an important question

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about societal responsibility. The Internet's reaction to Alisa Lamb represents

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a massive failure in our collective empathy regarding severe mental illness.

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Speaker 1: Because it's easier to look away, yes.

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Speaker 2: Instead of recognizing the clear signs of a psychiatric emergency,

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the paranoia, the erratic movements, millions of people chose to

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see d Deans. It's a defense mechanism. It's easier to

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blame a ghost than to face the uncomfortable reality of

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how fragile human brain chemistry actually is. But choosing the

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sensational narrative does a profound disservice to the victim.

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Speaker 1: It distracts from the truth, and we see that exact

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same distraction, that same swirling cloud of false rumors in

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the abduction of Britney Drexel. This is a case that

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spans from two thousand and nine all the way to

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twenty twenty two.

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Speaker 2: Britney Drexel's disappearance is another prime example of how sensationalized

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rumors can derail public perception and arguably draw investigative energy

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away from the most likely scenarios.

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Speaker 1: Brittany was a seventeen year old high school student from

475
00:23:39,200 --> 00:23:41,839
New York who vanished while on spring break in Myrtle Beach,

476
00:23:41,880 --> 00:23:44,519
South Carolina. The last verified sighting of her was on

477
00:23:44,559 --> 00:23:47,920
surveillance footage leaving the Blue Water Resort Hotel. She was

478
00:23:47,960 --> 00:23:50,920
texting her boyfriend back home, and then at exactly nine

479
00:23:51,000 --> 00:23:55,599
one five pm, the text stopped, just abruptly ended mid conversation,

480
00:23:55,799 --> 00:23:58,880
and for thirteen years the case went completely cold, and

481
00:23:58,920 --> 00:24:02,480
into that thirteen years vacuum of information poured the most

482
00:24:02,559 --> 00:24:04,400
terrifying rumors imaginable.

483
00:24:04,519 --> 00:24:08,359
Speaker 2: The narratives that emerged were incredibly elaborate and dark.

484
00:24:08,720 --> 00:24:09,720
Speaker 1: What were people saying?

485
00:24:09,799 --> 00:24:14,599
Speaker 2: There were widespread heavily circulated rumors, some even repeated by

486
00:24:14,640 --> 00:24:18,559
local informants, that Brittany had been abducted by massive human

487
00:24:18,599 --> 00:24:21,799
trafficking rings. There were stories that she had been taken

488
00:24:21,839 --> 00:24:25,160
to a stash house in mccloneville, assaulted by gang members,

489
00:24:25,400 --> 00:24:26,839
and that her remains have been fed to.

490
00:24:26,839 --> 00:24:30,640
Speaker 1: Alligators, fed to alligators. I mean, these stories gained immense traction.

491
00:24:30,680 --> 00:24:33,000
Why do you think people latch onto those specific rumors?

492
00:24:33,039 --> 00:24:34,680
Is it because it sounds like the plot of a

493
00:24:34,680 --> 00:24:35,480
Hollywood thriller.

494
00:24:35,799 --> 00:24:39,200
Speaker 2: Partly, yes, the idea of a vast organized criminal syndicate

495
00:24:39,359 --> 00:24:42,359
is terrifying, but it also provides a structured narrative for

496
00:24:42,400 --> 00:24:45,920
an otherwise senseless crime. It implies a level of evil

497
00:24:45,920 --> 00:24:47,200
that is extraordinary.

498
00:24:47,319 --> 00:24:49,599
Speaker 1: It makes it feel like an action movie exactly.

499
00:24:50,079 --> 00:24:53,519
Speaker 2: However, the actual reality of violent crime, especially the abduction

500
00:24:53,680 --> 00:24:57,119
and murder of young women, is almost always far more

501
00:24:57,200 --> 00:24:58,359
localized and banal.

502
00:24:58,480 --> 00:25:01,799
Speaker 1: Alkham's razor right, the SIMP explanation is usually the correct one.

503
00:25:01,839 --> 00:25:06,319
Speaker 2: Precisely in twenty twenty two, a stunning breakthrough finally occurred

504
00:25:06,599 --> 00:25:10,559
that shattered the trafficking myth. Raymond Moody, a local man

505
00:25:10,599 --> 00:25:12,759
and a convicted sex offender, who had been living in

506
00:25:12,799 --> 00:25:15,000
the area at the time, confessed to the crime.

507
00:25:15,279 --> 00:25:16,119
Speaker 1: Just a local guy.

508
00:25:16,160 --> 00:25:19,119
Speaker 2: He admitted to seeing Brittany offering her a ride and

509
00:25:19,160 --> 00:25:23,160
then abducting, assaulting, and murdering her. He led the police

510
00:25:23,160 --> 00:25:26,119
directly to her remains, buried in a wooded area in

511
00:25:26,160 --> 00:25:27,119
Georgetown County.

512
00:25:27,279 --> 00:25:30,039
Speaker 1: It was just a crime of opportunity by a local predator.

513
00:25:30,160 --> 00:25:33,240
Speaker 2: Yes. While human trafficking is a very real and serious

514
00:25:33,279 --> 00:25:37,319
global issue, the statistical likelihood in cases of stranger abduction

515
00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:41,759
is usually a local, opportunistic offender operating within their own

516
00:25:41,799 --> 00:25:43,079
geographic comfort zone.

517
00:25:43,119 --> 00:25:44,480
Speaker 1: They stay where they know the roads.

518
00:25:44,759 --> 00:25:49,519
Speaker 2: It's exactly the sensationalized rumors of alligator pits and massive

519
00:25:49,599 --> 00:25:53,039
gang networks distracted from the grim reality that a known

520
00:25:53,079 --> 00:25:56,680
predator was living right in the community. It shows how

521
00:25:56,759 --> 00:25:59,799
false narratives, even when born out of a desperate desired

522
00:25:59,839 --> 00:26:02,960
to find answers, only serve to muddy the waters.

523
00:26:03,160 --> 00:26:06,640
Speaker 1: Okay, let's shift gears entirely. We've spent time analyzing how

524
00:26:06,720 --> 00:26:10,599
victims are perceived and the narratives surrounding their disappearances, But

525
00:26:10,720 --> 00:26:13,839
what about the psychology of the killers themselves?

526
00:26:14,160 --> 00:26:15,559
Speaker 2: This is where it gets really dark.

527
00:26:15,680 --> 00:26:19,039
Speaker 1: This brings us to a completely different pathology. We are

528
00:26:19,079 --> 00:26:21,759
focusing now on perpetrators who didn't want to hide in

529
00:26:21,839 --> 00:26:25,759
the shadows. We're looking at killers who sought notoriety, who

530
00:26:25,880 --> 00:26:29,759
literally couldn't resist taunting the public, and who ultimately engineered

531
00:26:29,759 --> 00:26:33,599
their own destruction through sheer, blinding technological arrogance.

532
00:26:33,920 --> 00:26:36,079
Speaker 2: And there was absolutely no better example of this than

533
00:26:36,119 --> 00:26:39,400
the BTK killer Dennis Raider. Dennis Raider Dennis Rader is

534
00:26:39,440 --> 00:26:42,960
a psychological study in extreme narcissism in the need for control.

535
00:26:44,119 --> 00:26:48,599
Under the moniker BTK, an acronym he assigned to himself

536
00:26:48,720 --> 00:26:53,920
standing for bind Torture, Kill HERA, he terrorized the greater Wichita,

537
00:26:54,000 --> 00:26:56,920
Kansas area between nineteen seventy four and nineteen ninety one,

538
00:26:57,319 --> 00:26:59,119
murdering at least ten individuals.

539
00:26:59,319 --> 00:27:02,119
Speaker 1: He was a fan him, and for thirty one years

540
00:27:02,160 --> 00:27:04,319
he successfully evaded police capture.

541
00:27:04,680 --> 00:27:05,759
Speaker 2: Thirty one years.

542
00:27:05,920 --> 00:27:08,200
Speaker 1: That is an entire lifetime of getting away with it.

543
00:27:08,400 --> 00:27:10,759
He went dormant in the nineties. He could have just

544
00:27:10,799 --> 00:27:13,799
lived out his days as an unassuming code enforcement officer,

545
00:27:14,039 --> 00:27:17,000
retiring quietly and taking his secrets to the grave.

546
00:27:16,920 --> 00:27:18,920
Speaker 2: But his ego wouldn't let him no.

547
00:27:19,359 --> 00:27:22,039
Speaker 1: In two thousand and four, as Hubris kicked into overdrive.

548
00:27:22,480 --> 00:27:24,559
He was triggered by a news article in the Wichita

549
00:27:24,640 --> 00:27:27,759
Eagle about the thirtieth anniversary of his first crimes. The

550
00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:30,920
article suggested that BTK was either dead, in prison for

551
00:27:30,960 --> 00:27:32,519
another crime, or simply.

552
00:27:32,160 --> 00:27:34,400
Speaker 2: Forgotten, and that was the ultimate insult to him.

553
00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:36,880
Speaker 1: His egos simply couldn't handle the idea that people were

554
00:27:36,880 --> 00:27:40,440
forgetting him or minimizing his legacy, so he resumed communicating

555
00:27:40,440 --> 00:27:41,799
with the police and the media.

556
00:27:41,880 --> 00:27:45,160
Speaker 2: It's fascinating to observe the intersection of a killer's desperate

557
00:27:45,200 --> 00:27:49,759
need for relevance and his complete staggering misunderstanding of the

558
00:27:49,759 --> 00:27:50,559
modern world.

559
00:27:50,720 --> 00:27:51,960
Speaker 1: He was stuck in the past.

560
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:55,839
Speaker 2: Raider's initial crimes PREE occurred in a purely analog era.

561
00:27:56,319 --> 00:27:58,440
He was used to writing physical letters, drapping them in

562
00:27:58,440 --> 00:28:03,039
public mailboxes, and playing this grand theatrical cat and mouse

563
00:28:03,079 --> 00:28:05,720
game with police using nineteen seventies.

564
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:07,119
Speaker 1: Tactics, right before the Internet.

565
00:28:07,359 --> 00:28:10,119
Speaker 2: But when he resurfaced in two thousand and four, the

566
00:28:10,200 --> 00:28:13,799
technological landscape had fundamentally shifted beneath his feet.

567
00:28:13,599 --> 00:28:16,039
Speaker 1: And he had absolutely no idea. He actually sent a

568
00:28:16,079 --> 00:28:20,880
purple floppy disc to a local Wichita TV station KSAs Now.

569
00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:24,039
He wasn't completely reckless. He actually asked the police in

570
00:28:24,079 --> 00:28:27,599
a previous communication via a newspaper ad if a floppy

571
00:28:27,599 --> 00:28:28,880
disc could be traced back to him.

572
00:28:28,960 --> 00:28:30,240
Speaker 2: He literally asked them.

573
00:28:30,279 --> 00:28:33,240
Speaker 1: The police, playing on his ego, lied and published a

574
00:28:33,279 --> 00:28:36,119
message saying no, it's totally safe. We can't trace a disc.

575
00:28:36,559 --> 00:28:38,759
Raider believe them he sent the disc.

576
00:28:38,839 --> 00:28:42,039
Speaker 2: Which highlights a profound arrogance. He believed he was smarter

577
00:28:42,079 --> 00:28:44,920
than the combined forces of law enforcement. When the police

578
00:28:44,920 --> 00:28:47,119
received that disc, they didn't even need to look at

579
00:28:47,119 --> 00:28:51,200
the physical object. They immediately pulled the hidden metadata from

580
00:28:51,240 --> 00:28:53,519
the Microsoft word document saved on it.

581
00:28:53,720 --> 00:28:55,640
Speaker 1: For those who might not be familiar with early two

582
00:28:55,680 --> 00:29:00,000
thousand's digital forensics, what exactly is metadata in this context?

583
00:29:00,079 --> 00:29:00,920
How did it catch him?

584
00:29:01,279 --> 00:29:05,519
Speaker 2: Metadata is essentially data about data. It's the invisible footprint

585
00:29:05,559 --> 00:29:09,160
embedded within a digital file. When you create a Microsoft's

586
00:29:09,160 --> 00:29:13,400
word document, the software automatically records information in the background,

587
00:29:13,799 --> 00:29:16,880
the time it was created, the time it was last modified,

588
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:20,000
and crucially, the registered name of the software license and

589
00:29:20,039 --> 00:29:21,440
the computer system it was saved on.

590
00:29:21,640 --> 00:29:22,839
Speaker 1: It tracks everything.

591
00:29:23,160 --> 00:29:25,960
Speaker 2: The police looked at the metadata on Raider's floppy disk,

592
00:29:26,359 --> 00:29:28,240
and they found that the document had been saved by

593
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:31,920
a user named Dennis at a location registered as Christ

594
00:29:32,000 --> 00:29:32,720
Lutheran Church.

595
00:29:32,880 --> 00:29:35,759
Speaker 1: It's almost comical. A quick Internet search of Christ Lutheran

596
00:29:35,839 --> 00:29:39,079
Church in Wichita pulled up their congregation president, Dennis Raider.

597
00:29:39,359 --> 00:29:43,240
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate digital downfall. He was caught not

598
00:29:43,440 --> 00:29:46,920
by a brilliant forensic deduction of his crime scenes, not

599
00:29:46,960 --> 00:29:51,480
by a behavioral profile, but by the basic automated metadata

600
00:29:51,519 --> 00:29:53,039
embedded in a word processor.

601
00:29:53,279 --> 00:29:54,119
Speaker 3: Unbelievable.

602
00:29:54,279 --> 00:29:57,200
Speaker 2: If we look at the broader evolution of criminal investigations,

603
00:29:57,599 --> 00:30:02,720
the BTK case marks a definitive transition point. It signaled

604
00:30:02,720 --> 00:30:06,799
to the world that digital forensics, analyzing the invisible footprints

605
00:30:06,799 --> 00:30:10,279
we leave in our technology, was becoming just as critical

606
00:30:10,519 --> 00:30:13,799
as physical forensics, like fingerprints are ballistics.

607
00:30:14,039 --> 00:30:17,039
Speaker 1: And what's wild is that his arrogance about physical forensics

608
00:30:17,119 --> 00:30:20,000
was just as absurd as his ignorance of digital forensics.

609
00:30:20,559 --> 00:30:23,160
After his arrest in two thousand and five, when investigators

610
00:30:23,160 --> 00:30:26,319
confronted him with DNA evidence linking him to the crime scenes,

611
00:30:26,680 --> 00:30:28,440
Reader was genuinely confused.

612
00:30:28,599 --> 00:30:29,319
Speaker 2: You didn't get it.

613
00:30:29,480 --> 00:30:32,160
Speaker 1: Our sources show he actually believed you couldn't extract a

614
00:30:32,160 --> 00:30:35,200
person's DNA unless they had undergone a total blood transfer.

615
00:30:35,279 --> 00:30:37,400
Speaker 2: It's a textbook example of the Dunn Kruger effect.

616
00:30:37,519 --> 00:30:38,680
Speaker 1: Explain that for our listeners.

617
00:30:38,960 --> 00:30:42,720
Speaker 2: The Dunning Krueger effect is a cognitive bias where people

618
00:30:42,759 --> 00:30:46,400
with limited knowledge or competence in a given domain greatly

619
00:30:46,480 --> 00:30:50,759
overestimate their own knowledge or competence. Rader believed he was

620
00:30:50,799 --> 00:30:54,079
an evil genius, a master criminal who has studied forensics

621
00:30:54,079 --> 00:30:54,640
at the library.

622
00:30:54,759 --> 00:30:55,920
Speaker 1: He thought he knew at all.

623
00:30:56,000 --> 00:30:58,720
Speaker 2: He genuinely thought reading a few books made him an expert.

624
00:30:59,319 --> 00:31:03,039
But his knowledge, which was entirely superficial and wildly outdated,

625
00:31:03,480 --> 00:31:05,720
his ego convinced him he was the smartest man in

626
00:31:05,759 --> 00:31:08,160
the room, and that delusion led him right into a

627
00:31:08,200 --> 00:31:08,720
jail cell.

628
00:31:08,839 --> 00:31:12,799
Speaker 1: He literally outsmarted himself. Now, moving from the dawn of

629
00:31:12,880 --> 00:31:16,720
digital forensics to the absolute explosive power of the modern

630
00:31:16,839 --> 00:31:20,079
hyper connected Internet, we have to talk about Luca Magnata

631
00:31:20,200 --> 00:31:22,400
and the international manhunt of twenty twelve.

632
00:31:22,519 --> 00:31:26,960
Speaker 2: The Lucamagnota case represents a terrifying modern evolution and true crime.

633
00:31:27,319 --> 00:31:30,480
It's the era where the killer actively crowdsources their own

634
00:31:30,480 --> 00:31:31,880
infamy in real time.

635
00:31:32,000 --> 00:31:34,640
Speaker 1: On May twenty fifth, twenty twelve, a video was uploaded

636
00:31:34,640 --> 00:31:37,599
to a shock site on the Internet titled one Lunatic,

637
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:40,559
One Ice Pick. It is widely considered one of the

638
00:31:40,559 --> 00:31:42,799
most horrific pieces of media ever made public.

639
00:31:42,839 --> 00:31:44,039
Speaker 2: It's notoriously brutal.

640
00:31:44,200 --> 00:31:46,680
Speaker 1: It showed the murder and dismemberment of a thirty three

641
00:31:46,720 --> 00:31:50,559
year old international student named Lynn June. Magnata didn't just

642
00:31:50,680 --> 00:31:53,079
kill him. He filmed it, He edited it, He scored

643
00:31:53,119 --> 00:31:55,200
it to the song True Faith by New Order, and

644
00:31:55,240 --> 00:31:58,079
he posted it for the entire world to see. He

645
00:31:58,160 --> 00:32:01,640
then began mailing Lyndin's body parts to elementary schools and

646
00:32:01,720 --> 00:32:06,799
federal political offices across Canada to ensure maximum media coverage.

647
00:32:06,960 --> 00:32:11,680
Speaker 2: It was an act of supreme performative cruelty, designed specifically

648
00:32:12,000 --> 00:32:14,839
to manipulate the Internet algorithm and go viral.

649
00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:16,119
Speaker 1: He wanted to be famous.

650
00:32:16,319 --> 00:32:19,839
Speaker 2: Magnata was completely obsessed with Internet fame. He had spent

651
00:32:19,960 --> 00:32:22,880
years prior to the murder creating dozens of fake profiles,

652
00:32:23,079 --> 00:32:25,519
leaving comments on his own photos, and trying to start

653
00:32:25,599 --> 00:32:28,880
rumors that he was dating notorious killers, all to cultivate

654
00:32:28,920 --> 00:32:29,839
a dark persona.

655
00:32:30,000 --> 00:32:31,079
Speaker 1: He understood how it worked.

656
00:32:31,160 --> 00:32:33,920
Speaker 2: He understood the architecture of the twenty twelve Internet, a

657
00:32:34,000 --> 00:32:37,519
time when viral videos could spread like wildfire across forums

658
00:32:37,759 --> 00:32:40,400
before any sort of content moderation could take them down.

659
00:32:40,519 --> 00:32:43,319
Speaker 1: The contrast here is what really breaks my heart. Our

660
00:32:43,359 --> 00:32:47,279
sources highlight that while this viral nightmare was unfolding, lyn Jinn,

661
00:32:47,359 --> 00:32:50,200
the victim, was living a quiet, dutiful life.

662
00:32:50,240 --> 00:32:51,160
Speaker 2: He was just a student.

663
00:32:51,359 --> 00:32:54,400
Speaker 1: He was a computer engineering student. He had been calling

664
00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:57,680
his worried mother back in China every single day via Skype.

665
00:32:57,759 --> 00:33:00,279
He would walk the streets of Montreal, points his hammer

666
00:33:00,319 --> 00:33:04,799
around and tell her, don't worry, I'm safe. While Lynjin

667
00:33:05,000 --> 00:33:08,079
was trying to assure his family of his safety, Magnata

668
00:33:08,119 --> 00:33:10,559
was orchestrating a global spectacle out of his death.

669
00:33:11,279 --> 00:33:17,079
Speaker 2: It is a devastating juxtaposition of pure innocence and manufactured evil. However,

670
00:33:17,359 --> 00:33:20,559
Magnata's reliance on the Internet for his infamy proved to

671
00:33:20,559 --> 00:33:23,599
be a massive double edged sword. How so Well, yes,

672
00:33:23,720 --> 00:33:27,799
the crime made international headlines instantly, but that same global

673
00:33:27,799 --> 00:33:32,119
connectivity meant that law enforcement agencies worldwide were instantly mobilized.

674
00:33:32,480 --> 00:33:35,720
Interpol issued a red notice almost immediately.

675
00:33:35,319 --> 00:33:38,640
Speaker 1: Right Magnata fled Canada, flying to Paris and then taking

676
00:33:38,680 --> 00:33:40,680
a bus to Berlin, thinking he could pull off some

677
00:33:40,680 --> 00:33:42,640
sort of cinematic escape across Europe.

678
00:33:42,680 --> 00:33:44,240
Speaker 2: He thought he was in a movie.

679
00:33:44,039 --> 00:33:46,680
Speaker 1: But he was recognized by a civilian in an internet

680
00:33:46,680 --> 00:33:49,839
cafe in Berlin on June fourth, that is just about

681
00:33:49,880 --> 00:33:51,880
a week and a half after he uploaded the video.

682
00:33:52,079 --> 00:33:54,079
A week and a half. The guy who ran the

683
00:33:54,119 --> 00:33:56,880
cafe had literally just read a news article about the

684
00:33:56,880 --> 00:34:00,640
man hunt, looked over and saw Magnata reading news articles

685
00:34:00,640 --> 00:34:01,400
about himself.

686
00:34:01,680 --> 00:34:05,519
Speaker 2: This raises an essential point about modern man hunts. The

687
00:34:05,640 --> 00:34:10,320
very tool Magnata used to achieve his dark fame, the Internet,

688
00:34:10,719 --> 00:34:13,800
was the exact tool that ensured he couldn't hide.

689
00:34:13,880 --> 00:34:15,960
Speaker 1: He broadcast his own face to the.

690
00:34:15,920 --> 00:34:18,599
Speaker 2: World in a hyper connected world, a face that is

691
00:34:18,639 --> 00:34:22,239
plastered across global news feeds cannot simply disappear into a crowd,

692
00:34:22,440 --> 00:34:25,840
not even across an ocean. The unprecedented speed of his

693
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:29,280
capture is a testament to the power of international cooperation

694
00:34:29,679 --> 00:34:33,360
fueled by instant digital communication. He wanted the world's attention,

695
00:34:33,760 --> 00:34:35,880
and the world gave it to him, resulting in a

696
00:34:35,920 --> 00:34:36,559
life sentence.

697
00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:40,119
Speaker 1: It's the ultimate be careful what you wish for scenario. Now,

698
00:34:40,159 --> 00:34:42,519
let's look at a different kind of killers, Hubris one

699
00:34:42,519 --> 00:34:44,280
that took a lot longer to crack than a week

700
00:34:44,280 --> 00:34:48,039
and a half, the Zodiac Killer, the Ultimate Cipher. This

701
00:34:48,159 --> 00:34:52,639
phantom terrorized northern California in the late nineteen sixties, and

702
00:34:52,719 --> 00:34:55,920
a major part of his terror campaign involved sending complex

703
00:34:55,960 --> 00:34:59,320
ciphers to local newspapers, demanding they be published on the

704
00:34:59,320 --> 00:35:01,400
front page or he would kill again.

705
00:35:01,719 --> 00:35:05,199
Speaker 2: The Zodiac ciphers are legendary in the annals of cryptography.

706
00:35:05,760 --> 00:35:08,599
He produced four of these cryptograms, and they were hard.

707
00:35:09,199 --> 00:35:12,239
The first one, known as the Z four eight, was

708
00:35:12,280 --> 00:35:14,920
cracked relatively quickly by a local school teacher and his

709
00:35:14,960 --> 00:35:18,920
wife in nineteen sixty nine, but the remaining three, particularly

710
00:35:18,960 --> 00:35:21,599
the infamous three hundred and forty character cipher known as

711
00:35:21,639 --> 00:35:25,559
a Z three forty, sat completely unsolved for over fifty years.

712
00:35:25,639 --> 00:35:28,639
Speaker 1: Over half a century. That piece of paper stumped the FBI,

713
00:35:28,800 --> 00:35:32,400
the CIA, naval intelligence, and the most brilliant professional code

714
00:35:32,400 --> 00:35:35,119
breakers in the world. It just mocked investigators from.

715
00:35:35,039 --> 00:35:36,440
Speaker 2: The archives until recently.

716
00:35:36,480 --> 00:35:39,119
Speaker 1: But in December twenty twenty, there was a massive breakthrough.

717
00:35:39,280 --> 00:35:41,920
The Z three to forty cipher was finally decoded, and

718
00:35:41,960 --> 00:35:44,039
what fascinates me is that it wasn't cracked by a

719
00:35:44,079 --> 00:35:47,039
supercomputer at the Pentagon. It was solved by a small

720
00:35:47,079 --> 00:35:50,960
international team of private citizen's amateur codebreakers who just refused

721
00:35:50,960 --> 00:35:51,519
to let it go.

722
00:35:51,719 --> 00:35:54,360
Speaker 2: I'd argue this is a fascinating counterpoint to the Elisa

723
00:35:54,440 --> 00:35:55,840
Lamb case we discussed earlier.

724
00:35:55,920 --> 00:35:57,000
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a good point.

725
00:35:57,239 --> 00:36:01,079
Speaker 2: With Elisa Lamb, we saw the destructive, koot and harmful

726
00:36:01,159 --> 00:36:05,280
nature of Internet sleuthing. But with the Zodiac cipher, we

727
00:36:05,320 --> 00:36:08,840
see the absolute best of crowd sourced citizen science.

728
00:36:08,920 --> 00:36:09,840
Speaker 1: They actually helped.

729
00:36:10,119 --> 00:36:13,599
Speaker 2: This team, comprising an American software developer and Australian applied

730
00:36:13,639 --> 00:36:17,800
mathematician and a Belgian programmer, didn't just guess. They applied

731
00:36:17,880 --> 00:36:21,920
rigorous mathematical principles, built custom software to run hundreds of

732
00:36:21,960 --> 00:36:26,480
thousands of combinations, and utilized obsessive patients to achieve a real,

733
00:36:26,719 --> 00:36:30,320
tangible result that had eluded official channels for decades.

734
00:36:30,519 --> 00:36:34,000
Speaker 1: It's a huge victory for logic and persistence. For those

735
00:36:34,119 --> 00:36:36,840
curious about the mechanics, the Zodiac used what's known as

736
00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:39,079
a homophonic substitution.

737
00:36:38,599 --> 00:36:40,159
Speaker 2: Cipher, which is very tricky.

738
00:36:40,360 --> 00:36:43,159
Speaker 1: It means he used multiple different symbols to represent common

739
00:36:43,239 --> 00:36:48,039
letters like E, or A, making traditional frequency analysis incredibly difficult.

740
00:36:48,239 --> 00:36:51,239
Plus he shifted the reading direction diagonally instead of just

741
00:36:51,320 --> 00:36:51,800
left to right.

742
00:36:51,880 --> 00:36:52,760
Speaker 2: He was trying to be clever.

743
00:36:53,119 --> 00:36:56,360
Speaker 1: When the team finally ran the correct algorithm and translated it,

744
00:36:56,679 --> 00:37:00,320
the message was chilling. It read in part, I hope

745
00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:02,199
you are having lots of fun and trying to catch me.

746
00:37:02,559 --> 00:37:04,960
That wasn't me on the TV show. I am not

747
00:37:05,039 --> 00:37:06,960
afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me

748
00:37:07,000 --> 00:37:09,239
to Paradise all the sooner because I now have enough

749
00:37:09,280 --> 00:37:10,239
slaves to work for me.

750
00:37:10,760 --> 00:37:12,960
Speaker 2: Lots of fun and trying to catch means It's the

751
00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:16,920
ultimate taunt from a sidistic personality. But the cracking of

752
00:37:16,960 --> 00:37:20,119
the cipher actually stripped away some of his mystique. Howso,

753
00:37:20,480 --> 00:37:24,679
it revealed him not as some infallible supernatural mastermind, but

754
00:37:24,719 --> 00:37:28,800
as an arrogant individual with a flawed understanding of cryptography.

755
00:37:29,280 --> 00:37:34,639
He misspelled Paradise as paradic and he actually made several

756
00:37:34,719 --> 00:37:37,599
encoding mistakes in the cipher itself that made it much

757
00:37:37,639 --> 00:37:39,280
harder to crack than he likely intended.

758
00:37:39,360 --> 00:37:41,039
Speaker 1: He screwed up his own code exactly.

759
00:37:41,480 --> 00:37:44,079
Speaker 2: There are still two short ciphers remaining, and given the

760
00:37:44,119 --> 00:37:47,079
success of twenty twenty. You have to believe that somewhere

761
00:37:47,079 --> 00:37:49,920
out there a citizen sleuth is running code on them.

762
00:37:49,960 --> 00:37:52,360
Speaker 1: Right now, I have absolutely no doubt. Okay, we have

763
00:37:52,519 --> 00:37:55,480
arrived at our final major theme of this exploration. Science

764
00:37:55,679 --> 00:37:57,119
as the great equalizer.

765
00:37:57,280 --> 00:37:58,360
Speaker 2: This is the game changer.

766
00:37:58,559 --> 00:38:03,159
Speaker 1: We've talked about behavioral filing, digital footprints, and cryptography, but

767
00:38:03,320 --> 00:38:06,280
now we are looking at the absolute most powerful tool

768
00:38:06,360 --> 00:38:09,360
in the modern investigative arsenal. We are going to look

769
00:38:09,400 --> 00:38:13,119
at how the patient silent witness of DNA eventually catches

770
00:38:13,199 --> 00:38:16,800
up to the most prolific phantoms in criminal history. Let's

771
00:38:16,800 --> 00:38:18,320
talk about the Golden State Killer.

772
00:38:18,760 --> 00:38:22,079
Speaker 2: For decades, the Golden State Killer was the ultimate cold case.

773
00:38:22,559 --> 00:38:25,800
He was a fandom who completely terrorized California throughout the

774
00:38:25,800 --> 00:38:27,679
mid nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties.

775
00:38:27,800 --> 00:38:29,360
Speaker 1: His crime spree was massive.

776
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:32,840
Speaker 2: The scale of his crimes is almost unfathomable. At least

777
00:38:32,840 --> 00:38:36,239
fifty one sexual assaults, over one hundred burglaries, and thirteen

778
00:38:36,320 --> 00:38:37,159
brutal murders.

779
00:38:37,360 --> 00:38:40,960
Speaker 1: He was a ghost. He operated across multiple different jurisdictions,

780
00:38:40,960 --> 00:38:44,280
moving from Sacramento down to southern California, and because law

781
00:38:44,320 --> 00:38:48,039
enforcement agencies in the seventies and eighties weren't sharing data effectively.

782
00:38:48,079 --> 00:38:51,079
They literally used different filing systems. They didn't even realize

783
00:38:51,079 --> 00:38:53,039
they were chasing the same guy for years.

784
00:38:53,159 --> 00:38:55,400
Speaker 2: The lack of communication helped him hide.

785
00:38:55,480 --> 00:38:59,079
Speaker 1: He was known by various regional monikers, the Vicelia Ransacker,

786
00:38:59,119 --> 00:39:02,840
at the East Area Rapist, the Original Nightstalker. It wasn't

787
00:39:02,920 --> 00:39:06,280
until twenty thirteen that the late true crime writer Michelle McNamara,

788
00:39:06,559 --> 00:39:10,519
through her relentless advocacy in writing, coined the unifying name

789
00:39:11,039 --> 00:39:12,360
the Golden State Killer.

790
00:39:13,039 --> 00:39:16,400
Speaker 2: McNamara's writing was pivotal in bringing the case back into

791
00:39:16,440 --> 00:39:20,199
the national spotlight, keeping the pressure on law enforcement, but

792
00:39:20,280 --> 00:39:22,960
it was a revolutionary leap in forensic science that actually

793
00:39:23,039 --> 00:39:27,559
put handcuffs on the perpetrator the DNA. Yes, law enforcement

794
00:39:27,599 --> 00:39:30,599
had always possessed the killer's DNA preserved from the crime scenes,

795
00:39:30,880 --> 00:39:34,400
but it hadn't matched anyone in CODIS, the national criminal database.

796
00:39:34,960 --> 00:39:38,840
The breakthrough came when investigators, led by Paul Hols, utilized

797
00:39:38,880 --> 00:39:43,039
a completely new technique called investigative genetic genealogy or IgG.

798
00:39:43,440 --> 00:39:45,679
Speaker 1: This methodology is what I found most compelling when the

799
00:39:45,760 --> 00:39:48,079
news broke in twenty eighteen. Can you break down for

800
00:39:48,119 --> 00:39:51,519
the listeners exactly how IgG works. How do you catch

801
00:39:51,519 --> 00:39:53,039
a killer using genealogy?

802
00:39:53,280 --> 00:39:58,159
Speaker 2: It's an incredible synthesis of biology and historical research. Investigators

803
00:39:58,199 --> 00:40:02,320
took the killer's nuclear DNA, the unique genetic blueprint inherited

804
00:40:02,360 --> 00:40:06,159
from both parents, and converted it into a format compatible

805
00:40:06,159 --> 00:40:07,559
with consumer DNA.

806
00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:09,039
Speaker 1: Testing like the ones you buy online.

807
00:40:09,280 --> 00:40:13,679
Speaker 2: Exactly. They then uploaded this specialized profile to ged match,

808
00:40:13,760 --> 00:40:18,159
and open source genealogical website where regular people voluntarily upload

809
00:40:18,159 --> 00:40:22,159
their DNA to find distant relatives. By analyzing shared DNA

810
00:40:22,280 --> 00:40:25,800
segments known as Santa Morgan's, the system identified distant relatives

811
00:40:25,840 --> 00:40:28,519
of the killer third or fourth cousins who shared a

812
00:40:28,519 --> 00:40:29,599
great great grandparent.

813
00:40:29,800 --> 00:40:31,920
Speaker 1: So they didn't find him directly, they found a distant

814
00:40:31,920 --> 00:40:33,199
branch of his family tree.

815
00:40:33,280 --> 00:40:36,880
Speaker 2: Exactly. From a sociological and scientific standpoint, this was a

816
00:40:36,920 --> 00:40:40,239
watershed moment. Once they found those cousins, a team of

817
00:40:40,280 --> 00:40:45,039
genetic genealogists painstakingly built massive family trees backward combing through

818
00:40:45,079 --> 00:40:49,199
census records, birth certificates, marriage licenses, and obituaries.

819
00:40:49,320 --> 00:40:50,840
Speaker 1: That sounds like so much work.

820
00:40:50,920 --> 00:40:53,079
Speaker 2: It is meticulous. They built the tree back to the

821
00:40:53,119 --> 00:40:56,559
shared ancestors in the eighteen hundreds and then traced every

822
00:40:56,639 --> 00:40:59,920
single branch forward to the present day. They eliminated branch

823
00:41:00,119 --> 00:41:04,480
is based on age, sex, and location, systematically narrowing down

824
00:41:04,559 --> 00:41:07,960
thousands of people until they found a viable suspect who

825
00:41:08,039 --> 00:41:10,679
lived in the exact areas where the crimes occurred.

826
00:41:10,440 --> 00:41:12,760
Speaker 1: And that meticulous search led them to a seventy two

827
00:41:12,840 --> 00:41:16,000
year old man named Joseph James DiAngelo. He was a

828
00:41:16,000 --> 00:41:19,199
former police officer, which explains how he knew police tactics

829
00:41:19,199 --> 00:41:21,159
so well, living quietly in a suburb of.

830
00:41:21,079 --> 00:41:22,800
Speaker 2: Sacramento right under their noses.

831
00:41:23,039 --> 00:41:26,280
Speaker 1: Once they had his name, investigators secretly followed him, collected

832
00:41:26,320 --> 00:41:29,000
his DNA from a discarded tissue in his trash, ran

833
00:41:29,039 --> 00:41:31,639
it against the crime scene evidence, and boom, one hundred

834
00:41:31,639 --> 00:41:32,199
percent match.

835
00:41:32,400 --> 00:41:34,880
Speaker 2: What is truly remarkable here is the paradigm shift that

836
00:41:34,960 --> 00:41:38,719
represents Deangelos stopped his known crimes in nineteen eighty six.

837
00:41:39,280 --> 00:41:40,559
He likely believed he had won.

838
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:41,679
Speaker 1: He thought he was safe.

839
00:41:41,960 --> 00:41:44,400
Speaker 3: He believed that he had beaten the technology of his era.

840
00:41:45,079 --> 00:41:47,400
He could not have conceived of a future where his

841
00:41:47,559 --> 00:41:51,559
own distant relatives participating in a recreational hobby of genetic

842
00:41:51,639 --> 00:41:54,119
testing to find out if they were Irish or Italian

843
00:41:54,639 --> 00:41:58,400
would unwittingly form a digital net that would drag him

844
00:41:58,400 --> 00:41:59,960
out of retirement and into a court.

845
00:42:00,639 --> 00:42:03,519
Speaker 1: Think about your own family tree for a second. Anyone

846
00:42:03,519 --> 00:42:07,000
who has taken a consumer DNA test could theoretically be

847
00:42:07,079 --> 00:42:09,519
the key to solving a forty year old cold case.

848
00:42:09,960 --> 00:42:11,000
Speaker 2: It's mind blowing.

849
00:42:11,280 --> 00:42:15,280
Speaker 1: It is the ultimate poetic justice. A monster who completely

850
00:42:15,400 --> 00:42:19,039
terrorized an entire state, who made people change their locks

851
00:42:19,039 --> 00:42:21,679
and sleep with guns under their pillows, was caught by

852
00:42:21,719 --> 00:42:24,760
the innocent curiosity of his extended family wanting to know

853
00:42:24,840 --> 00:42:28,039
their ancestry. He was sentenced to life in prison, dying

854
00:42:28,039 --> 00:42:28,679
behind bars.

855
00:42:28,719 --> 00:42:31,760
Speaker 2: And we see that exact same inevitability of modern DNA

856
00:42:31,840 --> 00:42:34,760
forensics playing out right now with the Long Island serial Killer.

857
00:42:35,159 --> 00:42:38,840
Speaker 1: Yes, the Long Island serial Killer, often referred to as LASK,

858
00:42:39,519 --> 00:42:42,079
is one of the most absorbing and unsettling mysteries of

859
00:42:42,119 --> 00:42:45,039
the early twenty first century. Beginning in the late nineteen

860
00:42:45,119 --> 00:42:48,360
nineties and culminating in a horrific discovery in twenty ten,

861
00:42:48,880 --> 00:42:51,840
the remains of at least eleven victims were discovered dumped

862
00:42:51,880 --> 00:42:54,840
in the thick bramble along the desolate stretches of Ocean

863
00:42:54,880 --> 00:42:56,960
Parkway near Gilgo Beach in New York.

864
00:42:57,159 --> 00:42:59,039
Speaker 2: For over a decade, the public assumed this would be

865
00:42:59,079 --> 00:43:02,760
another Zodiacit situation, a phantom who operated in the dock

866
00:43:02,800 --> 00:43:04,079
and would never be named right.

867
00:43:04,400 --> 00:43:07,280
Speaker 1: Four of the victims found wrapped in burlap were officially

868
00:43:07,360 --> 00:43:10,559
dubbed the Gilgo four. But then in the summer of

869
00:43:10,559 --> 00:43:13,679
twenty twenty three, the world watched in shock as a

870
00:43:13,719 --> 00:43:16,639
fifty nine year old man named Rex Andrew Huerman was

871
00:43:16,719 --> 00:43:18,320
arrested in midtown Manhattan.

872
00:43:18,440 --> 00:43:21,039
Speaker 2: The contrast between the horrific nature of the crimes and

873
00:43:21,079 --> 00:43:24,079
a Hureman's public life is jarring. He was a successful,

874
00:43:24,199 --> 00:43:25,719
established architect.

875
00:43:25,239 --> 00:43:26,119
Speaker 1: Working right in the city.

876
00:43:26,400 --> 00:43:29,400
Speaker 2: He ran a firm in Manhattan, interacting with city agencies

877
00:43:29,400 --> 00:43:33,079
and high profile clients while living a seemingly normal suburban

878
00:43:33,119 --> 00:43:36,039
life in mastapecka park just across the bay from where

879
00:43:36,079 --> 00:43:40,360
the bodies were found. It is the terrifying juxtaposition of

880
00:43:40,400 --> 00:43:45,440
a man navigating professional circles while allegedly harboring a decade's long,

881
00:43:45,880 --> 00:43:47,719
dark double life.

882
00:43:47,559 --> 00:43:50,079
Speaker 1: And once again it comes down to the silent witness

883
00:43:50,119 --> 00:43:53,239
of science catching up. According to the bail documents and

884
00:43:53,320 --> 00:43:58,800
our sources, the breakthrough involved two distinct technologies, mitochondrial DNA

885
00:43:59,159 --> 00:44:01,039
and cellular FT tracking data.

886
00:44:01,079 --> 00:44:02,639
Speaker 2: Both are incredibly powerful.

887
00:44:02,719 --> 00:44:05,239
Speaker 1: I think it's worth explaining the DNA aspect first, because

888
00:44:05,239 --> 00:44:07,800
it's different from the Golden State killer case. What is

889
00:44:07,880 --> 00:44:10,360
mitochondrial DNA and why was it crucial here?

890
00:44:10,639 --> 00:44:13,320
Speaker 2: It's a vital distinction. In the Golden State killer case,

891
00:44:13,320 --> 00:44:17,880
they had nuclear DNA a complete genetic profile, but environmental exposure,

892
00:44:17,920 --> 00:44:21,360
like body sitting in marshland for years, degrades nuclear DNA.

893
00:44:21,440 --> 00:44:22,239
Speaker 1: It breaks it down.

894
00:44:22,400 --> 00:44:26,039
Speaker 2: Yes. However, investigators recovered as single male hair from the

895
00:44:26,079 --> 00:44:29,320
burlap wrapping of one of the Lisk victims. Because the

896
00:44:29,320 --> 00:44:32,679
hair lacked a root, they couldn't extract nuclear DNA, but

897
00:44:32,719 --> 00:44:35,880
they could extract mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA.

898
00:44:36,239 --> 00:44:37,159
Speaker 1: How is that different?

899
00:44:37,280 --> 00:44:41,079
Speaker 2: Unlike nuclear DNA, which you get from both parents, mtDNA

900
00:44:41,159 --> 00:44:43,800
is inherited solely from your mother. And because there are

901
00:44:43,840 --> 00:44:47,079
thousands of copies of mtDNA in every single cell, it

902
00:44:47,159 --> 00:44:52,039
survives degradation much better. Investigators matched the mtDNA profile from

903
00:44:52,039 --> 00:44:55,199
that single hair to DNA recovered from a pizza cross

904
00:44:55,199 --> 00:44:56,960
Hoyerman discarded in Manhattan.

905
00:44:57,199 --> 00:45:00,199
Speaker 1: It's incredible. A single hair and a pizza crust, and

906
00:45:00,239 --> 00:45:03,719
then they layered that genetic evidence over massive amounts of

907
00:45:03,760 --> 00:45:07,119
cellular data. They mapped the burner phones used to contact

908
00:45:07,119 --> 00:45:09,840
the victims, and they mapped Hoyrman's.

909
00:45:09,280 --> 00:45:11,719
Speaker 2: Personal phone the digital footprint.

910
00:45:11,320 --> 00:45:14,519
Speaker 1: And they found that these phones traveled together. They pinged

911
00:45:14,559 --> 00:45:17,639
the same cell towers in Massapeqwell Park and the same

912
00:45:17,719 --> 00:45:19,280
cell towers in midtown.

913
00:45:18,880 --> 00:45:22,920
Speaker 2: Manhattan, which demonstrates the sheer inevitability of modern forensic science.

914
00:45:23,320 --> 00:45:26,559
The margin for error for a perpetrator today is virtually zero.

915
00:45:27,199 --> 00:45:30,679
You shed DNA, skin cells, hair saliva everywhere you go,

916
00:45:30,760 --> 00:45:33,719
You leave a trail. Your phone, even a burner phone,

917
00:45:33,960 --> 00:45:38,400
constantly handshakes with cell towers, leaving a precise geographic footprint

918
00:45:38,440 --> 00:45:42,119
of your movements. The days of a serial offender operating

919
00:45:42,159 --> 00:45:45,239
in a vacuum of information, relying on shadows and silence,

920
00:45:45,519 --> 00:45:47,000
are rapidly coming to an end.

921
00:45:47,079 --> 00:45:48,199
Speaker 1: They can't hide anymore.

922
00:45:48,719 --> 00:45:53,280
Speaker 2: Science is systematically dismantling the anonymity that these individuals relied

923
00:45:53,360 --> 00:45:56,840
upon to survive. We should note that Hoyerman has pleaded

924
00:45:56,920 --> 00:46:00,800
not guilty and is currently a waiting trial. The methodology

925
00:46:00,880 --> 00:46:02,800
used to make the arrest is a testament to the

926
00:46:02,800 --> 00:46:06,159
fact that the investigative window is closing on the monsters

927
00:46:06,199 --> 00:46:06,760
of the past.

928
00:46:07,119 --> 00:46:10,360
Speaker 1: It is a totally new era. So what does this

929
00:46:10,400 --> 00:46:12,840
all mean for us as we pull these threats together.

930
00:46:12,880 --> 00:46:15,440
At the end of this extensive discussion, we have to

931
00:46:15,440 --> 00:46:17,480
look at the massive timeline we've covered today.

932
00:46:17,519 --> 00:46:18,440
Speaker 2: We've covered a lot of ground.

933
00:46:18,480 --> 00:46:20,280
Speaker 1: Whether it took a week and a half, like in

934
00:46:20,320 --> 00:46:23,280
the case of Luca Magnata's international manhunt, or over fifty

935
00:46:23,360 --> 00:46:26,519
years to crack the Zodiacs twisted cipher, these cases prove

936
00:46:26,639 --> 00:46:31,840
one undeniable truth. Justice has a remarkable, terrifying patience.

937
00:46:32,119 --> 00:46:34,440
Speaker 2: It really does, and I think it's important to reflect

938
00:46:34,440 --> 00:46:37,280
on why we are so drawn to these stories. We

939
00:46:37,360 --> 00:46:41,199
consume true crime narratives not simply for the morbid thrill

940
00:46:41,239 --> 00:46:41,800
of the mystery.

941
00:46:41,920 --> 00:46:42,920
Speaker 1: No, it's deeper than that.

942
00:46:43,239 --> 00:46:46,679
Speaker 2: We analyze them for the profound psychological relief of seeing

943
00:46:46,880 --> 00:46:50,719
order restored to a chaotic world. When a cold case

944
00:46:50,800 --> 00:46:53,400
is solved, when a phantom is finally given a name

945
00:46:53,440 --> 00:46:57,360
and put in handcuffs, it reaffirms our fundamental belief in

946
00:46:57,400 --> 00:46:58,679
a system of consequences.

947
00:46:58,719 --> 00:47:00,199
Speaker 1: But the bad guy gets caught.

948
00:47:00,599 --> 00:47:05,159
Speaker 2: Justice delayed undeniably damages families and inflicts deep wounds on communities.

949
00:47:05,480 --> 00:47:08,559
But as the meticulous unraveling of these ten story shows,

950
00:47:09,000 --> 00:47:12,119
the book has rarely ever truly closed. The truth is

951
00:47:12,239 --> 00:47:14,280
incredibly resilient, it really is.

952
00:47:14,559 --> 00:47:16,960
Speaker 1: It waits patiently in the crawl space, It waits under

953
00:47:16,960 --> 00:47:19,960
the desert sand, and it waits within the microscopic strands

954
00:47:20,000 --> 00:47:23,400
of our DNA. We've talked today about the silent historical

955
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:28,519
power of genetic genealogy, the dangerous wildfire nature of Internet rumors,

956
00:47:28,920 --> 00:47:32,519
and the sheer blinding arrogance of killers who genuinely think

957
00:47:32,519 --> 00:47:34,400
they can outsmart the future. They can't.

958
00:47:34,639 --> 00:47:37,599
Speaker 2: No, they cannot. The tools we have to eliminate the

959
00:47:37,679 --> 00:47:41,960
darkness are only growing sharper, more precise, and more connected.

960
00:47:42,280 --> 00:47:45,039
Speaker 1: So we want to ask you directly, as the third

961
00:47:45,119 --> 00:47:48,599
person sitting at this table with us. After everything we've

962
00:47:48,599 --> 00:47:52,920
explored today, the scientific breakthroughs, the tragic false starts, the

963
00:47:52,960 --> 00:47:57,480
stunning conclusions, what unresolved mystery or true crime story are

964
00:47:57,599 --> 00:47:59,559
you hoping becomes solved? Next?

965
00:48:00,000 --> 00:48:00,599
Speaker 2: I'll have one.

966
00:48:00,719 --> 00:48:03,119
Speaker 1: What is the one case that burrows into your mind

967
00:48:03,119 --> 00:48:05,199
and keeps you up at night waiting for that final

968
00:48:05,239 --> 00:48:08,159
piece of the puzzle to snap into place? Leave a comment,

969
00:48:08,199 --> 00:48:09,679
and let us know where you stand.

970
00:48:09,800 --> 00:48:12,679
Speaker 2: We read every single one, and your insights often fuel

971
00:48:12,719 --> 00:48:14,440
the direction of our next investigations.

972
00:48:14,519 --> 00:48:17,519
Speaker 1: You've been listening to thrilling threads. Thank you for joining

973
00:48:17,559 --> 00:48:20,199
us on this exploration into the shadows, and remember to

974
00:48:20,280 --> 00:48:22,000
keep pulling at the threads of curiosity.