Serial Killers on the Loose

TV, film and fiction have given the public a set of stereotypes about serial killers -- one of the biggest being that they always get caught. Join Ben, Matt, Noel and special guest Christian Sager as they explore the disturbing stories of uncaught serial killers in the second episode of their series on true crime.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
From UFOs two, Ghosts and government cover ups. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to now. Hello,
ladies and gentlemen. If you've heard the intro music, hopefully
that means you're in the right place. I'm Ben and
I null and most importantly, you're you and you're here,

(00:24):
which makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Now.
This episode has a lot of stuff going on, and
hopefully you'll find it as interesting as we do. But
before we get to the dark heart of today's topic,
we have some very big news. Uh, ladies and gentlemen,

(00:46):
Matt Frederick has returned. That is right, I have returned.
Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome, Welcome, that's Frederick. Thank you. Noticed
I'm it is you, though right, you're not vampire dressed
up as our friend Matt. I cannot confirm or deny that.
Are you a replicant? That is perhaps I am so

(01:09):
sleep deprived at this moment. Seriously, two and a half
hours last night, and I tried very hard to get
some sleep last night and it did not happen. So
perhaps this is an inkling of Matt Frederick. Now, Matt,
is that because vampires don't actually sleep at night? Yeah,
I don't armchair biologists? Or is it because of something else.

(01:29):
That's the little thing we talked about before. You know, babies, babies,
babies everywhere. Did you tend to make sounds at odd hours? Yes?
They do, and I have found out that my wife
sleeps right through those sounds, and I do not. Yeah,
I do not. But I also am terrified to where
earplugs or something just in case something does go wrong

(01:50):
or I need to hear that sound. So at this point,
I'm just kind of living with it. You know, It's
all good. Though. Do you have one of those new
fangled video baby monitors or you get that stay yet? Not?
We I have one. It's not a new fangled point.
It's literally a security camera that I can broadcast essentially
over bluetooth a couple of other things. So I'm gonna

(02:11):
use that with frequency Watch your baby. You know what
Christians Sacer guest on our show today. I'm gonna get
to that later. I'm not even gonna address that comment
right now. No, Christie raises like a good point, because
when you say security camera does sound like you think
your baby's gonna steal or something. Oh yeah, well, I mean,
you know, look, I'm not gonna say anything against Mr.

(02:32):
I'm just gonna say his name. I don't know have
I said his name before on here. I don't know
that you've spoken his name. I don't think I'm going to.
I have a son, Mr. Ms, which is a mosquito
service in Atlanta. I don't know if anybody knows that.
Oh I get it, like a like a miss to
PESTI said, miss. There we go. We have also, as

(02:52):
you could tell, buried the lead a little bit, because
we do have a fourth person on the show today
who just got introduced to you. Um, but we're going
to We're going to do it again because we love
introducing this guy. You'll remember him from some earlier episodes
that we have done. Our our friend and colleague, co

(03:13):
host of Stuff Deploy your Mind, writer of numerous things,
here at how Stuff Works one more time for Christian Seger.
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here on this
momentous occasion. And I didn't realize that in the Stuff
they don't want you to know that they were Nazi
vampires sometimes Nazi replicant. Okay, Nazi replicant vampires. Well, I'm

(03:35):
glad to be here to learn the deep dark secret.
There's this, there's another leader bearing slightly? Is that with
you know, no explanation. Last week's episode was Matt was back. Oh,
that's a very came back. It was a John Tyder
moment and discuss it um and just you know, just
to shed a little light on that. That was an
episode we had recorded right before Matt took his leave,

(03:57):
and um, it's the first in this series is that
we're working on. So one of the last things I
want to say before we get into the meat of
this is a huge thank you to super producer Noel
brown Stiff for taking over and just being awesome on
the show. Thank you Ben for basically helming everything while
I was gone, from the videos to you know, the

(04:19):
podcast everything. Thank you Christian for making sure the house,
how stuff works, headquarters you know, is in order. Every
single thing, everything, everything's fine. Did you you realize it
sounds a little like an awards speech, right? Okay, So
I also want to thank you. I'm no academy. Also

(04:39):
want to thank Mr Mr Mr Mr for having those
signs that I noticed and stayed in my head until
I came on this podcast. So also rock Star Energy
Drink for keeping me awake when I have to be
a little native advertising. Yeah there, you know you like that.
Give me some free energy drinks please. That's where the
money comes from. People, stuff they don't want you to know.
That's right. The vampire Nazis drink Monster Energy drinks. It's

(05:04):
the only thing it's replaced blood. Uh, not just in
matts system, not just mats circulatory system, but in that
of Nazi vampire, Nazi replicant vampire around the world. So guys,
we're uh, we're several minutes into the beginning show. And
it's good that we started out with some levity and

(05:24):
some friends returning and well met, because today we are
we are going into a dark subject. We're returning to one.
You will recall listeners that if you're listening to these
podcasts in order, previously we started the can we get
like a previously who's got a good voice? Previously stuff
that they don't want you to know. Boy, that was

(05:47):
that was great, you guys, so previous we did the
we did this topic earlier. The people that asked us
about you had asked us over Twitter Facebook YouTube comments
to cover the so called Highway of Tears. And while
we were looking into that in this series with with
another Fritish show Scott Benjamin Christian, we started talking off

(06:10):
air about other disturbing things related to serial killers and
we found and we found, um, what's I guess worse
than disturbing. We found some horrifying things about serial killers
on the loose. Yeah, I'll put it this way. So
we've also done a video about this subject, which I'm

(06:32):
assuming is gonna be live by the time this podcast
is really will correspond, Yes, yes, perfect, So you can
go watch that video and here's a little behind the
scenes for you. We went were very jocular, as you've
just heard. We went in to go shoot that episode
and just could not muster the humor that we normally
have because it's a very dark topic and it really

(06:52):
kind of brought brought the tone down. Uh so that
the video, the video is like the dark sister to
this podcast, BROB. But I think too, I mean, we're
gonna talk about a lot of the same subject sure today. Uh.
I also think that it's kind of fascinating though in
its own way, in that true crime and serial killers

(07:12):
and especially uncaught serial killers. The stories behind them, I think,
are they they encapsulate something about American culture. I don't,
I can't put my finger on it, but they encapsulate
something about it at these like moments in time that
are kind of perfect. Have you ever read um Norman
Mailer's The Executioners Song before? Oh wow? Yeah, a long

(07:34):
time ago. It's just this great, uh true crime book.
It's it's nonfiction. Actually, I'm sure he you know, put
some hyperbole in their huge book, but about a guy
responsible for murder on death row and uh, just a
great way to capture kind of this particular moment in

(07:54):
American history. And I feel the same way about some
of these stories that we're about to tell today, although
they're not only in American, are they? Right? Absolutely we
have also we've also seen similar things such as the
Devil in the White City, Right, yeah, that's another one's
droughing welfare, the way that John Wayne Gacy fundamentally altered
the Western perception of clowns, and it's probably responsible for

(08:17):
a lot of uh cooro phobia. I think it's the word.
So I have an a side that will maybe help
us out here. I have a friend who is currently
staying in a clown motel in the desert. I believe
it's in Arizona for one month. What is a clown motel?
A clown themed motel in the middle of the desert.

(08:39):
He raised money on Kickstarter to do this. Okay, he's
staying there and writing about his experiences and uh. Part
of the Kickstarter the rewards was that he has to
dress up like a clown every once in a while
in his room. Just sit there. I mean we've all
done that, right, guys. Yeah, sure, I've one last side

(08:59):
on this. Um. My wife showed me a picture two
weeks ago of one of her best friends who was
hanging out a bar because she was moving away from Atlanta,
and it was like their goodbye party. There was a
gentleman drinking alone at the bar, and all that he
wanted to talk about was this picture he had on

(09:21):
his cell phone, an old picture that he'd taken a
picture of of him as a kid and John Wayne
Gacy at his birthday party, making blome him. I remember
you telling me about this, or maybe you shared it.
I don't. I think she may be shared. I don't.
I don't know what it was. It was Chandler, our coworker.
He was there. He was there and he told me

(09:41):
about it. Yeah, very strange, and it's it's also strange
when you consider that what we're going to examine now
will be the likelihood of a serial killer uncaught running
free range swear in your town, swearing your neck of
the woods. And we'll take a look at the statistics
and the facts here. But you've probably had this thought before,

(10:06):
ladies and gentlemen, guys, Well, Matt Christian, have you ever
been in a crowd and thought, you know, I wonder
what the worst thing someone has done in this crowd is.
Because it's true that it's more difficult to get away
with murder nowadays than it was, you know, when our
parents or grandparents were our age. But it's a it's

(10:28):
paranoid thought. The good news is that serial killers, as
we're going to find, are relatively rare birds in the
gray aviary of crime. Right, But what so? First off,
like Matt, what is a serial killer? Serial killer as
defined by the FBI's Crime Classification Manual. It essentially says
that they have to kill in several places, so at

(10:50):
least three places during different events, and there has to
be a cooling off period in between these deaths, these killings. Okay,
and that's it's a commonly accepted definition at least. Yes,
that is, when the FBI says, hey, we're going to
define this crime as this, then generally I go, okay, FBI.
You know what's something that I hadn't thought about until now,

(11:11):
and I think could bear some further research from maybe
another episode. Is that the FBI is defining that serial
killer feels like a very American phenomenon. Right. I'm sure
it's not. I'm sure it happens in plenty of other countries,
but I wonder how it's defined and other cultures, and
especially since we're going by that classification, right, Yeah, and

(11:35):
the FBI, you'll often hear it called serial murdering or something.
There were there were some closely related types of homicide
that we looked at in the video, right, that you
have to distinguish between. Yeah, well, right, you've got mass
murders and those are basically they're the reason why they're
different from serial killers is because that's when you have

(11:56):
four or more victims, but it's in one specific time
and location. Right. So unfortunately, this is something we're familiar
with recently because we've had kind of a spat of them. Uh.
And then there's also spree killers, which are a little different. Uh.
And the FBI refers to these as killers that tend
to keep killing over a period of days or weeks.

(12:19):
But they're in different locations, right, Uh. And they don't
have the cooling off period, so unlike a serial killer
who would maybe you know, uh, take like a month
between killing or or maybe longer. These there isn't that
kind of pattern, right. These people may continue killing until
they are stopped literally. Uh. There's another thing here that

(12:41):
we could add while we're defining what makes a serial killer,
and then is there's often some sort of psychological aspect
to the crime, some sort of exploration of an emotional trauma,
for instance. Uh, some sort of ritualized thing that is
based on and as based on a pre existing mental condition. Right,

(13:06):
So people are reliving certain moments, or people are responding
to a pathological problem with a parent and childhood or
something like that. But that's this, This is what we
have when we're when we're loosely defining these things. And
the phrase serial killer comes to us first from a
book called The Complete Detective, published in nineteen fifty. But

(13:28):
going back to this conversation about serial killers and the
the very American nature of it, which I agree, many
many cultures across the world associate serial killers with the
US and the other the only other big one being
Jack the Ripper, But the the the idea, the actual

(13:52):
idea of a serial murderer comes was coined in ninety
one in Germany to a in reference to a killer
named Pe You're cryptin, you know, I think the media
in the US has certainly distorted maybe our view of
what what a serial killer looks like, what they sound like,
I agree, you know, how they function, what their problems

(14:13):
are psychologically. And one of the big things that I
know is the FBI kept reiterating is that serial killers
don't all look the same way. They do not all
follow a pattern. There are so many things that you
have to look at when you're trying to profile somebody
like that. Yeah, exactly. I think that that is the
thing that's actually scary about thinking about uncaught serial killers,

(14:35):
right is the idea that in our entertainment that we
almost fetishize this serial killer entertainment culture, right, Uh, think
about like shows like Hannibal. Right, so the whole show
is about one profiler who's profiling all these different serial
killers that just happened to all happen around Baltimore, Maryland. Right.
I love that show, but uh, it does you know,

(14:57):
stuff like that, and a lot of police procedurals do
sort of not glorified but um create a somewhat fantasy
version of what this is like and there and there's
always an assumption that there's like one specific incident like
that grandma wasn't nice to them when they were in
ten or uh, you know what, what's Hannibal Lecter's incident

(15:19):
something with his sister? Right, Well, this this okay spoiler
alert officially, I don't know if we want to do
a sound cue for that or something. But he was
forced to participate in Next Accountableism Child and that it
that'll do it. Right. I think that's an excellent point
because it's one of the myths, and there is this
mythology about serial killers. But we have to be clear.

(15:44):
A serial murderer doesn't necessarily have to have some physiological
injury or a neurological injury to their brain like oddist tool, right. Um,
it can instead be a lack of empathy could be
part of the ingredients. There There have been, of course.

(16:07):
You know, there's that famous triumvirate that was proposed earlier
that suggested a relationship between We're suggested there were three
red flags to see someone come growing up to become
think pyromaniac, a sexual deviants, and possibly a serial killer,
which were bed wedding, to late age, torturing animals. Almost

(16:29):
the third one, the torturing animals, is the one I
always remember. I don't know, yeah, the oh fire was
our striving a Honda Odyssey Christian that I'm not allowed
to comment on that actually, But but here's our point.
We have a hard time as a society, at least

(16:51):
in the States, profiling what a serial killer is because
they can be very different. We're not looking at we're
not looking at the root of a perpetrator criminal. We're
looking at the work that they have done, and we're
looking at the crimes they have committed. And that makes
it very, very difficult to to find the source of it,

(17:14):
which is why one of the biggest myths about serial
killers that they get caught all the time, right, Yeah,
and I think that too, like that's part of the
myth of the entertainment spreads as well as and no
offense to any criminal profilers out there, But I don't
think that it works like it does on TV, right, Like, Yeah,
they want to get caught kind of, so they play

(17:35):
a little game and they all have like like a
little theme about how they do it, you know, like
as we're about to find out that's the the m
O isn't always the same first of all, Um, but
but but also just that like it's not so easy
to nail down exactly what kind of person this is
so that you can narrow down the field of potential suspects. Right.

(17:59):
So us just as a warning for everyone who is
listening to the podcast, we are entering the part of
the show where we're going to talk about some grizzly details,
and we were doing this, Um, we're doing this because
this is true crime, which is something that interests all

(18:20):
of us associated with this. Uh, this is also an
opportunity to shed some light on some things that are misportrayed.
And also these are real monsters. These are the closest
thing to genuine monsters, you know, and and they're even
there's a great folkloric supposition or theory that reports of

(18:44):
werewolves and stuff. We're really these older cultures, right, trying
to understand serial killers. But why right, So we have
several examples of serial killers who are currently not apprehended.
So let's go ahead and get started with number one.
And I'm going to throw this to Christian because I
know you did a lot of research on this fellow. Yeah,

(19:07):
I am this person. Yeah. I mean that's another thing, right,
is that it's often assumed that serial killers are male.
Uh So this particular one is known as the New
Bedford Highway killer. And I chose uh to look deeper
into this one because I'm from the Boston area and
New Bedford's pretty close to Boston, Massachusetts. Uh And one

(19:27):
of my good friends grew up there actually, and I've
spent some time there. So I had a bit of
an idea of the locale in my head when I
was reading this. It wasn't so it wasn't just like
reading texts in research, you know what I mean. Like
I had an idea of what the culture was like there.
Um So in n uh, somewhere between nine and eleven women.
They don't know if all of them were victims of

(19:49):
this particular killer. We're murdered between April and September in
New Bedford. And if you're not familiar, New Bedford is
the town where Herman Melville set Moby dick Um. So
it's a seaside town in Massachusetts. Uh used to have
a strong uh fishing culture industry, and it fell on
hard times. UH. So all of these bodies were dumped

(20:13):
by the side of various highways leading outside of New Bedford,
Root one forty and Roots six uh and all of
these women were thought of as sex workers. UH. And
they all were thought of as having drug problems. Now,
I will say like in some of the research there
were parents of these victims who disputed that uh and
and and I was telling you guys off air that

(20:35):
my my buddy, who grew up in this town, said,
you know, I'm not all that surprised. There's like a
particular type of person who like hangs out downtown and
it's they're just assumed to be involved in drugs or
the sex trade or something like that, and they're just
largely ignored by the rest of the community. So so
he wasn't all that surprised that they were sort of

(20:57):
labeled that way. Uh, and it's easy I think for uh,
that that idea to sort of fall through the cracks
to right and say like just slap that on and say, well,
of course that's why they got killed, right, and then
they would And then it's also from the killer's perspective,
less likely to draw attention. Yeah. Absolutely. Um So the

(21:17):
thing that was really interesting about the actual finding of
the bodies is that, I mean, this New Bettor is
a fairly populated area. Most of these bodies were badly
decayed and already exposed to animals and the elements by
the time they were found. And we're talking about on
the side of the highway and not like in the forest,
you know. Um. So the problem here was that there

(21:38):
was a lack of physical evidence for the police to
really work with. Uh. They just had these bodies and
they didn't really have you know, I mean they've they've
been exposed for for quite some time, so there there
wasn't a lot to work with there. So what went
on was in nineteen nine, Sorry, like I said, New
Bedford was on hard times. Uh. In Massachusetts is generally

(21:59):
acknowledged as kind, um, you know, being a little bit
shady it's a place where you can get uh, coke
and heroin. Uh and it was regarded, you know, as
having a bit of a heroin problem. There's a local
clinic there at the time that estimated that it was
treating at least four hundred heroin addicts a day. So
that's second to Boston in the state. Um. Uh So
you know, again, like that helps paint a picture, but

(22:20):
it also gives you an idea of sort of like
why the police I think gravitated to this idea of
just like okay, so their sex workers and their drug addicts,
so that's how they're getting napped, right. Um. The other
problem here is that many of the original investigators that
were involved either have retired or moved away, or they've
like moved up the ranks in the Massachusetts Police Force

(22:43):
and they're in command positions now that can't be abandoned
so that they can follow up on leads on this case,
so like their chief now, and they because of that,
they can't go back to decades old cases. Yeah. And
and honestly, like when I was looking into sort of
the broader range of uncaught serial layers, I think that
that's a fairly common problem with finding these guys decades later,

(23:05):
you know, is that uh, like the other one I'll
talk about in this episode had a sort of similar
thing where you know, people have retired, moved away, or
they just you know, had moved on to bigger positions
and and unfortunately these cases they're not forgotten, They're still there,
but they're not being worked. I guess it's like you know,
from from how entertainment is terming it, it would be

(23:27):
a cold case. Right, So this is just me thinking
inside the podcast room, and I know this might be horrible,
but that that fact also kind of makes me a
bit suspicious of the law enforcement. And I'm not saying
and you know, as a blanket way a law enforcement
in those areas, But I don't know if in the

(23:48):
wildest of theories, if someone was involved in the law enforcement,
then you know, if they have moved up and they
are no longer involved in such things, or perhaps I
don't are able to cover up some actions, you know. Yeah,
it does make sense in these allegations of potential cover ups, right,
It's something it's a trope we see often in different films. Yeah, again,

(24:11):
is it just media muddying my perception? Not not necessarily,
because there are cases such as the Atlanta child murders
from seventy one, which is, as listeners know, the town
where we record this show. There was an Atlanta native
named Wayne Williams who was who was convicted for murders.

(24:35):
The child murders were grizzly and included almost thirty kids,
you know, And at this point, um, there are many
people who believe that Wayne Williams was set up or
as a murderer who had something attributed. And another way
this corruption could happen would be if you consider the
story of Henry Lee Lucas, who has suspected and I

(24:59):
hope you care air quotations here guys suspected of hundreds
of murders. But there's also a question whether law enforcement was,
you know, goading him into confessing things or incentivizing him
to get that off the books. So this is an aside. Uh,

(25:20):
but let me let me formulate something here on stuff
to blow your mind. We did an episode about the
psychology of necrophilia, and uh. It was an intense episode,
but it was also really interesting to dive into the
research and surprisingly there's a ton of research out there. Uh,
And UH, you know, if you want to learn more,

(25:40):
we you know, go listen to that episode of Robert
and I talking about people having sex with the bodies.
But uh, there is in necrophilia under it's understood that
as a mental disorder. It's something that develops when people
have the opportunity to take part in it due to
their career. So there's like a good chunk of necrophilia

(26:01):
acts that are associated with it, and only perform those
acts because you know, they work in a hospital or
um or perhaps they work in a morgue or something
like that, they come into contact with dead bodies and
they have the opportunity. So alright, establishing that, moving back
to where we are on Uncaught serial killers, you know,
the police are also in a situation in which they

(26:23):
are often working with dead bodies. That's you know, that's
that's interesting because I'm not saying police all police are necrophilias.
I'm not saying they're serial killers. I'm just saying that
if there was the potential for a mental disorder, the
career puts them in a situation where they have the
opportunity to indulge in such fantasies. But that's an opportunity,
you know it It It reminds me of another statistic I

(26:46):
read where apparently and this was only conducted with men,
I think apparently male uh shoe store employees have a
higher likelihood of a foot fetish, which maybe that also
stars to opportunism. But but of course, you know, we
have a we have a lot of law enforcement that

(27:06):
listens to this show. It has written into us before
about um corruption in a police course or in in
a military organization. I think at a certain point, you know,
there's a calculation that comes with power and with um
opportunity and people who haven't seen the wire. I know
everyone gets tired of people trying to proselytize for the wire.

(27:30):
But it does, it does provide a very good look
at the internal political machinations. It's not you know, it's
not necessarily when we say corruption or cover up, we're
not necessarily saying you know, um, we're not saying that
Scott Benjamin, Lieutenant Scott Benjamin is a police officer just

(27:52):
so he can continue poisoning the elderly and ambulances. Uh.
But we're saying that that's a plot of a bad
like procedural TV show. But what is much more right.
What's much more possible is that someone wants their record
to look good to affect their chances of promotion. Well yeah,
and so get to get back to this case. Actually,

(28:13):
there there's a really good example of of of that
very kind of common every day uh political slash law
enforcement corruption that happened in this case that led to
it being unsolved. So, um, this the victims again, you know,
let me just remind you there were nine to eleven women. Uh,
they were all strangled. That was the only kind of

(28:36):
common thing in the m O. But none of the
research that I could find listed any methods of murder
beyond that, like whether they were strangled with a rope
or with hands or there was just not a lot listed,
which made me think maybe the police never released the details.
They're holding onto that information. And again, remember this happened
in a pretty short span of time, so they might

(28:58):
not have wanted to release the information Asian. Well, yeah,
so anyone calling in wouldn't they would have to have
or if anyone had details beyond some of the very
very general perhaps that's someone you could look at exactly. Yeah,
and so so okay, so they're strangled, they were always
found nude abandoned on the side of the highway. Uh

(29:19):
and two of the victim's bodies were never found. So
that's why there's that nine to eleven things. They don't
know what happened to these two particular women, but there's
some really fascinating leads in this case. Um, again, it's unsolved,
but this is what we know. There's a guy named
Tony de Grazia in the area who had a history

(29:40):
of sexual assault with prostitutes, specifically that you know, kind
of area culture of prostitution and drug use that was
in in New Bedford at the time. However, there was
no evidence to link him to this case, and in fact,
he committed suicide in h if I remember correctly from
the research. One of his relatives speculated that the suicide

(30:01):
was probably brought on by all the attention that was
focused on him from this case. So there, you know,
there's no evidence to link him to this other than
that he just happened to be a guy who you know,
hung around, I guess with that crowd, but also was
a known sort of violent offender. UM. The other possible theory,

(30:23):
and this is something that I ran by my friend
who lived in New Bedford at the time. Is that
the killer was also a killer that was known as
the Lisbon Ripper that was operating in Portugal in the
nineteen nineties. Uh. And the reason for this is that
New Bedford has a very large Portuguese community. So the
idea was that this guy could potentially have been flying
back and forth between the continents and performing various murders

(30:49):
and then you know, uh, I guess the cooling down
period would be him going to a you know, a
different location I see. And that that's one speculation as
to why they were in every able to get him.
This is the deep one, and this is the one
that has a little bit of corruption connected to it.
The other guy was a lawyer in the area named
Kenneth Ponte, and he was actually indicted for the murder

(31:11):
of one of the women that was involved, you know,
one of one of the victims. Uh, but his case
ended up being dropped due to a lack of evidence.
Again uh. And both the investigators in the case and
the surviving family members of the victims say that they
don't think it was him. However, here's how things played
out with this guy over the course of a couple
of years, um, Ponte, the reason why he was a

(31:34):
suspect was that he also knew some of the victims
and he actually served as one of their attorneys. However,
he had uh personal feud going on with the local
district attorney, a guy named Ron Pena. Uh the way
that I saw in in several reports that I read
for this episode, Uh, apparently it stemmed from the fact

(31:57):
that their mothers were neighbors and they didn't like each other,
and therefore there's just this kind of family few that
had gone back for a while. So Ron Peena is
the district attorney. He gets a special grand jury to
indict Ponti. So that's where the indictment came down from.
When Pena loses his election as a special prosecutor, they

(32:19):
have to drop the charges because there's no evidence. Wow
again Ponte, you know, there's no evidence, there's nothing. They
can't actually connect him to the case. Um. And there
were also like a lot of reports about jurisdictional issues
between the state police, local police, and the FEDS. So
again that's another thing that we see in entertainment crime

(32:40):
stories all the time. Right. But as far as the
research for this case, that was an actual thing that
held up them being able to really nail down evidence
in this case. And at this point the murders remain unsolved.
They do. In fact, Ponte while having drug problems and
being disbarred and was even later caught shoplifting. Uh, you know,

(33:02):
they were never able to find anything. In two thousand seven,
the police went back to his old house and dug
up the front of the house because they thought there
might be something there. They didn't find anything, and he
died in two thousand and ten. So that's all the
new Bedford Police, Massachusetts State Police, and the FBI had
for this case, you know, at least as far as
we know publicly. Obviously, you know, as we were saying earlier,

(33:25):
they must have had other information that they just didn't release.
But uh, this person remains uncought. Whoever committed these crimes.
You know what's fascinating about that is it shows another
it shows another possibility that I first read into with
the Zodiac killings, I was not involved. Just to go
on record there, I'm not old enough. We believe you,

(33:49):
thanks math uh So the uh, the one of the
suppositions was that the murders stopped because the one of
the suspects was incarcerated on a different charge and died
in prison or died somewhere else as a result. So

(34:10):
it is it is completely possible, you know that, Um, well,
obviously not Ponte, probably not. Yeah, I mean there was
like a good twenty years in between the end of
these murders and him passing away where nobody was killed
in the area. That doesn't mean that, you know, maybe
there was potential evidence that could have connected him to

(34:30):
the case, but they may never found it. And let's
look at another another one that is a little bit
different because this person was actually apprehended and did go
to jail. But wait, that's not the end of the story, ladies, gentlemen.
We're going to talk about Pedro Alonso Lopez, also known
as the Monster of the Andes. He is suspected of

(34:54):
killing more than three hundred and fifty girls, primarily in Ecuador,
Umbia and Peru. Originally, authorities didn't believe his story. Three
fifty dead children is a lot. Well, yeah, because he
was in jail for something else, right, and then he
was talking to an officer who was like dressed up

(35:15):
as an inmate and basically boasting about all of these
girls that he had killed, and he was naming off
like hundred in Peru, a hundred over here in Columbia,
hundred in Ecuador. And they, you know, if you hear
a grandiose story like that, that is awful. I don't
think you believe him on the first account. And they

(35:36):
didn't either until he led police to a mass grave
of fifty three victims in Ecuador, all girls between nine
to twelve years old. And here's this strange thing Alonso
Lopez though, was when he was prison it wasn't his
first brush with a judicial system. When indigenous villagers in

(35:57):
Peru caught him trying to abduct Chill Dre and they
buried him up to his neck. Uh, and we're pouring
honey on him and preparing to have him die by
having ants consume him until western white missionaries um prevented
this horrible pagan practice and said that she would take
him to the cops. She drove him to the border

(36:19):
and let him go. That was his first that was
his first brush with the consequences of these deranged actions.
So here's his time frame. He was first active sixty
nine through nineteen eighty or so. And while he was
in prison. Uh it was deemed too costly and complicated

(36:43):
to have him on trial in both Columbia and Peru,
so Peruvian authorities in August of support him to Columbia,
where he was found insane and held in a mental
ward until nine when he was released to the public.
The last that we have heard of Pedro Donso Lopez
is in two thousand to an interpool released an advisory

(37:05):
for his arrest in on suspicion of another another homicide,
and he has again primarily killed female children, also male
um As of two thousand and fifteen, the year we
recorded this, Lopez would be sixty seven years old if

(37:26):
he remains alive. And again it sounds this guy is
a little bit unique because you can read purported a
purported interview with him, which I wasn't able to verify
to the my ideal standards, but it seems pretty it
seems pretty legitimate, and just you know, I'm trying to

(37:49):
I'm trying to verify that stuff as well right now,
and I agree I can't verify it, but the way
the way some of their the things are written, and
then knowing what we already know about him, I would
agree with you right, probably in the interviewer is real. Absolutely.
But so here's the thing that this leaves us with.
He's sixty seven years old. He wouldn't He most likely

(38:13):
is not going to be in the best of shape.
Not everyone is Sean Connery, right, so he we this
would make us think that maybe he's too frail, right,
we hope, we hope. Um, I would hope that he
is dead. But part of the reason I hope that
is remembering that his victims are children, and that many

(38:34):
that were confirmed, and then all the other ones, the
hundreds that are suspected, right, often poor, often street kids,
often um in rural areas, not part of mainstream society.
That so again it's like a population that's sort of
at the limits and uh ignored. Right, that's where we
see this succeeding. So let's let's look at another case,

(38:58):
because that's that's the other thing. Folks, if you haven't
seen the video yet, there are numerous cases of unconst
real killers. We just picked a few. Yeah, yeah, we're
only talking about like four or five today, and I
think when we were looking at the general research, there
were at least just in a cursorysearch, like uncased serial

(39:19):
killers that are pretty widely known, and the number of
missing persons that perhaps aren't even attached to any known killer.
Are there. There are a crazy amount of evil that
go missing every year. Well, for the this next one,
I again, I chose one from you know, the nick
of the Woods that I grew up in, which is uh,
you know, I'm from Massachusetts. I went to school in

(39:41):
New Hampshire. Uh. This is the Connecticut River Valley serial killer.
Connecticut River Valley is uh this border area between western
New Hampshire and Vermont. Uh. And this killer basically stopped
that area in the nineteen eighties and six women were killed, uh, stabbed,
lee and their bodies were dumped in the woods near

(40:03):
an area called the Sugar River. The time frame for
this is much wider than in the previous case that
I talked about, So that was one summer. This took
place over ten years, from nineteen seventy eight to nine
eighty eight. The first bodies actually turned up in eighty five,
but they believed that he started in seventy eight based
on you know, like decom decomposition uh in that they've

(40:28):
found at least five of the women by seven So UH,
the m O of this particular killer was that he
would find isolated women. Again I'm using he as sort
of just a general gender term, not knowing who it is. Uh,
but he would find these isolated women, usually hitch hood
hiking or alone at night. Three of the victims were nurses,

(40:52):
so they were traveling at a late night schedules because
of their shifts. Uh. He would stab them in the
throat and then repeatedly stabbed them across their bodies and
then took the bodies and dumped them into this particular
area in the woods. Sometimes Uh he'd used like a
black tarp sort of like kind of try to hide
the bodies a little bit. Okay, So there are several

(41:13):
victims leading up to August six, when a woman named
Jane Barowski, who was pregnant at the time, was at
a convenience store late at night in the area. UM.
The reason again I should have probably mentioned this earlier.
One of the reasons why I'm referring to him as
a hymn is because of this particular incident, she identified
her attacker as male. Uh. He attacked her, stabbed her

(41:36):
twenty three to twenty seven times uh, and she basically
did everything she could just you know, kind of protect
her baby, so um, to make sure that that area
of her body wasn't wasn't hit. Um. By playing dead,
she was able to survive and basically, um, crawl and

(41:59):
then like I think, walk to the nearest location where
I think she knew somebody local and get help. And
I think she might have even driven with that many wounds. Um.
So there's a couple of things here that are they're interesting, right,
So she survives, so we know that it's a it's
a male killer. We know a little bit about how

(42:22):
he attacked her, but um, he didn't take her body
like the others, which is curious to me because you know,
like I said earlier, the m O was he stabbed
them and he would take them, bring them to the woods,
dumped them. But he left her there. So if she
was playing dead, was he going to come back later
or something, or maybe it was because of the pregnancy.

(42:44):
Nobody knows, well And how how could you ever prove
that this is the same guy? Right, exactly right? And
in fact, there are four other cases that may be linked,
but there's no proof connecting them. Right. So again there's
some fascinating leads in this case, but but nothing nailed down.
No one has ever been apprehended for this. The first

(43:06):
lead is a guy named Michael Nikolau and he was
a Vietnam veteran who actually in two thousand five killed
his wife and his stepdaughter and then himself in West Tampa, Florida. UM.
He had previously been linked to the case by a
private investigator who had been looking for his ex wife,

(43:28):
a woman named Michelle Ashley. She basically in n she
disappeared from the Holyoke, Massachusetts area, which is kind of
close to that relatively speaking, close to that Connecticut River
Valley arena. Uh. And so when this private investigator contacted him,
he said, oh, I don't know where she is, but
she ran off with a drug dealer and left me

(43:50):
to raise our two kids alone. So, uh, his ex
wife's missing, right. Um. She looks into him, the private investigator,
I mean, and she finds out that while he was
in the Vietnam War, people who were in his platoon
reported that he would go human hunting with a knife. Uh.
And he would go and basically killed civilians during the war. Uh.

(44:15):
And she believes that this is connected to this case
because there was a millis military style association with the
way that the victim's necks were cut, so with these
stabbutes and knives, right, so that this was like again
like so we were talking earlier about how when you're
in a career that sort of puts you in a
position in which you're coming into contact with dead bodies

(44:38):
are in this case killing people. Uh that you know,
it provides the opportunity to sort of bring about this disorder,
if that's what you want to call this kind this
type of serial killing. Uh. So, so it's possible, you know,
based on this private investigator's theory that if Nikolau was
the one who did it, that he kind of got

(44:59):
into this during Vietnam and then brought it back with
him to the States afterwards. The thing that is interesting
to me is that, uh, if his m O was stabbing,
remember that when he you know, had his meltdown in
two thousand five and killed his family and himself, he
did it by shooting them. So uh, you know who knows, uh,

(45:21):
but it's curious, uh, you know, discrepancy there. Uh. However,
Jane Borowski, that woman I was talking about earlier, the
one who was pregnant and survived. She identified him as
the man who attacked her. This is much later, but
she looked at you know, photos of him and after
he was was gone and said, yeah, that's the guy.

(45:44):
So she identified it as Nicolaon. That's pretty strong. But wait,
it gets weirder. No, Uh, here's where it gets crazy.
Go for it all right. Guy named Gary Westover is
from the area and uh. He had been paralyzed from
a diving accident and he at the time thought he

(46:08):
was dying. So he called upon his uncle, who was
a former sheriff's deputy in Grafton County, New Hampshire, again
part of this area. Yeah, on his deathbed. Uh, And
he tells his uncle, he says, Okay, a couple of
years previous to this, three of my friends picked me
up and they wanted to go partying in a van.

(46:29):
And I kind of joked about this with you guys,
because you know, being living in New Hampshire for a
long period of time, that's kind of a thing you do,
like like you just get into somebody's car or van
and you know, get some get some drinks, some booth,
some of the things. Matty's and Fatty's was a common
term when I was going to high school up there.

(46:49):
The party in a van is the thing people do.
I mean, go somewhere in It's not unusual. Yeah, exactly,
Like I don't want listeners to think like, oh that's weird.
Like just driving around in a van with it was
kind of yeah. Let me tell you I've I've done it,
so but I haven't done this next part. Uh. So,

(47:10):
so Gary west Over says, Okay, my friends picked me up,
we get in this van. Uh. And then they abduct
a woman and they killed her and dumped her body
off on a back road. And he said, you know,
he didn't participate, but that he was forced to be there. Uh.
And again remember reason a wheelchair. So uh. He basically said, look,
I feel really bad about this. I want to tell

(47:31):
the truth and want you to know about this to
his uncle. But he had previously been scared to say
anything because they said, well, look, you know we can
get you any time. So if you say anything, we
you know you're an easy target. And and uh. The
other thing that's kind of interesting about this is that
private investigator who had looked into Nickel Out previously also

(47:54):
speculated that it's possible that Gary Westover was used as
bait for one of these killings. And then because it
was particularly snowy there in the middle of a snowstorm
when this VAM party was going on, they placed him
in his wheelchair. This is her speculation, mind you, there's
no evidence for this, but they placed him in his
wheelchair on the side of the road so that when

(48:16):
one of the women drove by, she pulled over to
help him to find out what was wrong, and that's
when they killed her. Good lord. Yeah, So, uh. The
private investigator comes into this again though, because she says, well,
it's possible that that Michael Nikolau guy was one of
these three friends, uh, and that it's possible that he

(48:39):
and Gary west Over knew each other because they're both
veterans and they might have met through the local Veterans
Affair hospital. Uh. And so if that's true, and Gary
Westover's story is true, and even if Nicolau was the killer,
then that means that there's two other guys out there
that were accomplices or involved in these murders somehow, and reportedly,

(49:02):
you know, police have access to the names. Of course,
his uncle took this information for it. It became part
of the case. But sure you know, no arrests have
been made as of our recording today. Right. Wow, So
before we get to some statistics, we have one more
case and we'll we'll walk through this one kind of quickly. Here.

(49:22):
This is the Long Island serial killer and unidentified assailant
believed to have killed anywhere from ten to seventeen or
more people over the course of twenty plus years around
the Ocean Parkway area. Time frame here would be at
least nine six to two thousand, nine two thousand thirteen.

(49:44):
So what kind of victims are we talking about here?
It's kind of similar to a few of the other
cases that we've already looked at, where these are primarily
sex workers or at least believed to be sex workers,
who were killed at some location, then put into in
this case, a burlap sack, and then dumped along the parkway.
And that's particularly at Gilgo Beach in this area. So

(50:07):
that is so similar to the new Bedford Highway guy.
And it's not that it's not at all on Long Island,
is not. I mean, like maybe five hours at the most,
But I mean, I'm not saying that's the same guy.
But there's also sort of like the idea that this
this motive, this is this uh, the m O could

(50:28):
have been spread through the media, you know, I mean
this when they started. So this happened like just about
I don't know, ten years after and it continued until
almost today. I mean it's close, right, we don't know
when it ended too well. Yeah, that so the ones
that we know of go that far. Yeah, And there
were some anomalous things there as well. There was a

(50:49):
man of the body of a man and a toddler discovered.
So they went into profiling, which, as we know, can
be a dangerous game at times. And don't get me wrong,
profilers in real life are doing fantastic and vital work. Um.
But I think it's also we we talk about this

(51:10):
off air, folks. Every so often something comes out about
quantum mechanics, and you can hear everybody roll roll their eyes.
You can literally hear eyes rolling in their sockets at
our office because quantum mechanics, it's it's one of the
most misunderstood things I think a popular culture and profilers
would be up in the top ten what they actually

(51:31):
do and how they do it. But here's a lot
of I think forensic work. Oh yeah, yeah, that's true. Oh,
no spoilers, but it's true. Uh. So we have this,
we have this look from a profile with all those caveats. Uh.
The authorities surmised that this killer is a male and

(51:53):
is financially comfortable, obviously owns an auto. It's transport victims,
and would have a job where he has access to
burlap sacks, maybe a center and nursery. I think it's
also possible that he could just be buying them. The
big thing is they believe he's familiar with police methods,
possibly working in law enforcement or having friends maybe family

(52:17):
members who do. And they're also here's another thing. They're
also certain that, well fairly certain that he buried some
of these bodies, restored them somewhere before he dumped them,
meaning that it's possible. Adding onto your earlier statement about
New Bedford, it's possible that he is visiting the area seasonally.

(52:40):
So it gives us some questions, right, could it be
abducting his victims. We'll see a note here that says
that these all these victims are sorry. The first four
victims disappeared between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Yes, that's
almost exactly the same as the New Bedford situation. Oh wow,
it was very it was it was a summer spree.

(53:02):
Well okay, I'm using the term spree summer serial killer.
So you know, I just want to say another thing
that was interesting. A couple of the a couple of
the victims were prostitutes who are advertising on Craigslist, who
were advertising their services. So again that's someone who was
perhaps not immediately in the area, that could find someone

(53:23):
who was in that location and meet up with them
through the Craigslist meet up. I don't know, this is
all that. I mean, it's disturbing either way. Like you know,
it's fun to play armchair detective and and try to
find some kind of connections, but it's also just disturbing
in the fact that they're so similar and didn't happen
all that far away from one another and both are

(53:44):
still unsolved. Yeah, and and didn't happen that far away
from each other really in space or time, so them
and I think that's a very good catch about the
timing of the murders. So we do have some leads.
There's been a lot of speculation in the media about
this identity of this killer. Um the street name for

(54:05):
this killer would be unsub not what you do and
you don't like a YouTube channel, but as a as
a portmanteau for unknown subject. And they believe again he's
most likely a male, specifically a white male. I don't
know how they knew that part in his twenties the forties,
clearly familiar with the south shore of Long Island. But um,

(54:27):
there's an interesting case by or an interesting article rather
by a fellow named Dr Scott Bond. Writing for Psychology Today,
Bond said he believes the killer may have relocated or
become dormant. Uh. And we'll talk about dormancy in a second,
but he does believe the killer resided in New York
City at one point because there was a series of

(54:50):
phone calls that the killer made he made after he
abducted and murdered um a woman named Melissa bar Flamy. Uh.
He made seven phone calls using her phone over a
six week period in oh nine to the sister to
Melissa's sister, and these were taunting her, saying horrible things

(55:13):
about the victim, and the phone calls could be traced
roughly the Manhattan area. It's so close. Yeah, yeah, that's
one of those things that if you're in the law
enforcement looking to find this guy, like, oh my gosh,
we almost got him. And again, sorry, this sounds like
something like that you would see on like a TV
show like The following or something like that, Right, but

(55:34):
this is this is real. Like that this guy killed
a woman's sister and then called her repeatedly from her
own phone. It's haunting. So yeah, and these are just
four examples of the Long Island serial killer is currently
one of the I guess most recent right, but that

(55:57):
doesn't mean that any of these perpetrators fit the same profile.
That doesn't mean that any of them are necessarily uh deceased.
So if you if you look at look at what
the FBI says about it, they will say that serial
killers are among us. There is no set profile. There's

(56:19):
an interesting thing that we've talked about off air, I believe,
which was the Highway Serial Killing Initiative. The FBI started
to map this out, and one thing we talked about
in Highway of Tears was that these sorts of murders
of again people in the fringes of society, right, prostitutes,
drug addicts, hitchhikers, these people are these people are prey.

(56:45):
And when when the FBI started mapping this, they found
within five cases that they could add to their database,
and they started to wonder if there were truckers that
we're using the opportunity again to the excellent point you
made earlier to become serial murderers. And furthermore, if these

(57:10):
criminals were hunting in packs essentially, well, I mean that
goes back to the was it Gary west Over claim
about that for well, you know, he said that he
wasn't actively taking partner, but three guys were basically in
a driving around a van together in New Hampshire stalking women. Right,

(57:30):
And it's true that, which is contrary. I'd like to say,
it's very contrary to our popularized idea of serial killers. Yeah,
exactly right. And there's a there's a conservative estimate that
comes from fellow named John Douglas, a former chief of
the FBI's elite Serial crime unit and the author of

(57:50):
a book called mind Hunter. Uh. He says that at
his conservative estimate, there are between thirty five and fifty
active serial killers in the US at any given time,
and that because they have no profile, because they could
be the person you walk past on your way from
the gas pump to the cashier, because they could be

(58:12):
one of the six people with you in an elevator.
Because of this, it's horrifying. Well, it's it's it's horrifying.
It's a little alarmous too, because if we consider that
there are what around three thirty million people in the US,
and then maybe sixty those it's a very small percentage.

(58:35):
But he also said it was a conservative estimate, and
it makes me think this is entirely supposition, But it
makes me think if these stereotypes about serial killers are
impeding apprehending them, because I'm sure, even now, in living
in a surveillance state, I'm sure it would be quite
possible for someone to be, you know, a normal, average

(58:55):
person and every two years they take a two week
vacation somewhere they've never been because they like to see
the sites. Then a homeless person goes missing that over
that same stretch, and then they never go to you know,
Aruba or Vegas again. So this is a thing that
we often run into here at how stuff works on

(59:18):
all of the shows really is I find that the
various things that we research here, I end up with
this perspective of well, from our current vantage point here
in we can look back on such and such discovery
and go, oh, isn't it so silly that they didn't
understand this disease or this biological factor a hundred years

(59:42):
ago or whatever. I really feel like the more we
look into this, that serial killer psychology is something that
we don't quite understand that well right now, and that
in you know, in the future, people are going to
look back and say, Wow, they're really in the dark
about this, and then just making lots of TV shows

(01:00:02):
and movies kind of celebrating it. Yeah. I as if
they understood it. There's this glorification in some ways. That's
that Don't get me wrong, that's some of my favorite stuff.
I mean, like I said earlier, like I'm a huge
fan of the Hannibal TV show. You guys know, I
love Hill TV show, Millennium with Lance Henrickson. Oh yeah, yeah,
that's another like serial killer profiler show. But I mean,

(01:00:26):
it's just bizarre when you think about it, how we
sort of approached this thing. I guess it's sort of
like our attempt as a culture to understand it and
feel safe with it by like finding it to a story. Well, yeah,
and it's also it gives you a tremendous feeling of
relief when the bad guy in one of those gets
caught yeah, right, or almost gets caught, or just you know,

(01:00:48):
I was watching the following yeah, and just all the
times we're like, all right, well that was nice resolution.
Oh no, he's back, right exactly. Yeah. One thing that
I want to bring out to the audience into every
one else before before we get towards the end of
the show is this. I almost said the following. Your
core choice of words is is this. We know that

(01:01:12):
we live in a world of predictive data, right, big data,
and it is possible now to gain an increasingly sophisticated
a bill of prognostication really of an individual's future actions
based on what they're doing. Would it be possible to

(01:01:33):
I mean, I know, I'm proposing this idea of pre
crime essentially, all right, are yeah, you're talking about minority report.
I'm talking about something like minority that kind of already happening. Now.
It's just what you're gonna buy in the next six
to twelve months. As I've found out after having a baby,
really what happens just you're depending on what goes on

(01:01:54):
your credit cards depending on what I happen to purchase
at let's say Kroger. If I end up us sing
my Kroger Plus card, what happens. It tracks all of
the information of what I'm buying, and then it sends
that information to everybody else. Roger sells that information. So
on my television right before I canceled cable, every ad.

(01:02:16):
Every ad was diapers or you know, something like depression medication.
I'm not kidding you, it was. It was happening already.
It was trying to understand what my life was like.
Depression medication. Well, yeah, because that's why Hulu keeps telling
me to go to the gym. I'm completely serious, though.
It really is trying to target me as it does

(01:02:38):
everyone else. And when I say it, I mean big
data essentially. All Right, I gotta I gotta short story.
I gotta tell you, guys, because this is perfect for
your audience. And this is anecdotal and I'm not going
to name this person. I have a friend who has
a PhD in computer science and has done freelance work
for the df D before, and one of the projects

(01:02:59):
that he was a mine too was predictive data. Uh,
basically trying to map out the probabilities of government employees
breaking the rules. Are you allowed to tell us based
on He's not allowed to tell you this, I'm allowed
to tell uh. Basically the idea being that, you know,

(01:03:22):
based on their actions within the network and how they're
using you know, the computer system, are they going to
go snowdon Yeah. Yeah, essentially I could see that. I mean,
I could see that being a necessary thing from their perspective.
Oh sure, I understand it completely. Um, but it's possible. Yeah,
it is possible. And often, you know, I'm sure we'll

(01:03:45):
get a lot of letters from people were saying that
often the idea of security is falsely, you know, is
marketed in an alarm is fashion to give people to
sacrifice privacy. And I think that's I think it's absolutely true. Um.
But then that leads us to a philosophical quandary, which is, directly,

(01:04:06):
do we let fifty people go around killing people on
the inner state because we don't want targeted advertising? I know,
I know, I'm yeah, I'm clearly I'm swaying in that way.
This is not this is not the way that I
necessarily believe it. I'm just I'm playing that question, bringing

(01:04:27):
it back to al Pacino, and bringing it back to
al Pacino. We're talking off air about you can probably
tell Christian are both under the weather, and we were thinking, man,
our voices are gonna be awesome in this show. Kevin
Wait speaking of speaking of awesome, do you guys hear
that music? You hear that just means my having a struke?
Ye know, I kind of felt like I was having

(01:04:48):
a stroke the other day. I got a cavity filled
for the very first time, and whole half of my
face was nomin It was very strange sensation. We made
it through the fire ladies and gentlemen. It's a moment
with our super producer uh Noel Brown Nolan not choosing
a nickname for this episode because it feels you guys
went a little dark with it. It got a little dark,

(01:05:09):
got a little dark. Yeah, So what's on your mind?
What do you think? Yeah? I don't need those kind
of nicknames been I just don't need them. What's on
my mind? Yeah? Yeah, I got a little I've still
got this little chest cold thing. Everyone's to the weather.
It's this crazy seasonal change. I only seem to get
hit with something around this time except from that. Yeah,
I know, I haven't got a guy with the baby

(01:05:30):
is the only one who's healthy. Maybe there's an immune
system thing that happened. Just wait till he starts school.
Oh yes, and then exposed to all the other elements,
the children's elements. You're sending your kid to school, you know, monster,
I was thinking about it, but I don't know. What
do you guys think? Okay, really fast, No, you don't

(01:05:51):
want to get in this. You don't want to. But
I'm really curious. Homeschooling Is that a thing? Ben, guys?
Should were you at all? And should we? It's definitely
a thing. Yeah I was not, and I'm the wrong
person to ask because I don't have kids and probably won't.
But get you though, you're so well adjusted by this
because I went through the fire exactly. That's the way

(01:06:12):
I feel too. So I'll give you my perspective just briefly.
My daughter is six years old. She went to Montessori
school from like pre kge to just now and she
loved it. It was great. I really you know. If
anyone doesn't know, Monastorius sort of like a um. All
kids of different age groups are all in the same
classroom together, and so there's this kind of like leadership

(01:06:32):
involved where like the older kids sort of take the
lead and said an example for the younger kids. And
it's a great way to socialize kids and make them
comfortable around in different situations and around different age groups
of kids. Loved it worked great. I feel like it
outlived it's usefulness. I feel like first grade, she needs
to be in public school with the rest of the
in the fray, you know, no more soft pedaling everything,
and you know, I think it's time to throw her

(01:06:54):
into the fire. And she's doing great. She loves it.
She loves it. So this year, she's starting this year first. Well,
you you're gonna have to keep me updated with that.
So here's the deal, guys, this is what was going
on in my world while I was at home editing
the video that's coming out this weekend and the one
that came out last week about serial killers. So you've
got but see that it puts a nice bow on it.

(01:07:15):
Though I try. I try to look at that stuff
in a positive way, you know. Yeah, My positive way
was how do I make this kid not a serial killer?
Like we're gonna make this kid the opposite. I mean,
it's like a mix of nature and nurture. Right, That's
sort of what you guys have to takeaway, is yeah,
a lot of this talk. Yeah, I mean I usually
think that based on the research for all of these things. Yeah,

(01:07:38):
they just don't don't lock your kid in the basement. Okay, good,
don't have one of those yet. It's uh it is
theoretically possible, not plausible nor ethical or humane, but it
is possible to uh read someone who would be genetically
predisposed to some sort of serial murdering. But the good

(01:08:01):
news for you is I believe that ship is sailed.
Perhaps kids already out just stay away from I would
imagine that would require have you never get amount of
at mean, I've never met Matt's parents. Does he have parents?
We don't know where Matt came from. Wait a minute,
I met your didn't your pops come in here one day? Uh? Yeah?
Sure that was my dad? Are you sure that wasn't

(01:08:24):
a Nazi replicant vampire? So? Um? So, I guess to
answer your question, I am. I guess. I'm partially homeschooled,
like every only child is. Because I hung out with
myself a lot uh m hmm. You know, okay, never

(01:08:44):
mind never mind by Heman VHS tapes. At least it
wasn't the master as far as I was concerned. Yeah,
like you have the power. It taught me to believe
in myself and to be a team player because I
didn't have any brother or sisters either. And talk to
you out was that like one of little lessons at

(01:09:06):
the end of every episode. And talked to you out
of or talked to you off the ledge of becoming
a homicidal maniac, right e Skeletor, Yeah, well he was
the least appealing character in the show. He had kids. No,
he's fun, but hold on, want to be Skeletor? You
identified with Skeletor No? No, well, okay, certain aspects of
it I get, like Cobray Commander, you can understand, you know,

(01:09:29):
kind of where they're coming from. Um, but I overall
I don't agree with their approach and I never really
understood the mythology of he Man. I saw the live
action film again in recent Yeah, I just didn't under
I didn't understand it, and I didn't understand how it is,

(01:09:51):
something about it not being a cartoon and for Rome,
I'll say it beat me if you have to know.
But for a grown ass Dolph Lunggren to be walking
around calling himself he and and have other people call
him he man, I mean, I have a I have
a I love nicknames, don't get me wrong, but if
I meet somebody who is our age and says like

(01:10:11):
they call me, you know, spin daddy? Sorry, Derek? So
how did this get made? The comedy podcast that looks
at movies actually just did an episode on mass and
they talk about this and they kind of reveal the
I believe there's one of those like behind the scenes
blog posts. Was it like the secrets behind Masters of

(01:10:33):
the Universe? Talking about how Dolph Lungering got involved in
the movie. It makes me think when you think of
the name he Man, like it just what could be
a more absurd masculine name, you know? And I'll tell
you what could be there. But it works because it's
a band called man Man, and that, to me, that's
one upset, but in a great way because they're this
kind of weirdo. Tom Waits he kind of like, uh,

(01:10:55):
you knows pirate kind of rock band? Is it? Is
it hyphenated? I think it's one I think it's one.
There probably is someone somewhere in the world, because there
are billions of people here, and their name probably is Man. Man.
It probably doesn't mean the same thing it does to
us in English. But how do we get here? Guys?

(01:11:16):
How do we get here? Well? You know what, after
you talk about on cut Serial Killers for an hour,
out a little bit of your bach, Well, guys, we
are going to head out. We know this episode went
a little bit longer, but that's one of the main
complaints for Get is that people want longer episodes. So
we hope that I don't know if enjoy is the

(01:11:38):
right word to use for this, but we hope that
this shed some light on some of the misapprehensions people have.
And we want to thank Christian Saker for coming in again.
If you like this episode, you'll also like the Comics
Code episode we did Earlierah, that was a fun one. Uh.
And you can also find me on Stuff to Blow
your Mind, where I podcast with our colleagues Robert and

(01:12:01):
Joe about all things weird and science. E. I guess
the one I would recommend the most, the sort of
if you if you liked what we talked about here
is that Science of Necrophilia episode that I mentioned earlier,
but don't discount there are a lot of episodes that
you guys have done, especially recently since the three of
you have been podcasting, that are right, I think in
our listeners out Yeah, yeah, especially um all of October,

(01:12:24):
we've been doing uh, not Halloween themed, but sort of
October themed topics. So for instance, like those guys tackled
natural burials, and Robert and I took a look at
the psychology of final Girls in slasher movies. Um, so
we've done some interesting stuff like that. Yeah, your audience

(01:12:44):
would certainly be interested, I hope. Oh yeah, check it out.
If you like stuff they don't want you to know,
you'll love stuff to blow your mind. Oh wait, before
we go, there's one more big announcement, which is this
was our last moment with Noel. It's okay, guys, I
mean terrible. I knew it was short lived, you know
it was. It was nice while it lasted. Right, Wait

(01:13:08):
there's more, yes, but wait, there's more. Uh. The reason
it's our last moment with Noel in this episode is
because from now on this is going to be a
three person show. So when three person plus three person plus.
Because when you when you tune in from every week,

(01:13:30):
and we hope you do, you're gonna be hearing Noel
and Matt and I and perhaps some special guests if
I can. I mean, I already have exhausted my my
podcast Karma maybe cajoling you into this. I'm sure I'll
come back at some point. There's plenty of more uncought
serial killers for us to discuss, right, and hopefully something

(01:13:50):
more pleasant. Yeah, let's come up with a happier conspiracy theory. Okay,
so we've we've been talking about doing something about the invisibles.
That would be a fun one. Yes, that's something a
lot of people want to know about the bear and
staying bears and the Mandela effect. Uh So we'd like
to pass this question to you, as always, what do
you want to hear about? Our best suggestions come from you.

(01:14:14):
You can find us on Twitter and Facebook, where we
are conspiracy stuff, and we have a website. We also
have a live show. I'm saying all this stuff. Yes,
don't forget to tune in every week for our live show.
Maybe at different times we're gonna be experimenting a little
bit with that, but you can always follow us on Twitter.
That's the best way to keep up with it, and

(01:14:34):
we'll let you know every time we're gonna go live.
We'll give you a little heads up yeah, and let
your let your friends know too. In the meantime, Matt,
there are a lot of people who want to talk
to us, but I think the whole social media stuff
is belogning. Yes, for all those people who want to
hop on you know, their A O L accounts, they
can send us an email. We are conspiracy at how

(01:14:55):
stuff works dot com. M hmmm. For more on this
topic and other unexplained phenomenon, visit YouTube dot com slash
conspiracy stuff. You can also get in touch on Twitter
at the handle at conspiracy stuff.