375 - Please Withhold

This week, Karen and Georgia cover the tragic murder of author Helen Bailey and the story of the “reincarnated WWII pilot” James Leininger.   

For our sources and show notes, visit www.myfavoritemurder.com/episodes.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hello, and welcome to my favorite murderer. That's Georgia hart Star. Hi,
that's Karen Kilgariff.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, and are you ready for some podcasting football?

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Football? Some podcasting football is a podcast. This is about football.
And we did we tell you sorry if you found
this in the true crime section of your podcast app,
it's been mislabeled. Yeah, this whole time.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Well, no, we got some feedback, you know, And and
what we've learned from the polls and the you know,
all these things is that people want to hear about football.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
And what's great about it is we want to talk
about football.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
It turns out this whole time we've both been obsessed
with football.

Speaker 1 (01:07):
We were keeping it to ourselves.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
That's right, We're not We don't want to be bragging
all the time about with loving football.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
No, we're not gonna be like first down this and
put touch back that. It's not our style.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
That was so funny. Look, guys, obviously we're doing a
hilarious sketch. But I spent the weekend with my dad.
I went home for Easter. I watched so much golf, oh,
because it was the Masters that by the end of
the weekend I was cheering and yelling for golf. I

(01:42):
don't think you're supposed to do that, are you. You're
supposed to keep your voice way down and your plaid
pants way up. But it was really funny. It's like
if you sit in front of a humongous TV long enough,
you'll kind of get into anything.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
I think, or like, if you're sitting watch any compian,
you're again aside with someone, even if it's something we're
not interested in fly fishing, let's say for real.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
And I think I was observing this myself. I didn't
share it with my father, but I think there's something
about dudes, like professional golfers because it was a master
so it was like a ton of like professional golfers
and one amateur old and news literally ask me anything
about the mass, but they're so serious and intense and

(02:29):
everyone's like, you say, being quiet and kind of doing
the golf clap and whatever that. I am very triggered
romantically by that, where I'm like, oh my god, you
would totally ignore me if I was there, And then
you're like, now I love him. Parents the professional golfer
in her life.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Withholding the biggest turn on. That's like if you have
a bio on whatever Jay day, like turn ons withholding
men men who withhold their emotions.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Yes, please withhold, and also please have a pale from
your forehead down to your upper lip is pale, and
then the rest of your face is deeply tanned because
they always wear the exact same like titleist baseball hat. Right. Yeah,
that was my weekend. How was your weekend? It was good.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
I played those crazy game our friend Lauren Cook. It
was her birthday and all she wanted to do was
play this like it was like a White Elephant style game,
but it's hardcore and shit talky and like fast and crazy.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
It's like a dice.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
Game, and it was so much fucking It was like
the most fun I've had a party oh so long.
It was just mingling and like trying to think of
something to talk about with each other. It was like
running around a circle, stealing presents from people, grabbing that
no fuck you you know dance like dance a minute,
dance breaks.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
It was so much fun or even at dance breaks?
Was it? Did she make it up? I mean she's
a writer, right, yeah? I think like a friend may
had made.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
It up a couple of years ago and they'd played it.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
And loved it. So I just had the most fun.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
Like if your present got picked last, you had to
wear a stupid hat, and.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Like it was just like such great rules. It was
so much fun. What was the best present?

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Vince did come hard with a snoopy snow cone maker.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Oh shit, So people were like fighting for it. People
definitely wanted that.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
I had like a nice plant that it put in
a beautiful pot that was like luckily not it was
a little nerdy, but not too nerdy that people didn't
want it.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Everybody wants a plant.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
And I sweetened it by attaching ten scratchers on it. Yeah,
I was like, that's dumb, but I like scratchers. Yes, yeah,
it was really cool.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
That's and can you say, without hurting anyone's feelings, what
the worst present was? I will tell you.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
Who ended up in the hat is our friend of
the podcast, Joan Horay.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Oh no.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
He brought a flip cup game. Like someone manufactured a
flip cup is used with plastic cups, but someone.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
Sole the kit for flip cup. Yeah, and everyone's like,
go fuck, you're saying I don't want this. He ended
up in the hat. It was very it was very funny.
You know, that's that's so funny, and I that sounds
amazing because every time there's ever been a white elephant,
it usually it's at a job. It turns into especially

(05:22):
if it's like you're, you know, working on a comedy
show or whatever, it gets intense because people don't They
just don't. No one cares about being polite, like at
a comedy show obviously, So like there was there was
one like that, and I had forgotten. I knew we
were supposed to do it. I forgot to get something,
so I just put one hundred dollars at an envelope,

(05:45):
turned it into it made it crazy because some people
were mad, like that's a cop out, and other people
are like, out of my way, I want that couch. Yeah,
it was pretty funny.

Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah, this was I highly recommend parties with a game
instead of a fucking mix and mingle.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
Man, And were you able to was it a like
thirty people or was it like that.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
Like twent It was like twenty, so it is this
perfect amount, perfect time.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
Yeah, yeah, it was, yeah, it was great. You know,
it's really funny like that. First of all, we're both
talking about like a party in a positive way, which
I think is great. Yeah, a lot of progress, rare. Yeah.
So flying home today and I realized I observed that
this has happened a bunch before. It's Easter weekend. Like
after Easter weekend, I fly home, Suddenly it's hot. I

(06:32):
had the heat around in my house, and I'm like,
I have to turn from the heater to the air conditioner. Yeah,
like seventy eight today, Suddenly it's like spring has sprung.
We're done with whatever we were doing before. Totally so la. Yeah,
and it's like I love it. It just has that
it feels like it has that energy like people are
It's like, let's do this thing, let's party, let's wear

(06:53):
shorts again. Please.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
I'm excited for that, even though I don't have any shorts,
but I'll buy them this year.

Speaker 1 (06:59):
This is the year of the shorts. Yeah, that's right.
You can A buy them or b you can cut
your chinos off, you can make shorts. Mm hmm. Get go,
get your doctors. It's short and those things.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
So my golfers, we doctors, Yes, they do ask.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
You should we get into it?

Speaker 2 (07:19):
Should you should we do exactly right corner, Yes, let's
do it. I I want to thank everyone for sending
in non violent and non depressing TV suggestions for me
to watch while I'm doing TMS.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
Oh do you get some good ones?

Speaker 2 (07:32):
I got some great ones. Transcranial magnetic stimulation is what
TMS is. And a lot of people also wrote in
about having done it, so that was really cool too.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
So thanks guys. Oh nice? Oh wait, did you see somebody?
Hold on out? Let me find it just real quick. Shasta,
whose Twitter handle is pin up wanna be she wrote
to us and said, ladies, new Brocks, jellybeans, desserts of
the World. Did you see this? No for Easter Brock

(08:00):
and guys, we this is an independent endorsement, actually through Shasta,
so we're trusting Shasta. Yeah, but these ones, you know
we we love a Brox uh, you know, kind of
jellybean challenge every holiday, but because it's Easter, they did so.
The desserts of the world truro yes, lemon sorbet okay,

(08:23):
apple pie, yeah, strawberry mochi cute and chocolate macaron. Oh
I need this right? Doesn't it look? Does not seem good?

Speaker 2 (08:34):
You know that I'm obsessed with chiros in a really deep,
deep way.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
Is that true.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
I kind of lose my mind when I see a
chiro cart, like in a really young way that is
just deep inside of me.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
Do you get that feeling where you're afraid if you
say I'm going to get a churo someone's going to
say no, you can't or you're not allowed to. Maybe.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
I definitely was turned down for a lot of desserts
as a child because I had a healthy, healthy parent.
So yeah, it's not the same having a carab cookie
dad as a churoh kara carab.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
My dad was related the carab. What a fucking oh,
what a scared carab? You know that because it's brown,
it's also brown browned it, it's brown. Get away. Okay,
sorry to interrupt with that. No, that was good to know,
like very good to know. Yeah, thank you shasta. Yeah, okay,

(09:33):
So this week over in the exactly right Corner. This
week on Buried Bones, Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Hols
cover the Great Sheety murder case. I actually covered this
story in episode two to eight that we did live
at the Orpheum Theater in Omaha in twenty nineteen. So
they're going to do the Buried Bones version, which is

(09:54):
going to be thoroughly researched and actually technically spoken about.
And I love when there's that kind of crossover me too,
where it's like, do you remember this story, We'll let
Paul and Kate tell it to you. Now. I love it.
They're the professionals. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
And on parent Footprint, Doctor Dan is joined by Mary
Louise Kelly, anchor of All Things Considered on NPR.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
What a freaking huge get subscribe.

Speaker 2 (10:19):
To the podcast. It's a parenting podcast, but it's more
than that. You don't have to have kids to have it.
It's about reparenting yourself. It's about taking care of your
inner child. It's about parenting as well, all ages and
you know, all issues, anything you need. It's such an
incredibly beautiful podcast, so please check it out. And they
also have new artwork that we're so proud of and
love so much, so please check out Parent Footprint.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
Also, So don't forget to follow us on Instagram at
My Favorite Murder. The handle is at My Favorite Murder
because we are now posting the recommendations corner. So as
you're listening, you know, some people panic and they're driving
and they feel like they need to pull over to
write things down. Well, not anymore. That's literally something someone
wrote in of like, thank God, I don't have to

(11:01):
pull over and write this down anymore. It's waiting for
you on the Instagram.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
And lastly, we've launched our annual spring sale in the
MFM store. Lots of plastic items are on discount, including
a few things from other exactly right shows, including Merched
from my said note Gifts and That's Messed Up an
SVU podcast, So go shop now at my favorite murder
dot com until Monday, April twenty fourth. Before we start,
I have a sad note that I wanted to bring

(11:29):
up a friend of mine and stevens Ashley Morrison, known
as Youngest Old Cat Lady on Instagram. She started her
own cat rescue and she was a foster of cats,
and she was just this amazing person. But she was
also very oven about her mental health struggles, which I
always admired about her. I met her through this podcast.
She sadly took her own life recently, and I just

(11:52):
wanted to acknowledge what an incredible person she was, and
also to anyone who's struggling to please reach out because
her book was not over.

Speaker 1 (12:03):
It was. It was not over.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
She had so much more in life to give, and
so please reach out to to.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
Friends, to family.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Nine eight eight is the National Suicide hotline number where
you can call or text.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
So please just reach out to someone. I can't.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
I don't even have the words. She was such a bright,
beautiful person. We're going to donate ten grand in her
name to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. That's NAMI
dot org. So please check that out and give your
cat a hug for Ashley Morrison.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
So sad. That's so rough. I know, feel for her.
And now it's time to podcast. Right, that's football, baby,
Are you ready to football? I'm ready to football? You're
you throw the first touchdown? Right? Yes? I'm in a
quarterbacket and wide receiver it to myself. Great? Great? While

(12:59):
you watch and ask any question, feel free to ask questions.
Thank you. You want the coin toss? Is there a
coin toss in football? Maybe at the beginning to kick
it off? You want it? Or it's either a coin
toss or the boys meet in the center and they
talk about coins that they like and then agree.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
Everyone has to say something vulnerable and whoever opens up
the most that their team goes first, that gets.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
A silver dollar. Yep, that's right, yes see football like
cokief we know. Okay, So this story, I'm positive this
story has been recommended to us by listeners, definitely by
British listeners. This is a really, of course, horrible story.
It's a case about a murder of a person that

(13:43):
was really adored and well known in the UK. Today,
I'm going to tell you about the murder of Helen Bailey. Okay.
The sources Marin used for the story are Helen Bailey's
own blog, which was called Planet Grief. Also, there was
a twenty seventeen Channel five dot com documentary called Murdered
by My Fiance. There was also a twenty seventeen BBC

(14:04):
news article entitled Helen Bailey a Life Shaped by Death
by Jodie Halford and all the rest of the sources
are in our show notes. It's Friday, April fifteenth, twenty
sixteen in Royston, England, and fifty five year old Ian
Stewart calls nine nine nine, which is the UK's version
of nine one one, and he tells the operator he

(14:25):
hasn't seen his fifty one year old fiancee, Helen Bailey
in four days, although he thinks he knows where she
is because she left him a note. He says Helen
wrote that she was headed to her vacation home in
the coastal town of Broadstairs for some much needed alone time,
and she asks not to be contacted. Broadstairs is an
idyllic literary haven in the southeast of England, and Helen

(14:48):
is an accomplished author. She's written both young adult fiction.
She's also written on the topic of grieving and bereavement.
Her ability to convey her difficult experiences, emotions and vulnerabilities
have struck a chord with British readers. She's popular, some
would say she's adored. So Helen's friends and family members

(15:10):
find this story of an impromptu getaway extremely out of
character for the people who know and love her. It's
deeply weird. The idea that she would isolate and be
out of touch just isn't how Helen works through things
when there's a problem immediately. There's just kind of what's
actually going on here. Ian tells the nine to nine

(15:30):
operator Helen must have taken the train out to Broadstairs
because she's left her car behind. He also says that
Helen's docks and boris has disappeared, so as he's telling
the operator this information, he starts to get flustered. Even
though Ian and Helen have been together for four years,
he is struggling to answer even the most basic questions

(15:51):
about her. When the operator asks what her height is,
he can only give an estimate. When she asks what
color Helen's eyes are, he has no idea. When the
operator asks for Helen's birthdate, he says he has to
go look it up. What M now that seems odd? Yes,
I literally yesterday watched a TikTok video where someone's interviewing

(16:17):
couples in the street. Yeah, and the interviewer literally asks
these exact questions yeah to husbands and boyfriends of very
happy couples that are standing there smiling. These men don't
know their wife's middle name, They don't know their wife's parents' names. What, Yes,
they don't know their birth date, they don't know their

(16:38):
eye color. Now some of them are boyfriend girlfriends.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
Some of those little details like eye color and height,
I wouldn't expect, like I don't. Yeah, I wouldn't expect
until you're deep in a relationship to know like, no,
for sure.

Speaker 1 (16:51):
But yes, sort others names, stuff like that. But I
guess I'm only bringing it up because you know, there's
always these things where we hear these stories and they're
told in a certain way, right, and so it's always
like that's suspicious immediately, that's suspicious, It isn't really when
you know that kind of like a lot of dudes
aren't paying attention to anything about themselves. Maybe also, this

(17:15):
TikTok video could have been edited just to be worst
case scenario, but still it was funny and surprising where
these girls are standing next to their boyfriends looking at
them like, seriously, you don't know my mom's name, my
middle name, Oh my god, what's going on? So anyway,
that to be said, we don't know what's questionable behavior
or strange behavior when someone has disappeared totally. And the

(17:36):
hardest part is this conversation that Ian's having on nine
nine nine is the beginning of what will become a
nationwide search for Helen Bailey. So let's talk about Helen
a little bit. She's born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England,
in nineteen sixty four and grows up nearby Ponteland. Huh,
I've been given the pronunciation, I don't trust it and

(18:00):
I don't want to be attacked for it, But apparently
it's Pontyland. From an early age, Helen's said to be
incredibly observant and expressive. She would later write on her
blog Planet Grief that quote, I've always loved putting pen
to paper. As a child, I wrote pages and pages
of loopy squiggles pretend joined up writing, which to me
were thrilling stories, but to anyone else must have looked

(18:22):
as if I was writing while trapped in a tumble dryer.
You can just tell, you know, so personal, so charming,
like this is the person would be so easy to
read her writing. So it's unsurprising that once Helen's done
with school, she gravitates towards a creative career, and she
starts working for a prominent London based licensing company that

(18:43):
represents huge brands like et and Garfield and Snoopy like
gigantic worldwide brands. Yeah, and she loves her job, and
then she also finds love at this job. In her
early twenties, Helen falls for an executive at the company
named Johnson Field, and before long they're a couple. They
move into a North London home together and they get

(19:06):
married in nineteen ninety six, and then in two thousand
and eight they get their docs in Boris and round
out the family. Ah. So, around the same time, Helen
throws herself back into her writing, and she credits her
work at the licensing company teaching her how to develop
a strong main character. So she's looking at like, why
does everybody love Snoopy? Did you? Why are we still

(19:29):
talking about Garfield? It's because they're distinctive and funny and
interesting characters. At the same time, Helen has developed a distinctive,
confident voice of her own. Her writing is quippy, fast,
funny and incredibly smart, and she ends up publishing over
twenty books, with young adult novels becoming her specialty, and

(19:50):
her catalog includes the beloved Electra Brown series that follows
a sometimes sweet, sometimes shallow thirteen year old named Electra,
and it's a total hit with British teens. So as
Helen approaches her mid forties, her life is steady. It's
comfortable and creatively fulfilling, and then in twenty eleven, it

(20:10):
all changes. That year, on a trip to Barbados with
her husband, tragedy strikes. One morning, as Helen sits on
the beach, John goes out for a swim, and as
Helen watches, John gets caught in a rip current and
is swept out into deeper water. She can hear him
calling for help. He's struggling, and then he disappears. A

(20:31):
group of tourists rush into the ocean and pull him
back out onto the beach, but it's too late. John
Sinfield is dead at sixty five years old. Oh my god,
that's heartbreaking, horrible. I mean, just the worst case scenario
in every way. So of course Helen is in total shock.
Her husband of twenty two years has just drowned in

(20:53):
front of her. And she would later write about her
thought process in this horrible moment. She writes, quote, but
I'm wearing a bikini. It was inconceivable that something so
terrible could happen while I'm wearing swimwear. It was the
absurdity of it. So after losing John, the absurdity of
death is something that Helen thinks about constantly. None of

(21:15):
what's happened makes any logical sense to her. In an instant,
the life she had with John is completely gone, and
now she just has Boris, and the two become inseparable.
Helen is rarely seen without him, and from this point
forward she doesn't write anymore young adult books. For a while,
she doesn't write anything at all, which of course is

(21:36):
horrifying to her as a lifelong writer. And then one
day she decides she's going to turn her sadness into
a writing exercise. So she starts a blog and she
names it Planet Grief, and she challenges herself to regularly
write about how she's coping with John's death. The posts
on Planet Grief are tragic and heartfelt and wistful and angry.

(21:57):
There are posts about mindlessly watching sitcom, struggling through holidays,
and preparing meals. For one. Boris regularly makes cameos, but
Helen's posts are also very funny. In one, she writes, quote,
I have two fantasies at the moment. The first is
popping my clogs by spontaneous human combustion, thereby proving it

(22:18):
does exist whilst being able to join my husband. I
know that one got me. The second is becoming the
sole winner of the euro millions lottery. This isn't because
I want to buy a bigger house. This one is small,
but it feels suppressingly empty, or a faster car. The
average speed in central London is twelve miles an hour,
so little point in trading up to the Fiat five hundred.

(22:41):
But because I could live in a culinary sense like
Elton John and have a team of chefs offering me
a menu of tasty morsels. So soon Planet Grief has
thousands of loyal readers, many struggling with their own loss,
and Helen's blog becomes an online community for the bereaved,
something that she welcomes, and she's also begun to join

(23:03):
online support groups to connect with other grieving people. And then,
just months after the death of her husband, she meets
a man in a Facebook support group for widows and
widowers named Ian Stewart. Ian lives in Bassingborne, England, about
fifty miles north of London, and like Helen, he's recently
lost his spouse, Diane in twenty ten. Diane died after

(23:24):
an epileptic seizure while she was home alone. So Helen
and Ian bond over the shared sudden losses of their
life partners, and soon their online relationship escalates into something more.
According to Helen's friends and family, Ian comes on very strong,
pushing their relationship forward. In fact, the first time they
meet in real life, Ian just shows up at Helen's

(23:47):
London home unannounced. What normally that might be a complete
red flag to Helen and her family is definitely concerned,
but at that moment in her life, Ian feels like
a gift. He makes Helen feel special, loved and secure,
and within two years of meeting online, Helen sells her

(24:08):
London home and, along with Boris, moves into a new
house in Royston with Ian. Things continue to evolve quickly
in Helen and Ian's relationship. The next year, Helen writes
Ian into her will, that's it, That's unnecessary.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
Although I guess if you've just lost someone in your grieving,
that's probably something that, yeah, you think about a lot
more than most people do.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
Exactly. That's what most people say is she knows how
it feels to suddenly not only be grieving, but having
to deal with all the horrible business of like after
someone's died. So there are definitely people who theorize that
was the reason. And he had gone through it too,

(24:52):
so they both kind of understood it. They understood it,
and you know, in a way. I think that is
this huge kind of act of trust that we don't
know how that came up, but it might have felt
really good to be like, oh, this is almost like
a way of committing Yeah, it's a symbolic gesture. Yeah,
a very kind of adult, mature way of doing it,

(25:15):
but also red flag just like on the other side
of all of all of that, you can see it.
Don't like him. So she gives both Ian and her
brother John power of attorney also, which grants both men
the authority to make important health, financial, and administrative decisions

(25:35):
on Helen's behalf if she should ever become sick or incapacitated. So,
as she approaches the age of fifty, Helen Bailey is
worth around four million pounds, and she also owns like
three different properties that are very valuable, so it makes
a lot of sense to be arranging her affairs in

(25:55):
this way. But she also she also wants to ensure
that Ian who who isn't as wealthy as she is
cared for in her absence. So a year passes, now
it's twenty fifteen, and Helen does something that just a
few years before felt impossible to her. She publishes a
new book. It's a compilation of her Planet Grief blog

(26:17):
posts and it's called When Bad Things Happen in Good
Bikinis Gets Me? It just gets me. Yeah, it's so
like gracefully when you can kind of gracefully and humorously
handle the absolute shit you've been dealt in life. Yeah,
it's really something. I'm sorry I didn't read the whole title.

(26:39):
It's When Bad Things Happen in Good Bikinis Life After
Death and a dog called Boris. Even though this book
is about grief and loss and the absurdity of death,
there's something joyful about it. And the cover prominently features
Boris sitting on top of a green animal print bikini,
and inside Helen writes about how hopeful her new relationship

(27:02):
has made her. In fact, the dedication reads quote, this
book is dedicated to my gorgeous, gray haired widower Ian
Stewart BB. I love you. You are my happy ending. Yeah. So,
the publication of When Bad Things Happen in Good Bikinis
feels like Helen's full circle moment. She's built herself back

(27:23):
up after experiencing the horrible loss, and she and Ian
continue to share their home and eventually they become engaged
by early twenty sixteen, the two have been together for
four years and are inching closer to a wedding date,
and everything seems perfect and then Helen goes missing. So

(27:43):
that brings us to April twenty sixteen, Ian being on
the phone with nine nine nine and basically that triggering
a nationwide search for Helen Bailey. But police are totally stumped.
There is absolutely no trace of Helen. No one's heard
from her, no one's seen her. She has not been
captured on CCTV footage near her multiple properties, and the

(28:06):
last communication police can definitely link to her is an
email sent just before eleven am on Monday, April eleventh.
That's the same day Ian claims he last saw Helen,
and it's unclear what Helen writes in the email. We
just know it was sent to one of her friends.
And after that there's nothing, no communication anywhere. So a

(28:28):
week passes and investigators, who have zero leads, think their
best course of action is to focus squarely on Helen
and Ian's home in Moyston, where Ian still lives. They're
hopeful something inside of the home can point toward her location,
so to make sure that they're covering their bases. The
police methodically search the large property over the course of

(28:50):
several weeks, and they also interview Ian and so. Ian
repeats the same story he told the operator when he called,
claiming his memory is he runs through his activities on
April eleventh. He says he'd last seen Helen in the
afternoon before leaving for a three pm doctor's appointment. Then
he ran a few errands, including dropping off an old

(29:12):
duvet at the dump. Then he'd met up with one
of his sons for dinner. When he finally made it
back home later in the evening, Ian claims that Helen
and Boris were gone. All that was left was Helen's note,
which he has since thrown away. Huh yeah, also read so.
At first, Ian's very cooperative with the investigation. He's doing

(29:33):
all the things that you would expect of a man
who's partner's missing, participating in searches, he's paying for missing
posters to be printed, He's showing up at awareness raising events.
He even makes a televised statement where he tells Helen, quote,
you not only mended my heart five years ago, but
made it bigger, stronger and kinder. Together we learned to

(29:55):
live with our grief and move forward with our lives,
but never forgetting Now. It feels like my heart doesn't
even exist. Whatever has happened. Wherever you are, I will
come and get you and Boris and give you whatever
you need. That's his statement about his missing partner. That's
got the staircase vibes statement. Yes, because he's only talking

(30:16):
about himself.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
Yeah, And it's like so floral and rehearsed and doesn't
sound like someone panicking.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
No, it sounds like someone's saying, isn't this terrible for me?

Speaker 2 (30:28):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (30:29):
Yeah, which is easy for me to say, obviously in hindsight.
But it's a pattern. It's a habit for people like
that that are like they wouldn't think to be saying
other than I'm here.

Speaker 2 (30:42):
To tell you how horrible this is for me, right,
or I'm worried about her and i just want her home.

Speaker 1 (30:48):
It's not about that. Yeah, it's not about that, it
seems like. But Ian's behavior is inconsistent at best. Police
are already on alert because of the bizarre nine ninety
nine call. Not just that he could answer basic questions
about Helen, but police are also confused as to why
Ian would wait four days to report her missing. Then
he begins lashing out in investigators as they continued their

(31:11):
search of the home. One investigator later says, quote everything
we did was questioned. He was there, watching every single move.
He was at shoulder length. He was very interested in
what we were doing and followed us everywhere. End quote.
But his questionable behavior doesn't end there. When two months

(31:31):
have passed with no sign of Helen, Ian renews his
season pass to the Arsenal Football Club using the joint
bank account he shares with Helen, and then he takes
a trip to MAJORCA.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
Oh dear, which is like I want to judge every
little thing, but it's like, Okay, it was true, and
he needed to get the fuck away from this grief
that he was going through. Okay, you know what I mean.
But I know I think he did it, so I
think everything suspicious.

Speaker 1 (31:59):
Well, here's what I would say. It's a valid point,
except he's not in a grief stage yet. We don't
know where she is. So what are you getting away from.
You're getting away from a huge question mark that hasn't
been answered of where your fiance is. The person that
you're supposed to care the most about in the world.
You're like, I really have to get away for myself.

(32:20):
It's like, what are you talking about. Why don't you
want to search every home in your neighborhood. Yeah. So, meanwhile,
investigators are pouring through Helen's electronics for any useful information,
and soon their suspicions around Ian start coming into focus.
They learned that on the day that Helen was last
seen alive, someone logged into her bank account. That person

(32:43):
had edited an existing monthly payment that pulls money from
Helen's personal account into the joint account she shares with Ian.
So it used to be six hundred pounds and now
it's four thousand pounds. Investigators are eventually able to think
this activity to Ian's computer, not Helen's, so that's not good.

(33:05):
Red Flog police also make note of what Helen had
been googling ahead of her disappearance, and it includes things like,
quote I'm so tired falling asleep at work. H end
quote falling asleep in the afternoon. So this checks out
with the information that Helen's mother, Eileen, had recently told investigators.
She'd said Helen quote confided in me about being worried

(33:28):
about her state of mind. The week before she disappeared,
she called me at lunchtime and said to me, I
can't believe I just slept for five hours. I had
two poached eggs, and the next thing I woke up.
End quote. Eileen mentions another incident where Helen had gone
for a walk with Boris at the beach, and while
there she became so groggy and dazed that when she

(33:51):
started to head home, she almost left Boris behind. Oh
my god, which just no if you have a dog,
no right. Another clue that investigators find while searching Helen's
electronic devices involves her cell phone. After Helen's reported missing,
it's assumed that she left with her phone. However, investigators
find evidence that on April sixteenth, the day after Ian

(34:14):
reports Helen missing, her phone automatically connects to the Wi
Fi network at her Broadstairs house. When police investigate further,
they learned that Ian had driven to Broadstairs that same
day after being pressured by Helen's family to go search
the vacation home for her. So they're basically like, well,
you don't know for a fact she's not there if

(34:36):
you haven't gone there, Like, why haven't you gone there?
So this wife by connection, leads police to believe Ian
has had her phone in his possession the entire time
and was carrying it with him for whatever reason that day,
chuck it into the lake or something. Right. If all
of that isn't enough, it's also revealed that on April eleventh,

(34:56):
the day Helen went missing, Ian showed up to an
appointment Helen had made previously with her lawyer. It was
about the pending sale of one of Helen's properties, which
was about to net her hundreds of thousands of dollars,
and Ian told the lawyer that Helen was quote too
unwell to meet, and because he had power of attorney,
she had sent him to handle the transaction and collect

(35:18):
the payment from the buyer in her place. But that
lawyer refused to work with Ian and said that he'd
need to hear from Helen directly first. And over the
next several weeks, with Helen still missing, Ian follows up
with this lawyer multiple times about this sale, but he
continues to get stonewalled, and eventually the lawyer calls the

(35:38):
police to tell them about these pushy exchanges with Ian. Shit, yeah,
not good. She feels unwell. The same day she goes missing,
and you're not talking about any of that, right, they
have to find out from the lawyer. Love that lawyer
by the way, who's like, no, totally, just no. Soon,
investigators feel like they have enough circumstantial evidence to connect

(36:01):
Ian to Helen's disappearance, and the motive seems clear. Ian
wanted access to and control of Helen's money. So on
July eleventh, nearly three months after Helen is first reported missing,
Ian is arrested. Allie says to the police upon his
arrest is you're joking. And then just four days later,
on July fifteenth, the police finally find Helen's body. Her

(36:25):
remains are discovered at her Royston property. She's been stuffed
into a sewage holding take underneath the homes detached garage,
and her dog Boris's remains are there too. Oh my god.
Police had missed the holding tank during earlier searches. Not
only had Ian never mentioned it, but he had conveniently

(36:47):
parked his car directly on top of it. So when
word spreads that Helen's body has been found, her brother
John remembers a time when Helen quote mentioned there was
an old well in the garage and then there was
some banter almost certainly instigated by Helen, that it was
a good place to hide a body. Eerily, John claims

(37:08):
that Ian was standing nearby when Helen said this, so
the discovery of Helen's body immediately suggests foul play, but
there are no signs of assault or struggle. However, investigators
do learn that Helen has a large amount of zoe Picklan,
which is a prescription sleep aid, in her system, and
a sample of Helen's hair suggests she's been regularly ingesting

(37:31):
the drug for several months, but Helen did not have
a prescription for it. Coincidentally, Ian does. That's right, so
police immediately go to Ian with this information. They want
to see if he has any reasonable excuse as to
why his prescription drug was found in Helen's system. Ian
says Helen often took his seat sleeping pills to treat

(37:53):
her own insomnia, but by this point police know from
Helen's friends and family and her google's orches that she'd
had the exact opposite problem. She couldn't seem to stay awake.
The zopic loan seals his fate. Police are now convinced
that Ian drugged Helen with his sleeping pills before murdering her.

(38:15):
He's formally charged with murder, fraud, preventing lawful burial, and
obstructing justice, and he denies all charges against him. So
Ian's trial begins in January of twenty seventeen. It gets
pretty weird when he's put on the stand. He announces
that he'd lied about the note that Helen left him
before she vanished that it never existed, but he claims

(38:38):
that he'd invented the lie in her best interest because
she'd actually been kidnapped. What yeah Ian claims her kidnappers.
He basically describes them and then identifies them as simply
Nick and Joe said that they would kill Helen if
he went to the police, but Ian never specifies why,

(39:01):
like what the scheme is, or anything that would like ransom,
not even that that would make this story plausible. By
his telling, the men just showed up and took Helen
for no good reason and then killed her. In response,
prosecutors present two minute trial named Nick and Joe, who
match Ian's descriptions. Both were acquaintances of Ian's and have

(39:22):
absolutely nothing to do with her disappearance. In his defense,
Ian claims that these are the wrong Nick and Joe.
But it's an unconvincing story to say the least, so
things aren't looking good for Ian as his trial wraps up.
The prosecution presents a compelling and believable theory based on
the wealth of evidence in the case. They suggest Ian

(39:44):
had targeted Helen, knowing she was grieving and vulnerable, and
hatched a plan to steal her fortune. After weaseling his
way into her life, he convinced her to change her
will and give him power of attorney. Then in twenty sixteen,
he began secretly dosing her with sleeping pills. It's unclear
what the end goal was there, if it was to

(40:04):
murder Helen or to trick her into thinking that she
was seriously ill so that he would have more control
acting as power of attorney. In any case, On the
day she went missing, prosecutors believe that Ian had drugged
Helen and then suffocated her to death with the duvet
that he later brought to the dump right ovey, Yeah.

(40:26):
They believe he used that to drag her body into
the garage and put her into the holding tank and
then got rid of it. After a seven week trial,
Ian Stewart is found guilty on all charges. He receives
a life sentence with a minimum thirty four year prison term.
Good But this story doesn't end there, don't because after

(40:48):
Ian's conviction, police launch an investigation into the death of
his first wife, Diane. Right Diane had also suddenly died
in twenty ten. It was a complete shock. He was
only forty seven years old. She was a very healthy woman,
and when he made the initial nine to nine nine call,
he suggested Diane had experienced a fatal seizure, and investigators

(41:11):
just took him at his word and her death was
never fully investigated. But because Diane wasn't a public figure
like Helen, we don't know as much about her life.
But according to her family, she was a very special,
caring person and a very loving wife and mother. After
her passing, Ian's behavior struck many people as strange. He

(41:34):
had her body cremated almost immediately and then splurged on
a brand new sports car. What you so gross? As
with Helen, Ian stood to gain financially from Diane's death.
Shortly after she died, he collected nearly one hundred thousand
pounds between her life insurance payout assets and her savings. Fortunately,

(41:57):
Ian had consented to having Diane's brain donated to medical science,
so pathologists were able to test Diane's brain tissue and
they're able to determine she was suffocated to death. Wooh wow, right,
erasing any further doubt. A neurologist dives into Diane's medical

(42:18):
history and it's revealed that she hadn't experienced a seizure
in nearly twenty years. Wow. Given what's known about Diane's
health at the time of her death, the likelihood that
she died following an epileptic seizure is quote extremely low
one in one hundred thousand, damn. So in twenty twenty two,
Ian has found guilty of murdering Diane. He's sentenced to

(42:41):
a whole life order, which means he'll spend the rest
of his life in prison with no chance of parole.
During the trial, the judge tells Ian, quote, you successfully
passed off a murder as an epileptic fit, playing out
an elaborate and an indeed sophisticated charade over a period
of time that succeeded at the time and would have

(43:02):
succeeded for all time, but for your subsequent murder of
Helen Bailey, so as Ian serves as prison sentence. The
world continues to mourn the losses of both Diane Stuart
and Helen Bailey, and Helen continues to comfort the bereaved
through her book When Bad Things Happen in Good Bikinis
and the archives of her Planet Grief blog. Back in

(43:24):
twenty eleven, Helen ended her very first post on Planet
Grief by talking about balloons she'd released in honor of
John's birthday, and she says this quote, I have a
flash of terror at the thought of my balloon being
sucked into a jet engine, the plane plummeting over London,
and my being responsible for hundreds of new inhabitants of

(43:45):
Planet Grief. But then the balloons continue their gentle flight,
at first familiar and recognizable, then just dots, and then nothing.
As I search the sky with teary eyes, I think
to myself, I know they're out there. Only moments ago
I was holding them. I could feel their form and energy.
I could see them, and they were bright and shiny
and fun and even when I let them go for

(44:07):
a while, I could watch them. But now, however hard
I look, however carefully I scan every inch of the skyline.
I can't see them. They may have gone from my
sight and my touch. They may soon be punctured and
in a change of shape, end up hanging in a tree,
or be swept up and bind. But I know that
in some form they're still out there. And I'm not

(44:27):
just talking about balloons. But you knew that, didn't you.
And that is the story of the tragic murders of
Helen Bailey and Diane Stuart. Wow. I had never heard
that before somehow, right, because it just happened. It just happened.
It was like a quarantine. I remember people talking about

(44:48):
it on Twitter, you know, in quarantine basically when it
was still kind of a mystery that was playing out.

Speaker 2 (44:54):
I somehow missed it completely. That's so sad and tragic. Yeah,
but I'm so glad he didn't get away with it.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
Yeah, And it reminds me there's I think you may
have covered this one, but it's a cold case. There's
a guy who says his wife drowns in the bathtub
and they have little kids, and then when the forensic examiner,
they're like, nope, she was dead before she went into
this water. And then they find out that he had

(45:24):
been married before and that wife had died like that,
those those stories where you're sitting there going this is
bad enough. Yeah, what we're talking about is horrifying. It's
it's already one horrifying story, and you're telling me that
this motherfucker's been doing.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
This all along, these greedy pieces of shit who just
like take and take and justugh.

Speaker 1 (45:49):
You got to wonder how many are out there, you know? Crazy?

Speaker 2 (45:52):
Wow, Good job, Karen, Thank you, Georgia. All right, so
we're gonna take a big old left hand turn.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
Wonderful.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
We're going to go a little bit away from murder
exactly into some like weird, you know, unexplained stuff.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
Wonderful. But that's this is our football podcast, and we
can do what we want with it. We can tell
about any team we want. That's right, that's right.

Speaker 2 (46:19):
So today I'm going to tell you the unbelievable story
of James Lininger, the toddler who believed to be the
reincarnation of a World War Two fighter pilot.

Speaker 1 (46:29):
What, oh my god, are you ready for this? I
am beyond ready for this. Okay.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
The sources using today's episodes are several scholarly articles by
Jim B. Tucker, several responses to those articles by Michael Sutteth,
an episode of the Netflix series Surviving Death and ABC
primetime special hosted by Chris Cuomo, and the book Sole
Survivor The Reincarnation of a World War Two Fighter Pilot

(46:59):
by Bruce and Andrea Lenninger with Ken Gross and you
can find the rest in our show notes. So I'm
going to tell you about this toddler.

Speaker 1 (47:07):
You ready? Yes?

Speaker 2 (47:09):
James is born on April tenth, nineteen ninety eight, in
San Francisco, California.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
Woo. You know that, you know well? But his family
moves around a lot when he's young.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
They bounced to Dallas, Texas, and they ultimately end up
in Lafayette, Louisiana. James is seemingly a normal kid during
the first year or so of his life. He's fun
and smiley. He's hitting all the expected milestones for his age.
He's not a reincarnated fighter pilot.

Speaker 1 (47:34):
Yet, not yet, not yet. Right now, he's just in
the in the ninetieth percentile, that's right. Did your sister
ever talk about her boys being in the like eightieth
or ninetieth percentage? She never got like that. She's not
that kind of person. She's cool.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
Yeah, she's laid back, but she'll be She'll tell me
when I do gross stuff and that's fun. I like
when she does that, and you know, yeah, or rip
a loose two thoughts their head or something.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
It's more relatable, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (48:06):
His mother, Andrea, is a former ballerina with a warm
personality who's always wanted to be a mom. James is
her first and only child. His father, Bruce, is a
traditional type of guy. He takes his job and fatherhood
very seriously, and he has four other kids who live
out of state from a first marriage, so he basically,
you know, considers himself an experienced father. So when James

(48:28):
begins having nightmares when he's around two years old, just
a few weeks after the family moves into this big,
old house in Lafayette, Bruce brushes it off. He's been
a parent for a long time and so he knows
this is kind of a normal thing for toddlers to
go through. But Andrea is tortured by her young child's distress.
These nightmares are really intense. James will thrash around while

(48:51):
lying on his back in his crib, punching and kicking
the air above him. Andrea later says, quote, I thought
this looks like The Exorcist. I half expected his head
to spin around like that little girl in the movie.

Speaker 1 (49:03):
Oh, it's got to be so hard to see your
two year old like that. Oh horrible. Yeah, And while
he thrashes, he screams.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
Andrea and Bruce's report losing sleep for months over these
loud and frightening episodes. James allegedly has these nightmares several
times a week. Doctor's family, friends, and friends of Andrea
tell her this is totally normal, he'll grow.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
Out of it.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
But then James starts screaming discernible words during his night terrors.
Have you ever been with someone or seen someone half
night terrors before?

Speaker 1 (49:34):
No? I haven't.

Speaker 2 (49:35):
It's the fucking my dad has them, and it is
it is so frightening, like so, I bet it's just terrible.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
And a two year old have them. That sounds like awful.

Speaker 2 (49:47):
So he starts yelling airplane, crash, plane on fire, little
man can't get out.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
Oh no, you imagine hearing that from your child's crib.
A baby baby? Does baby know anything? Airplane? Right?

Speaker 2 (50:01):
So around the time the nightmare start, James develops an
obsessive interest in airplanes in the same way that some
kids become obsessed with like princesses or fireman or whatever.
For James's airplanes and he and his father visit the
Kavanaugh Flight Museum outside of Dallas multiple times in the
spring of two thousand, which is around the time the
Nightmare start, and James literally has to be dragged away

(50:23):
because he's so obsessed with the planes, and Bruce notices
that James is particularly interested in the World War Two
plane exhibit, so during these museum visits, James is allowed
to pick out some toys from the gift shop. He
gets several toy propeller planes and a VHS tape of
the Blue Angels, which is the Navy's flight exhibition team.

Speaker 1 (50:43):
I'm sorry, how old is his baby? He's too right?
Could he be like dinosaurs? No?

Speaker 2 (50:53):
His Blue Angels the Blue Angels, and he watches the
video several times a day, amazing. He also plays very
aggressive with his toy planes, crashing them into a wooden
coffee table so often that it's covered with deep scratches,
and while playing, he often says the words quote airplane
crash on fire and then Bruce travels a lot for work,

(51:15):
and whenever he leaves to catch a flight, James tells
his father, quote, daddy's airplane crash, big fire.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
So that's a show that's super chill. Yeah, it's just
say goodbye. No no, James, just say bye bye. No,
don't scare daddy. Don't.

Speaker 2 (51:36):
The combination of James's aggressive play, the warnings to his dad,
and the violent nightmares are freaking Andrew and Bruce out.
They've tried dismissing it. They tried telling him to stop
talking this way. They even hide the Blue Angels VHS
and try to minimize his obsession with planes and plane crashes,
but the nightmares persist.

Speaker 1 (51:54):
Almost every night.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
James is still screaming things like quote airplane crash, plane.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
On fire, little man, get out.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
Oh. On August eleventh, two thousand, Andrea's reading aloud to James.
As he starts talking to her about the quote little
man that he dreams about. He begins to mime more
slowly the kicks and punches and thrashing he does when
he's asleep, saying quote, little man's going like this, can't
get out. Andrea later describes her hair as standing on

(52:23):
end as she hears her son's descriptions, HM as calmly
as she can, she asks him who the little man is.
James responds quickly by saying, quote me.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
Oh so.

Speaker 2 (52:36):
Then she grabs Bruce. She says to James, tell him
what you told me. James tells his parents again about
the plane crash and the little man, and Bruce, with
a growing sense of unease, asks him what happened to
his plane. James responds that it quote crashed on fire.
And Bruce asked why the plane crashed, and James responds with, quote,
it got shot. When Bruce asks who shot your plane,

(53:01):
James screws up his face in this indignant way, as
if the answer was obvious. He tells the parents the
Japanese shot down his plane.

Speaker 1 (53:08):
Oh no, wouldn't you be like, hold on a second, here,
take this gogurt. Momy has to step into the kitchen.
Mommy needs a hot bath, scream into a dish towel,
like what the full? Oh yeah, yeah, a little baby,
a baby that barely can talk, is telling you about
World War two. Yeah, you're supposed to like Elmo, like

(53:32):
almost has to be your thing? What yo man?

Speaker 2 (53:35):
Yeah? Okay, So Birst and Andrea are totally baffled. Their
son is barely two years old, but as the nights
go on, they start to ask more questions. It's becoming
clear that what James is experiencing are some sort of memories,
and he starts providing some more baffling details. Two weeks
after he says the Japanese shot down his plane, he
tells his parents he flew a Corsair, which is a

(53:57):
fighter plane that was developed during World War Two, Like
I can't even pronounce it, and he fucking sign of course.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
You're like, what's this now? Also, I mean, this must
have been so eerie because they knew already. It's not like, oh,
he's been watching They can't lie to themselves about it.
They have to go with it because it's not like
you're like, were you watching the History channel? Right? And
then Bruce had four other kids, so he's like this.

Speaker 2 (54:23):
None of them were like this, Like, yeah, they had nightmares, yeah,
these they got obsessed with things.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
But this isn't normal, yeah, not consistently the same. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:31):
So then he tells his parents that he flew his
plane off a boat. They asked him if the boat
had a name, and James tells them this boat is
called the Netoma. They've never even heard that word before,
so it's not like they could have fed it.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
To him somehow on accident.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
But Bruce and Andrea are intrigued enough by how specific
it is, so Bruce gets to work. It's the early
days of the internet, so the search is slow and painstaking. Eventually,
Bruce discovers that there was a small aircraft care you're
stationed in the Pacific during World War Two called the
USS Natoma. He is amazed, but also a little terrified.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
Yes he's slightly shitting yeah, so sorry, but for real,
as like the nineties website comes down.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
You know, it's got the dancing thing in this corner
and the flab really cool flash flying toasters come through.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
Jesus.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
When Bruce and Andrea ask their son what is the
name of the little man in his dreams, he only
responds with quote me or he says James. Then they
ask him if he remembers the name of any friends
he had, and James tells them clearly and immediately quote
a guy named Jack Larson.

Speaker 1 (55:43):
He gives them the name Jack Larson.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
So the Lenangars are a pretty traditional Christian family, so
reincarnation is not really part of their belief system. The
specificity of the name Jack Larson starts to pull Andrea
in the direction that these are past memories, while Bruce
doubles down on his research, perhaps so he can prove
it himself. It's all made up either way. The Jack

(56:07):
Larsen reveal seems to take what's going on with James
the next level for his parents, and James's strange recollections
begin to escalate.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
I mean, I wonder if they were still holding out
this tiny percentage of a hope that he's just incredibly gifted. Yeah,
he's just like has a great imagination. Sure, he's just
able to pull a really believable forties Air Force guy's
name out of his back pocket. Oh uh huh.

Speaker 2 (56:37):
When James is two and a half, so he's a
little old, little wiser. Bruce fuys a book on the
World War two Battle of Ushima. James is sitting with
his father as he flips through it. When James stops
his father on a page with an aerial map of
the Japanese islands where this military operation took place, and
points to a particular spot on the map. He says, quote,

(56:58):
that's where my plane was shot down. My airplane got
shot down there, Daddy. This insight, combined with the Jack
Larson detail, is enough for Bruce. He actually reaches out
to a veteran who'd served in World War Two on
the USS Natoma Bay and asks about its history. He
confirms the boat was in fact involved in the Battle
of Yoshima. The man also says he remembers a pilot

(57:21):
named Jack Larson, but he doesn't know what happened to him,
so he confirms this person's name James. Does James James's
Oh really because my two year.

Speaker 1 (57:29):
Old son does? I mean, Jesus what if? The reveal
is that James rolls its sleeve up and he has
like a Hawaiian lady tattoo and it makes a birthmark there,
and it was like, oh, oh my God.

Speaker 2 (57:45):
At this point, the Lenningers reach out to a woman
named Carol Bowman. She's a counselor who specializes in reincarnation,
especially the past lives of children, which is so interesting. Yeah,
She's written a book which Andrea reads, which is why
they reach out to her. Carol encourages the Leningers to
treat these experiences like they are indeed past life memories

(58:05):
and not just figments of James's imagination. I think you know,
don't call your kid a liar, basically is what she's saying.
You'll traumatize him more. Yeah, it's real to him, no
matter what.

Speaker 1 (58:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
His parents follow Carroll's instructions, acknowledging to him that the
events he was describing had indeed happened to him before,
while emphasizing that they were in the past and now
he is safe. And sure enough, the intensity of James's
nightmares decrease once they acknowledge what's going on and tell
him he's safe, But the memories don't stop. So it's
now two thousand and one and James's three, the ripe

(58:39):
old age of three Jesus. He is recounting his alleged
past life in the daytime, drawing tons of pictures of
World War two style planes in epic battle scenes. The
enemy planes he draws have the distinct Japanese red rising
Sun flag drawn on their wings.

Speaker 1 (58:58):
I've seen it, I've seen the pick. Sure it's true.
Have you ever seen like my dad has Nora's art
from when she was like in kindergarten still taped to
his refrigerator. Now, we love Nora. She was very talented,
always has. She was in the ninetieth percentile. She was
absolutely the nine percentile. That fucking chimney is way on

(59:20):
the side of that house. You know, the windows are
big and small at the same time. Like she's two
years older than this kid and can barely put a
normal house together. And this guy is drawing fighter planes
right right, I.

Speaker 2 (59:34):
Mean it's it's a kid's drawing, but there are the
details of those little things he's talking about.

Speaker 1 (59:39):
You know, it's a kid's drawing of a thing. Kids
don't draw, right, It's like you stand, My sister has
so much art from kids, being like a grammar school
teacher where it's like they always have like hands with
eight fingers, Like, you know, it's stupid. They're such bad artists.
Just kidding you, just kidding children. We love you. He'll

(01:00:01):
love you too. Stop listening to this. Why are you
listening to this? Why are you here?

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
Oh? And then he starts signing the pictures James, and
then the number three at the end of it, So
James three.

Speaker 1 (01:00:12):
And when he's asked why, he says, quote, it's because.

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
I'm the third James, and even when he turns four
years old, he still signs his pictures James three. Not
like it wasn't like his age, so James three is
his name. He's also revealing relatively in depth knowledge of airplanes.
He can correctly identify a drop tank and and his
mother called it something else. When he gets some Gi
Joe dolls for Christmas that year, he names them Billy,

(01:00:38):
Leon and Walter.

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
It's like, those are weird names for kids to bame
their toys, right, Walter hasn't been like a current name
for fifty years. Not typical names for that. No.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
When Bruce and Andrea ask him why he's named his
dolls this, he responds, quote, because that's who met me
when I got to have then, I'd be like, send
this kid back. At this point, I would be.

Speaker 1 (01:01:05):
Kick about. I'd be like, can we just take a
break for a second, let me just go to the park.
We stop talking. Mommy has a headache, Jesus.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
In two thousand and two, Bruce actually goes to a
Natoma Bay reunion to interview some veterans because he just
wants some more fucking information. Bruce has become obsessed with
finding out the identity of this Jack Larson person, and
so he does learn that this reunion that Jack Larson
was in fact a pilot in World War Two stationed

(01:01:37):
on the Natoma Bay and not only that, but he
survived the war and is still alive and living in Arkansas.
Oh shit, he's not at the reunion, but people remember
him and show Bruce documentation to confirm that Jack is
real and alive.

Speaker 1 (01:01:51):
So that was Would you just get directly into your
car and drive to Jack's house like that moment? Yeah? Yeah,
we need this to come together.

Speaker 2 (01:02:00):
So it's around this time that the Leningers learned that
only one pilot from the ship was killed during the
Battle of Eosima.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
His name is James M. Houston Junior.

Speaker 2 (01:02:14):
Andrea has an intuitive sense that this is the person
who has been reincarnated through her son. Bruce still needs
more convincing. He starts posting obsessively on online forums for
more information about this pilot and how he died. So
it turns out that James Houston Junior was a twenty
one year old from Pennsylvania who didn't exactly die at Eosima,

(01:02:36):
but instead was killed during a strike against transport vessels
in a harbor on the nearby island of chi Chi Jima,
and this falls under the umbrella of the Eogima Military operation,
even though the specific island where Houston was shot down
is about one hundred and fifty miles to the north.
So it all fucking checks out right, and Bruce discovers

(01:02:57):
that Houston's plane was shot down by the Japanese and
exactly the manner described by his son, and according to
old flight path records, it turns out that Jack Larsen
was flying in the plane right beside Houston's when he died.
And he also learns that three squadron mates of Houston's
who had been killed before him were named Billy Peeler,

(01:03:19):
Walter Devlin, and Leon Connor. Whoa so Billy, Walter and Leon.

Speaker 1 (01:03:26):
Okay, Because here's the thing, Like, we believe in psychic
So you don't believe in psychics. You believe in that
kind of that kind of connection people may or may
not have. There's lots of ways to discuss it. Yeah,
this is a baby, Yeah, this is a baby saying
air force stuff. Yeah, and name checking real people, real

(01:03:48):
veterans who gave their lives for this country.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
Yeah, yeah, it's beyond. It's beyond. It's unexplainable. It's totally
fucking unexplainable.

Speaker 1 (01:03:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:03:57):
Yeah, So now Bruce and Andrea are like, yeah, we
believe it. They publicly claim that their son is the
reincarnation of James M. Houston Junior. And remember he wrote
that he was number three, so he was a junior
and James is number three, Okay, that's why he was
referencing the number, which is fucking crazy. And this is
when things blow up for James and his parents. They

(01:04:18):
connect with Houston's surviving sister, Anne, who was in her
eighties and is shocked by how much this three year
old boy knows about her brother. She is on record
as wholeheartedly believing that little James is a reincarnation of
her little brother, in part because he knows specifics about
her family and early childhood that she says no one
would know.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
So she's buying it for sure. I mean, that's a
very legitimate confirmation totally.

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
The Liningers do an ABC primetime special hosted by Chris Cuomo.

Speaker 1 (01:04:49):
It's a huge hit.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
The segment airs on April fifteenth, two thousand and four,
and the Liningers are flooded with global media attention, so
they decide to write a book about their experiences. Published
in two thousand and nine. Their book is called Soul Survivor.
Soul Survivor, Isn't that pretty nice? The reincarnation of a
World War Two fighter pilot, and it chronicles James and
the family's journey. The book does well and even spends

(01:05:14):
some time on the New York Times bestseller list, just
like that Celery Juice juicing book, Just.

Speaker 1 (01:05:19):
Like Celery Juice, which was also reincarnation of many diet
books from the seventies. That's right.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
But of course this then opens up the Leninger story
to skeptics and prompts a fierce ongoing academic debate. Two
particular researchers that I'm going to focus on are Jim
Tucker of the University of Virginia and Michael Setteth, who
is currently teaching at San Francisco State University.

Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
So smarty, smart people, sure, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
Both of these men are highly educated and specialize in
the study of consciousness after death. The specifics of both
of their arguments are highly technical and not easy to follow,
but the main point is Jim Tucker believes that james
testimony is reliable evidence of reincarnation in the Western world.
Michael Sutteth does not, and for almost every publication Tucker

(01:06:10):
has written in support of James, Sutteth has written a
scathing response to disprove the quote facts with his own research.
So these two are like butting heads. The main points
of contention are could this be fraud, could this be fantasy?
Or could James have acquired this information through normal means?

Speaker 1 (01:06:27):
Yep, yep, it's he learned it at preschool, you.

Speaker 2 (01:06:30):
Know, when they're all talking about those bedtime stories that
Andrea was reading him, that you wish you a bedtime story?
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:06:37):
Yeah, but everyone loves well. I want to know, actually
what the real argument is, because it seems hard to imagine.

Speaker 2 (01:06:44):
Yeah, for sure for Tucker, and never aired ABC News
interview that James had done recorded in two thousand and two,
confirms that the Lenngers are not frauds to him. When
they recorded that segment, Little Baby James had not yet
identified James Houston as the person he was every incarnation
of in Tucker's mind. The family could have fabricated this

(01:07:04):
story in a way that was more sensational and lucrative
from the start. Like they would have used the name immediately,
like he said, oh, he told us he was this,
and it's like no, this. The memories slowly started coming,
not just like boom boom.

Speaker 1 (01:07:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):
The slow developments over time proved to Tucker that this
family is not making up their son's experiences for attention
or financial gain.

Speaker 1 (01:07:24):
So that's an interesting way to look at it, right yeah, Yeah,
I'm just like kind of putting out the information or
just like telling a story incompletely is a more believable
way to hear it as opposed to like, here's my
two and a half year old's PowerPoint presentation on his
past life, right right, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:07:43):
Tucker also dismisses that this could just be James's imagination.
He says that even though it is normal for toddlers
to have nightmares, James's nightmares were characteristics of having experienced
a major trauma, and similarly, his repetitive and violent play
with toy airplanes is an example of what he calls
post traumatic play. And then, given that James Leininger has

(01:08:05):
no history of trauma in his life, in Tucker's mind,
the intensity of both James's play and nightmares points to
evidence of trauma in a past life.

Speaker 1 (01:08:15):
Do you believe in past lives? Well, between this kid
and then there's that kid that when he was little
he thought he was an agent from the forties. Have
you ever seen that one? No, it's incredible. It's a
kind of thing where it's just like this where a
little kid giving these details. You're just like, how is

(01:08:36):
this possible? And I feel like these are stories that
are you know, we've gotten a lot of these, like
in hometowns where people are like then my daughter said totally.
Grandma says, don't do that, or I don't know that.
There's things that we absolutely you know, yeah, like when
we're little are open to and can have come into
our brains so we can't later. I definitely believe in

(01:08:59):
that like that just because we don't our brains are mysteries.
We don't know, Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
So Tucker, this other dude outright dismisses the possibility that
James could have learned about James Houston or the Natoma
Bay through normal means. So the other researcher, Michael Sutteth
He says that Lininger's story is filled with quote falsehoods,
factual distortions, and fallacious reasoning, So he doesn't believe in
it at all.

Speaker 1 (01:09:25):
The two and a half year old is using fallacious reasoning. Yeah,
he's yelling at this two year old. Sure.

Speaker 2 (01:09:30):
In his many papers, Setteth explains that he believes the
Lininger has suppressed certain facts that would make this story
less interesting or believable. He says, they deny the reality
that James could have acquired some of this knowledge through
normal means, such as overhearing adults talking or the many
flight museums he went to.

Speaker 1 (01:09:48):
So it's not, you know, out of the realm of possibility.
He went to dot dot dot as a two and
a half year.

Speaker 2 (01:09:54):
Old, as a two and a half year old after
he had the dreams a stroller. He suggests that the
because adults wanted James the story to be proof of reincarnation,
they somehow created the circumstances in which James's story would
look like proof of reincarnation.

Speaker 1 (01:10:09):
Sure, yeah, understandable.

Speaker 2 (01:10:11):
So, even though the ongoing debate over James's past life
memories continues, James and his family remain firm believers in
his story. In the summer of two thousand and six,
when James is eight years old, he and his family
traveled to Japan to make a pilgrimage to Chiji Jima.
They're taken out in a small boat to the spot
approximately where Houston's plane was shot down, and there's video

(01:10:32):
footage of the simple and heartfelt memorial service the liningers hold.
In it, James holds a bouquet of flowers and drops
them over the side of the boat and begins to
sob as they sink below the water. After the ceremony,
James's nightmares reportedly become less frequent and less intense, and
he reports a sense of lasting peace after this. As

(01:10:52):
a teenager and young adult, James can only remember traumatic
images of the plane crash. He loses connection with most
of the other details, but he still believes that he
once carried the personality of James Houston inside him, and
in two thousand and nine Fox News follow up, James
says of his story, quote, I hope that it helps
people understand the meaning of how precious life is, how

(01:11:14):
fast it can just blow away. And I also hope
that it opens people's eyes up to reincarnation. It is
a possibility, it is not a lie. And as an adult,
he's been featured on an episode of the Netflix documentary
series Surviving Death and reportedly is just focused on living
a normal life, and he still lives in Louisiana. So
this case and others like it, like the ones we've

(01:11:36):
done on the minisodes, open the door to all sorts
of questions like is there such a thing as consciousness
after death? But also how susceptible are very young children
to the powers of imagination and suggestion. We know there
is a precedent of adults getting caught up in the
stories of children, like the Satanic Panic, for example, but
it's safe to say that even though many smart people

(01:11:57):
have looked into the story of James Leninger and his
connection to Pilot James M. Houston, it produces more questions
than answers. Maybe there are just some circumstances that just
can't buck and be explained. Yeah, and that is the
story of the quote reincarnated pilot James Leininger.

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
I loved that. Here's the thing. You can go through
life and be like, here's what I know, and it's
a fact. Yeah, blah blah blah. You'll always end up
being proven wrong in some way because there's a lot
going on. Like the thing I always love to bring
up is like randomly and my dad did it the
other day where I'm like, oh wait, I think I

(01:12:37):
get this from you, where he's like, you know, we're
watching some nature show. He's like, you know, we don't
know what's in the ocean. It's like it's ninety percent
of it's unexplored.

Speaker 2 (01:12:46):
Where I'm like, I know, I know, I'm watching a
thing about fung Guy right now, and it's just like
the amount of stuff that we don't understand was happening
on this planet is so vast.

Speaker 1 (01:12:55):
It's crazy. Yeah, And like, was it that one where
it's like all the different things like the benefits that
funk I have fantastic fung Guy. Yeah, yes, that's such
a good show. But I mean, yeah, I just think
there's a little bit of humility if you are the
kind of person that approaches like new information with humility
and then and curiosity and kind of interest. But I

(01:13:16):
also absolutely admit that as a person who in the
past watched ancient aliens and been like, ooh, it's all possible,
and then people are just like, excuse me, as an archaeologist,
this is offensive because there's real people who built the pyramids.
Humans do this and then humans tell each other stories
to kind of like discredit the accomplishments of certain people

(01:13:41):
and it's bullshit. But to me, this lies right in
this very innocent area of like what's the benefit did Like, yes,
they wrote a book, but like how could they have
filled a whole book if they were if all of
this was just fabricated totally?

Speaker 2 (01:13:59):
And like the the beginning, they didn't believe it. They
took a long time to like confirm certain things. It
wasn't like they were just like look over here, everyone,
you know, they didn't believe.

Speaker 1 (01:14:08):
The parents didn't even believe in the beginning, right, It's
just I don't know. And also, you know these days,
who knows what people are doing? And why? Yeah, I
think we say that, like we see that a lot
where you're just like, oh, oh okay, I get it,
you know, But as the more you know, like scam
podcasts that I love and a door and listen to,

(01:14:29):
it's just like, yeah, what are people doing? So it's
like absolutely within the realm of possibility. But wouldn't you
wait till your son was seven or eight so that
at least it would make sense right right, that somebody
was talking about World War Two, like two and a
half year old. It's just like, no, it doesn't make
any sense. They are absolutely still in diapers. They cannot

(01:14:51):
control themselves in many ways. Do they even walk yet?
I don't know. I think so here and there they're
not great at it. They can't even walk. Thank god,
they're like bad at walking. I don't know. That's I
think it's hilarious and compelling to even imagine. And there's
just been so many of like Grandma says hi, the
two year old in the back seat, where you're just like.

Speaker 2 (01:15:12):
Well, yeah, send us your stories. By the way, that
my favorite marriage. Now, send us your reincarnation stories for
the hometowns.

Speaker 1 (01:15:19):
We've got to hear it. Please, you're toddler. That's open
to the you know, astral plane type of shit that
no one can explain. We love it. Here's the thing,
I think of all the football podcasts out there, this
one has been the most comprehensive. Right, You've covered every
possible football top.

Speaker 2 (01:15:37):
Absolutely never in the history of football podcasting has any
football podcast podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:15:45):
Did this heart about football. Yeah, I think we've really
done it. We've honored it, We've honored the sport and
we've moved the ball down the field. What you got
to do is move the ball down the field. That's right,
that's we know that about it. If there's anything we
know about football, and also the one thing we really
know about that probably the most important rule of the game,
stay sexy and don't get murdered. Goodbye, Elvis, Do you

(01:16:09):
want a cookie? This has been an exactly right production.
Our producer is Alejandra Keck. Our senior producer is Hannah
Kyle Crichton.

Speaker 2 (01:16:23):
This episode was engineered and mixed by Stephen Ray Morris.

Speaker 1 (01:16:26):
Our researchers are Maren mcclashan and Sarah Blair Jenkins.

Speaker 2 (01:16:30):
Email your hometowns and fucking horays to My Favorite Murder
at gmail dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:16:34):
Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at my Favorite
Murder and Twitter at my favor Murder Gybbye