Speaker 1: Have you ever thought you knew exactly where a story
Speaker 1: was going, only to have the rug pulled out from
Speaker 1: under you so violently you actually get whiplash.
Speaker 2: Oh. Absolutely, it's the wildest.
Speaker 1: Feeling, right, I mean, imagine for a second that you
Speaker 1: are doing this massive, thousand piece jigsaw puzzle. You've spent hours,
Speaker 1: maybe even weeks.
Speaker 2: On it, just agonizing over every little piece exactly.
Speaker 1: You've sorted all the edges, You've painstakingly color matched the
Speaker 1: varying shades of the sky and the grass. You've totally
Speaker 1: convinced yourself you were building this beautiful, serene landscape.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you see the big picture, or so you think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And right as you go to place that very
Speaker 1: final satisfying piece right in the center, you take a
Speaker 1: step back and you realize you have been looking at
Speaker 1: a completely different picture the entire time.
Speaker 2: Oh that is the worst.
Speaker 1: Like the landscape you thought you were building is actually
Speaker 1: a portrait or a maze or something entirely terrifying and unrecognizable.
Speaker 2: That profound, almost dizzying sense of disorientation.
Speaker 1: Yes, that collapse of everything you thought was true, And
Speaker 1: that is exactly what we are untacking today. Welcome to
Speaker 1: thrilling threads.
Speaker 2: I am so ready for this.
Speaker 1: We have gathered a stack of source material that proves
Speaker 1: human deception goes like far far deeper than simple white lies.
Speaker 1: We are looking at some of the most mind bending
Speaker 1: true crime documentaries ever made, and.
Speaker 2: We're really dissecting the terrifying lengths human beings will go
Speaker 2: to for power, control and survival.
Speaker 1: So it's a crucial distinction to make right at the start,
Speaker 1: we are not just talking about people who lie to
Speaker 1: cover up a mistake.
Speaker 2: No, not at all. We are examining the complete, deliberate
Speaker 2: fabrication of reality. Deception at the level we are exploring
Speaker 2: today is honestly an intricate art form. An art form
Speaker 2: wow yeah, I mean it functions as a weapon to
Speaker 2: attack and a shield to hide behind, all at once.
Speaker 2: And what is truly fascinating from psychological perspective is how
Speaker 2: this level of deception reshapes the world like.
Speaker 1: Not just for the victims who are trapped in the.
Speaker 2: Line exactly, it reshapes reality for the perpetrators who have
Speaker 2: maintain it, the investigators who try to unravel it, and
Speaker 2: eventually for us as the audience. We are talking about
Speaker 2: a phenomenon we might call a pistemological vertigo.
Speaker 1: The pistemological vertigo, Okay, I love that term.
Speaker 2: It's that dizzy sensation when your foundational understanding of what
Speaker 2: is real completely drops out from under you.
Speaker 1: I have a feeling we are going to be coming
Speaker 1: back to that term a lot today, because I can
Speaker 1: promise you this, by the time we finish going through
Speaker 1: these sources, you are going to question everything you think
Speaker 1: you know about.
Speaker 2: Trust, oh for sure, about identity too.
Speaker 1: And quite frankly, about the people you interact with every
Speaker 1: single day. You might find yourself looking sideways at your
Speaker 1: digital footprint, your own memories, and your closest relationships.
Speaker 2: It really gets under your skin, it does.
Speaker 1: But to truly understand how these incredibly dark, sophisticated deceptions
Speaker 1: take root, we actually have to start with something that
Speaker 1: on the surface seems completely.
Speaker 2: Absurd, almost laughable.
Speaker 1: Really, I want to talk about how abusers use the
Speaker 1: sheer bizarre nature of their crimes as a literal shield.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of competitive endurance tickling?
Speaker 2: I can safely say that, until reviewing this source material
Speaker 2: for this show, competitive endurance tickling was entirely absent from
Speaker 2: my radar.
Speaker 1: Right, it sounds like a joke.
Speaker 2: And that in itself is the very mechanism of the deception.
Speaker 1: It totally is. It sounds like a weird late night
Speaker 1: internet rabbit hole you fall down when you can't sleep,
Speaker 1: and that is exactly how journalist David Ferrier treated it
Speaker 1: when he first stumbled across these videos online.
Speaker 2: Videos featuring young athletic men participating in this so called
Speaker 2: endurance tickling.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, Ferrier is a guy who has made a
Speaker 1: career out of investigating the weird, fringe subcultures of the world,
Speaker 1: so to him, this felt like a lighthearted, goofy human
Speaker 1: interest story.
Speaker 2: He starts digging and discovers an American company called Jane
Speaker 2: O'Brien Media running these monthly events.
Speaker 1: And the setup they had was incredibly lucrative, which is
Speaker 1: the first hook. You know, young athletes from anywhere on
Speaker 1: the planet could apply, and if they were selected, this
Speaker 1: company flew them out to Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, what can all expenses paid.
Speaker 1: Trip completely, They put them up for four nights in
Speaker 1: a really nice hotel, and they handed them fifteen hundred
Speaker 1: dollars in cold hard cash. And the only requirement just
Speaker 1: to be tickled on camera, exactly, just be tickled.
Speaker 2: On camera, but the narrative pivots violently from a quirky
Speaker 2: subculture piece into something deeply sinister. The moment Ferrier attempts
Speaker 2: to do basic journalistic due diligence.
Speaker 1: Which is just like asking simple questions.
Speaker 2: Right when he simply reached out to ask some standard
Speaker 2: boilerplate questions about the company, the reaction from the people
Speaker 2: behind these videos wasn't just defensive, it.
Speaker 1: Was aggressively, disproportionately hostile.
Speaker 2: We are talking about immediate, vicious legal threats, blatant intimidation tactics, homophobia,
Speaker 2: and highly coordinated attempts to completely silence any critics.
Speaker 1: Which, if you think about it for more than two seconds,
Speaker 1: makes absolutely zero sense. I mean, if you were running
Speaker 1: a silly concent tickling competition, why do you have a
Speaker 1: vicious team of attack lawyers on standby.
Speaker 2: It's the ultimate red flag.
Speaker 1: It's like clicking on a funny cat meme and somehow
Speaker 1: being instantly redirected to a dark web arms dealership. You
Speaker 1: immediately know something is profoundly wrong.
Speaker 2: That's a great analogy. So Ferrier keeps pushing, and.
Speaker 1: What the documentary Tickled ultimately uncovers has very little to
Speaker 1: do with the physical act of tickling, and absolutely everything
Speaker 1: to do with power control and a massive harassment ring.
Speaker 2: And the sheer scale of the deception is what gives
Speaker 2: you that vertigo we talked about earlier.
Speaker 1: Behind this entire global operation, behind the Jane O'Brien media facade,
Speaker 1: behind the lawyers and the threats, was a single man.
Speaker 2: Operating through a complex, dizzying web of aliases.
Speaker 1: Yeah, aliases and shell companies, just to exert immense power
Speaker 1: over these young men.
Speaker 2: And we really need to analyze the specific mechanics of
Speaker 2: how we got away with this for so long. This
Speaker 2: is where the concept of the shield of the bazaar
Speaker 2: becomes so relevant.
Speaker 1: The shield of the bizarre. Break that down for us.
Speaker 2: Well, when we think of abusers or organized harassment, we
Speaker 2: expect the methodology to look a certain way, intimidating, violent,
Speaker 2: traditionally criminal.
Speaker 1: Right, like something out of a mafia movie exactly.
Speaker 2: But this perpetrator deliberately hid in plain sight by weaponizing absurdity.
Speaker 2: Think about it from the victim's perspective.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you are a young, perhaps struggling athlete, You
Speaker 1: take a weird gig for easy.
Speaker 2: Money, and suddenly this entity turns on you. They threaten
Speaker 2: to ruin your life, ruin your career, out you to
Speaker 2: your friends and family with these bizarre videos if you
Speaker 2: don't comply with their escalating demands.
Speaker 1: But why not just go to the police. That's what
Speaker 1: I kept asking myself while reviewing the notes for this.
Speaker 1: It's embarrassing, yeah, but if someone is blackmailing you, you
Speaker 1: go to the authorities. How does someone orchestrate a highly
Speaker 1: financed harassment ring around something so fundamentally ridiculous without getting
Speaker 1: caught by the cops sooner?
Speaker 2: Because the abuser knows exactly how the police and society
Speaker 2: at large will react. The premise of tickling sounds so
Speaker 2: inherently juvenile and silly. The victims are paralyzed by shame.
Speaker 1: Oh, I see. They are terrified of the ridicule.
Speaker 2: Right. If a twenty year old athlete walks into a
Speaker 2: police precinct and says, I am being subjected to a
Speaker 2: global extortion campaign by a tickling syndicate.
Speaker 1: The cops are going to laugh at him.
Speaker 2: The immediate reaction from an overworked detective is going to
Speaker 2: be skepticism, confusion, or outright laughter. The absurdity creates the
Speaker 2: absolute perfect smoke screen for a control freak.
Speaker 1: It isolates the victims instantly. It weaponizes their own potential
Speaker 1: embarrassment against them.
Speaker 2: The perpetrator constructed a reality where the victims felt completely
Speaker 2: trapped by the ridiculousness of their own victimization.
Speaker 1: Wow, they are literally imprisoned by the punchline of the joke.
Speaker 1: The absurdity is the cage. It's terrifyingly effective, and the
Speaker 1: sources note that even after the documentary aired, even after
Speaker 1: Ferrier bravely exposed all of this to the world, the
Speaker 1: lawsuits and the harassment from this man just kept coming.
Speaker 2: He was just so insulated by his wealth and his
Speaker 2: aliases that he thought he was untouchable.
Speaker 1: But the truly frustrating, maddening part of this story is
Speaker 1: the lack of a satisfying resolution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the tough part.
Speaker 1: The man at the center of it all died in
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen before ever facing true legal accountability for the
Speaker 1: dozens of lives he ruined.
Speaker 2: It just proves that the Internet allows people to build
Speaker 2: these elaborate, insulated kingdoms of abuse where they can play
Speaker 2: god behind a keyboard.
Speaker 1: And that reliance on the anonymity of the digital world
Speaker 1: to construct a false reality transitions us perfectly into our
Speaker 1: next case study.
Speaker 2: It really does. While the perpetrator and tickled used shell
Speaker 2: companies and a bizarre premise to hide his identity, our
Speaker 2: next manipulator used the digital sphere for something even darker.
Speaker 1: To completely rewrite the fundamental line between life and death.
Speaker 1: We're moving from abusers who hide behind a joke to
Speaker 1: abusers who hide behind a ghost.
Speaker 2: Yes, and this is where it gets deeply terrifying for
Speaker 2: anyone who has ever used a dating app.
Speaker 1: Which is based half the planet. At this point, let's
Speaker 1: look at the source material regarding lover Stalker Killer.
Speaker 2: The story starts out sounding like a completely standard, incredibly
Speaker 2: relatable modern dating headache totally.
Speaker 1: We have Dave Krupa, a mechanic living in Nebraska. He
Speaker 1: is fresh out of a long term relationship. He gets
Speaker 1: on the dating app plenty of fish and he is
Speaker 1: just looking for something.
Speaker 2: Casual, nothing serious at all, right.
Speaker 1: He briefly dates two different women. He meets Carrie Farver
Speaker 1: and Liz Goliard. Then suddenly Carrie just vanishes. She ghosts
Speaker 1: him in real life.
Speaker 2: But the digital ghosting doesn't happen.
Speaker 1: No. Instead, Dave starts getting these relentless, unhinged, deeply threatening
Speaker 1: messages from Carrie's phone and email.
Speaker 2: And this harassment campaign doesn't just last for a few
Speaker 2: angry weeks, it goes on for years.
Speaker 1: Years. The police get involved, and naturally, based on the evidence,
Speaker 1: their primary suspect is Carrie Farver.
Speaker 2: They think she is this incredibly obsessive, dangerous, fatal attraction
Speaker 2: style ex girlfriend who just I don't let go of
Speaker 2: a guy she dated casually for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: Which is the most logical assumption based on the digital footprint.
Speaker 1: The messages are coming from her accounts, Her phone number
Speaker 1: is pinging from various towers.
Speaker 2: The investigators are following a trail of digital breadcrumbs that
Speaker 2: clearly spell out Carrie's guilt.
Speaker 1: But this is where the epistemological vertigo hits hard. The
Speaker 1: digital evidence eventually revealed a deception so profound, so labor intensive,
Speaker 1: it defies her basic understanding of human psychology.
Speaker 2: The shocking truth was that Liz Goliar, the other woman
Speaker 2: Dave had casually dated, was behind the entire harassment campaign.
Speaker 1: But she wasn't just like spoofing to Mary's number to
Speaker 1: scare off romantic competition.
Speaker 2: No, it was so much worse. Liz Goliar had actually
Speaker 2: murdered Carrie Farvar, disposed of her body, and then spent
Speaker 2: years masquerading as her digitally.
Speaker 1: Just to misdirect the investigators and systematically torture Dave. I
Speaker 1: just have to pause and really sit with that for
Speaker 1: a second.
Speaker 2: It's allowed to process.
Speaker 1: We swipe right, we invite a stranger into our lives.
Speaker 1: We assume the digital foot print matches a living, breathing
Speaker 1: human footprint. The sheer psychological stamina it would take to execute.
Speaker 2: This, it's practically unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Think about it. You murder a woman, you dispose of her,
Speaker 1: and then instead of fleeing, instead of laying lo you
Speaker 1: wake up every single day for years. You log into
Speaker 1: her accounts, you adopt her voice.
Speaker 2: You pretend to be the woman you killed.
Speaker 1: Yes, just to ruin a man's life, while simultaneously pretending
Speaker 1: to be the supportive girlfriend to that very same man
Speaker 1: in real life. It's sickening.
Speaker 2: It requires a level of cognitive dissonance and malice that
Speaker 2: is almost impossible to comprehend.
Speaker 1: I remember reading about a similar case where a person
Speaker 1: maintained a fake persona for a few months and talked
Speaker 1: about how exhausting it was. Liz did this for years
Speaker 1: with the highest possible stakes.
Speaker 2: It dives into the unique, unprecedented terror of the digital age.
Speaker 2: Before the Internet, if you killed someone, they were gone.
Speaker 1: They were just gone.
Speaker 2: But we now live in a world where it is
Speaker 2: entirely possible to keep a dead person alive online to
Speaker 2: torture the living. A person's digital existence can now outlast
Speaker 2: their physical existence.
Speaker 1: And in the hands of a psychopath like Liz Goliar,
Speaker 1: that digital ghost becomes a highly effective weapon of misdirection.
Speaker 2: And consider the incredibly complex dilemma that's presented for law enforcement.
Speaker 1: Oh Man, the poor detective.
Speaker 2: Right, one of the lead investigators in the case, as
Speaker 2: to pivotal paradigm shifting question, how do you prove a
Speaker 2: murder without a body when the victim is seemingly texting
Speaker 2: you every day?
Speaker 1: That is wild. The detectives had to first prove that
Speaker 1: Carrie was actually dead despite her active digital presence, and second.
Speaker 2: That Liz was the one who killed her, Relying almost
Speaker 2: entirely on painstaking digital forensics.
Speaker 1: They had to map out IP addresses, trace overlapping timelines,
Speaker 1: and prove that Liz was physically holding the device that
Speaker 1: was sending the messages from Careery.
Speaker 2: Ultimately, Liz Goliar was convicted of first Green.
Speaker 1: Murder, but the psychological toll on Dave, who thought he
Speaker 1: was being hunted by Careery, and on Creery's family who
Speaker 1: held out hope she was alive because of those messages,
Speaker 1: it is simply incalculable.
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate violation of our modern reality.
Speaker 1: You're being terrorized by a phantom, and that phantom is
Speaker 1: being orchestrated by the person sitting right next to you
Speaker 1: on the couch watching you suffer.
Speaker 2: Exactly. But while Liz Goliar hid behind a screen, behind
Speaker 2: the ones and zeros of the Internet to pull off
Speaker 2: her deception, some manipulators have this sheer audacity, the unbelievable
Speaker 2: sociopathic nerve to steal identities right to people's faces.
Speaker 1: We are moving from digital ghosts to physical impostors, and
Speaker 1: this brings us to a case that deals heavily with
Speaker 1: the fragility of our own perceptions and the terrifying concept
Speaker 1: of wilful blindness.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about this source material for the impostor.
Speaker 1: This is a case study and how desperately human beings
Speaker 1: want to believe a comforting lie rather than face a devastating,
Speaker 1: horrifying truth.
Speaker 2: It challenges everything we assume about parental instant and recognition.
Speaker 1: This story is so wild it feels like a bad
Speaker 1: rejected Hollywood's script, but it is entirely documented truth. We
Speaker 1: have a guy named Frederick Bourband.
Speaker 2: A French serial impostor well into his twenties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he has dark brown hair, dark brown eyes, a
Speaker 1: five o'clock shadow, and a very noticeable distinct French accent.
Speaker 2: Yet somehow this man manages to convince authorities and subsequently
Speaker 2: aggrieving family in Texas that he is their missing teenage son,
Speaker 2: Nicholas Barclay.
Speaker 1: Now let's look at the real Nicholas. Nicholas was a
Speaker 1: blonde haired, blue eyed, thirteen year old kid from San Antonio, Texas.
Speaker 2: The physical discrepancy isn't just a matter of him aging
Speaker 2: a few years.
Speaker 1: It is a complete biological mismatch. And yet Burdin gets
Speaker 1: on a plane, flies to America, meets his family, and
Speaker 1: they welcome him home.
Speaker 2: They literally take him into their house, enroll him in
Speaker 2: high school, and live with him.
Speaker 1: The initial visceral reaction from anyone hearing these facts is
Speaker 1: a resounding how is that physically possible?
Speaker 2: Exactly? How do you not recognize that this grown french
Speaker 2: man with brown eye is not your blonde, blue eyed
Speaker 2: text and child?
Speaker 1: The cognitive gap is so vast it seems unbridgable. If
Speaker 1: you can't recognize your own child's eye color, I just
Speaker 1: can't wrap my head around it.
Speaker 2: But the story doesn't just stop at the physical impossibility.
Speaker 1: No, it doesn't. Once Bourden is finally exposed, because you
Speaker 1: can't fake eye color in Age Forever, a private investigator
Speaker 1: eventually figures it out, Bordena doesn't just apologize and go
Speaker 1: quietly to jail.
Speaker 2: He drops an absolute bomb.
Speaker 1: He suggests quite forcefully that the Barclay family knew he
Speaker 1: wasn't Nicholas.
Speaker 2: All along, and that they had their own, dark, sinister
Speaker 2: reasons for playing along with the charade.
Speaker 1: Nicholas Barclay, should be noted, has never been found. Borden
Speaker 1: actually has this incredibly chilling quote in the Sources where
Speaker 1: he says, I didn't need to be Colombo to put
Speaker 1: all the pieces together. They killed him. Some of them
Speaker 1: did it, some of them knew of it, some of
Speaker 1: them choose to ignore.
Speaker 2: It, which forces us to analyze an incredibly uncomfortable psychological
Speaker 2: debate regarding grief versus willful complicity.
Speaker 1: Okay, unpack that for us.
Speaker 2: On one hand, you have the immense blinding power of trauma.
Speaker 2: When a family loses a child to the unknown, the
Speaker 2: desperation to have them back, to have closure can create
Speaker 2: a psychological state of profound denial.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess the human mind is a remarkably
Speaker 1: fragile and malleable instrument.
Speaker 2: Under extreme duress, it can literally overwrite sensory input. The
Speaker 2: psychological literature on confirmation bias shows that if the emotional
Speaker 2: payoff is high enough, people will ignore eye color, age, discrepancies,
Speaker 2: and accents.
Speaker 1: They will invent rationalization.
Speaker 2: Exactly the family convinced themselves his eyes change color from
Speaker 2: medical trauma, where his accent changed from being held captive
Speaker 2: by a European pedophile ring. The brain protects itself from
Speaker 2: the agony of loss by accepting the impostor.
Speaker 1: But I'm sorry, I have to jump in and push
Speaker 1: back on that heavily. I refuse to accept that grief
Speaker 1: alone causes this level of blindness.
Speaker 2: You don't buy the trauma angle.
Speaker 1: I can understand thinking someone looks different after three years
Speaker 1: I cannot understand looking into the dark brown eyes of
Speaker 1: a grown Frenchman and seeing a blue eyed Texan child.
Speaker 2: It is definitely a stretch.
Speaker 1: Is it really possible to want to lie to be
Speaker 1: true so badly that your brain literally rewrites what your
Speaker 1: very own eyes are seeing in broad daylight? Or is
Speaker 1: Bordin right?
Speaker 2: Was this family using this obvious con artist as a
Speaker 2: convenient walking alibi because they were somehow responsible for Nicholas's disappearance.
Speaker 1: It creates this horrific, tense standoff between a documented master
Speaker 1: manipulator and a potentially complicit, guilty family.
Speaker 2: And the brilliance of the way this story is documented
Speaker 2: is that it leaves you completely suspended in that ambiguity.
Speaker 1: It doesn't give you the comforting answer.
Speaker 2: You are forced to question the reliability of every single
Speaker 2: person involved. Bordin is a known liar, so you can't
Speaker 2: trust him. The family's actions defy logic, so you can't
Speaker 2: trust them.
Speaker 1: It highlights that sometimes deception isn't just a one way
Speaker 1: street where a predator fool is a victim. Sometimes deception
Speaker 1: is a symbiotic relationship.
Speaker 2: It's a dark economy of lies. Foster needed a home
Speaker 2: and a stage, to perform on and the family needed
Speaker 2: a son, either to heal their grief or to serve
Speaker 2: as a distraction from a much darker truth.
Speaker 1: They fed off each other's lies. That concept of symbiotic
Speaker 1: deception is deeply unsettling, very much, and it ties right
Speaker 1: into our next source, which also deals with the malleability
Speaker 1: of reality and memory, but from a completely different, intensely
Speaker 1: intimate angle.
Speaker 2: We are moving from external deception a stranger tricking a family,
Speaker 2: to internal deception.
Speaker 1: Where the lie comes from the person you trust most
Speaker 1: in the universe. Let's look at the source material for
Speaker 1: Tell Me Who I Am? This one is an absolute
Speaker 1: emotional gut punch, it really is. Here is the setup.
Speaker 1: A young man named Alex Lewis gets into a horrific
Speaker 1: motorcycle crash when he is eighteen years old. He wakes
Speaker 1: up from a coma with severe, profound amnesia.
Speaker 2: He literally remembers nothing of his life, his parents, his childhood,
Speaker 2: his own name.
Speaker 1: The only thing The only person he recognizes when he
Speaker 1: opens his eyes is his identical twin brother, Marcus.
Speaker 2: So Marcus takes on the monumental, godlike task of reconstructing
Speaker 2: Alex's entire life and his memories from scratch.
Speaker 1: Marcus essentially becomes the sole author of Alex's reality. He
Speaker 1: tells him about their supposedly idyllic childhood, their loving, eccentric parents,
Speaker 1: the grand family home, the vacations.
Speaker 2: He paints this beautiful, comforting, Norman Rockwell picture of who
Speaker 2: Alex is and where he came from. He gives his
Speaker 2: brother a history to anchor his identity.
Speaker 1: But as with everything we are discussing today, there is
Speaker 1: a massive structural lie at the center of it. As
Speaker 1: they get older, the cracks and the facade start to
Speaker 1: show right.
Speaker 2: The parents pass away, they had to clear out the
Speaker 2: family home, and Marcus can no longer hold a narrative together.
Speaker 1: He painted a happy picture, but he deliberately systematically left
Speaker 1: out devastating, horrifying family secrets regarding their mother's genuinely evil
Speaker 1: deeds and.
Speaker 2: The severe, unspeakable sexual abuse both brothers suffered throughout their childhood.
Speaker 1: When Alex finally uncovers the truth decades later, he is
Speaker 1: forced to con in front not just the magnitude of
Speaker 1: the trauma he actually endured, but the profound guilt, rage,
Speaker 1: and betrayal he feels toward the brother who lied to
Speaker 1: his face every single day for thirty years.
Speaker 2: What is philosophically fascinating here is the concept of memory
Speaker 2: as a constructor, yeah.
Speaker 1: And how it forms the bedrock of our identity. Without
Speaker 1: our memories, who are we really?
Speaker 2: Are we just the sum of the stories we are
Speaker 2: told about ourselves. Marcus literally played god with his brother's mind.
Speaker 1: He had a blank slate and he chose to write
Speaker 1: a fairy tale over a horror story.
Speaker 2: And it presents a profoundly complex ethical dilemma that you,
Speaker 2: the audience, have to wrestle with deeply.
Speaker 1: Is it an act of profound, unconditional sacrificial love to
Speaker 1: shield a traumatized loved one from their darkest nightmares by
Speaker 1: simply erasing them?
Speaker 2: Or is it the ultimate betrayal, the ultimate theft of autonomy,
Speaker 2: to deny a human being their true reality, no matter
Speaker 2: how agonizing that reality is.
Speaker 1: I look at it with this intense empathetic view for
Speaker 1: both of them, but mostly for the profound isolation it created.
Speaker 1: The major thing about being a twin, the cultural myth
Speaker 1: we all hold is that you're supposed to never be alone.
Speaker 1: You share everything from the womb, but here because of
Speaker 1: this massive orchestrated lie Alex was entirely alone in his
Speaker 1: own mind. He was living in a dollhouse built by
Speaker 1: his brother.
Speaker 2: And conversely, Marcus carried the absolute crushing agony of their
Speaker 2: real childhood completely by himself, trying to protect this fragile
Speaker 2: bubble for his brother.
Speaker 1: So I have to ask you, listening right now, put
Speaker 1: yourself in Marcus's shoes. If you could erase a loved
Speaker 1: one's worst, most traumatic memory, just hit delete, wipe away
Speaker 1: the pain and replace it with a happy story. Would
Speaker 1: you do it?
Speaker 2: It's an impossible question.
Speaker 1: And more importantly, do you even have the moral right
Speaker 1: to alter someone else's reality?
Speaker 2: That is the crux of the tragedy, because eventually the
Speaker 2: fabricated foundation will crack. Reality always demands its due.
Speaker 1: And when it does, the secondary trauma of the deception
Speaker 1: is just brutal.
Speaker 2: Oh, the realization that your entire adult life was a
Speaker 2: curated again exhibit is often just as damaging, if not
Speaker 2: more so, than the original abuse. The lie, however well intentioned,
Speaker 2: becomes a second layer of trauma.
Speaker 1: Exactly tell me who I Am really shows how a
Speaker 1: family home which is supposed to be your ultimate safe
Speaker 1: haven can actually be a prison of secrets.
Speaker 2: And that observation leads us seamlessly into our next case.
Speaker 1: Where the family home itself becomes a chaotic battleground for
Speaker 1: the truth. If we were dealing with the internal collapse
Speaker 1: of memory, we are now looking at the external collapse
Speaker 1: of the justice system.
Speaker 2: Let's dive into the source material for capturing the.
Speaker 1: Freedman's This documentary is a monumental achievement in filmmaking, precisely
Speaker 1: because it induces that epistemological vertigo we discussed earlier better
Speaker 1: than almost anything else on film.
Speaker 2: This one will absolutely make your head spin.
Speaker 1: The story is set in the nineteen eighties in an
Speaker 1: affluent suburban neighborhood in Great Neck, New York. Arnold Friedman,
Speaker 1: a seemingly normal, highly respected suburban father and computer teacher,
Speaker 1: and his teenage son Jesse, are suddenly accused of horrifying,
Speaker 1: widespread sexual abuse, specifically.
Speaker 2: Of the young boys who took computer classes in the
Speaker 2: Freedman's basement.
Speaker 1: The accusations are sweeping. Panic immediately takes over the community,
Speaker 1: and at first glance, it seems like a straightforward, albeit
Speaker 1: tragic and horrific true crime procedural.
Speaker 2: Right Initially, the narrative follows the very familiar, almost comforting
Speaker 2: pattern we expect from the justice system. Accusation, police investigation, arrest,
Speaker 2: and prosecution.
Speaker 1: We rely on the justice system to step in, identify
Speaker 1: the monsters, and restore order to a chaotic, terrifying situation.
Speaker 1: We expect clarity.
Speaker 2: But clarity is the first casualty in this story.
Speaker 1: The freedmen's were avid, almost obsessive users of early home
Speaker 1: video cameras. They recorded everything family dinners, arguments, holidays.
Speaker 2: And the documentarians gain access to these raw, intimate home
Speaker 2: videos filmed by the family during the police investigation.
Speaker 1: And the subsequent tearing a part of their lives, and
Speaker 1: these videos completely hopeless muddy the waters. You watch the
Speaker 1: family arguing in the kitchen.
Speaker 2: You see the police seemingly leading witnesses during interrogations.
Speaker 1: You see Arnold and Jesse behaving in ways that are
Speaker 1: deeply contradictory, sometimes appearing incredibly guilty, other times appearing like
Speaker 1: bewildered victims of a modern day witch hunt.
Speaker 2: Friends, lawyers, the allegedictims themselves, and the investigators all give
Speaker 2: completely conflicting accounts of what actually happened in that basement.
Speaker 1: This is where the story transcends. A simple true crime
Speaker 1: narrative and becomes a study of truth itself.
Speaker 2: The metathene here is the collapse of certainty. Most media
Speaker 2: is designed to feed the viewer facts to construct a linear,
Speaker 2: cohesive narrative that guide you safely to a specific logical conclusion.
Speaker 1: This material does the exact opposite, imeticulously strips facts away
Speaker 1: until you are left with nothing to stand on.
Speaker 2: It exposes how the justice system desperately relies on definitive,
Speaker 2: black and white narratives, good guys, bad guys, clear timelines,
Speaker 2: definitive motives.
Speaker 1: But human life, especially as it is captured in the raw, unedited,
Speaker 1: claustrophobic chaos of home video, is incredibly messy, contradictory, and ambiguous.
Speaker 2: It really is. You watch this footage and you are
Speaker 2: paralyzed by indecision. Both Arnold and Jesse eventually plead guilty,
Speaker 2: but the doubts absolutely never go away.
Speaker 1: Did they orchestrate a massive abuse ring right under the
Speaker 1: mother's nose? Or were they railroaded by mass hysteria, over
Speaker 1: zealous prosecutors and leading investigative techniques that planted false memories
Speaker 1: in children?
Speaker 2: And the most absurd, surreal moment of the entire film
Speaker 2: The moment that perfectly encapsulates this vertigo is when Jesse
Speaker 2: Friedman is out on the courthouse steps.
Speaker 1: After taking a plea deal that will label him a
Speaker 1: sex offender for life and send him to state prison.
Speaker 2: And he is singing and dancing. His brothers are videotaping him,
Speaker 2: and he is doing a little jig with a smile
Speaker 2: on his face.
Speaker 1: What does it mean when the camera is rolling, capturing
Speaker 1: every pixel of an event, but the truth is entirely
Speaker 1: out of frame. How are we supposed to interpret a
Speaker 1: convicted predator dancing happily we're going to prison.
Speaker 2: It forces the viewer to confront their own ingrained biases
Speaker 2: and narrative expectations. We want criminals to look and act
Speaker 2: like remorseful monsters, and we want innocent people to act
Speaker 2: perfectly pious, terrified, and aggrieved.
Speaker 1: When a person acts completely outside of those expected parameters,
Speaker 1: our certainty collapses. We realize we are judging them based
Speaker 1: on a script they refuse to follow.
Speaker 2: Jesse was eventually freed in two thousand and one after
Speaker 2: serving his time, and is fought for decades to clear
Speaker 2: his name, citing false memory syndrome and police coercion.
Speaker 1: But the viewer is left without closure. We just cannot
Speaker 1: know for sure what happened in that basement, and that
Speaker 1: lack of certainty is deeply unsettling.
Speaker 2: Is the ultimate puzzle with missing pieces.
Speaker 1: But if the freedmen's leave us dizzy with uncertainty, our
Speaker 1: next subject leaves us dizzy with pure, unadulterated screaming rage.
Speaker 2: We are moving from a case where the parents were
Speaker 2: accused of being the monsters to a case where the
Speaker 2: parents unwittingly invited the monster to the dinner table.
Speaker 1: Over and over, let's look at abducted in plain sight.
Speaker 2: This case is a horrifying master class in psychological manipulation
Speaker 2: and the insidious, invisible anatomy of grooming.
Speaker 1: The facts here sounds so fictitious, so incredibly contrived, that
Speaker 1: if you wrote this in a thriller novel, your publisher
Speaker 1: would reject it for being too unbelievable.
Speaker 2: It really strains credulity.
Speaker 1: We have a man named Robert briche told. He is
Speaker 1: a neighbor, a family friend, who systematically methodically manipulates the
Speaker 1: entire Broberg family.
Speaker 2: He targets the parents, Marianne and Bob specifically so he
Speaker 2: can get unfettered, unquestioned access to their young daughter, jan Brober.
Speaker 1: Whom he then proceeds to kidnap, not once, but repeatedly.
Speaker 2: The aspect that leaves audiences screaming at their televisions is
Speaker 2: the sheer incomprehensible gullibility and complicity of the parents. Oh
Speaker 2: my god, Yes, we see Birch told manipulate the father, Bob,
Speaker 2: by exploiting his repressed sexual insecurities, drawing him into a
Speaker 2: compromising physical encounter.
Speaker 1: And he manipulates the mother, Mary Anne through a bizarre,
Speaker 1: fabricated romantic and spiritual connection, convincing her they were destined
Speaker 1: for each other.
Speaker 2: He compromised both parents so thoroughly, wrap them up so
Speaker 2: tightly in their own shame in his manipulation, that they
Speaker 2: constantly let him back into their lives, even after he
Speaker 2: had literally abducted their child across state lines.
Speaker 1: I mean, I have to be honest. My blood pressure
Speaker 1: spikes just talking about this. I want to be empathetic
Speaker 1: to the victims. I really do try to understand the
Speaker 1: power of manipulation, But how do you not see the
Speaker 1: neon red flags?
Speaker 2: It is incredibly frustrating to.
Speaker 1: Watch he kidnaps your daughter the FBI gets involved, You
Speaker 1: get her back, and then you let the guy come
Speaker 1: over for Sunday dinner. You let her sleep over at
Speaker 1: his house again.
Speaker 2: It's madness.
Speaker 1: It makes you furious that the predator, obviously he's a monster,
Speaker 1: but you find yourself equally viscerally enraged at the parents.
Speaker 1: How does a father protect his own secret over his
Speaker 1: daughter's life.
Speaker 2: And then, to top it all off, you are left
Speaker 2: utterly defeated by a justice system that, after all of this,
Speaker 2: after multiple abductions and documented to be lets, Robert birch
Speaker 2: hooldt walk away.
Speaker 1: He literally spent ten days in a psychiatric facility and
Speaker 1: a short stint in jail, and was then allowed to
Speaker 1: move to a motor home in Salt Lake City ten
Speaker 1: days for stealing a child twice.
Speaker 2: It is enraging, but it is deeply instructive. We want
Speaker 2: to understand how predators operate.
Speaker 1: Okay, how so well?
Speaker 2: We tend to think of grooming as a solitary act,
Speaker 2: something a predator does solely to an isolated child. But
Speaker 2: birch Hold's genius, his evil, calculated genius, was that he
Speaker 2: groomed the entire family.
Speaker 1: And arguably the entire church community. They belonged to.
Speaker 2: He understood that to isolate Yon, he had to neutralize
Speaker 2: her protectors first. He compromised the parents to the point
Speaker 2: where exposing him would mean exposing their own deeply shameful,
Speaker 2: community destroying secrets.
Speaker 1: He created a psychological bear trap where the parent's silence
Speaker 1: was guaranteed by their own complicity in his bizarre games.
Speaker 2: As the mother herself reflects in the sources, looking back
Speaker 2: with decades of hindsight, it's like a mouse going ou
Speaker 2: into a trap. They never even saw it coming because
Speaker 2: the cheese was tailored specifically for them.
Speaker 1: They were paralyzed by the fear of social ruin and
Speaker 1: religious excommunication.
Speaker 2: Exactly. It's the ultimate weaponization of suburban politeness, community trust,
Speaker 2: and religious authority.
Speaker 1: They were so terrified of a scandal, so afraid of
Speaker 1: what the neighbors would think, that they essentially sacrificed their
Speaker 1: own daughter on the altar of their reputation.
Speaker 2: And while jan Broberg thankfully survived her repeated abductions, lived
Speaker 2: to tell the tale and is now a powerful advocate
Speaker 2: for abuse survivors, others are swallowed entirely by their captors,
Speaker 2: Which leads.
Speaker 1: Us to a case where an entire identity isn't just manipulated,
Speaker 1: it is forged from scratch. In captivity, we.
Speaker 2: Are moving now from cases where reality is distorted by
Speaker 2: a predator to cases where reality is completely manufactured from
Speaker 2: the ground up, erasing the victim's original self entirely.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about the documentary Girl in the picture.
Speaker 1: If there is one piece of media on this list
Speaker 1: that will haunt your waking thoughts long after the credits roll,
Speaker 1: it is this one.
Speaker 2: It is incredibly grim.
Speaker 1: This story begins in April nineteen ninety a young woman
Speaker 1: named Sharon Marshall, who was also known to some as
Speaker 1: Tanya Hughes, working as an exotic dancer in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: is found dying on the side of a road, the
Speaker 1: victim of an apparent hit and run.
Speaker 2: It's tragic but unfortunately common.
Speaker 1: But when investigators try to figure out who she really is,
Speaker 1: to trace her next of kin and notify her family,
Speaker 1: they hit a brick wall. They realize that Sharon Marshall
Speaker 1: doesn't actually exist.
Speaker 2: There is no birth certificate, there is no original Social
Speaker 2: Security number.
Speaker 1: Her entire identity was a ghost story. And the deeper
Speaker 1: the investigators and later investigative journalists dug into the archives,
Speaker 1: the more horrifying the truth became.
Speaker 2: The reality was that this woman had no real name,
Speaker 2: that she herself knew of her entire existence, her memories,
Speaker 2: her names, her relationships. It was all a horrifying, continuous
Speaker 2: performance orchestrated by a man named Franklin Delano Floyd.
Speaker 1: Franklin Delano Floyd, just speaking his name makes the hair
Speaker 1: on my arms stand up. This man is the definition
Speaker 1: of a monster.
Speaker 2: He originally claimed to be her father. He abducted her
Speaker 2: when she was just a little girl.
Speaker 1: He raised her, sent her to high school, where she
Speaker 1: was popular and smart. Then as she got older, the
Speaker 1: narrative shifted. He forced her to become his wife.
Speaker 2: Marrying her, moving her across multiple states under a constant,
Speaker 2: dizzying series of false identities. He controlled every single breath
Speaker 2: she took.
Speaker 1: And the tragedy compounds exponentially. Floyd also kidnapped the young
Speaker 1: son she had given birth to, Michael Anthony Hughes, and.
Speaker 2: In a horrific twenty fourteen FBI interview, after decades of
Speaker 2: silence on death row, Floyd finally confessed to killing the
Speaker 2: little boy, though his remains have never been found.
Speaker 1: What this case exposes, beyond the depravity of one man,
Speaker 1: is the terrifying reality of a completely stolen life.
Speaker 2: It explores how abusers utilized transient lifestyles as an impenetrable shield.
Speaker 2: By constantly moving across state lines, constantly changing name, pulling
Speaker 2: kids out of school the first sign of trouble, abusers
Speaker 2: can completely evade the.
Speaker 1: Law and utterly isolate their victims from any support system.
Speaker 1: Franklin Floyd exploited every single crack in the Americans social
Speaker 1: safety net.
Speaker 2: Sharon was a ghost in the system, completely dependent on
Speaker 2: the very man who was destroying her. She had no
Speaker 2: foundational reality to return to because he had stolen her
Speaker 2: past before she could even remember it.
Speaker 1: The scene in the documentary that absolutely breaks my heart,
Speaker 1: the one that highlights the systemic failure we are talking about,
Speaker 1: is when they discuss her in the hospital after the
Speaker 1: hit and run.
Speaker 2: Oh, that scene is tough.
Speaker 1: The doctors are examining her broken body and they see
Speaker 1: the history of violence. They see old faded bruises, They
Speaker 1: see old bone fractures that have healed badly without medical attention.
Speaker 2: The doctors realize, right then and there, there is something very,
Speaker 2: very wrong with this picture.
Speaker 1: But by then it is too late. It makes you
Speaker 1: reflect on how easily society lets marginalize transient people slip
Speaker 1: through the cracks. How many teachers, neighbors, or police officers
Speaker 1: over the years saw Sharon, saw the bone deep fear
Speaker 1: in her eyes and just look the other way because
Speaker 1: it wasn't their business.
Speaker 2: Because she was just a transient girl who moved away
Speaker 2: a week later. Her whole life was an illusion forced
Speaker 2: upon her by a monster, aided by the apathy of society.
Speaker 1: And contrasting that deeply tragic forced fabrication of identity where
Speaker 1: the victim had no agency, our next case examines a
Speaker 1: completely voluntary, mutual fabrication of identity.
Speaker 2: It's a case where both parties eagerly construct false realities,
Speaker 2: but it ends in equally fatal consequences.
Speaker 1: Right we are pivoting from a physical forced kidnapping to
Speaker 1: a digital voluntary one. Let's explore the story of Tall
Speaker 1: Hot Blonde.
Speaker 2: The facts of this case are the absolute epitome of
Speaker 2: the early Internet's dark side, back when dial up internet
Speaker 2: and chat rooms with the wild West.
Speaker 1: We have a man named Thomas Montgomery. He is a
Speaker 1: forty seven year old married man living a completely mundane,
Speaker 1: predictable suburban life working at a factory.
Speaker 2: He decides to go into an internet chat room and
Speaker 2: completely reinvents himself.
Speaker 1: He creates a profile as an eighteen year old, muscular,
Speaker 1: single marine preparing to deploy. He uses this fake persona
Speaker 1: to pursue a romance with a user whose screen name
Speaker 1: is tall, hot blonde.
Speaker 2: Who goes by the name Jesse and claims to be
Speaker 2: a beautiful eighteen year old high school senior.
Speaker 1: It is a classic, almost cliche case of internet catfishing,
Speaker 1: a bored middle aged man seeking escapism.
Speaker 2: But the situation becomes highly combustible and breaks the digital
Speaker 2: boundary when a younger coworker of Montgomery's, a man named
Speaker 2: Brian Barrett in his early twenties, discovers what Montgomery is doing.
Speaker 1: Brian, who actually is young and single, decides to use
Speaker 1: his real identity his real photographs to pursue the same girl,
Speaker 1: Jesse online.
Speaker 2: So now you have a ridiculously toxic love triangle.
Speaker 1: You have a forty seven year old man pretending to
Speaker 1: be eighteen and a real twenty two year old both
Speaker 1: vying for the affection of this teenage girl they have
Speaker 1: never met. In person.
Speaker 2: The jealousy between the two men, who are sitting right
Speaker 2: next to each other at their actual physical workplace, escalates
Speaker 2: to a fever pitch.
Speaker 1: Montgomery is consumed by obsession and rage that this younger
Speaker 1: man is stealing his fantasy, and it ends an absolute tragedy.
Speaker 1: Thomas Montgomery drives to the factory parking lot and murders
Speaker 1: his young coworker in cold blood.
Speaker 2: But the twist that elevates this from a tragic, pathetic
Speaker 2: workplace murder to a truly mind bending story of deception
Speaker 2: is the actual identity of the girl herself.
Speaker 1: As investigators dig into the digital footprint of tall Hoop
Speaker 1: Blonde after the murder, they uncover a staggering truth.
Speaker 2: The beautiful teenage girl both men believe they were romancing
Speaker 2: the girl they were competing for, the girl one man
Speaker 2: was willing to kill for was a complete fiction.
Speaker 1: Behind the screen name typing out the floating messages was
Speaker 1: actually Mary Schiler, a middle aged married woman in another state.
Speaker 2: To use The real Jesse's mother.
Speaker 1: The actual teenage daughter whose photos were used to lure
Speaker 1: these men, knew absolutely nothing about what her mother was
Speaker 1: doing with her identity.
Speaker 2: It is an incredibly dark lethal version of a high
Speaker 2: school crush Gonka completely wrong.
Speaker 1: It is this bizarre symmetry of mutual delusion. You have
Speaker 1: Montgomery faking his identity to catfish a young girl, only
Speaker 1: to discover he is actually being catfished by a woman
Speaker 1: his own age.
Speaker 2: It's like two spiders catching each other in the same web.
Speaker 1: Imagine the psychological shock of that realization. Imagine the exact moment.
Speaker 1: Thomas Montgomery is sitting in a sterile police interrogation room.
Speaker 1: His life is over. He has murdered an innocent young man.
Speaker 1: He is going to prison for the rest of his life.
Speaker 2: And the detective slide a picture across.
Speaker 1: The table of the middle aged suburban housewife. He actually
Speaker 1: destroyed his life for it is Shakespearean. But it's Shakespeare
Speaker 1: played out with fifty six k modems and fatal consequences.
Speaker 1: But I have to ask, does that make Thomas a
Speaker 1: victim of her deception too?
Speaker 2: That is the debate this source material Sparks. Is Thomas
Speaker 2: a victim of a cruel catfish? Legally? No, Morally it's
Speaker 2: highly debatable.
Speaker 1: You have to remember his initial intent, right.
Speaker 2: Yes, he was a forty seven year old man acting
Speaker 2: trying to seduce an eighteen year old high school student
Speaker 2: through lies. He wasn't a victim, he was a predator
Speaker 2: who simply got outplayed by another predator.
Speaker 1: But the psychological autopsy of Mary Schiler is particularly disturbing.
Speaker 1: How does a mother justify weaponizing her own daughter's identity
Speaker 1: to seek digital validation from strange men.
Speaker 2: It speaks to a profound pathological narcissism and the deeply
Speaker 2: addictive nature of online attention, where the real world collateral
Speaker 2: damage is entirely ignored for the sake of sustaining a fantasy.
Speaker 1: The collateral damage is what absolutely gets me. The real
Speaker 1: Jesse's life is forever tainted by her mother's bizarre proxy romance.
Speaker 1: Her face is forever tied to a murder she had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with it.
Speaker 2: Solemnly shifts our tone entirely because sometimes the tragedy isn't
Speaker 2: just the crime itself.
Speaker 1: The initial crime is horrible, but the true devastation comes
Speaker 1: from the catastrophic failure of the institutions that are explicitly
Speaker 1: designed to protect the innocent from these predators.
Speaker 2: And that brings us to cases where the deception isn't
Speaker 2: just personal, it's systemic.
Speaker 1: These last two cases showcase what happens when the systems
Speaker 1: we rely on, the family courts, the bail system, and
Speaker 1: the sheer insulating weight of immense wealth create a protective
Speaker 1: bubble for the perpetrators.
Speaker 2: Allowing them to inflict even more pain on the victims.
Speaker 1: Let's start with a documentary that I honestly believe should
Speaker 1: come with a mandatory emotional warning label. Dear Zachary, A
Speaker 1: Letter to a son about his father.
Speaker 2: This is one of the most affecting pieces of media
Speaker 2: I have ever consumed.
Speaker 1: The story of how this film started is so pure,
Speaker 1: so rooted in love. Filmmaker Kurt Kune wanted to make
Speaker 1: a memorial film for his best friend, Andrew Bagbie.
Speaker 2: Andrew was a beloved, warm, kind hearted doctor who was
Speaker 2: brutally murdered.
Speaker 1: Kurt decided to travel across the country, interview all of
Speaker 1: Andrew's friends, colleagues, and family, and compile this beautiful, loving
Speaker 1: tribute video so that Andrew's unborn infant son, Zachary, would
Speaker 1: one day know how amazing his father was.
Speaker 2: It begins as an act of profound love, a digital
Speaker 2: scrapbook of grief, remembrance, and legacy.
Speaker 1: But the twist in this narrative is not a clever
Speaker 1: cinematic trick orchestrated by a director. It is a real time,
Speaker 1: agonizing documentation of a catastrophic systemic failure unfolding before the camera.
Speaker 2: Andrew's ex girlfriend, a woman named Shirley Turner, is the
Speaker 2: primary suspect. In fact, everyone knows she is the one
Speaker 2: who murdered him, and she flees the United States to Canada.
Speaker 1: While she's in Canada, awaiting extradition and facing pending murder
Speaker 1: charges in the US, she gives birth to Zachary, and then,
Speaker 1: incredibly inexplicably, she is granted custody of the infant Zachary
Speaker 1: by a Canadian judge.
Speaker 2: She is allowed at on bail.
Speaker 1: The family, Andrew's devastated parents moved to Canada. They fight
Speaker 1: with every ounce of energy and money they have to
Speaker 1: get that baby away from the woman who murdered their son.
Speaker 1: They warn the courts, they warn child services.
Speaker 2: And they fail. The system fundamentally fails them.
Speaker 1: And then out on bail, Shirley Turner commits an even greater,
Speaker 1: unspeakable atrocity. She takes her own life by jumping into
Speaker 1: the ocean, and she takes baby Zachary's life with her.
Speaker 2: The documentary evolves right before the viewer's eyes in a
Speaker 2: way that is utterly devastating. What started as a heartfelt
Speaker 2: memorial violently transforms into a damning, furious indictment of the
Speaker 2: justice system.
Speaker 1: It explains the profound, almost incomprehensible, bureaucratic failure that allowed
Speaker 1: a suspected murderer who had shown extreme psychological instability and
Speaker 1: a flight risk to retain custody of the victim's child.
Speaker 2: It forces us to examine a legal system that prioritized
Speaker 2: the biological presumed right of the mother over the glaring,
Speaker 2: flashing red flags of imminent danger to the child. The
Speaker 2: judge looked at the law rather than the reality.
Speaker 1: It is emotionally devastating. The source material notes that Andrew's
Speaker 1: father had to travel to claim the remains, and he
Speaker 1: made very very sure that he kept Zachary's body far
Speaker 1: away from the wicked woman who murdered him, ensuring they
Speaker 1: were not buried together.
Speaker 2: It is just gut wrenching.
Speaker 1: It proves that sometimes the biggest, most shocking twists and
Speaker 1: true crime aren't these clever mysteries crafted by a master
Speaker 1: con artist like Frederick Borden.
Speaker 2: Sometimes the twist is just a senseless, blind, bureaucratic failure
Speaker 2: that costs an innocent child their life because someone didn't
Speaker 2: want to do the paperwork to keep a dangerous woman
Speaker 2: in jail.
Speaker 1: However, out of this immense tragedy, the film actually became
Speaker 1: a powerful catalyst for real change. It directly contributed to
Speaker 1: changing Canadian bail laws, creating Zachary's bill.
Speaker 2: It prevents someone accused of a serious crime from easily
Speaker 2: getting bail when they pose a danger to children.
Speaker 1: It is a profound testament to the power of documentary
Speaker 1: filmmaking not just to observe reality, but to force reality
Speaker 1: to change. Kurt Kuhn weaponized his grief to ensure that
Speaker 1: Zachary's death was not entirely in vain.
Speaker 2: But while Dear Zachary shows the tragic failure of a
Speaker 2: well meaning but legally blind system, our final case study
Speaker 2: demonstrates what happens when a perpetrator actively arrogantly manipulates a
Speaker 2: system that they believe they are fundamentally above.
Speaker 1: This brings us to the grand finale of our exploration
Speaker 1: into the arrogance of evil, the Jinks.
Speaker 2: I remember when this aired the entire world stopped to
Speaker 2: watch the finale.
Speaker 1: The story is centered around Robert Durst. He is an
Speaker 1: ultra wealthy, eccentric real estate error to one of the
Speaker 1: most powerful families in New York.
Speaker 2: For decades, He's been linked to three very suspicious violent deaths,
Speaker 2: the disappearance of his wife Kathleen in the early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 2: the execution style murder of his close friend Susan Berman
Speaker 2: in two thousand, and the dismemberment of his neighbor Morris
Speaker 2: Black in Texas.
Speaker 1: Yet, through sheer wealth, high priced lawyers, jury manipulation, and
Speaker 1: bizarre legal loopholes, Durst managed to avoid any serious long
Speaker 1: term consequences for years. He even beat the Texas case
Speaker 1: by claiming self defense despite admitting to chopping up the body.
Speaker 2: The premise of the documentary is astonishing in itself, and
Speaker 2: it requires us to analyze the sociology of extreme wealth.
Speaker 1: Director Andrew Jureki gains extensive, unprecedented interview access to Durst,
Speaker 1: and Durst participates willingly. He reaches out to the filmmaker.
Speaker 2: This is the crux of the psychological profile were examining here.
Speaker 2: The unparalleled hubris of the ultra.
Speaker 1: Wealthy Durst felt so utterly untouchable, so insulated by his
Speaker 1: money and his history of getting away with literal murder,
Speaker 1: that his risk assessment was completely broken.
Speaker 2: He thought he could sit down for a multi part
Speaker 2: documentary about his own suspected crimes and simply outsmart the
Speaker 2: filmmaker with his charm and his check book.
Speaker 1: It is pure unfiltered arrogance. He thought he was the
Speaker 1: smartest guy in the room because his money always made
Speaker 1: him the most powerful guy in the room.
Speaker 2: And the twist. The twist is arguably the most famous
Speaker 2: moment in true crime television history.
Speaker 1: During the final interview, Jeroche confronts Durst with damning handwriting
Speaker 1: evidence linking him to Susan Berman's murder. Durst gets flustered,
Speaker 1: he asks to take a break.
Speaker 2: He gets up, still wearing his microphone, and he goes
Speaker 2: into the bathroom, but.
Speaker 1: He is completely unaware that his microphone is still hot,
Speaker 1: still recording every breath, every sound, and alone in the
Speaker 1: bathroom washing his hands, he starts muttering.
Speaker 2: To himself and he says the words, what the hell
Speaker 2: did I do? Kill them?
Speaker 1: All? Of course, it is the ultimate unraveling of a
Speaker 1: narcissist's carefully constructed narrative. For decades, he had maintained this
Speaker 1: facade of the unlucky, misunderstood millionaire who just happened to
Speaker 1: be surrounded by tragedy.
Speaker 2: He spent millions of dollars building that reality, but in
Speaker 2: a moment of unguarded privacy, the mask slips entirely.
Speaker 1: The recording of that hot mic moment was a critical
Speaker 1: piece of evidence that ultimately led to his arrest and
Speaker 1: helped convict Durst of Susan Berman's murder. He finally died
Speaker 1: in prison in twenty twenty two, his legacy permanently destroyed
Speaker 1: by his own unforced error.
Speaker 2: I would just marvel at the cinematic perfection of that reality.
Speaker 2: You couldn't write that into a Hollywood script without the
Speaker 2: audience rolling their eyes and saying it felt entirely too convenient.
Speaker 1: The criminal mastermind goes into the bathroom and accidentally confesses
Speaker 1: on tape. Come on, but it happened. The truth after
Speaker 1: decades of millions of dollars spent hiding, it just slipped
Speaker 1: out of his mouth while he was washing his hands.
Speaker 2: If we synthesize this entire journey today, we see a
Speaker 2: terrifying spectrum of human behavior. We started with the absurd,
Speaker 2: highly financed harassment of Tickled, where the czar was used
Speaker 2: as a shield.
Speaker 1: We move through the digital ghosts and fatal manipulations and
Speaker 1: lover Stalker, Killer and Tall Hot Blonde.
Speaker 2: We examined the profound familial betrayals, symbiotic lies, and the
Speaker 2: malleability of memory. In the Impostor and Tell Me Who
Speaker 2: I Am?
Speaker 1: We confronted the dizzying epistemological vertigo of capturing the Freedmen's,
Speaker 1: the insidious grooming of a community abducted in plain sight, the.
Speaker 2: Total erasure of identity and girl in the Picture, the
Speaker 2: devastating systemic failures in Dear Zachary, and finally, the sheer
Speaker 2: unchecked arrogance of evil in the Jinks.
Speaker 1: The single thread that ties all this human darkness together
Speaker 1: is deception. It is the tool that predators use to
Speaker 1: bend reality to their will, and it is the blindfold
Speaker 1: that we as a society sometimes willingly put on to
Speaker 1: avoid facing the monsters in our midst.
Speaker 2: That is incredibly well said. It really reminds us that
Speaker 2: looking into these dark stories isn't just about the macog
Speaker 2: details or the thrill of the mystery.
Speaker 1: It is a mirror. It reflects our own vulnerabilities back
Speaker 1: at us. It shows us our capacity for denial, our desperate,
Speaker 1: sometimes fatal need to trust the people around us, and
Speaker 1: our absolute fundamental need for the truth, no matter how
Speaker 1: much it hurts.
Speaker 2: We consume these stories not just to be entertained, but
Speaker 2: to learn how to protect ourselves in a world where
Speaker 2: the jigsaw puzzle doesn't always match the picture on the box.
Speaker 1: But before we go, I want to introduce one final
Speaker 1: terrifying thought that builds on everything we've discussed, particularly the
Speaker 1: digital deception we saw in Tall, Hot Blonde and Lover
Speaker 1: Stoker Killer.
Speaker 2: Oh. I think I know where you're going with this.
Speaker 1: If people were this easily deceived by bad physical disguises,
Speaker 1: dial up internet chat rooms, and spoofed text messages, what
Speaker 1: happens now?
Speaker 2: We are entering an era of deep fakes and highly
Speaker 2: advanced AI.
Speaker 1: We are entering an era where you can literally clone
Speaker 1: someone's voice perfectly from a three second clip, or generate
Speaker 1: a photorealistic video of them doing something they never did.
Speaker 2: If are certainly collapse when looking at raw home video
Speaker 2: in the eighties, how on earth are we going to
Speaker 2: survive the next decade? Of deception when seeing and hearing
Speaker 2: is literally no longer believing.
Speaker 1: It is the ultimate evolution of epistemological vertigo. The tools
Speaker 1: of deception are becoming democratized and infinitely more sophisticated.
Speaker 2: The critical thinking and skepticism we've talked about today won't
Speaker 2: just be helpful traits in the future, they will be
Speaker 2: essential survival skills.
Speaker 1: So I want to turn this over to you, the listener.
Speaker 1: Looking at all these twisted realities, these unbelievable fabrications of truth,
Speaker 1: and looking ahead to the future of AI deception, which
Speaker 1: of these concepts shook your core the most?
Speaker 2: Do you think you would realistically spot the red flags
Speaker 2: if a master manipulator walked into your life? Or are
Speaker 2: we simply hardwired to believe the lie when the truth
Speaker 2: is just too terrifying to face.
Speaker 1: Think about the people you interact with online, the people
Speaker 1: you trust the most in your real life. What do
Speaker 1: you really know about them? Leave a comment with your thoughts,
Speaker 1: your theories, and where you stand on that very fine
Speaker 1: line between trusting someone and protecting yourself. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for joining us on this edition of Thrilling Threads.
Speaker 1: Keep your eyes open and always keep questioning the narratives
Speaker 1: around you,