500 - Knot for Naught

On today’s 500th (!!) episode, Karen covers the Lost Women of Highway 20 and Georgia tells the story of the Hollywood Bling Ring.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder. That's Georgia Hartstar,
that's Karen Kilgariff.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
This is our five hundred episode.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
That's so bananas I can't even come to grips with it.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
It is. It feels like five and it feels like
five hundred thousand?

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Does boa?

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Did you ever think we'd get to this number when
we start, when we were making single digit puns back
in my old apartment in Hollywood.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Taking so much time to name these shows? Really a
couple days worth of wait, wait I thought of one,
here's a better one. Yeah, yeah, no, it's pretty wild.
It is cheers, Hey, cheers, h five hundred, great job.
And that's it and goodbye.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
And that's the last.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
And then we're both raptured.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
Wait, I'm a jew.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Wait, don't take me wait wait, no, no, no, I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Want to go there. I want to go to the world. Please,
I'm gonna go to Ireland.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Do they have any that's a different kind of rapture,
the Guinness rapture?

Speaker 1 (01:15):
What's going on? God?

Speaker 2 (01:16):
Nothing? I mean, we had incredible shows in Boston, very
tie tie, two shows in one night.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah. By the time this episode goes up, will have
been in Salt Lake City and then tonight will be
in Oakland. Wow, which is exhausting to just think about
the future. Hopefully you guys are enjoying the shows. Go
to my favorite murder dot com, slash Live to get
your tickets.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
And thank you Boston for just a delightful, power packed
evening of all kinds of things. I mean, everything happened
in those two shows speaking.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
I have a movie recommendation because it made me cry,
which I don't do. Yes, you do, you start out,
I know once in a while, I like, there's certain things,
but I really need those those good cries. And there's
this thing that all my girlfriends talk about and agree upon,
which is that when you're on a plane, you cry
harder at movies and it's a good cry, and airplane

(02:07):
movie cries are the best cries. And I've fucking never
ever had one, and I've always been like that sounds
nice to have in your life. And it never happened
until we were on our way home yesterday from Boston
and I found myself sobbing in my seat from a
movie that I think you're a love. I'm sure you

(02:27):
love this movie. It's a British fucking epic World War
two love story Atonement so good. Oh my fucking gouy.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
The typing Keys soundtrack as she runs around that.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Everything about that, Yes, and until the end. I have
a video of it. I'm gonna make a video. I
just was sobbing in my seat.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
I'm sorry, you have video of yourself sobbing?

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Yeah, because it was so good it felt. I was like, finally,
I'm a real girl. I felt real for the first
time in my life.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Got to get to you the place where you do it,
and then you it's not content.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Why wouldn't it be content? Why wouldn't it be content?
Why wouldn't it Why wouldn't everything be content?

Speaker 2 (03:07):
Look around, so can you do a little reenactment of what?
So you start to cry, Oh, this is really sad,
and I.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Was like, oh my god, I'm crying. I was like,
I felt like, oh my god, I have emotions. It's
so cool.

Speaker 2 (03:18):
They're in there. Yeah, they're in there.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
So either things are going really well and I'm like
breaking through, or things are going really poorly and I'm
crying a lot.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Either way, the rapture's coming. I mean, I when I
learned that it's very good to cry because it is
one of the ways the body releases CORDI is all
because I always had like not as much shut down feelings.
It was more like you're not allowed to do this
and no one has time for this. I have part
of that too, So it's kind of that thing of

(03:47):
like I start feeling it and then I just like
fully muscle it down.

Speaker 1 (03:51):
I think that's what it is. Or it's almost like
this isn't going to do anything. Yeah, you're wasting your time,
and everyone else is yeah, stop it.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yeah, well we'll come of this and nothing facts not.
But then like learning that where it's like no, no,
it's for you. You get to release some of that
goddamn quartiza.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, there are times and I'm like, I know that
if I fucking started bawling right now, I would feel
so much better in twenty minutes. But I can't do it,
and I don't want to do the things that I
know will make me do it, like think sad thoughts,
because I'm trying so hard not to do that.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Anyways, Yeah, you gotta. I don't think that's the way
to do it. I think you just have to be
open when it really comes. But that's a hard thing.
It's all easy to say and hard to do.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
Yeah, well, Atonement, the movie Atonement, it's like twenty thirteen.
I think. Oh, Kieran Knightley and what's his adorable face
from James mac snackavoy mack.

Speaker 2 (04:41):
Of voice, Oh my god, this is the greatest.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
And Sarosi, how do you say.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
It's the liver? How do you say to do Sarsha, Sirsha, sirraharmone,
thank you?

Speaker 1 (04:53):
And fucking little what's her face? From the fucking the
Football Kieran Knightley, No, Juno Temple, Yes, thank you, Juno Temple.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
Oh from I almost just said, ed Hardy. This is
the saddest conversation we've ever had. This is the five
hundredth conver No, no, no, it's good. Okay, it's good.
This is exactly our kind of podcast.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Okay, great, great, great.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
You can't We were basically up for forty eight hours straight.
So this is the result. This is what podcasting looks
like when you're doing.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
It like they'll overdo it when you commit too much,
just too much stuff.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
I'm going to give you a recommendation for your next
crying movie. Great because it's a.

Speaker 1 (05:30):
Cry everyone give me airplane crying movies, Karen, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
Okay this movie. First of all, I was about to
say Atonement again. This movie stars Alan Rickman and Juliette Stevenson.
British movie. Very art housey, but an amazing director. It
was one of his first big ones. And I can't
remember what director. It's like a great director and it
is called truly madly deeply.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
Okay, I've heard of it.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
It's really brilliantly. It's like one of those things where
I bet the person who went they decided to make
it read the script and was like, holy shit, it's
like great, beautifully written, very real and true okay, but
then also a little bit magical okay, because.

Speaker 1 (06:09):
It's so funny. With Atonement, I was like, this is
like a book I would read. And normally I'd been
like I wish I read the book, but this is
like the first time I've been like, I'm so glad
I've watched the movie because there's so many little details,
like I get cinematography now, with the typing being part
of the background, and the music and the little moments
that you just can't see when you're listening to or

(06:30):
reading a book. Yeah, then actually if you love the
movie Atonement, I highly recommend the author Kate Morton. She
does very similar style that World War Two, like epic
kind of historical. Yeah, and like seeing Dunkirk the way
they show it, like I you know, you can't. You
can picture it all you want when you're reading it,
which I fucking love. But it was just done so

(06:52):
well that I just don't think I would have my
imagination would have never taken me there.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
And I think you're so right. Those war scenes in
that movie are so gigantic and like put you there.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
Realistic and then they like slice in real fucking footage
from the time. I mean, it was just I think
one of my favorite movies I've seen a long time now.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
Molly, please correct me when I'm wrong, But I'm almost
positive that it's the same director as Pride and Prejudice.
Am I wrong about that? Yes?

Speaker 1 (07:21):
God damn it, same hundred episodes. The first time you're
wrong about anything? Can you believe?

Speaker 2 (07:28):
Joe Wright directed Pride and Prejudice?

Speaker 1 (07:30):
The new one? Anthony Mengela directed truly, madly, deeply.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
Oh no, no, no, but an.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
Wait, okay, you might not be held.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
On Oh my god, second chance Okay.

Speaker 1 (07:41):
I'm wrong, You're right.

Speaker 2 (07:43):
Oh my hundred. It feels so great.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
How do you feel here? Congratulations so much?

Speaker 2 (07:51):
Oh my god, I guess the first I'd like to
think it the rapture. I guess I have to thank
Georgia because she's I'm here dress Stephen Ip.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
We love you, Stephen, good job, congratulations.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Thank you so much. But Anthony, it's because when I
watched it, loving the Pride and Prejudice so much, I
was like, this man is unbelievable. But Anthony Manguela is
the director of Truly Madly Deeply went on to direct
the English patient.

Speaker 1 (08:23):
Oh, such a good book. So the book. Of course
I read the book.

Speaker 2 (08:27):
She always bragged that back.

Speaker 1 (08:29):
Okay, I'm gonna get rid of these Okay, good I do.

Speaker 2 (08:31):
All right, Wow, that was amazing. Thank you, Mollie, Thank you,
Thank you for your honesty and your vulnerability.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, and you're producing all these episodes, not not five hundred,
but but a lot.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
It feels like it probably fits Jesus. Yeah, there's three
so oh, you know what I was going to say
for the five hundred and this, I don't know if
this has happened to you, We've probably talked about it
before if it has, but I think it was the
first time it happened to me. When I was driving
to work last week before we left for tour, I
got off the freeway. I had just never seen a
bumper sticker. I'd seen pictures of my exactly, so not

(09:06):
from my own car, and so I pull up and
it's ssggm on the right side in the little talking
bubble and on the left side there's just a stick
or a bigfoot, and I was like, this is my purses,
my friend I've never met before, and I'm just sitting
there and I was like, Hong Kong, just like like that.
And the person I was looking at them through their

(09:27):
own rear view mirror and they kind of weren't turning around,
so I think they were just like, why is this
asshole honking at me? So then I was like, Hong
k k Hong Ko Kong. And then I rolled my
window down and just chucked my arm and my whole
head out like that, and they were like they kind
of look horrified, like.

Speaker 1 (09:44):
I borrowed my best friend's car, and I don't know
who this this woman is who's waving her whole box.
She must also be my friend who loves that fucking podcast.
This must be another person who loves that podcast.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
Or loves Bigfoot or Bigfoot loves.

Speaker 1 (09:57):
But she finally did it, Dawn. I think. I think
at the end, well, if you have an sscjam sticker
and you're in Burbank, like, hey, what's up, Karen Wave
said hi to you? Was that you let us know?
It was?

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Yeah, let us know. But also it was really exciting.
Even though I know that people like this podcast and
people support this podcast, they don't it's it do get real,
But to see it like that in the wild, it
truly was kind of like oh, almost like being able
to see it through the eyes of the other like
that's what this kind of looks like.

Speaker 1 (10:31):
It's always exciting.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
Yeah, it was cool.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
Cool. Well, beside we're having a podcast and five hundred
episodes of it, we also have a podcast network.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
Yeah, thousands of episodes on that thing.

Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah, it's called exactly right Media. And here are a
few highlights.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
My Favorite murder now has a brand new YouTube channel.
Hey yeah, so you can watch full episodes of this podcast, minisodes, shorts,
and more at my favorite murder dot video or by
searching my favorite murder on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
They're holding us hostage and making a fuck. Forty plus
women make videos.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
Oh, so please not YouTube, We really like you.

Speaker 1 (11:06):
Not YouTube, just in general, Molly, please go and watch
them so they're not for not.

Speaker 2 (11:12):
Yes, exactly right, all of our strivings and lips liner, lipsliner.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
Lips, liner and contouring is not for not, and for
all your other favorite exactly right shows like this podcast
will kill You ghosted by Roz Fernandez Buried Bones, I
said no gifts. You can still find them all at
YouTube dot com, slash exactly right Media.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
And that's also where you can find MFM animated. That's right.
Our MFM animateds are over at exactly right Media's YouTube page.
And this week we have a brand new clip from
the one and only Nick Terry featuring my iconic and
I'm only saying that because it's written here. Yeah, drunk
Karen Voice from minisod sixty three.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
My absolute favorite. It's so good. Go watch it. And
if that's not enough content for you, then you and
the crying content that I make, then you should join
the fan cult at fan cull dot supercast dot com
for ad free episodes of my favorite murder, exclusive audio
and video merch discounts and access to our private discord server.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
Also one last thing. As we said, we are on
tour and there are still some gold VIP packages available
that include exclusive merch bundles, assigned poster and more. So
check your city availability and grab tickets at my favorite
murder dot com slash Live.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
And thanks for doing all of.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
That, yes and more and caring at all about any
of it.

Speaker 1 (12:28):
Yeah, we appreciate you so much. Okay, okay, you're first right,
Yes I am.

Speaker 2 (12:38):
This is a straight up true crime story and just
as a trigger warning, it includes mention of sexual assault.
It also takes place in and around one major roadway
in the Pacific Northwest Highway twenty in Oregon. That highway
cuts across the state west to east, running from the
Pacific coast to Idaho, often through very remote areas. So

(13:02):
this story is about six victims, all women whose lives
were either ended or torn apart on this highway. They
were all different ages and came from different walks of life,
and we know more about some of these cases than
we do about others. But what we will learn is
that one psychopathic man who knew highway twenty better than
most is presumed to be responsible for what happened to

(13:24):
all of them and potentially many more women who have
gone missing in the state of Oregon. This is the
story of suspected serial killer, convicted murderer, and Oregon State
Highway mechanic John Arthur Ackroyd.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
Oh my God.

Speaker 2 (13:38):
Maren basically got most of the research for this story
from an award winning multi part series called Ghosts of
Highway twenty produced by Oregonian journalists Noel Crombie, Dave Killen,
and Beth Nakamura. We begin in nineteen seventy seven with
twenty year old Marlene Gabrielsen. Marlene is originally from Alaska.

(13:58):
She's a member of the Inner Piac tribe, but now
she lives in the town of Lebanon in northwestern Oregon
with her husband and their brand new baby daughter. So
one night, the couple decides to drop their baby off
with a sitter and head out to the rodeo in Sisters, Oregon,
which is like an hour and a half away, And
barn left me a note But I think it's a

(14:19):
noteworth reading, which is that Marlene is ided in this
research because she very intentionally and very powerfully identifies herself
in the Oregonians reporting Wow, which is really amazing for
what she has been through. So at some point that evening,
when they're at the rodeo, Marlene decides to head home alone.
She said that she doesn't really remember the specifics here,

(14:40):
but it seems like this happened because her and her
husband got into an argument. What we know for sure
is that Marlene's husband stays behind with the car and
she goes, and because it's the late seventies, she's like,
I'll just hitch hike home, totally very common in the
late seventies. She's hitchhiking in. Before long, a car pulls over,
and inside a stranger introduces himself as John. Nothing about

(15:03):
him rings any immediate alarm bells for Marlene. He says
he's in his late twenties, he's back in town after
spending time in the army, and he works for a
local welding company. So Marlene does get a ride home
from John along Highway twenty towards Lebanon, as promised, and
this highway, basically at certain parts are just long, dark,

(15:23):
isolated stretches of road that are surrounded by dense evergreen forest.
That's all that's out there. And there's some old logging
roads that cut off from the highway, but that's basically it.
So out in the middle of all of that, suddenly
John pulls over and violently drags Marlene out of her
seat and puts a knife to her throat, threatening to

(15:43):
kill her unless she does what he says. He then
tears her clothes off, using his blade to cut her
underwear and her boots off of her, and then he
rapes her. After the attack, he tells Marlene, quote, now
what do I do with you? Oh?

Speaker 1 (15:58):
My god?

Speaker 2 (15:59):
So she knows what means he's considering killing her. But
even in these horrific circumstances, Marlene comes up with an
ingenious plan. Somehow. She starts to act and very convincingly
act like she's charmed by John, and it actually works
so much so he asks her to be his girlfriend,
and of course she says yes, and I'll be your

(16:19):
girlfriend as long as you take me home right now,
and he drives her home, knife still at hand. When
they get back to Lebanon, Marlene is able to get
out of his car alive and go home. My god,
So the first family member she encounters when she's there
is her mother in law, and her mother in law
is shocked to see the state that Marlene is in,

(16:40):
so she urges Marlene to get in shower and go
clean herself up, and Marlene says, no, that would wash
away evidence. I need to go straight to the hospital
to get a rape kit. Oh my god, incredible. Yeah,
and she even gives her clothes to the police from
that night with all the information that she can remember
about John Arthur Ackroyd. But it's the late seventies, so

(17:00):
it's not surprising, but it's always heartbreaking hearing these stories.
Instead of protecting her, these investigators immediately doubt her story.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
The fuck they cut her boots. Yeah, like, what the fuck, dude.

Speaker 2 (17:13):
But also she's a native woman, so these are these
built in cultural excuses why people don't have to care,
don't need empathy, or why they are can be lazy,
and also just that that energy and attitude around rape
victims at that time, woman at the time. Yeah, it's
so bad. They actually make Marlene take a polygraph and

(17:34):
they decide she's lying about the sexual assault, So ultimately
they choose not to prosecute John Ackroyd, and years later,
Marlene will tell reporter Noel Crombie quote, I always thought
that's why these people get paid to protect you. They care,
That's what I thought. But they made me feel like
a smelly, drunken native. So I just shrink if they
had only listened to me. End quote. So John Ackroyd

(17:58):
never faces any legal consequence is for Marlene's brutal assault,
although this is obviously cold comfort and eye for an eye.
He does get his ass kicked by Marlene's husband, great,
but the problem is that it's not just Marlene who
suffers because of these investigators dereliction of duty. It will
lead to deadly consequences for many other women.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
Right because now he knows like, oh, I can't let
them live, right.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
Yeah, And also that maybe it won't be that big
of a deal, right, whatever I decide to do totally.
So fast forward about a year and a half from
Marlene's assault, and now it's late December nineteen seventy eight
and John Ackroyd is employed by the State of Oregon
as a highway mechanic. So in this job he drives
up and down Highway twenty, usually between Bend and Newport,

(18:46):
helping stranded motorists, repairing equipment, clearing res and maintaining remote
stretches of road. This is literally a horror movie.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
Yeah, like you've been given this power and a position
of trust. Yeah, even just trust. But you have no
other choice but to trust this person or like rely
on this person.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yes, the good faith that this person that's going to
show up in a tow truck is helping you and
not going to hurt you totally doesn't seem like it
should be that much to ask. This job also gives
him unique access to and familiarity with this highway as
he navigates it alone in his work truck with little
to no supervision. So on Christmas Eve nineteen seventy eight,
thirty five year old Kay Turner, who's a public health

(19:27):
manager from Eugene, is on vacation with her husband and
some friends in Camp Sherman, which is about fifteen miles
from Sisters, which is where Marlene and her husband went
to the rodeo. Kay decides that she's going to go
out for a run. She's a serious runner. She doesn't
think twice about going and doing her workout routine. She
tells her husband she'll probably be home in about an hour.

(19:47):
After two hours pass and she still isn't back. Her
friends starts searching for her, and soon the police join
them and comb the area, wondering if maybe Kay somehow
got lost out in the wilderness, and then they find
some Nike running shoe prints that they think are Kays,
but there's also a large boot print there and signs
of a struggle in the nearby dirt. In start contrast

(20:09):
to how Marlene is treated, though the police immediately take
Kay's case very seriously. She's a white woman. They immediately
start to interview locals, and as they do, one name
keeps coming up, John Ackroyd. He's interviewed on January eleventh,
nineteen seventy nine, a couple weeks after Kay goes missing,
and he admits that he did see her running the

(20:29):
morning of Christmas Eve. But the police get sidetracked when
they dig into Kay's private life. They learn that she's
had extramarital affairs, so they focus on those leads and
they start scrutinizing her grieving husband Dude. But this is
all a dead end and John Ackroyd manages once again
to not be investigated. Eight months later, John Ackroyd reinserts

(20:53):
himself into Kay's still active case. One afternoon, he walks
into a store in Camp Sherman, where Kay went missing,
claims that he's just gone hunting and found bones and
a pair of jogging shorts in the woods. He insists
that these clothes must be K turners. So when investigators
arrive at the scene and they speak to John, they
immediately feel like he knows more than he's letting on.

(21:15):
And when he's eventually polygraphed, he fails a question about
whether he'd ever touched K, and he starts spinning a
whole new theory. Now, he suddenly claims that he'd first
found K's body back in February, two months after she
went missing, and he says she was lying in the
snow with her throat cut and several visible bullet wounds.
He tells police that he didn't report it then because

(21:37):
he was afraid of becoming a suspect. Investigators smell a
rat and finally John Ackwright is on their radar, but
they don't have any hard evidence, so they have to
let him go. Twelve years go by, and now it's
nineteen ninety and the investigators assigned to the K Turner case,
get a call from the Lynn County District Attorney, So
to give you a sense of location, to get to
Lynn County from Camp Sherman, where k was last seen,

(22:00):
and it's an hour's drive west on Highway twenty. Lynn
County is also where Marlene lives and sisters. Oregon is
in nearby Dushoots County. So all of these areas are
in the same general swath of Oregon, and they're all
connected by Highway twenty. So when the DA asks investigators
if they've heard of a Lynn County resident named John
Arthur Ackroyd, of course they say they have. The DA

(22:23):
then explains that John's stepdaughter, thirteen year old Rashonda Pickle,
has just been reported missing. Rashonda is a young girl.
She's playful, she's silly, she loves animals. She's very close
with her big brother, Byron, who's a year older than her.
Rashonda's mother, Linda describes her as quote wonderful and ads
quote you couldn't ask for anything sweeter. But life is

(22:47):
not safe at home for Rashonda because in the mid eighties,
her mom marries John Ackroyd, believing that he's a good
Man that she's providing stability for herself and her children. Instead,
John reveals himself almost immediately as violent and abusive, particularly
towards his step children. Rashonda's in the fifth grade, she

(23:07):
starts showing up to school with clear signs of physical abuse.
She'll then confide to her friends that her stepfather is
also sexually abusing her. Rashonda tries to stay with relatives
or friends as much as she can. She's in fifth grade.
Yeah no, that's just heartbreaking. So she doesn't have to
live under the same roof as him, and she does
everything she can to avoid being alone with him. She

(23:28):
and Byron lean on each other during this time. They
just focus on turning eighteen, when they can finally escape
his abuse and his household once and for all. In
July of nineteen ninety, Rashonda finally tells her biological father
about this abuse she's been suffering at the hands of John,
and the biological father lives in a different part of Oregon,
so he calls the mother, Linda and threatens to get

(23:50):
the police involved. The next day, Rareshonda vanishes, so the
police learn that John was alone with Rashonda the day
she vanished, which was frightening, knowing how desperately Rashonda tried
to avoid ever being alone with him. But her mom
was at work, her brother was out of town visiting
their father. John was supposed to be fixing a snowplow

(24:11):
at his job. He'll later tell police that he'd taken
the day off because he was waiting for parts to
come in, but according to Noel Crombie's reporting from The Oregonian,
that made no sense to his supervisors because John had
a lot of other work he could have been doing
that day. John claims that he invited Rashanda out into
the woods to take pictures of deer. This is a

(24:32):
claim that baffles everyone in the family because he's never
shown an interest in wildlife photography. According to him, Rashonda
turned down his offer and stayed behind at the house,
and when he returned later that day after going to
take pictures of deer by himself, she was gone. Of course,
there's a ton of immediate suspicion around John, and while
under interrogation, the mask begins to slip. He offers up

(24:55):
a bizarre theory about a stranger coming to the door
and abducting Rashonda. Saying almost casually, quote, eighty seven pounds
is nothing for somebody to carry. You hit him over
the head and they have no fight.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
Oh my god, how fucking chilling. Yeah. Like to be
in that interrogation room and hear that.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
Yeah, and just knowing it's like, that's the thing that
I think is amazing because psychopaths work very hard to
be smart, but they always think they're the smartest people
in the room. And it's that when you watch you know,
any true crime show, you see what bad liars they are.

Speaker 1 (25:26):
Yeah, not even that liars, Like they think too that
like this the person they're telling this thing that you know,
they think is totally normal to but like to hear that,
like you're not a psychopath, hearing that is fucking chilling.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
It's chilling. And then also if you're not that person
talking like and you clearly this is you're saying one thing, yeah,
but what's actually coming through is, oh my god, you
know how much she weighs. You've picked her up, like
you know how to You're giving yourself away and you
don't realize it. The red flag of him knowing his
stepdaughter's exact body weight is raised even higher when John

(26:00):
tells investigators, unprompted that on the night Rashonda disappeared, he
and Linda had great sex.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:07):
As Noel Crombie reports, this is quote significant because they
almost never had sex. Akroyd's lo libido was the source
of such open conflict that Linda's teenage son Byron knew
of their trouble. Oh not healthy, not okay, No. Most
disturbing though, John seems fixated on describing his stepdaughter's body
in sexualized terms to the fucking police.

Speaker 1 (26:31):
He's so.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, can't control it. No, he even tells officers her
exact bras eyes at one point, and when he's eventually
shown a pair of pants that police find in the
woods and believe our reshondas he becomes sexually aroused in
front of them, are.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
You fucking kidding me? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (26:50):
Just a complete animal like this, that's the most wow. Yeah, yeah,
now I never heard that. Well, we're gonna take a
little break.

Speaker 1 (27:00):
And everyone has to wash her fucking hand leech bath.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
But again, the evidence against John Ackroyd is entirely circumstantial,
so they have to let them go.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
No, no, no, the police are.

Speaker 2 (27:12):
Doing everything they can to build the strongest case they
can against him, not only in Rashanda's case, but in Kay's,
which is now picking up steam after being cold for
several years. And that's because investigators on Ky's case are
going back through the case file and they are looking
for new avenues to explore, and when they do that,
they find the name Roger dale Beck. Now, Roger was

(27:34):
close friends with John Ackroyd, and he claimed to be
with him the day that Kaye was reported missing, and
Roger's then wife Pam provided their alibi for that morning,
but police never looked into Roger's potential involvement in Kay's
murder until now. So as they dig, police finally find
the lead they've been waiting for. They learn from members

(27:56):
of Roger's own family that, on different occasions, he'd bragged
about rape and killing a jogger back in the late seventies. Yeah,
who I mean for real.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
Like, are even casually having beers with a friend or
an acquaintance and then fucking like what, oh my god,
Like this is psychotic.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
Well, and it's also like, can we get a little
perspective here where it's like everything that people called political
correctness in like the nineties was trying to correct shit
like this where it's like, Hey, if your bro brags
about raping and killing someonecking around, I don't know, make
a phone call.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
Yeah, pick up that phone. Oh no, he likes to
brag about that. He makes up strongties. He's still my
very best friend. Like, what the fuck?

Speaker 2 (28:39):
Insane? So when investigators try to reconfirm Roger and John's
alibi for the day k went missing, Roger's now ex
wife Pam completely falls apart and tells them she lied
both meant had actually come home covered in blood on
Christmas Eve nineteen seventy eight. Roger made her burn his clothes,
destroy his brand new boots, and threatened her into covering

(29:01):
for him.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
I'm sure he was terrifying. Yeah, like the terror of
that and then what are you gonna, yeah do stand up.

Speaker 2 (29:08):
Right, He'll know it was you, right, I mean the
just so. Now it's May nineteen ninety two. This is
two years after Rashaanda goes missing. She still hasn't been found,
but investigators working Kay Turner's disappearance have managed to put
together a really strong case, and there is a sense
that John Ackroyd could be charged at any moment. But
before the authorities can close in two more young women

(29:31):
from the same area in Oregon go missing. They are
seventeen year old Melissa Sanders from Sweet Home, Oregon, and
nineteen year old Sheila Swanson of Lebanon So. Melissa and
Sheila disappeared during a family camping trip with the Sanders
family to the Oregon Coast town of Newport. They're together,
mm hmm, and the family was there too. The girls

(29:52):
share a tent that night, but early the next morning,
when Melissa's family wakes up, they find both girls are gone.
At first, their families think they hitchhiked home, because Malitia
and Sheila did sometimes spend days away from their families
in their late teens, and they'd actually even called their
respective boyfriends to tell them they were going to leave
the family camping trip. But when days pass with no

(30:15):
sign of either of them, they're reported missing. Weeks later.
In June of nineteen ninety two, John Arthur Ackroyd is
finally arrested for the murder of Kay Turner. Roger dale Beck,
has presumed accomplice in Kay's murder, is also arrested. This
is fourteen years after Kay went missing from Camp Sherman
back in nineteen seventy eight and fifteen years since John's

(30:37):
first known act of sexual violence against women, which was
when Marlene was sexually assaulted in seventy seven.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
I imagine like being their families or Marlene in this case,
and waiting that long to even have movement in your
like I.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
Just but also waiting that long knowing that this monster
is just walking around, which is such a cliche, but
when you think about the fact of it, where it's.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
Like, yeah, it's it's not like an we don't know
who it is, we haven't found a suspect yet. It's
like that it is clearly to everyone this fucking person.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
It's this person and his fucking friend. Yeah, Like it's horrifying.
So right out of the gate. What police wondered that
if John knew he was about to get arrested and
decided to kill more women while he still had the chance,
But when he's pressed about Melissa and Sheila's disappearances, he
doesn't admit anything. Several months later, in October of nineteen

(31:31):
ninety two, hunters find Melissa and Sheila's bodies in the
woods outside Eddieville, Oregon, off Highway twenty, about twenty miles
from the campsite in Newport where the girls were at
the scene, police discover a rivet, which is something a
mechanic might have, but they don't have much else to
go on. Eventually, Melissa and Sheila's case goes cold, so

(31:52):
the year after John's arrest in nineteen ninety three, He's
tried for the murder of Kay Turner. The case against
him is largely circumstantial, but prosecutors lean into a few
key pieces of evidence. Kay's TIMEX watched, her clothes and
her skeletal remains. So the watch is important because it
stopped ticking the morning she disappeared, and it's presumed it

(32:12):
stopped working at the time of the attack it was broken.
This gives police a pretty strong sense of the exact
time she was killed, which that time frame dovetails with
when John told police he had spoken with her, he
told them.

Speaker 1 (32:25):
That, yeah, didn't he find her body too, like.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
He claims to have you. Right on top of that,
forensic testing shows that Kay's clothes had been cut off,
which calls back to them o of Marlene Gabrielson's assault.

Speaker 1 (32:38):
Which they didn't fucking believe happened.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
So much suffering mm hmm. With that kind just because
of an ego move like tyle.

Speaker 1 (32:46):
But don't worry, it's just women who are suffering.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
They just yeah, that's right. So prosecutors also have John's
own words, which are damning in and of themselves. Because
John did tell police he found Kay's body two months
after she was killed, he thought she looked like she'd
been slashed and shot. In the prosecution Hammer's home, that
he could not have known these things, given how badly
the body had been decomposed, unless he was the man

(33:10):
that killed her. The jury deliberates for four hours and
comes back and convicts John Ackroyd on two counts of
aggravated murder and three counts of murder. His accomplice, Roger
dale Beck, is also convicted. Again, this is one conviction
when John Ackroyd is suspected of many crimes against women.
Still it's a huge victory for the investigators who work

(33:30):
to get him off the streets. One of those investigators
is a man named Bill Hamlin, who championed Kay's case
and is arguably the man who secured John Ackroyd's conviction,
and he will later tell the Oregonian quote it saved
women's lives if he had stayed out. If he had
never been convicted, he and maybe Beck would have done
more crimes and killed more women. For sure, he managed

(33:53):
to get through that whole thing without ever getting caught,
not because he was all that smart, but because he
slipped through end quote. Here's my edit to that line,
but because the police didn't do their jobs. Fast forward
to twenty ten. At this point, John has served nearly
two decades in prison and he's eligible for parole soon,

(34:14):
I mean twenty years. So because of that detective's dig
back into Rashonda's disappearance with renewed vigor, they're hoping they
can create a strong enough case to bring charges and
ensure John stays in prison for the rest of his life.
But when they press him for information on Rashonda, he
doesn't give anything up. Meanwhile, cold case investigators are also

(34:34):
looking at the nineteen ninety two double murder of Melissa
Sanderson Sheila Swanson, and in twenty twelve they pieced together
information that had inexplicably gone overlooked in the nineties, probably
because of sloppy police work. They learn that John Ackroyd
was a regular at a twenty four hour restaurant called Sherry's,
which was frequented by local teens, and he had earned

(34:57):
the nickname the Perv because of how creepy he was
about all those teenage patrons of Sherry's restaurant. Among those
patrons were Melissa and Sheila, who John had been seen
interacting with at the restaurant. So witnesses come forward and
tell police that they saw two teens hitchhiking and entering
a state truck that matched the description of John's work vehicles,

(35:19):
and the rivet found near the scene is determined to
match the kind commonly carried by the highway workers. Most damningly,
one of John's coworkers will later report seeing John covered
in blood around the exact time the girls go missing.
At first, his coworker dismissed it because John said he
hid a deer with his truck and got bloody clearing
out the remains, so the whole incident goes unreported. But

(35:43):
John never admits to any involvement in Melissa in Sheila's deaths,
and because of that, there's still a lot we don't
know about what happened to them. But the theory is
that after talking with them at Sherry's, John knew the
girls were camping at the coast that weekend and probably
lied and say he'd be in the area. If they
wanted to get a ride home from him, they could
just let him know, and clearly they took him up

(36:06):
on that offer. As investigators continue working Melissa and Sheila's case,
there's a movement in Rashonda's case. In twenty thirteen, twenty
three years after she was last seen alive, John Ackroyd
pleads no contest to Rashonda Pickles murder. This means that
he neither admits nor denies having anything to do with
her death, and in exchange for this no contest plea,

(36:27):
which effectively closes Rashonda's case, he agrees to never pursue
being paroled.

Speaker 1 (36:32):
Wow, my good literal deal with the devil.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
Yeah, the plea is sealed for a long time, so
we still don't know the details on why he does this,
but it means he'll live the rest of his life
behind bars.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
It just feels so like this little girl was not
important enough to pursue justice. It's like, let's use this
as a throwaway bargaining chip, but unfortunately it's the best possible. Well, yeah,
because everything's been so fucked. It's the best possible you
know resolution.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
Yeah, and it's it's a bargaining chip, but it's not
a throwaway because it actually works, right, So there is that.
But yes, the idea that he is not in some
way forced to tell that.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
Where where her body is? Yes, what he did to her.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah, the answers for both Melissa and Sheila just don't
have to be given.

Speaker 1 (37:21):
And they've just been completely discarded by society. Yeah, it's
just horrifying.

Speaker 2 (37:25):
It feels like that whole metric needs to be readjusted
to not like, what do we do just to keep
them behind bars, because like we have to do whatever
it takes, and it's like, no, just do whatever it
takes to actually get the information out of him. Just
a few years later, in December twenty sixteen, John Arthur
Ackroyd dies in prison at age sixty seven, taking many secrets,

(37:47):
you know, presumably including the location of his own stepdaughter's
body to the grave. So today, investigators suspect that John
Arthur Ackroyd might be behind other on soolt cases in Oregon,
many of which involved remains found near Highway twenty. This
includes the nineteen seventy six cold case involving a victim

(38:09):
found near the Highway who was only known at the
time as Swamp Mountain Jane Doe for decades because where
she was found. Just days before this recording, in September
of twenty twenty five, police have announced genetic genealogy has
now identified this person as Marian McCord. Holy shit, so
they just figured out who this Jane Doe was.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
Oh my god, chills.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
Yeah. Yeah. So for the families of his victims, the
wounds will never heal. Rashonda Pickle's beloved brother, Byron never
stop fighting for justice for his little sister. He keeps
her memory alive by telling his children about Aunt Janny,
which was her nickname, and he has a tattoo of
her on his arm. Sheila's brother, Bart Swanson has also

(38:53):
been her biggest advocate over the years, helping to keep
interest in her case alive, and he tells The Oregonian
they'd be sometimes it's the location where her body was found, saying, quote,
I go up there to, you know, pretty much remind
myself that I still haven't let it go, and to
let her know that I haven't let it go. Marlene
Gabrielson has had to live with the trauma of being

(39:14):
sexually assaulted and not being believed by the people who
were supposed to fight for her after her attack, She
tells the Orgonian quote, I figured it was because I
was nothing. I wasn't ever going to amount to anything.
I was brown and I was ugly, So you know
you're not going to amount to anything you don't think
you are. I think that's why I cowered so much

(39:34):
back then. My first thought when I read that message,
and she means from Noel Crombie's the reporter that reached
out to her, was why would she care? Because that's
the whole mindset that I've had about this thing from
the gate. But that's what made me come because there
was somebody who actually cared. This makes me feel really
good because there's a reason I am here, and I

(39:56):
guess I am not that ugly and I'm not worthless.
I'm Marlene K. Gabrielson. I'm in New piac I'm a
strong woman. Oh fucking And that's the story of the
investigation into John Arthur Ackroyd and those cases linked to
Highway twenty.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
It's these when everyone is just in the media like
why do women love true crime so much. It's so
like what's wrong with you that you're interested in? And
it's like, because this is how little we have mattered
for so fucking long. If you think it's that different now,
then you're not paying attention.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
Then please log on to any website and check out
what our bodily autonomy status is.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
But also interested because we care. Can you imagine caring
that much?

Speaker 2 (40:44):
But also we're interested because it's about us, And especially
like in Marlene's case, the more marginalized you are, the
more you're affected and the less people help you. So
we as white women care and get upset. But it's like,
but as you go and you're more marginalized and you're
less represented and you're less empowered, people care less and
less totally, until people literally are like, oh, you came

(41:07):
here to report a rape and we're going to fucking
polygraph you right.

Speaker 1 (41:11):
Your throwaway, Like we have to care ten times as
much because we're cared about as women ten times less.

Speaker 2 (41:20):
Well, and also it's like, guess what women are fifty
percent of the fucking population if not fifty one, So
our caring is like everybody can just stop asking that question. Yeah,
you just accept the fact that women are concerned and
care and it's about themselves as much as it's about
other women, because we have to for each other, right,
that's the idea.

Speaker 1 (41:40):
Exactly, we're the targets. I don't want to do my
story now because it is so different from that. Wow,
great job, thank you.

Speaker 2 (41:49):
What do you mean this is what we do? Have
you seen them big lit up number come on, balloon
wi gout balloons for God's sake? Okay, you know, changing
it up is what we're all about.

Speaker 1 (42:04):
Yeah, great job, thank you. It was an incredible story
I'd never heard before, and I'm shocked and horrified.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
I mean, it's so horrifying. I really liked you know,
our producer, Molly It suggested like just doing straight up
true crime.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
Yeah for a five hundred Yeah, and just you.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
Know, like a classic. And Maren did an amazing job.
Yeah that was incredible.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
Yeah all right, Well mine is not just well mine
is true crime really?

Speaker 2 (42:30):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (42:30):
Yeah, you know what it is. Because we're gonna start
in Sherman Oaks or Beverly Hills, depending on who's fucking
arguing about zip codes?

Speaker 2 (42:39):
Do people in Sherman Oaks think they in any way
live in Beverly Hill.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
No, but there's like a weird ZIP code dispute going
on that we're not getting into.

Speaker 2 (42:46):
I'm going to get into it myself.

Speaker 1 (42:49):
We're in Sherman Oaks technically, at five am on the
morning of December twentieth, two thousand and eight, number two thousand.

Speaker 2 (42:56):
And eight, I do a very innocent time.

Speaker 1 (42:59):
Yeah, very stupid. A security guard in the gated community
of the Mullholland Estates has just realized that something is
a miss at one of the mansions in the neighborhood.
When the guard gets to the front door, he sees
that it's opened. No one appears to be in the house,
but he can tell the house has been ransacked. He
calls the police and once they arrive, he becomes clear

(43:20):
that burglars have taken a whopping two million dollars worth
of jewelry and watches from this estate. In today's money,
that two million dollars would be.

Speaker 2 (43:33):
You said it was two thousand and eight, so that's
twenty a little less than twenty years ago.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
Yeah, two mill in today's money three five three. But
great job, I mean that was close. Yeah, that was great.
Police look at surveillance footage which shows what appears to
be a man in a sweatshirt. You know who's the burglar?
And they say the person seems to know the house. Well.
What police do not know yet is that this burglar

(43:58):
is not a professional who has been casing the joint.
And also the mansion doesn't belong to just any old person.
It's Paris Hilton's home. Oh and it's been hit three
times before by this same group of burglars. The blak Karen,
that's all I was like, I can't do this now.
It's literally called the Bling Ring.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
Yes, no, this is what we like. It's a we do,
hot and cold, get back and forth. Yes, the full
scope of life.

Speaker 1 (44:28):
We're a fucking paradox. This group, mostly teenagers, would go
on to burglarize their homes of celebrities for close to
a year before finally being caught. This is a story
about obsession with celebrity and status, but maybe also a
story about how our teenage selves aren't necessarily the people
we are forever, but our mistakes sure are. This is

(44:49):
the story of the Bling Ring, The Bling Ring. Did
you ever watch the documentary about it? No?

Speaker 2 (44:55):
I just watched the movie movie.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
Okay, got it? Well, the main sources for the story
is a Vanity FA article that was written by a
woman named Nancy Joe Sayals called the suspects were Louis Batons,
and that was the basis for the Sofia Coppola movie
The Bling Ring. And there's also a twenty twenty three
HBO documentary called The Ringleader, and then another documentary that
I watch called The Real Bling Ring Hollywood Heist, and

(45:17):
then also a short lived e reality show called Pretty Wild,
and the rest of the sources can be found in
their show notes.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
This movie. When I saw it, it's like that kind
of thing where you I don't like thinking about other
people's family sometimes because I'm like it's just very Irish
Catholic for me. But I'm like, they're not doing it right.
It's not how you're supposed to do it.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
Anythink like the teenagers were raised wrong or what.

Speaker 2 (45:40):
Yes, Leslie Men plays this mom, and she's just.

Speaker 1 (45:43):
Like, you don't have to say more about what Leslie
Man played, because I fucking know who she played on anything.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
But there's a part where she's like she doesn't care
if the girls go to school. She just wants them
to work on their like affirmation manifestation or you're.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
Literally talking about I know who you're talking about. And
I watched a little bit of like the reality stuff
and I felt the same way about her.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
You're just like get the stomach ache of like, oh no,
not it's either they don't have a chance in the
world or the world doesn't have a chance against people
like this.

Speaker 1 (46:11):
Totally. Yeah, it very much made me go, Wow, I'm
so glad I don't have teenage daughters. Oh like, I
just yeah, I love that Leslie manfully the moment. Okay,
he's really good, She's so good. Okay. To understand the blingering,
we really have to go back to the celebrity media
landscape of the early two thousands, because it is so
fucking different than it is now. And thank god, there's

(46:32):
like kind of a reckoning happening. But it was so
trashy and so awful and so insidious and so you know,
damaging to our psyche back then, yes, for sure, horrifying. Right, So, like,
at this time in the early two thousands, US magazine
goes from being a monthly industry focused magazine to being

(46:53):
a weekly magazine focusing squarely on celebrities. So actually Sophia
Coppola cites this as the inciting incident that fomented the
culture that resulted in the robberies because of this magazine.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
That makes sense.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
The magazine and most the ones that quickly copied it
was full of paparazzi photos of celebrities, some of them
actual movie stars, some of them reality stars, some people
whose names you know, but you're you're not even sure why.
Like this is when Paris Hilton became famous for just
being Paris Hilton, and which you know, launched just so
many just celebrities.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
Who were just they didn't really do any It wasn't
like they were talents. It wasn't like, oh my god,
what a great actor. Now I want to see them
at the gas station.

Speaker 1 (47:34):
It's just fame, which also meant to a lot of
younger people that they could possibly do that as well. Absolutely,
you know what I mean, Like there was an opportunity
just to be famous for being famous.

Speaker 2 (47:44):
Yeah, that was simultaneous with like American Idol kind of
shows where literally it was just like you can, yah,
you can go stand in line out in front of
CBS and see if you can totally. I remember getting
a job in the late nineties writing those they used
to do like basically fashion police. I think it was
called fashion police, Yeah, And it was just like they

(48:04):
would show a picture of a celebrity with a fucked
up outfit on, and then there was all these commentators.

Speaker 1 (48:09):
I remember just tearing them apart.

Speaker 2 (48:11):
And I did it. I did it like for three
different times, I think I did it, And you would
write like each celebrity picture they'd give you had to
write like five jokes, so they'd pick one from the
remember this, and the only place you could go was
mean and meaner and meaner. And I remember on the
third one, I went, what the fuck am I doing?

(48:32):
And then I just didn't turn it in and I
never got asked to do it again, where I was like,
this is not like, yes, it's good to have one
hundred and fifty dollars, but like, what the fuck is
this for?

Speaker 1 (48:42):
Well, that's exactly it, because I was also going to say.
They did things like who wore it better? Yeah, where
they'd showed a photo of two women always wearing the
same outfit and then tear one of them apart and
say the other one looked amazing. Ye, you couldn't choose
both being like looking great, No, who wore it better?
There was Star without makeup, and then there was best
and Worst beach bodies. It was so toxic. It was

(49:07):
just it just you know, created a generation of women
with eating disorders, myself included entirely.

Speaker 2 (49:13):
Again, it's the launching pad for the facebooks Hot or
Not Right world where women absolutely were primed to be like,
oh wait, I guess I either I need to figure
out if I'm hot or not and then try to
get hot so that.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
Yeah, I'm not or not otherwise I don't have worth,
yeah at all.

Speaker 2 (49:30):
It was everything yes, and.

Speaker 1 (49:32):
So yeah, there's this frothing paparazzi culture who is just
making so much money off of this. That's what it
was like. And it's in this environment in two thousand
and six that a girl named Rachel Lee and Nick
Prugo first find each other as sophomores at Indian Hills
High School, which caters to kids who have struggled in
more traditional schools in calabasas rich juvie kids, rich kids

(49:57):
who can't Yeah, I mean essentially, I went to one
of those schools an Irvine, you know what I mean,
which like it was called self and it was the
like you hate school and you're not doing well and
your family doesn't force you to go to school, so
this is what you have to do now to get
to graduate. Oh so it was like the alternate school.
He was ping pong. So I'm pretty good of ping
pong now. And we went there for like a semester

(50:19):
and went back to regular school because I was just like,
I got it this, I have to do something with
my life. Yeah, but it was Yeah, it was all
the kids. Basically, was any kid in this affluent neighborhood
that had broken families, Like really, that's all we had
in common and became friends is because none of us
had supervision. We were neglected, We didn't have the money

(50:40):
that everyone else had, and so we didn't really give
a shit about school. Yeah, and we were fucking teased there.
We were made fun of there. We were like, I
didn't want to go there. I was out. I was
a total outcast. Yeah, so why would I go? Instead?
You go to self where people are actually nice.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
To you and you get to play some ping pong, some.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
Fucking hardcore ping pong. Yeah, I get it. And also
I be eventually when I was like in my early twenties.
I was a lunch lady in the valley at one
of these schools myself for elementary through high school. And
these are the sweetest, most wonderful kids who couldn't hack
it in the LAUSD school system in the valley. And
I'm telling you more than half of them were living

(51:19):
in group homes. So it wasn't These were not bad kids,
they just didn't have the resources that everyone else had.

Speaker 2 (51:26):
Yeah, they're support and also it's weird because there's some
kids who have nothing but resources, right, and it's not
a good thing. Now.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
It's also wearing that uncrustables because the kids loved them
and I was like, I'm gonna try this. I lived
off of them. Okay, So enough about me and uncrustables.
So this girl, Rachel Lee and Nick Prugo, they meet
each other at this school and they both have issues
getting along with their families. Rachel had been kicked out

(51:55):
of Calabasas High School for stealing something from another girl,
and Nick was kicked out of Calabasas High School as
well for excessive absences, which is like the fact that
you're just like punished for that instead of like what's
going on in his life that this that he's not
coming to school is so horrifying to me.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
Yeah, it's like, so basically there's clearly a lack of support, right, and.

Speaker 1 (52:16):
You're a child and you're being held responsible for the.

Speaker 2 (52:19):
Fact that you no one will get you to school.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
There's no follow through. Yeah, like maybe you have some
you know. And also he had been a troubled kid.
He had been diagnosed with ADHD, so he probably wasn't
taking care of the way he needed to be. Yeah,
you know, so I just these kids, I feel for them.
So Nick and Rachel they feel like outsiders, and then
they meet each other and just fall immediately in friendship love.

(52:44):
Nick is gay during a time when the average high
schooler here's gay slers multiple times a day. It was
very casual. Then Rachel's Korean and has always felt out
of place in her majority white town, and it's at
a time when the beauty standard is blindingly white and
being beautiful is seen as a teenager's highest duty. So
it's really depressing for them. They're both very into fashion

(53:06):
and celebrities and the very luxury brand focused aesthetic of
the era. You remember jusu Co tour, You had a
whole wardrobe for my whole.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
Ass was covered in that brand. But also I think
there's you know, especially in the valley. Yeah, I mean
that's like the valley in Beverly Hills to that's the
center of like materialistic kind of like here's what anybody
cares about, like what kind.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
Of car do you drive? And it's aspirational. You could
easily become part of that world if you play your
cards right. Yeah, you know, as Rachel will put it
many years later, quote, I felt this insatiable energy to
have as much as I could have. But that was
kind of the energy back then end quote. And so
Rachel and Knit quickly beform a deep, all consuming friendship.

(53:49):
Remember those fucking friendships in high school that were so amazing.
They're always talking or texting or iming each other, and
they just find this like kindred spirit in each other.
So sometime in two thousand and seven, Nick and Rachel
start burglarizing homes. I just I don't know why, like
I feel for them, and I feel like, by the

(54:09):
grace of God, there goes wah, you know, not burglarizing,
just doing really fucking stupid shit in a time when
stupid shit sticks to you permanent records exactly early nineties.
You can't track my shit.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
But hold on, how did they get to that?

Speaker 1 (54:23):
Okay, because here's what happens, saying it's kind of brilliant.
They find out that a classmate is going to be
out of town with their family. It's a richest fuck family,
and so they go there when they know no one's
going to be home, and they break in at this
classmate's house. They find a box with thousands of dollars
of cash in it. It's originally reported as eight thousand dollars,

(54:45):
but it gets bandied about maybe it was over twenty
thousand dollars. In today's money, it could have been worth
about forty thousand dollars. But they find it and they
take it and they go on a shopping spree on
rodeo drive with it, and I fucking get this thing
of like, how come everyone, I cause I used to
shoplift when I was a kid. I will say that
right now. You can't fucking come get me or come

(55:06):
fucking get me if you want, But I wasn't. I
was undera I used to shoplift, And it was this
feeling of like I deserve this everyone else in my
affluent community has everything they want. I get made fun
of for not I fucking deserve this, which clearly isn't true.
But I was a child, so that it made absolute

(55:26):
sense to.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
Me that, like it'll solve the problem.

Speaker 1 (55:28):
Yeah, like this is how I get mine too, So
I get that. I wrote about it in our book.
So they do that hit, and then they take up
this hobby that they call checking cars, and so they
basically just walk by luxury cars in their neighborhood and
see if the doors are unlocked. Lock your fucking doors, right,
like as we always say. When they find one that

(55:49):
is open, they plunder it for cash and credit cards
and then go on more shopping trips with this. By
their senior year of high school, the fall of two
thousand and eight, they hatch a plan to start robbing
celebrities houses and decide they're going to art with Paris Hilton.

Speaker 2 (56:01):
Why not?

Speaker 1 (56:01):
Yeah, it's so easy for them to do this. They
find a subscription based website that lists celebrity home addresses
on it, and then they go to Google Earth to
kind of map out the house like see roots to
get into the house, and then they go on social
media and like TMZ and see the celebrity themselves saying
I'm in Abiza, I'm in New York filming this thing.

(56:24):
I'm gonna be out tonight at this fucking bar. And
so they just know when the celebrity is going to
be out of town, they know where they live, they
know how to get in.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
Yeah, they can track it all, Thank yous magazine.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
Yeah, it's creepily easy for them to do this.

Speaker 2 (56:36):
See innocent days of the early Internet.

Speaker 1 (56:39):
Right. So they study TMZ and Paris Hilton social media
and know she's going to be out of town for
a few days in October. They look at her gated
community on Google Earth and they find a hill in
the back of the house where they think they can
get onto the property without being noticed, and it works.
When they approach the front door of Paris's eight thousand
square foot Mediterranean style man, they find a key under

(57:02):
the mat. That's how safe she feels in her community.

Speaker 2 (57:07):
Also, she doesn't have a house sitter. I know, I know,
just a richy rich person that doesn't just have someone there.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
I don't think they think about it then.

Speaker 2 (57:15):
I guess they didn't. They do now they didn't have to.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
When we go out of town at all for touring.
My friend stays at our house, not just cause we
have pets, but because I don't want to lead a
home completely unattended. There's never not someone at my house.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Yeah, we get it, we get it. No one can
rob you.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
They find a key under the mat and they let
themselves in. On this first visit, they kind of just
explore her house. They go into the night club room,
like this is a very wealthy woman. Then they do
they do this is brilliant, not brilliant. They do this
very smart thing where they fish through all of her
purses because she has hundreds of beautiful purses and she

(57:52):
goes out all the time, and so there's just crumpled
bills in every purse from all her nights out.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
That's really smart.

Speaker 1 (57:59):
Hundreds and huns and fifties that they just she just
crams back in her purse, puts her purse back on.
Eventually she'll grab it again, and you know, like she
doesn't care that there are all these waded up dollars.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
She is literally filthy rich exactly.

Speaker 1 (58:12):
So they take all of those, they say, they take
a lot of coke, like they find you know, baggies
of coke in the purses, but we're like, we don't
let's allegedly, we don't want Paris Hilton, who's the victim
of this crime. We don't want to be like saying
that she's a fucking coke head. Seems like they were
careful to make it not totally obvious that someone had
been there, Like so she I don't know if she
knew at first.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
She has a nightclub room exactly exactly.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
So they take little things like a bottle of grey
Goose on the way out, that sort of thing. They
return to Paris's house two more times that fall, and
they also start bringing some of their other friends and
associates into the scheme, which is a bad idea. Say yeah,
it feels a little less like a scheme though, and
more like the way teens like to break into abandoned buildings.
Are just kind of trying their luck in a way,

(58:57):
and they're so unaware of the consequences that you're stupid
fucking actions as a teenager will bring.

Speaker 2 (59:02):
Especially when what's really taking up most of your attention
is can I get a Chanelle purse? Can I get
a label? Fill in the blank blank?

Speaker 1 (59:11):
And I'm not good enough unless I have those things.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
Absolutely. Part of this includes stealing many thousands of dollars
worth of clothing and jewelry for them to wear like
they just want to dress the part. In the expanded group,
there are some other kids from their school, some friends
of friends. It kind of becomes this unorganized group of
people who are all doing this together. And there are
a couple older adults though. This includes a man named

(59:35):
Roy Lopez Junior, whom one of the group knows from
her job at a restaurant, and a man named Johnny
Ajar who goes by your favorite name ever, Johnny Dangerous,
Johnny Dangerous. You have the first part right, well, yeah,
well because his name is joy Johnny Dangerous.

Speaker 2 (59:54):
That is ridiculous. Yes, And what's Johnny Dangerous's deal?

Speaker 1 (59:57):
You're going to be shocked to hear this? Okay, he's
a Hollywood promoter. What I don't think any everyone who
doesn't live in LA knows like promoters. Hollywood nightclub promoters,
especially back in the early two thousands and like late nineties,
were just this like breed of dude tooth pictus. Oh,
they were like slimy, but they could probably get you

(01:00:18):
into the club for sure, especially if you're under age.

Speaker 2 (01:00:21):
Slimy but not unattractive, Yes, kind of there's a charisma there.

Speaker 1 (01:00:25):
But also they're like businessmen, yes they are, or they're
like marketing people.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
I told you about that. This is one of my
favorite memories, and I'm going to try to do it quickly.
I was turning. Remember the old DMV that used to
be off of Vine above between Sunset and Hollywood, and
it's like a DMV there. Yeah, I'd always go there
because there was rarely a line.

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
So I was driving in that neighborhood and I was
taking a right hand turn in my old car. Simultaneously
there was this dude taking a left so our cars
were passing and we were our window, you know, we
were passing each other, and he was super good looking,
but he was like shaved.

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
Head, yeah, very clean cut, like well.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
She guy was like super tan, and he had a
V neck silk shirt that was open, like way open
down here, and he had a big necklace and he
had like a big ring. He had a toothpick in
his mouth, and I was just like and I just
staring at him because I was like, who is this guy?
Like as we're passing each other, and he just very
slowly puts his arm out the window and points at me.

(01:01:25):
So as we're passing, he just like does one of
those as we go by.

Speaker 1 (01:01:28):
Like acknowledging your existence.

Speaker 2 (01:01:30):
And I was like, I love the idea of like this.
He looked like a nightclub owner or a promoter.

Speaker 1 (01:01:35):
It's a totally thing.

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
And I'm like his nerdy comic girlfriend. Yeah, Like it
was this idea of like how hilarious. But then he'd
also like give me coke?

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
Can you actually give you coke? You get you into Ladoux,
which is what the nightclub at the time, like seriously, So,
Johnny Dangerous was a promoter for the Hollywood nightclub LaDou
La Doo La dux La dux lu dou do.

Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
I remember it, but I don't know what it looks.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
It was on the hills all the time, like that
swear they all went to or worked or whatever. So
it was a big deal and he'd get these underage
kids who are not famous people into LaDue. He was
the promoter, the Hollywood promoter.

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
It feels like a lost the cultures being lost.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
I'm sure it's still there. We could go to Hollywood
world right now and meet four promoters within twenty minutes.

Speaker 2 (01:02:17):
And we'd be like hey, and they'd be like, I
can't see you're over twenty five.

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
No, you're a month.

Speaker 2 (01:02:23):
You're not invited.

Speaker 1 (01:02:24):
Yeah, there's no milks. Okay. So Roy the other guy
is actually the one captured on security footage in the
December Paris Hilton burglary, and that ends up being the
one to first be publicized. Johnny Dangerous mostly acts as
a fence, like buying the stolen goods to sell them,
because the kids can't. What are they going to go
into a pawn shop with Paris Hilton's fucking like heirloom

(01:02:45):
family jewelry and sell it on the market. No.

Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
I just thought about Paris Hilton coming home from Ibitha
or whatever it is and being like, hey, I put
eight thousand dollars in this pero. Sure wait a second.

Speaker 1 (01:02:59):
Did Nicky bar oh this purse? And then Nick later
says sweet Nick He says, quote, he gave us five
thousand dollars for like ten rolexes, which I guess is
a ripoff now that I think about it. End quote,
how much is a rolex worth?

Speaker 2 (01:03:13):
Fifty thousand dollars?

Speaker 1 (01:03:14):
Aren't they like so ten rolexes these like that just
shows how naive and young they are. Yeah, he was like,
here's five thousand dollars and they're like, oh my god,
thank you so much. That's so incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:03:25):
It's a bit muddy regarding like when each of the
members of the Blingering get involved. It's very loose.

Speaker 2 (01:03:31):
It's clear that that's no official history.

Speaker 1 (01:03:33):
Yeah, you're not going to believe it. It's clear that
the network expands quickly between Rachel and Nick's first burglary
in October and the fourth one in December. Since Rachel
and Nick didn't actually really even know the guy Roy,
the one who was in the security footage, it's almost like.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
Some guy heard about it too.

Speaker 1 (01:03:48):
Yeah, so it's not actually like group. And then the
burglars continue over the course of the entire school year
and into the summer with various members of this group,
but always Rachel and Nick. So they kind of are
the ringleaders, I guess you could say.

Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
In February of that year, Rachel and Nick rob the
home of Adrina Patridge, one of the stars of the.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
Hills Adrena Partridge.

Speaker 1 (01:04:10):
It says Patridge and everything I've read, and I always
thought it was Partridge.

Speaker 2 (01:04:13):
It is Partridge. I think it's Patridge.

Speaker 1 (01:04:15):
What was she on the Hill Hills iconic TV show
of it? I did. I watched the show on literally
until I read this research by Ali, I would have
said Partridge. And then I saw that I saw in
the Vanity Fair article it spelled Patridge. By the way,
I want to leave all of this in and Andrea,

(01:04:36):
We're so sorry. I wouldn't dare edit it out. It's
clearly gold and she says, quote, they took bags and
bags of stuff. They took my great grandma's jewelry, my passport,
my laptop, jeans made to fit my body to perfect shape, which, like,
can I get that done? I didn't know there was
something you could do.

Speaker 2 (01:04:54):
No, you can't. The answer is no, damn it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:58):
The estimated value of her stolen property was forty three
thousand dollars. But more than that, she is terrified from this.
And I think I've never think fucking God had a
break in, But I think the sense of security that
you lose when that happens is just psychologically so fucked up,
especially from a reality star like She's not you know,
a movie star that agreed to this life. I mean

(01:05:21):
she did because she's a reality star.

Speaker 2 (01:05:22):
She was like in high school when she agreed to it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:24):
Is she the one that lived in that very glass
boxy house that was up above Sunset down by like
Sunset Junction.

Speaker 1 (01:05:30):
I don't know. How do you know that?

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Because I remember I spent a lot of time in
the boxy house, and I remembered them the video with
the guy with the like a hooded sweatshirt and people
jumping over the fence. Y totally yeah, And it's like
that's when I realized, like, oh, that's right, You're totally
exposed if people know where you live, right.

Speaker 1 (01:05:48):
Exactly actually, And she shares the footage of this robbery
right away with the police and media, and it's pretty
clear you can see Nick and Rachel in it. But
nothing comes of that till later. So the group hits
Rachel Bilson's house in May from the OC. They have
a trend clue, right, Rachel Bilson's from the oce here,

(01:06:08):
I think, so, I'm from literally the OC and I
don't remember runs. Then in July they hit Orlando Bloom's house,
mostly because his girlfriend at the time is Miranda Kerr
and she has really fucking good clothes. Well, they hit
his house that night. They allegedly steal five hundred thousand
dollars in Rolex watches allegedly, which is probably two Rolex

(01:06:28):
watch Yeah, exactly, Louis of Aton luggage artwork. I mean,
it seems like they just have all the time in
the world in these houses and they take advantage of it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
And also all the choices in the world, because this
is like rich people like having too much money and
collecting stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:06:43):
And not having security. Yeah, you know, or house sitter security.
A fucking dog, a rottweiler with a ninety tape to it,
like anything.

Speaker 2 (01:06:54):
Plants that someone has to come in water twice something.

Speaker 1 (01:06:58):
The Orlando Bloom robbery is whar Eight year old Alexis
Nyers claims she comes into the story and she's the
daughter of the secret Manifestation mother. Yes, so she claims this.
So when she comes into the story, she says she's
a drag along. It's like, I don't know, allegedly allegedly allegedly.

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
I mean, if there's a group of kids that are
going around robbing celebrities houses, you're gonna want to tell
all the kids at school that you're out in front
and you're the leader. I thank and when once you
get caught, you're gonna be like I barely even understood
what was happening exactly, and I do think sorry, but
I do think that I remembered them trying to turn
that story with the Adrena Partridge break in, because they

(01:07:37):
were talking about how scared she was where it's like
the times I've sat at my house in the middle
of the night with the dogs barking, thinking someone is
breaking in my house and it is the fucking scariest thing. Yeah,
and of course it was raccoons or whatever, but like
a horrible threat, a horrible thing to go to even
if you're not home, that someone actually did it and
it was there.

Speaker 1 (01:07:56):
The violation of someone walking through this place. That's like
you're sanction that you created, especially when you're a famous person,
to get away from all of that, and it's not
safe and nothing safe and they've taken your grandma's jewelry,
Like I totally horrible.

Speaker 2 (01:08:11):
I can't imagine, But then yeah, it's cute when you
know it's these teenagers that are being rebels.

Speaker 1 (01:08:15):
Yeah, well, she racally was like I couldn't believe it
when I saw the footage because I figured, like I
was also terrified that it was these like big scary men. Yeah,
it wasn't, but it was still confusing. Yeah. So Alexis,
this eighteen year old had known Nick and Rachel from
Indian Hills High School, but she had dropped out to
pursue modeling, and she's at the time being homeschooled by

(01:08:37):
her mother, Andrea Leslie Mann's specifically, Andrea says she's basing
her curriculum around the movie, not the book The Secret.

Speaker 2 (01:08:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:47):
The family believes firmly in the law of attraction and
frequently says, quote and so it is.

Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:08:53):
That's They're like, hey, I want to be famous and
so it is, which is so culty, isn't it culty?

Speaker 2 (01:08:59):
I mean it's so la. It's so and because sometimes
it works, and it's like, yeah, sometimes it works. And
if you're delusional enough and right to believe that's why
peteite and hot enough, I guess, and then think.

Speaker 1 (01:09:10):
You earned it because you did that and they did
it and it's like, well you should.

Speaker 2 (01:09:14):
Yeah, it's just and so it is.

Speaker 1 (01:09:17):
And you live in the one are those apartments the
oak Woods. Yeah, and you just like all you want
is to make it. Yeah whatever that means. God, there's
no negative in making it, that's the idea. It's like,
there's no like, you can't do anything bad if it
results in you making it because it was worth it.

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
Yes, no matter what is it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
Alexi's best friend is a nineteen year old named Tess Taylor,
and she lives in the house as well. Andrea treats
her like another daughter, and then they're the ones who
end up having that reality show Pretty Wild for a
short time. The way it's presented on the reality show,
Alexis and Taylor are very focused on becoming famous, and
Andrea the mother is even more focused on this Leslie man.

(01:09:56):
And it appears that Alexis's race in a family that
prioritizes fame and proximity to fame over everything else. And
we know this because it's all chronicled on Pretty Wild,
which starts filming at the time, because they are following
Alexis in Tessa's life as little hell racers in the
Los Angeles club scene, like going to LaDou.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
They're looking for the new parasiled Nikki No, that's her
sister Nicole Richie Rich.

Speaker 1 (01:10:24):
Yes, so it's about that at first, about their attempts
at you know, going to modeling additions and becoming famous,
but it doesn't turn into that. But back to the
summer of the summer, all the kids in the blingering
are pretty blatant with their spoils. They are photographed in
celebrities clothes on their social media with like fucking roll
lex'es and shit. I know, I know, they brag pretty

(01:10:46):
openly about it among their peers. One day, Rachel and
Nick and possibly others spread out a blanket on Venice
Beach and start selling stolen goods from celebrities houses.

Speaker 2 (01:10:56):
Yes, like they cry for help.

Speaker 1 (01:10:57):
Are teenagers doing dumbass tea teenage shit, which is why
I'm so glad I'll never have a teenage child, just
a nephew that I could be like the cool aunt too.

Speaker 2 (01:11:06):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 1 (01:11:07):
So then at the end of July, TMZ reaps the
security footage from the burglary back in February at Adrina
Pea's house. For some reason, she had shared it back
when it happened, but for some reason now people are
more interested in it, and Nick and Rachel are pretty identifiable,
and it's a footage you've seen, like they really barely
try to cover their faces at all. They have like
hoodies on, and that's kind of it. So friends are

(01:11:29):
calling them about it. Rachel decides to move in with
her father, who's an accountant and professional gambler who lives
in Vegas, to have like a low profile, but she
cannot resist the poll to do that one last job. Oh,
like you're done, you're in a different state. Go fucking
you got out? Yeah, go be a what's it called dealer? Yes,

(01:11:51):
not a drug dealer. If you couldn't, if you're not
watching this on YouTube, I was doing cards.

Speaker 2 (01:11:54):
Not she was doing poker dealer gestures.

Speaker 1 (01:11:57):
One night in August, one of the members of the
ring were not sure. Who calls Rachel and says, quote,
let's go steal end quote. The intended target is Lindsay Lohan,
who pretty much is the white whale for any fashion
loving teenage burglar in the mid two thousands. Like she's
the famousist of the famousist and the party the most
like big party girl too. She's a big party girl.

Speaker 2 (01:12:18):
Also she I think I read and this is alleged,
so don't hold against me. But there was a lot
of stories about her taking clothing, really expensive clothing from sets, Yes,
and from places where she I think she had probably this.
She was famous and had been since she was a child. Yeah,
and she kind of had the same disease. It sounds
the second titlement disease. Yeah, Rachel makes the four hour

(01:12:40):
drive to Los Angeles in order to participate in that.

Speaker 1 (01:12:43):
She's like, don't go wait for me here I come.
So that happens, and then very shortly after this, the
walls start closing in. Several people anonymously tip the police
about the members of the blame ring because they fucking
know them from calabasas fuck in high school or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:12:57):
Yeah, one of them probably like the boy she like
like them, and then she's like, I'm dropping a dime on.

Speaker 1 (01:13:02):
Your No, totally Alexis Nyers. It turns out is one
of the anonymous tipsters, which is weird because she is
actually part of the group, even though she insists that
she didn't know what was happening and didn't participate. In September,
Nick Prugo is arrested based on one of these tips,
and he basically he's a child. He confesses to not

(01:13:22):
just everything, but everything and stuff the cops don't even
know is related to the blingering, Like that's how sweet
innocent he is. He's just like, yes, it was me.
Here's what we did. I didn't know it was illegal
or whatever it is. This includes a burglary from nine
to two one zero actor Brian Austin Green's house, which
they broke into because he was dating Megan Fox, who's

(01:13:42):
so fucking well dressed at the time, but the thieves
also wind up stealing a handgun from him, oh, which
is like scary.

Speaker 2 (01:13:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:50):
Nick turns in tons of stolen watches and jewelry and
it's photographed for his mug shot, and in the mugshot,
he's wearing one of Orlando Bloom's T shirts. Jesus, like
they're just children. I'm not saying that any of this
is okay, but.

Speaker 2 (01:14:08):
They got away with it. I mean, like there's a
part of it that's kind of delightful.

Speaker 1 (01:14:11):
Totally totally. Nick calls Rachel after his publicized arrest and
even though rationally she knows he got arrested, and she's
probably like, I shouldn't talk to him when he's calling me.
I bet this is being recorded but she talks to
him anyways, and Nick casually says to her, remind me
what your dad's addresses in Vegas where you're staying. Moments later,
the police bang on her door and yeah, find her.

(01:14:35):
They search her house and find it, you know, a
bunch of stuff, including a nude personal photo of Paris
Hilton that they had stolen, which is pretty shitty. Oh yeah,
you know, when Alexis is warrant.

Speaker 2 (01:14:44):
Is why doesn't Paris Hilton have a safe.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
One hundred percent?

Speaker 2 (01:14:47):
She's from the richest of the rich, Like, isn't there
some sort of internal protocol with these people? Yeah? I
mean the Kilgary family version of that is my dad
at a big bowl that he used to put his
spare change in, and then we would go steal of
the b My sister had.

Speaker 1 (01:15:00):
One of those like children's lock boxes that all you
had to do was like find the opening and it,
you know, and then I'd go buy like fucking exactly
in quarters. Yeah, my dad would be like, quit stealing
my corner and quit putting them, and then it's literally
called the stealing place.

Speaker 2 (01:15:17):
Ye.

Speaker 1 (01:15:17):
Now, Okay, when Alexi's warrant is served, the e cameras
are rolling, and her rest winds up in the pilot
of Pretty Wild. So suddenly like, thank fucking god, we
gave this girl the reality show. We have all of this.
It's so cringe to watch, Like I watched another scene
and it's just cringe. The rest of the series follows
her preparation for trial. While searching the house, police find

(01:15:38):
one of Rachel Bilson's purses, among other things. At this point,
the fact that this rash of well publicized Hollywood burglaries
has been committed by a ring of teenagers from the
valley has become in itself, this hugely sensational story. No
one can get enough of it. Vanity Fair writer Nancy
Joe Sales covers the story mostly from Alexis's perspective as

(01:15:59):
she naviogates her court dates and notes that the family
seems to be simultaneously treating her arrest like the scary
problem it is, but also an opportunity to become famous
and really laughing up the attention.

Speaker 2 (01:16:14):
I mean they manifested it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:15):
Yeah, I gotta live it at the time too, Like
all of those starlets had duys and all it did
was make them more famous.

Speaker 2 (01:16:21):
Yes, it was really like you were saying that it's
weird because paparazzi, although I know they still exist, it's
not the same as it was back then, where everything
was being driven by that so ugly it was out
of control.

Speaker 1 (01:16:33):
Yeah. The article goes on to be adapted into Sofia
Coppolo's twenty thirteen movie The Blingering, which is one of
Karen's favorites.

Speaker 2 (01:16:40):
Number one that in Atonement, that's.

Speaker 1 (01:16:42):
What you you cry on a plane do is the blingering?

Speaker 2 (01:16:46):
Why why aren't these children so any more?

Speaker 1 (01:16:49):
Alexis please no contest and a sentence to one hundred
and eighty days in the county jail, and she winds
up serving thirty days. Nick also spends this time giving
lots of interviews and doing lots of television news Apparents
says at the same time, Rachel the you know Nick,
and Rachel, Rachel is saying nothing. Her mom is a lawyer, yes,
and so she almost isn't part of the public narrative anymore,

(01:17:10):
which is so smart in that way of don't fucking
say shit and no one will care. Yes, it'll go away, yes,
which is so true. The consequence of that is that
in the cultural narrative she is portrayed by all the
other kids as the ringleader. They're able to point to her,
and she's not denying it, so everyone goes with it.
The way she tells the story now is that it

(01:17:32):
was more of a fallet I do type situation where
she and Nick had a shared compulsion to steal.

Speaker 2 (01:17:39):
And justify to each other. Yeah, like it's we're doing it.
It's fun, it's funny. It's I mean, I'm sure it
was fucking thrilling.

Speaker 1 (01:17:45):
Oh my god, so fucking fun, like the stories that
they tell about it was.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
And then you have eight grand in cash in your pocket, like,
now I get to do You're right, I get to
have whatever lipstick I want.

Speaker 1 (01:17:55):
And the purest coke you've ever fucking smelled in your life.
At the trial, many of the celebrity victims testify the
prosecution builds their case around the sense of violation and
fear that they felt to have their homes broken into,
as opposed to the actual material losses, because hopefully they
were all insured too, you know they were, they were

(01:18:16):
for sure, That's why there was no security. Ultimately, all
the members of the Bling ring who are charged together
plead no contest. Nick and Rachel get the stiffest sentences.
Nick A sentenced to two years in prison and Rachel
to four, and both serve about a year before being
released on probation. Everyone else finds up getting probation. And
this is partially because an LAPD cop who is a

(01:18:37):
major figure in the investigation is just as enamored with
celebrity as the kids are. He consults on the Sofia
Coppola film while the cases are still pending, creating a
big conflict of interest that lessens everyone else's sentences. So
it's not just teenagers.

Speaker 2 (01:18:55):
You know what makes you think of as I want
to rewatch LA Confidential.

Speaker 1 (01:18:58):
Yes, such a good movie movie, but that.

Speaker 2 (01:19:00):
Whole part with the now reviled Kevin Spacey, but yeah,
that whole thing is so LA. It's like there are
totally different rules here, totally and it is really acclimated
to beauty and money and like and this achievement staying
status and fame. But so it's like, yeah, the cops.
You cannot get a cop to show up anywhere for

(01:19:22):
any reason most of LA. But you will see twenty
five of them standing around a set if they're shooting
on Melrose, And I mean that's just how you just
learned that. That's just how it works.

Speaker 1 (01:19:32):
Here, totally. Yeah, that's so true. Such a weird town,
it's so weird. When Rachel does get out of prison,
she moves back in with her mom and stepdad to
a bedroom with a mattress on the floor and a
small box of belongings. I mean, she's got some stories
to tell though, for the rest of her life. That's right,
she says. She remembers thinking, quote, this is all that

(01:19:53):
I need in the world, Like she.

Speaker 2 (01:19:56):
Was just just so happy to be home.

Speaker 1 (01:19:58):
Yeah, with the whole thing because getting caught up in it.
You know. Yes, all of the members of the Bling
Ring now lead pretty quiet lives. Rachel is a hairstylist.
It's unclear what Nick does professionally, but he's not clamoring
for publicity. Alexis, though, is the kind of the only
one who still maintains an Instagram presence, So maybe she's

(01:20:18):
still looking for that elusive fame.

Speaker 2 (01:20:21):
If I was getting my haircut and my hairdresser was
like I actually was the leader of the Bling Ring,
I would be overjoyed in ways it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:28):
Yeah, where does she work?

Speaker 2 (01:20:29):
Im?

Speaker 1 (01:20:30):
I'll leave my beloved hairdresser for her Immedia. Sorry Marissa,
but like it's the leader of the Bling Ring.

Speaker 2 (01:20:35):
That's a great way to spend three hours of like,
and then what did you do with that?

Speaker 1 (01:20:39):
Watch? Don't ask me about what I'm watching on TV
right now. Tell me everything about your fucking incredible life, Rachl.
Fascinating And that is the story for our five hundred
episode of The Bling Ring.

Speaker 2 (01:20:50):
Genius, Genius. That was great.

Speaker 1 (01:20:53):
All props to Molly and Ali for suggesting the story.
And I was like, I don't know, it's kind of vapid,
and don like, is Karen doing a really good truth drama?
Only do this if like it, like legitimately it's a
good episode, and they were like it fucking is you.
Molly's like trust Trust I'm like, all right, fine, I'll
do the fucking Bling Ring.

Speaker 2 (01:21:09):
Well, you know it's interesting you say that now, because
that's what I was going to say at the beginning,
is it's our five hundredth episode and from Stephen Ray
Morris all by himself in on the floor of your apartment,
to this incredible staff of almost forty people that we
now have it exactly right, like we would be nowhere
and we could not have done it and certainly couldn't
have done it to the degree that we have done

(01:21:30):
it absolutely without all these people that we work with.
So for our own team, thank you Molly and Leanna
and Aristotle and just everybody every week that makes this
podcast possible. Thank you all so much, because you know that's.

Speaker 1 (01:21:45):
Not the two of us, it's.

Speaker 2 (01:21:47):
In the least And now there's like there's two other
podcasts that go along with this podcast, and there's video,
and it's just like we have team after team and
people after people that really work their ass off.

Speaker 1 (01:21:58):
It works despite it, not because.

Speaker 2 (01:22:00):
Us I disagree, No, no, it just is like it's
just such a big old thing. It's very exciting. After
ten years and five hundred that's so wild. Yeah, the
way it's grown, it's crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:22:14):
Turn we really fucking blingering this. The podcasting industry doesn't, Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:22:18):
What we did was we checked the podcast industries doors.
A couple of them were unlocked.

Speaker 1 (01:22:23):
It's trying to be broken. We some gregs, So we
went through their ship and we fucking.

Speaker 2 (01:22:28):
They don't need this forty grand in cash, yes.

Speaker 1 (01:22:30):
But what a joy. And of course to the listeners
to the Murderinos, to our fucking people. Obviously, this couldn't
have happened without you, but you've made it into this
incredible thing that we could never ever tell you how
grateful we are for the lives that we get to
leave now because of you. Guys listening to this podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:22:49):
And thinking that we're your best friends.

Speaker 1 (01:22:50):
Yeah, because we are, because we are fun. Run you
down on this street to honk at you. That's right.

Speaker 2 (01:22:56):
We will stick our whole arm and perhaps our head
out the windows to make sure you know that we
see you.

Speaker 1 (01:23:02):
And we appreciate it. Our lives five hundred episodes ago
were very different.

Speaker 2 (01:23:07):
They were very different.

Speaker 1 (01:23:08):
It really is a beautiful place to be. So thank
you guys, so fucking much.

Speaker 2 (01:23:12):
Yes, it's magical.

Speaker 1 (01:23:13):
Stay sexy and don't get murdered. Get good way, Elvis,
Do you want a cookie?

Speaker 2 (01:23:26):
This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 1 (01:23:28):
Our senior producers are Alejandra Keck and Molly Smith.

Speaker 2 (01:23:31):
Our editor is Aristotle Oscevedo.

Speaker 1 (01:23:33):
This episode was mixed by Leona Squalacci.

Speaker 2 (01:23:35):
Our researchers are Marion McGlashan and Ali Elkin.

Speaker 1 (01:23:38):
Email your hometowns to my Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:23:41):
Follow the show on Instagram at my Favorite Murder.

Speaker 1 (01:23:44):
Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeartRadio app, Apple
Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 (01:23:49):
And now you can watch us on Exactly Right's YouTube page.
While you're there, please like and subscribe.

Speaker 1 (01:23:54):
Goodbybye,