Thinking Sideways: Tube Sock Killer?

In 1985 two couples were killed in the woods south of Tacoma, Washington. The bodies of each the female victims were found with a knotted tube sock tied around their neck. Is this the hallmark of an unknown serial killer or just a set of coincidentally related murders?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Thinking Sideways. I don't know stories of things we simply
don't know the answer to. Hello, and welcome to the
podcast Thinking Sideways the podcast. Yeah yeah, I am Steve,

(00:28):
of course, joined by Devin and Joe and Joe and
Joe actually my name is Joe, not and Joe. Oh yeah,
well it's yeah, we've had this issue and once again
this week we have another mystery that we're going to
bring to yep. Yeah, it's a little bit. Yeah. I
don't know if scary, but I was creepy, Yeah, creepy,

(00:51):
creepy and weird stopping somebody who camps occasionally, you know,
a little twisted me. I even can't buy myself occasionally,
you know. Oh yeah, No, after researching this, I'm pretty
sure I have just come up with the reason that
I'm not going to go camping anymore. And I don't
like the cap. Well it's okay, you can go camping alone.
You just can't go camping with your significant other. That

(01:11):
seems to be the problem, This is true. Yeah, or
you could just take a gun. Well, let's let's get
into what we're gonna talk about today, which is the
tubesock killer. Yes, I used I actually put it correctly
because there's a mark at the end of this. It's
not just a weird speech impediment or pattern or what

(01:35):
what do you call that? So on September, the tub
sock was discovered brutally murder. What's outside of no No,
Now we're today Joe is goofing. But what we're gonna
talk about is a potential serial killer that is referred
to as the tube Sock killer. This, this story suggestion

(01:59):
a reginally came from Ash. So thanks for sending it
in a long time ago. You set us by way
of apology, you set us so many suggestions. We don't
want your hog in the show that Yeah, you know.
The thing is with this one is is I I
read it. I mean I read the original topic and
then it started leading into so many things and this

(02:22):
one grew quite rapidly on me. But let's talk about
the first part of the story, which is what Ash
sent in and suggested. Actually before we get into it,
if you haven't figured it out yet, we are going
to be talking about a potential serial killer. So there's
gotta be some people getting killed murder, murder, murder, but

(02:44):
a lot of stab stab stabbed. So if that's not
your thing, maybe skip this one. Yeah, I know, we
have a couple of people who say some people like
stabbings and stuff. If that upset you or the kids
are around, save it for later, or just don't listen.
But here's our story. On the twelfth of December nine
in Spanaway, Washington, which, for people who don't know, is

(03:04):
about ten or twenty miles south of Tacoma, Washington, which
is south of Seattle, just south, just south. Yeah, at
this point they almost have grown together. On that day,
December twelve, two year old Crystal Robertson was found wandering
around alone on December twelve in a kmart. Police were called.

(03:28):
She was taken to a local hospital and it was
a few days before she was identified. And don't worry everybody,
she was perfectly fine. But she was taken to the hospital.
It was just a precautionary, precautionary. Yeah, they didn't know
who she was, they didn't know what to do with it.
Was like they were gonna put her in a holding cell. Yeah,
so they well, they were taking care of her. Eventually,

(03:52):
her grandparents were found an ideater, so she was returned
to family. But the strange thing is what she said
when she was asked where her parents were, because she said,
and I quote, mommy is in the trees. That's all
we've ever really heard from her. Crystal, she was too.

(04:15):
I don't know if she she blocked it out. She
she has made it quite clear over time that she
doesn't want to talk about this story. No, no, which
is totally understandable. But that's really the only quote we've
got from her, and clear indication of potentially what might
be going on. But it seems like she wasn't actually
particularly traumatized. It does not appear that way. Her parents

(04:39):
were a man named Michael Reamer and a woman named
Diana Robertson. They were nowhere gonna be found. Reportedly, the
family had gone into the woods in El Washington to
look for a Christmas tree and to check the traps
of Michael. I Michael had animal traps, is what I

(05:02):
mean by traps, and I haven't been able to find
anywhere specifically what it was he was trapping. I mean,
I did some looking around, and there's beaver, fox, rabbits,
and mink in that area, so he potentially could have been.
Also yeats are there as well. He could have just
been trapping for almost anything, just about anything. Michael was

(05:24):
kind of a jerk. No, I mean, I presume that
he was trapping for meat mostly, so you know kind
of thing. Well, right, I read that he was a
fur trapper. He was after their pelts, but he might
have used to meat also. Yeah, yeah, either way, he
had traps in the woods and that was the reason
that he would be in the woods. I don't think
he can sell Fox anymore, just as a new Fox.

(05:45):
I don't know, I don't know, it doesn't matter. Let's
keep talking about this story. Sorry, it didn't mean the railroad.
You're there in February. Oh is that the next place
that we're at in this story. Yes, we moved forward,
so we didn't know anything. They were gone, her parents
were gone, I mean, but nobody knew where they were.
They went into the woods, and then their daughter appeared

(06:07):
at a kmar kind of surprising. Nobody noticed their truck. Well, well,
their their truck was on an abandoned logging road, so
that's why they wouldn't have found it. But we're getting
a little ahead here. So again, this is February of six,
and there's a man who's out walking his dog, in

(06:28):
the area and he finds Diana's body. She's found lying
on the ground next to their truck. She has she's
been stabbed seventeen times. I believe she was stabbed in
the chest and the torso is where where all of

(06:49):
the world, Yes, angry guy, Yeah, it doesn't sound like
a very happy person. Um. She also had a tube
sock tied around her neck that had knots in it,
and so like the tube sock was tied in knots
and then tied around her neck like yes, I'm sorry
to make this comparison, but like a rosary sort of

(07:10):
situation kind of. I mean, I've seen a picture of
it on her. I've seen what I believe is a
real crime scene photo, not a re enactment. And there
is there's the two ends of the sock are knotted
up on the back of her neck, and then there's
at least one, if not two other knots in the
sock itself. Are they evenly spaced around or like more

(07:33):
or they just like I've never I never saw a
description of where the knots were. Okay, but you kind
of saw more knots. Well, I saw the main knot
at the back and then there's a description of it
at least two not so I'm presuming one of those
knots is the knot that they were tied together with,
and then another somewhere else on it, but I don't
know exactly where those would have been. Yeah, you really

(07:53):
can't see him, and I only saw one picture and
it was kind of low res. Yeah, it was it
was hard to tell. Like I said, she was found
next to their truck. There was blood found on the
seat of the truck, but the police weren't able to
determine whose blood it was. I mean, we got to
remember it's a couple of months later, and this is

(08:16):
so DNA analysis isn't available at the time, so we
don't know who it belonged to. All they could confirm
is that it was human blood. Now I'm gonna go
out on a limb open and say that probably was
Diana's blood. It's quite, it's quite it's quite. It's quite possible.
But I've also seen stuff saying that this is still

(08:38):
considered an active case, right, so they can't really talk,
they can't really talk about it. And there's also the
fact that there are reports that some DNA still exists
and that that was being tested again, but that was
from two thousand and eleven. I don't know whatever came
of it. I can't find any information. Again, it's active

(09:00):
ace technically, so they're not just gonna willy nilly call
a press reports say we found this. So I don't
know if that DNA is from the blood, if that
DNA was recovered in the sock, I don't know. Yeah,
you would assume, since it is an active case, that
if they did have new evidence that would help them
find the perpetrator of this crime, they would be going

(09:22):
public with it. You would kind of assume that. But
also we've assumed things like that in the past, and
it's turned out to be not true sometimes on certain things. Whatever,
it's funny how you have an active investigation you just
don't tell everybody stuff that weird. Let's see what else
was there? Okay. Also with the scene, there were shell
casings found around the truck, but it's not clear from

(09:46):
the things that I've read if those casings were from
a gun that was fired when they were there or
prior to their arrival. At the location. It's it's an
abandoned logging road in the woods, it would be really
hard to tell, especially cap months later. Yeah, this is true.
I mean guys, people go out in the woods all
the time and just blow up trees, just shoot for funds.

(10:08):
So it's and just I know people who do it
all the time and they just leave the casing. Not
my problem. So we don't know. Yeah, shooters usually figure
this some A shooter that comes along next after them
is going to be a reloader and he'll pick it
all up, which is actually also abscrimes. Now this is
inside the truck. A Manila envelope was found and it's

(10:32):
it's kind of a legal size, you know, you put
eight and half eleven paper in it. It's a big
envelope and handwritten on it is I Love you Diana.
The police turned it over to the fbi'd have it analyzed.
The handwriting that was you that's on it. According the FBI,
it's inconclusive whose handwriting it is. They don't know if

(10:53):
it's Michael's. According to Diana's mother's it is his handwriting,
it would be without samples his mother it was Diana's mother.
Diana's mother has been convinced forever that Michael did it,
that he killed her and then beat feet and got

(11:14):
out of there and just disappeared. So she she was
convinced that it was his hand writing. Okay, but we
we don't know that for sure. But you know, based
on the fact that her body is there, his is not.
He's the prime suspect. He's disappeared. He also had a
bit of a temper the you know, there was things

(11:37):
between them, There was domestic disputes, there was fights. She
had put a restraining order on him at one point.
So everybody's pretty sure that he had a fit of
rage or whatever that it is exactly, and he killed her.
And then of course it makes sense too that he

(11:57):
would drop the kid off somewhere where the kid would
be found and taken to the authorities and eventually reunited
with her family. Because he's going to go on the run,
he really can't take a two year old with him.
I don't know that that's the case. I mean this
this WEE can get into in theories a little bit,
but I don't know that that's the case, because there
there are some theories around him being the lone gunmen.
So well, you know, I guess the other thing is

(12:18):
one kind of thinks from her last name, the two
year old last name. Gosh, what's her name? Yeah? From
that and the fact that her mother and father didn't
have the same last name, was that her biological father,
it was? But they were not married, Okay, she took
her mom's name. Well, yeah, I mean she she wasn't married,

(12:39):
so naturally, what do you do? You give the kids
your last name and she's two years old. They they're
not married at this point. It's probably not in the
four seable. They're having a lot of relationship issues. I
I'm not I'm not surprised, but I don't know that that.
I don't know what that means except that he is

(13:02):
the father. I do know that. Okay, he's her biological father. Yeah, yeah,
I don't know. I think it could go either way,
that he would drop a kid off or he would
not take the kid with Well, it's harder to be
on the run with a two year old child, especially
when amber alerts are a thing. Right, Well, but this
is okay. But but the point is moot. This this

(13:22):
little bit of debate is it's kind of moot because well,
the case sat the way We've just talked about it
for twenty some years in two thousand and eleven. March
of two thousand eleven, two men were hiking in that area,
the same place where Diana's body had been found. And

(13:44):
this is, this is I don't quite get this, but
I'm just gonna go through it. One of them kicked
over the lid of a vacuum cleaner. I don't know
what that means, but I don't know either, and then
went to kick what he thought was a rock underneath it.
But it wasn't a rock. Was a piece of Michael's skull. Oh,
I thought it the whole entire top skull. It's it

(14:05):
wasn't the entire skull. It was a piece of his skull.
They didn't find his entire skull. What they found at
the site was a portion of his skull and eventually
his jawbone, his rubber boots, and I think I think
there was a belt maybe, But those were the only
things of Michael that they found at that location. Well

(14:31):
that's that's the question. And the other question is how
did they not find him because it's a couple hundred
yards essentially away stumbled across him, But well it is,
it's it's kind of low scrub brush, So I can
see how a body might be difficult to find several
months later in the winter. Could be explainable that they

(14:53):
didn't find it, But it's weird, super weird. They seem
to have maybe not done a great thorough investigation. Possible,
there's there's also speculation that and and we're not going
to get into this in theory, so we just do
it now, is that somebody killed them and took his
body away and then brought it back after the investigation

(15:13):
was finished. But to me, that seems a lot like
a lot of work, especially since they just left the
truck and Diana, Yeah, you know, it could be that
they only found the head. It might be they whoever
it was, cut his head off left the head there,
and when you're looking for a body, it's easy to
overlook ahead. And of course they didn't find any any
other parts of his body. But I don't know why

(15:34):
you'd leave the boots and belts. Yeah, I don't know,
I don't I have no idea. So it's potentially it's
possible that he was decapitated. We don't know that for sure.
I mean, or he could have sat there for a
couple of years and rotted away and animals drug drug
parts of the body slowly but surely away over the
twenties some years, although again boots, rubber boots. Yeah, pulling

(15:58):
feet out rubber boots is hard as an animal. Yeah, yeah,
I don't know. But but the thing is, all I
can confirm is that those were the articles of clothing
that were found, and that part of a skull, and
eventually the job oone of the job bone is how
they identified him. You know, any kind of body sitting
on the wilderness for that long, it's hard to never

(16:20):
really tell if. Yeah, animals probably did drag it away,
and they're pretty resourceful and yeah that's but yeah, there
if there's a food source to um. Now, here's the thing.
In the articles and stories about the skull being found,
there's a guy, one of the guys who found in.
His name is Phil Reynolds. He said that in the

(16:43):
part of the skull that they found, there was a
large hole in the temple. Well he had just killed
kicked it. I The police completely denied that Michael was shot.
They say, there's there's not a hole in that Ysa's
skulls and I must have found a pretty complete, pretty
complete skull. Yeah, yeah, well, I'm thinking it's not a

(17:07):
complete skull, but it's got to be you know, like
two or three of the plates and a little bit
in the front. I don't I mean enough to have
a temple. Yeah. Well, I mean, let's let's stop with
the skull, because again I can't get a clear sense
of exactly what it was it was found, but they
seem to have a pretty definitive idea. The police did
that he had not been shot in the head. I
have read a quote from a local police that is

(17:29):
that is true. But we're gonna stop for the moment
with the murder of Michael and Diana, and we're going
to move to the other part of the story that
I eventually was led to in the research. The other
part of the story is actually set prior to their

(17:51):
disappearance and murder. On the tenth of August of which
would have been three months. Three months before they went
into the woods, a gentleman by the name of Stephen
Harkins and his girlfriend Ruth Cooper left Tacoma, Washington, and
they went to a wedding reception and then they were

(18:12):
planning to go to Tuley Lake, which is in the
Tacoma area. And they were going to go for a
weekend of camping. It's really nice. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, It's
August in Washington. It's one of the few nice times
a year you could possibly go wrong. Yeah. Well that
everything I've read it I've read about them is they
were They were huge camping nuts. They love to be

(18:34):
in the outdoors. If you see pictures of Stephen Harkins,
he's cut this giant grizzly Adams beer. Of course he
does even in the in the eighties, right mid eighties.
That was like, maybe now it's not uncommon to know, Yeah,
you see that all the time he's here, But no,
it's he was. He was definitely an outdoorsman. Well, they

(18:55):
left on the tenth of August. On the August, someone
came by their campsite and found Steven's body. He had
he was in his sleeping bag and he was laying
in the back of the truck and he had been
shot in the forehead with a twenty two caliber gun

(19:16):
that they've taken their dog. The dog was found dead,
also shot in the head. Why does that bother me
so much more? I'm like, oh, dude got shot in
the head. Oh no, a dog, No, yeah, yeah, so yeah,
both of both of those two were dead. Ruth wasn't
there and she wouldn't be found until October twenty six,

(19:41):
so we're again, we're talking a month later. Her body
was several hundred yards away from Stevens. Again, it seems
like maybe a really good search of the area maybe
not happening. So I tried. I tried to Joe's trick,
and I went on Google Maps because they give, uh,
it's kind of a dead end where she was found

(20:03):
near where they were camping, and it almost seems like
they were nearer road. And then somebody took her across
the road into the partial edges of a neighborhood and
there was a weird little dead end road. But that's
several hundred yards away, so they probably didn't bother to
go into the neighborhood because nobody in the neighborhood probably
reported anything. That's conjecture on my part. I can only

(20:25):
admit this. Think about this several hundred yards that could
be as much as say four yards, which is almost
a quarter mile. So I mean, they're not going to
search that bag of a radius, right, Well, it's difficult
because you've got to remember When you do the search,
you gotta search the entire three D and sixty degrees around.
You can't go in one direction another crossing a road. Well,
let's just rule that out. It's kind of an easy

(20:46):
thing for the cops to do or search teams to do.
But I don't know why. But yeah, I don't know
why she wasn't found. But let's talk about Ruth for
a moment. She'd been decapitated. She had a sock tied
around her neck. I've seen it's conflicting, seen reports that

(21:06):
do and don't say that the sock had not in it.
Reports on our little script here has quotes around it.
So are we talking like things you read on the internet,
or are we talking like I've read different police detective
reports of these things, And the police detective reports aren't

(21:26):
out there because technically it's an open case. So what
I'm getting is I'm getting reports from reporters. There have been,
you know, the people who try and commingle it together,
and as we've always said, we kind of try and
avoid some of that because artistic license takes over. But
I've seen it mentioned and not mentioned, which makes me
question it's validity. I guess for me, since this was

(21:51):
the first right, technically it's the first set of murders,
I would say since it was mentioned and not mentioned,
it was it probably happened. Versus the second set of murderers.
They were like, oh crap, that happened again. They're not
necessarily hearkening back to this other thing. But you know,
I also suspect that not of the reports on the

(22:13):
lot that on Diana's murder said oh yeah, it was nodded.
I think that it's probably fair to say that it
was mentioned and not mentioned in both cases, but that
it's more prevalent in the first case because people thought
it was probably not super relevant. That's and that's that's
potentially that'd be my conjecture. That's that's quite likely. I
don't know again, you know, it's just what I was

(22:34):
when you just read it. Yeah, yeah, because we don't
have the official police reports. But what I do find
weird is it seems to me that this whole thing
you could say was based around some kind of robbery,
except that her purse was found. Usually when I'm robbing people,
I don't stop the decapit. Yeah, like tube soccer around
their Yeah yeah. And one of the things I was

(22:55):
not able to find an answer to is so she
was decapitated tube soccer around her neck? Well, was it
the part of the neck that was still attached to
the head. I'm going to guess it's the part that's
still attached to the body. I don't know. Sorry to
like get a little grizzly here. I've never seen a
decapitated body necessarily, so I don't know where it is

(23:17):
that you naturally decapitate somebody on the body, like where
the neck ends up. I think I don't know either.
But I've thought about this as well. If you think
about next year collar bone item, there's a lot of
muscle there to sup but up high there's not. The
muscles are much thinner. Blow your jaw bone and towards

(23:39):
the back, so all you got you've got less muscle
mass there, and you've got the skull to leverage against.
I know that sounds terrible, but you think about if
you've got a saul through something you need some leverage,
you can work a knife against it. I'm probably now
going to get arrested because somebody's gonna say you know that,
But so like in that situation, then you would you

(24:05):
would just guess that the tubestock would have to be
around the lower neck. That's what I'm I'm I'm guessing. Yes.
By the way, was it just a random hiker that
found her body? Yeah? That must really sucks enough to
find a body, but finding a headless body. Yeah. Yeah.
You know, I was going to make a joke about
a tourniquet, but I will not. I wouldn't make that joke. Um, now, okay,

(24:30):
so we said, let's do a little timeline bit here.
We said that they left on the tenth of August
and she was found on the six of October, So
there's some time there, enough time for decomposition to take effect,
that they take effect to set in enough that they

(24:52):
couldn't determine how she died. All they could determine was
the official cause of death was homicidal violence. Yeah. I
think that's fair. I mean, at the minimum violence. Yeah,
I mean, yeah, there's no way to tell if the
head was sought off post mortem or not. I would

(25:13):
not that long after, No, it seems like yeah, I mean,
I can't imagine decapitating alive person, at least not like
an unconscious person. But I guess I also can't really
necessarily imagine decapitating a person or even like a fish.
I make my boyfriend do that. I like to fish,

(25:36):
but like, say, you know, an animal like a squirrel. No,
too much. So yeah, it just seems like it would
be so much extra work to be like, oh God,
you're still alive and you're fighting me. I guess you know.
I'm sorry, And this is where I get arrested. Right,
too much work. I'm too lazy. I'm just to soccer head,

(25:58):
you know. But yeah, alright, so let's let's let's go
back to the story, and let's let's do a little
summation of what we have in terms of the facts.
We have four people, two couples, killed within four months
of each other. They all died in a wooded area,
and all of both sets of bodies were found within

(26:21):
fifteen miles of each other then or about it's about
about fifteen miles as the crow flies, I'm guessing. Yeah, one,
possibly two people were decapitated and the and the possible
is Michael. He may have been decapitated. Both of the
women had tubes socks tied around their necks. The rest

(26:45):
of the details of the killings, there's there's really a
lot of inconsistencies. We've got one confirmed shooting and that's Stephen.
I do have a source that I don't know how
credible it is that's says that all four of them
were shot in the head with a twenty two. It's

(27:05):
one source I've seen that I didn't see that in
other areas. There is, as usual, a lot of conflicting
stuff out there and a lot of people making things up. Yeah,
I mean, it's it's inescapable, how difficult it is. So
we've we've got other Okay, what's the other details we have.
We've got a confirmed stabbing. One couple apparently killed at

(27:26):
night and I've heard conjecture on this, but I'm not positive.
But Stephen harkins he's in a sleeping bag, which makes
me think that it's nighttime. Yeah, I'll push back on
that though. I mean, you go camping, you see in
your sleeping bag a little longer. Especially, he was in
the bed of his truck, right in the bed of
the truck. It could have been warning. It could have
been warning. It could have been early evening. I mean,

(27:48):
you know, depending on the I guess it was August.
So the nights are a little shorter, certainly, but well,
and then there's there's um Michael Raamer and Diana Robertson
they if they went out to get a Christmas tree
and check traps. I'm not thinking that they went out
in the evening. It's the day, so there's been morning.

(28:10):
But also I guess the only other thing I would
say is that of our confirmed serial killers that we've
ever talked about, our researched or privately, you know, been
fascinating obsessed with you. Yeah, I don't know that. Oh
and all of them were killed at exactly five oh
five pm. You know that's not necessarily a thing, particularly
when you're talking about wilderness killings. No, No, that's you know,

(28:35):
the guys who go out and attack prostitutes. That's usually
done at night because that's when the trade is active.
But yeah, I mean it may not make it may
be a useless detail to focus on them at the
time of day. I I completely understand that, Yeah, these
are probably opportunistic crimes, quite likely. Here here we go,

(28:56):
We've got a couple of other things that I've noted here. Uh,
it's this is terrible, but it's unclear if the person
who killed them had sex with the women because their
months have gone by, that's not going to be evident anymore.
On the scene photo of Diana, she had her clothes,

(29:16):
she had her clothes. Yeah, but let's I mean again,
in fairness, sorry, I'm pushing back on so many of
these things. Sexual deviance doesn't necessarily mean that you have
to have sex person to gain sexual pleasure from the
thing that you're doing to that person. Particularly, right if
you're like, if your ritual is tying a tied tube
sock around somebody's neck, it doesn't mean you have to

(29:37):
actually have sex with that person to gain the pleasure
from it. And even it doesn't have to be sexual deviance.
It could just be psychopathic deviance that you gain pleasure
from that act, right, Yeah. No. The the other thing
I want to talk about real briefly is speculation. Is
speculation that I've seen about the tube sock itself. So

(30:00):
the tube sock, we haven't really described it, but it's
your well, it's your standards eighties tubes sock. It's like
the calf height, it's kind of gets you white. It's
got a couple of color. I think there are blue stripes,
you know, like you would see in what was that
Will Ferrell basketball movie and they were all wearing the
giant tall socks. I mean it's that kind of sock, big, huge,

(30:23):
with big white colored band socks. Yes, yeah, but the knots,
the knots are speculated to have been a form of control.
So if you've got something tied around someone's neck and
it's got a couple of knots on it, when you

(30:43):
pull on it, it's gonna push on the windpipe, it's
gonna restrict them. Even where it's kind of like a
dog color, like a choke chain on a dog that
kept him alive for a while. Yeah, yeah, it's possible.
I mean, I don't know that the tooth sock is
the weird element in both of these, particularly because it's

(31:03):
it happened twice, yes, within you know, within a couple
of months, in the same kind of area. That is
the weird part. And yeah, that and the like you know,
a two year old child saying, mommy's in the trees.
But I think the tubesock thing is it's worth mentioning.
And I think that once we get into theories, it
can knock a lot of theories out, it does it

(31:26):
does dash some that will say that. But but this thing,
this story, when you put these two couples together and
what happened to them, it lights up everybody to the
fact that there it's got to be a serial killer.
And said serial killer. Should probably talk about the theories
because there's a lot of them based around serial killers. Yeah,

(31:49):
it's hard. Serial things are hard. Do you think he
only had one pair of socks and then he went
on serial killing without the socks? He just had the
one pair of tubes socks out after Well, I guess
I have to stop back to the store. And I'm
sure you've experienced this when you go back for something
that you really like and it discontinued. I got to

(32:11):
become the panty host murderer. You two were so weird. Okay,
let's uh, let's let's go into our first theory. First
theory is that Michael Reemer did it all dumb. Sorry

(32:31):
this one, it's completely circumstantial to me, but we're going
to run through it anyway. The theory is that Michael,
who had a violent streak and had a reason to
go into the woods, which was to check his traps,
came across Stephen and Ruth and killed him because they
made him mad for some reason. And then several months later, um,

(32:57):
he goes to the woods with a Diana and either
in another fit of rage or out of guilt, decides
that he's got to kill her too. Now he we
briefly touched on his violence, So I talked about there
was the restraining order. Like one thing I want to

(33:19):
I want to bring up has been you know, he said, Well, guys,
guy's got a temper. He yells or he flails his
hands around. No, this guy like at one point was
having an argument through the door, broke the door down,
grabbed Diana and rubbed her face in the carpet I'm
guessing giving her a severe carpet berth other things. Yeah,
so he wasn't exactly the sweetest man in the world.

(33:41):
So I guess the question for me on that is
was his rage confined to kind of domestic disputes. Was
it that things in his relationships set him off or
was he just easily set off? You know, were there
instances of road rage, were getting enough work or anything
like that, Because there are some guys who are just

(34:03):
like angry dudes and they just get mad at everything.
But there are also some people, not just guys that
would be unfair, but there are people who in their
relationship become that kind of angry, horrible person, and you
kind of assume, at least I assume that unless the
only victim of them is their partner, partner, that it.

(34:28):
You know, you don't just like that. Yeah, you don't
just like walk out and find to two people camping
and suddenly kill them. Yeah. I tell you. One thing
that murderers, almost all murders have in common is that
they have prior fel any convictions for violent offenses? Did
he did, Michael Reen, were have any any convictions for anything?
I couldn't find anything about criminal. I couldn't find anything

(34:50):
about whether what Devon was asking about. I couldn't find
out if he just had domestic anger issues, you know,
relationship issues, or if it was a wider go Yeah,
I don't. I never saw any of that. Yeah. I
think that people are putting forth and Michael did it
theory would probably be able to come up with something. Yeah,
you would think so, yeah, yeah, but but but this

(35:11):
theory goes that, like I said, he finds Stephen and
Ruth and he kills him, which several months later, he
goes back into the woods, He kills Diana, takes the girl,
the daughter Crystal, back to the kmart, then drives back out,
wanders away, and then kills himself. And he doesn't necessarily
have to shoot himself, if you think about it, If

(35:34):
he cuts his this is going to be kind of gross.
But if he's a couple hundred yards away and he
kneels down and he cuts his wrists and he chucks
the knife, a knife is not going to be found
next to his remains, but his head may not have
originally been where his skull was found either. That's a
whole lot of conjections. I completely agree with that, but

(35:55):
you know, that's that's the way this theory goes. And
I've just got I got a run with you. Do
you have to say it? But I think it's dumb,
you know, I mean, you know, that's a whole lot
of remorse for somebody to have, for for a psychopathic
as he would have had to have been to actually
do these things. You know, it's Yeah, I don't I
just don't buy it. No, I I think that it's

(36:16):
it's done a whole lot of water for me. Yeah,
it was unlikely. Yeah, let's let's move to the next theory.
Theory number two is that the killings were unrelated. Yeah,
so yeah, I have a hard time with this one.
But but here's how this goes. Is that the theory
is that Stephen and Ruth were not killed by the

(36:39):
same person who killed Michael and Diana, and instead they
were complete killed by completely different individuals. And the tubesck
is a giant coincidence. Well, you know, actually in favor
of the series. Tube socks were hugely popular at that time.
People still we actually I don't know if they were
they in the eighties, Yeah, they were, Yeah, it was

(37:01):
kind of But I think that the fact that you
would not them and tie them around a woman's neck
in the same kind of area as the coincidence is
also super duck coincidence. But let's let's run down this
as we do so. Stephen Harkins was at the time

(37:22):
apparently involved in a dispute with another man over guessing
it's paying for repairs to his hardy because it's hardly
had been damnaged. Stevens Harley. Steven's Hartley is from what
I gathered, Yeah, it sounds like Stephen was actually a biker, right,
I Harley doesn't mean that he was a biker. I

(37:43):
heard from another source that he was. He actually was
a biker. That doesn't necessarily mean he's in a gang.
You know, a gang biker? No, No, you're the guy
who likes your motorcycle. But if you remember when I
was originally talking about their murder, in the day they disappeared,
they had gone to a wedding reception before heading out camping.

(38:05):
The guy that Stephen was having this dispute with he
showed up at the reception shortly after they left, and
people have said he was hot to find Stephen and
he wanted to have a confrontation over this this money
bit about damage to the bike. Well, if we if

(38:27):
we follow that logic, it is possible that that person
could have talked to other people, found out where they
were going to go camping, followed them, and then killed
the couple. Yeah. Yeah, although I guess the argument against
that would be that the vengeance and anger is mostly
towards Stephen, right, and so why killed Ruth and the dog?

(38:52):
Well or so brutally right that the brutality would be
funnel towards Stephen, not through Diana or sorry Ruth and
the dog well or the dog even got off the easiest. Yeah. Yeah,
that's the question, right is that is if it was
this guy that did it, you would think that his anger,

(39:14):
he would want to torture that person more. He would
be angry at that person that would be the person
he wanted to you know, affect, unless he would have
made him watch the torture of Ruth. But that seems
unlikely because he was in a sleeping bed. Maybe that
was it. You stay with the gun and shoots a
dog says, you stay in your sleeping bag while I
saw your girlfriend's head off and then like ft away.

(39:35):
Though like it's not it's not like it happened right there.
There is that. I mean, I'm not fun. I don't
know that the problem with this theory is this guy
whose name I don't have. I found his name on
one one place and then immediately lost. And that's also
not enough for me, the one place name thing. But

(39:57):
but the thing is, the police track this guy now
and they investigated him. They there wasn't any evidence or
enough evidence to link him to the murder of Stephen
and Rude. That's probably why you can't find his name,
you know, be suppresed they let him go. But but

(40:18):
according to this theory, if if we then moved back
to Michael and Diana, they were just in the wrong
place at the wrong time, and some other random person
killed him for some other random reason, and the tuck
thing and again the dupe stop. As they said at
the top of this is the giant coincidence, and it is.

(40:39):
And the thing about it is is that, of course
it couldn't have been a copycat incident unless the killer
was himself a cop. Do I had access to police
face because the police didn't publicize the fact that there
was a tubesock involved with the original murder? Correct? And
so yeah, so do you have that inlisted theories here? Cop? No? No, no, no,
I don't. I hadn't even thought about the fact that

(41:01):
it could have been a cop doing a copycat killing
for some personal vendelities political. But I feel suddenly like
we're on an episode of Castle where we're just making stuff.
Well no, but I mean, you know, not to get
like crazy or whatever. But if recent events have shown nothing,
it's that many cops are kind of crazy people. So uh,

(41:25):
it's not so far to stretch the imagination that it
could have been a cop who knew about the first
murder and or somebody or somebody with access to police records.
And I know a lot of reporters bribe policemen, but
not in Washington. Yeah. Yeah, so you know, it's not
one of your theories. We are not going to keep

(41:46):
going on that. But I think it's also not so
far out of reach. It's completely I'm not gonna I'm
not gonna swat it down immediately. This this particular theory, though,
brings out the creepiest thing about this story. And now
we talked about this a little bit in the beginning,
but who took the little girl to the freaking kmart?

(42:07):
That that that, by far is the weirdest thing. It
creached me out more than the fact that they cut
off Ruth's head. Yeah. Well, I think the really creepy
part about that isn't necessarily that somebody took her there.
It's that like she was too and two year olds
can tell, you know, they she should have been able

(42:30):
to say, oh it was my or it was a stranger.
And the fact that nobody pushed her and nobody said
but no, for real, we need to know rocky beer,
or there wasn't any kind of CCTV of the parking lot,
because even in you know, the eighties, that was a thing. No, no,
it was not often. It was on a loop. But

(42:51):
if you find a two year old wandering around your store,
you're gonna like search that stuff. Especially for a large
chain like Kmart. It's one thing to say, Okay, this
one tiny shop in Portland didn't have it, but it's
a large chain like Hamart, they're going to have that stuff.
Even in the eighties, she's a two year old girl.
They found her wandering around and nobody's doing anything about that.

(43:14):
They're just like it was under the hospital and accept
the fact that the only thing she's ever said is
mommy's in the trees. No, you can't stop there, you
can't stop there. I am surprised that they must have
asked her. Maybe they couldn't get any coherent answer out
of her at age two, and I guess that's a
lot to expect. But just who brought you here? Did

(43:36):
mommy bring you here? Did daddy bring you here? Did
somebody else bring you here? Yeah? Who brought you here?
What did he look like? Even if she says, right, oh,
he looked like a spaghetti monster with green ears, like
you can make that into something, thank you. But it's possible, right,
It's possible that it's also possible, now that I've gone

(43:56):
on this tangent, that she actually did say all that
stuff and that the police are can to you to
suppress it for whatever reason is because yeah, um, but
it seems to me that if she had actually witnessed
her parents being murdered, that she would have been in
pretty bad I don't think she did. I don't think
she did at all. I don't think she did. I
think I don't. I think that this guy, assuming the killer,

(44:16):
took her there, must have said She's like, where's mommy
and daddy? And he's like, oh, you know, I'm going
to take you and see them, and he gives her
a piece of candy because you know, when you're when
you're at that age and somebody somebody hands you a
candy bar, I mean that's like they're they're golden, Yeah,
the best thing ever, or you know, she said, It's
possible also, particularly if if Michael was abusing Diana, Crystal

(44:40):
would have been around, she would have seen that. It's
possible that somebody said, oh, mommy and daddy are fighting,
I'm going to take you someplace nice and buy you
a toy, and then you know, walked away from her,
or uh, you know, where's mommy and daddy? Oh, mommy's
in the trees, and I'm gonna take you to the
toy store to get you a barbie, or here's some candy,
or you know, it's not it's not so hard to

(45:01):
bribe two year olds for things, especially if they come
from are quite especially if they come from what sounds
like a really, really horrible homelie. It was a little
bit um. But also I think that it's not too
much to expect that you could ask a two year
old who brought you here and they could tell you
that's not that's not. I don't think so either. One

(45:21):
of the One of the things about the Kmar, though,
is that I do believe the killer was from the
area and familiar with it because of the Kmar, because
it was the closest big box store where he could
dump the kid off off anonymously to the murder side.
It was. Yeah, so I'm suspecting he's from the area
or she or he and she that might be why

(45:42):
the kid is alive. Is perhaps the perhaps a female
half of the killer couple really wasn't cool with killing
a two year old girl. We wow, this really went
for this is okay, I'm just gonna say this right now.
Is this? This is the hard part with this cases
that they're so many things and I went down so

(46:02):
many rabbit holes. I started going down the serial killer path,
which really it took me a long time to get
out of there. It's kind of funny. I'm at home,
I've researched the heck out of this story. That my
fiance comes home, we're having a conversation. She walks into
the kitchen. She comes back and I'm on the laptop

(46:25):
and she just looks over my shoulders goes and you're
googling serial killers again. That's that's how far down it's.
It's just like this thing is just so I can
want up you on this. I was doing research on
this on the airplane. So I'm sitting next to a
stranger on my let iPad going tupsock killer murders, into coma, washes,

(46:51):
how to decomposition of bodies, and you know this person
sitting next to me going can I yeah, well, I
mean that's part of the job, right, it is. It is. Well,
let's let's go to this would be theory number three.

(47:12):
The theory runs that there is a man named Joseph
Burgess who is responsible for this. Okay, that's credible some ways,
So let's let's talk about Let's talk about him. Let's
talk about Joe. Joseph headed him. Let's keep talking about Joe.
So Joe, Yeah, I had a lot of two sucks.

(47:36):
So Burges headed into the wilds, and by wilds, I
mean Canada in to avoid the draft. You left country
to dodge the draft. I don't know anybody who's done that. Nope.
But he was a bit of an outdoorsman, and he
actually did go into the woods to not come back
in nineteen seventy two, so four years later in Anada,

(48:00):
he just said, well, that's it. I can't take it.
I'm getting out of here. And he was in the
woods until two thousand and nine when he died. Out
of society. That except for when he come to cabins
and break into him and steal stuff. That because well
he's trying to survive. Yeah, you gotta get some extra stuff. Yeah, Well,

(48:22):
when he first left society back in seventy two. He
was known to have a twenty two caliber rifle and
considered himself, for Brad, to be quite the marksman winds
his Uh. He's known to have killed some people, were
believed to have killed some people, I should say, but

(48:43):
his m O. The only similarity is the shootings tube
socks were never used. If he did that, it was
a random thing, and then he just didn't repeat it again.
He was a member of what is called the fanatical Church,
and I use that because that's the way I've seen
it refer to in a number of places. But that
church was called Children of God, the Family International, and

(49:07):
they believe, and he believed. I should say that he
was on a mission directly from God, and that appears
to have been his motivation for killing people. Have you
read the book about these people? No, I haven't. The Family.
I have it. I'll let you borrow it. Okay. It's fascinating,

(49:28):
you know, since we have some people who like conspiracy theories,
go read that book, The Family. The Family. It's just
called the Family, and it's an investigative report about this group,
the Children of God, the Family International, the Family of Love,
the family as it pertains to the U. S. Government.
It's awesome read it. Okay, Burgess is part of that

(49:51):
church yea or group group? Yeah. I think it sort
of fell out action. He he had some very strong
views and like I said, he believed he was on
a mission from God. And one of the things that
he I don't know where this comes from, I'll be
honest with you, have seen it said, but I don't

(50:11):
know where it came from, is that he was obsessed
with and disgusted by unwed couples a k a. People
having sex that aren't in a marriage, couples without the
benefit of marriage. Yes, he didn't like that. And he
traveled up and down the western coastline from he stayed

(50:36):
in the States after he left Canada. From what we
can kind of tell, I mean, the guys in the
freaking woods, he's not going to just check it. It's
hard to say exactly where he was, but it sounds
like he went north to south, from the south tip
of California to the north tip of Washington, just kind
of traveling back and forth on the way. I also,
you know, it's interesting that people say, oh, yeah, he

(50:59):
broke into he broke into our cabin, Like, did they
have footage? Did they see him? How do they know?
Were they there? That's that's the hard Did you just
assume it was the Barefoot Bandit? Like, what's going on? Yeah,
I can't remember was it the Barefoot Bandit is that
what they called him? No, that he had a nickname,
and I can't remember what the bandit was really recent? Okay,

(51:20):
this guy, I can't remember what they called him, but
but he had a nickname, and they were because he
kept hitting the same ones over and over they did,
so they were pretty sure the same guy, and they
they believe it was him. Makes sense, but but there's
just there's some things that make me really question if
it's him. According to reports, and again I don't know

(51:41):
how valid this is because the guys just traveling around.
He was in Arizona at the time that the murders
were committed, and Arizona was the place where all the
cabin breakings were taking place. That's where a lot of Yeah,
he evidently upgraded guns before five. He went from a
twenty two to a forty five. And you know, actually

(52:03):
I read that when I actually when he died, he
didn't just die, he was shot to death by the police.
And it wasn't the police, it was off duty police officers. Okay,
but anyway, he he was found in hit to have
his possession then not a forty five but a three
fifty seven magnum revolver. Oh yeah, and the revolver was

(52:25):
originally sold to a guy who had disappeared, so probably
another one of his victim got it. With the way
he went down, he he I think he got cop
breaking into a place, and it was a man and
a woman. I think they were off duty cops. They
might not have been, but I think they were. Uh,
they exchanged fire. He shoots the male cop in the

(52:48):
leg after having been shot himself. So as he gets shot,
he's going down, he's still firing rounds hit this cop.
The other the lady cop didn't know how to use
the gun that she had. Well, it was it was
something to do with I think it was. Is it.
There's a single action and a double action, Is that correct, Joe?

(53:08):
She just though she thought a single action, she didn't
know how to use it and it was a double action.
So the cop who had been shot grabbed the gun
from her and then kills Burgess and then later dies
himself like a hail of bullets. The story probably the reverse.
So if you think if you think something as a
as a single action, that means you cock the hammer

(53:28):
a single action, you have to cock every time. She
probably had a single action revolver thinking it was a
double action, not realizing the trigger. You got to cock
the hammer on action. That's what it was, but it was.
It was a crazy scenario, but that's that's how he died.
The There's one other thing about him that I have

(53:49):
I've read that again, I can't corroborate anywhere else, saying
that at the time of the murders he was in
jail in California. That having been said, I again, I'm said,
the guy's not checking in. We don't know exactly where
he is. So it's hard to say if he was
responsible for these two double murders. That's hard. Yeah, I

(54:10):
would say it's possible because one of the things that
when you want a upgraded two at three fifty seven,
that doesn't mean he through is twenty two away. Oh absolutely,
no rifle actually is a murder. Weabin in the woods
makes a lot more sense because much quieter, easier to
get AMMO for it weighs a lot less. Yeah, so,

(54:31):
I mean, yeah, it could have been him. We belabored
him enough. We're gonna go to number four. So, by
the way, the guy was ugly. I don't know if
he saw pictures of him, he was he was scary, like,
oh yeah, I don't know. Look look him up. He's
a burgess. Is a crazy looking, bearded, screwy mountain man.
I didn't ever want to meet him. But next theory

(54:54):
is that the killings were done by a person and
who had a thing to use a tube sock, and
we just don't know who they are. So there there
are a huge string of killings of people hiking and
camping up and down the western coast of the United

(55:16):
States out there getting killed. Yeah, and it's it's before
these folks died and well after, I mean recently is
I think two years ago there was another one. I've
seen maps to try and connect them, and if they
truly are connected, it's like you said, it's scary, but
it's also a little strange because again the socks never

(55:40):
make an appearance again. Um, to travel that much ground,
it's it's fair distances to suddenly go like I've seen
one of the maps, and it jumps from you know,
from northern Washington to southern California and then back up
to northern Oregon like this, this is yours distances to

(56:01):
be traveling in how much time? Though? If it's I
can't imagine there's just one killer in weeks. But it
just seems like, you know why, I mean, I guess
it could be a trucker, but why would truckers be
out on campsites and you think trucks would be But
I mean, well, but if you're it's hard to it's
hard to wrap my brain around. I guess, like the
rail lines is pretty like if you're hopping rail cars, right,

(56:22):
if you're homeless or vagrant, or maybe you've got a car,
or maybe you have a car and you're driving. But
that does seem it seems weird that you would travel
that far up and down, back and forth unless you
were like train hopping and that was kind of where
you were living. Right If you were just like, well,
I'm going to get in my car and drive to
California and then kill some people and then drive up
to Washington and kills the more people, you know, that's

(56:44):
that's a little less sketchy, but nobody nobody's claiming. I
don't seriously though, that all of these murders all down
the coast the same person. There are people who are
trying to make connections. I will say that, but nobody
seriously says they're all connected. It just random to be
all connected. And let's face it, there's no shortage of

(57:06):
serial killers. There's no reason that one poor Harry it
overworks serial killer has to be doing all of this.
So so the thing is, with all of these, all
of these murders up and down the coast, Like I
said before, the tube sock never shows up. Maybe it
was a tool of convenience and the two murders, I
don't know, but it doesn't come up. You know, there's
there's people that I've looked at that I've tried to

(57:28):
pin this on that I couldn't. Israel Keys was one
of the ones that I wanted depended on, except it
turns out he's way too young. He'd have been eight
years old at the time of the murders. That doesn't work,
and you didn't find anything that could have escalated from
the tube Sockmarer is right, I mean you that that
that's an elementary tool. I looked at people who shot

(57:52):
or strangled their victims, and we're going to talk about
some serial killers that could possibly be it. But I
never found a wrong link. And serial killers don't tend
to change their m O. So you would think that
those two factors, the strangling and the shooting, would have
ast Yes, regardless of the sock, may have used a

(58:14):
rope or whatever, but but that that way to go
about it. Serial killers do tend to evolve. Yeah, but
there there's probably some smart ones at you actually changed
their all over the place. Oh god, that's scary to
think about it. It is really the scariest part about it.
As a white female, I don't want a gun in

(58:35):
a grenade with you. So that we're going to move
to our next theory, and this is this is loosely
tied to the last two. There's a guy who's sometimes
he's called the Mountain Man. You'll hear him called the
Elbs serial killer or the Northwest serial killer in the
Cascadia serial Killer. I don't know if I don't know

(58:58):
if I see that, okay, making it okay, This is
making reference to a serial killer that is believed to
be operating in the range of northwestern Oregon up to
the Tacoma Seattle area, and there's there's been a couple
of reports that have come across about a strange mountain

(59:21):
man who just comes out of the woods and he's
got a twenty two rifle and maybe another gun on him,
and he's really strange and he's really weird, and he
gives people the creeps and he's you know, he's he's
They think that he potentially could be the person, and
that he's territorial for where he's at. So he stumbles

(59:42):
across somebody in his area doing something he doesn't like
and decides that's it. I'm gonna hunt you down and
I'm gonna kill you like pray, and that's what he does.
I don't know that that this person actually exists. I mean,
it could just be a random weirdo that somebody that
different people have bumped into, because it's never the same

(01:00:03):
person meeting this guy twice. I don't know that it's true,
but there's there's a lot of talk about this, and
it's an easy jump in logic when you hear these
stories of I met this really creepy, weird guy with
a gun in the woods to that creepy weird guy
with the gun in the woods is the one that's

(01:00:23):
killing it. Yeah. In fairness, I've spent a fair amount
of time in the woods and I have met my
fair share of creepy weird dude yeah with rifles, and
I think that's just like a thing in the Pacific West.
To be honest with you, I don't know that I
necessarily would think, oh, he did have crazy eyes, like
of course he had crazy eyes. He was a weird

(01:00:44):
dude in the middle of the forest with a rifle,
Like of course he did. Joe has crazy eyes half
the time, you know. I mean I think that I
probably they probably look at me and they're like, what
is this weird chick doing in the middle of the forest.
Like she's got a bow and some arrows. She's weirdo,
you know. That's the sort of I don't know. I

(01:01:05):
don't know. It might be that you meet people like
that too, and you see they have a gun, and
then you get all freaked out because they have a
gun and I don't, and so you're sort of like, there,
oh my god, he's a psycho. And then and then
you look for reasons to believe he's a psycho and
you regular guy, or you think, like the what IF's
get ahold of you? You know, we're like, oh god,
what if he was crazy? What if he shot me?

(01:01:27):
What if he shot those people? Oh my god, he
totally shot those people. In some of the areas, this
is this is what I think people are linking to. Specifically,
is in some of those areas where this mountain man
has been spotted, or a mountain man has been spot
or some dude in the forest says, there have been
couples that are unwed, couples that are found shot in

(01:01:48):
the head in their sleeping bags. People are drawing the
link from that. So that's a pattern. That's a pattern,
and they're connecting that pattern because of Stephen Harkins, who
was shot in the head in a sleeping bag. The
thing is about it. Spot, you spot a couple in
a sleeping bag, maybe in a tent, how do you

(01:02:08):
tell they're unmarried? Yeah? I mean I was going to
say that. Yeah, like you go talk to him, Yeah,
you and you say, hey, hold out your left hands,
both of you know, but not even that. Like my
parents when we'd go camping, they left their wedding rings
at home, Like, you don't wear that when you're going
to go bathe in a stream. That's expensive and awesome, right, No,

(01:02:30):
I mean that the thing is like your fingers are
bloated or whatever. Like I honestly like, we spent a
lot of time in the wilderness as a kid, and
my parents literally never took their wedding rings with them.
So for as far as anybody knew, they were an
unmarried couple. Yeah, and uh so, it's amazing that didn't
get shot. Yeah, it absolutely is. It was amazing that
I wasn't left at a kmart saying mommy was in

(01:02:52):
the trees, mommy's in the stream. Oh my gosh, maybe
I was. Yeah, all right, let's let's move to a
less theories, because, believe it or not, we still have
one more to go. It's it's it's actually the hardest one.
They all suck, don't they a little bit? Here? But okay,

(01:03:14):
we talked about this before I did. I dove into
serial killerville, going through every single board of serial killer
lists that I could find. Found some unknown and known
serial killers. And by unknown I mean people that have

(01:03:34):
been given a name, but we don't know who they are,
they've been given a moniker and then people that have
been caught and we know who they are that because
they're in the general region, could potentially be responsible for
this set of double murders that we're talking about. We've
got uh person that is called the twenty two caliber killer,

(01:03:57):
and this person's believed to have killed three women who
were found dumped in the Spokane River. Spokene, just so
people know, is on the exact opposite side of the
state of Washington, like three hundred miles away. It's the
opposite side, but it's also several years later, so conceivably

(01:04:20):
somebody could travel the state. But but they were all
three shot at the same time. I don't know that
they weren't shot at the same time, shot in the
same year. They were prostitutes. They were shot with the
twenty two rifle or a gun. I should say something,
we don't know that two caliber gun. Yeah, that's that's
a completely different circumstances. Again, Joe, that's the hard part

(01:04:44):
here is I'm reaching for straws and I'm just trying
to find people that could potentially be linked. It's not
that Well, then I'll move to the next one, which
is Gary Shaw. Gary Shaw was convicted of raping and
then killing two women in Tacoma in separate attacks in

(01:05:04):
which is the same year. He dumped the bodies of
these women in the woods in Pierce County, which is
on the edge of Tacoma, which is which is where
our murders took place. So it's in the same region. Possible.
I don't know. Again, these are likely again, you know,
anything I feel for me, anything that is like a

(01:05:27):
single female murder, abduction rape thing. I okay, fine, No,
it's just it's hard because that's so much extra work. Checkmate,
the Green River killer, what about him? He committed that's
Gary Ridgeway. That guy went literally bananas with the killing.

(01:05:49):
He killed a lot of people. Did he kill anybody
other than prostitutes? So? Oh, that's the question, right, that's
the m O. Is the m O? Hey I pick
up prostitutes or single women and abuse and whatever them
and kill them? Or do I find couples and take
care of them? Right? That's the question? Well, and and

(01:06:09):
I think potentially you led us to a little bit
of the answer, which is killers evolve. Could be Wait,
when there's two people, this is way too much work.
This is way too difficult. It gets a little messy,
like people have. There's conjecture that Diana tried to get
away and that's why she was stabbed so viciously. Is

(01:06:32):
that Ruth cooperated so she was easily killed, But Diana
freaked out and tried to get away and that made
the killer angry and stabbed ahead. Guess that's true. And
I guess that that deals with the you know, if
you're targeting prostitutes, you're targeting women well, but also women

(01:06:52):
who have sex outside of marriage if that's your thing, right,
So I I okay, alright, except okay, so I think
that Ridgeway ridgeway even though the specialty was prostitutes in
the I five corridor. You know, when you think about it,
the guy needs to take a vacation occasionally. Yeah, But
also the whole Tacoma thing, that's not so far off

(01:07:12):
the I five corner. Now, it really isn't that far.
But I said he was just not camping and just relaxing,
and it comes across these couples and I was like, oh,
I'm one a little reparational killing, yeah, just for fun um.
And if anybody doesn't know about the green river Killer.
There's a ton of information. He lived in Rentain, which

(01:07:32):
is north of Tacoma, and north lived he's he's now
very well locked up. Yeah, this is the only reason
I'm okay walking to my car at night. Yeah. That
that is the end of the theories. I mean, like
I said, I spent forever digging through stuff until I
realized I was looking for anel in a haystack, and

(01:07:54):
I kind of had to stop. And I don't know
that any of the theories that we've come up with
ourselves or discussed so far even come close to figuring
this out, because we're so little there to work with.
But it's so strange the connection between the two. Yeah,

(01:08:16):
I mean, I think that's that's totally fair. It's weird
tube socks with not that's weird. But then the noted
tube sock doesn't show up again after that. Those two
are like that. That seems like such a specific thing
to have done in such a short time span. Now
it's completely plausible that the goofball that did this then

(01:08:40):
got himself arrested for something else and locked up for
a good long time and we never knew about it
because nobody ever asked and that person never admitted to it. Yeah, yeah,
that happens a lot. Or he could have gotten killed
or it was d B. Cooper. Yeah, you know, it
could have could have tried to screw with the wrong

(01:09:02):
couple who were armed to the teeth themselves and just
blew him away and buried him. There's a basilionaces go. Yeah,
it's hard. I would say that. You know again, we'll go,
We'll go back to. One of my favorite ways of
looking at these things is that there was somebody specific
in there that he wanted to kill, probably let's say
Michael or Diana. I would say Diana was the most brutal. Yeah,

(01:09:26):
it was the most personal. And so and so what
you do as you go out and you and you
you kill somebody, you kill a couple out in the
It was just like just like these two talked about
the tubestock thing. And then when it kind of time
that you follow those guys out in the woods, track
them down and you make and you kill them. And
then if they if they do have you as a
suspect for Diana or or whichever, when they have us

(01:09:48):
a suspect for you, just say, well, no, it was
it was a tube sock killer and these other people.
I have no connection with them whatsoever. The problem you
run into with that is if they didn't publicize the
tubesock part of the first part, right is and you say, oh, no,
it's really a tupto killer because the other lady was
found with the chepstock, and they're like, well, how did
you know that? Yeah? But now, yeah, I mean obviously

(01:10:08):
obviously you're not going to say that. I mean, I
think there's an obvious answer here. It was Crystal. Whoa,
she's the only survivor. I don't know who you want
for me. She didn't have a good alibi. No, it's
just a mommy is in the trees. I mean, that's
a horrible thing. But she as much as anybody that

(01:10:34):
I'm realistic. Yeah, well that's that's exactly the hard part
with this is that she as much as anybody. We guys,
I've spent I don't know how much time reading on
this one, and I still don't know where to go.
I mean, I don't know if you two tracked the
list that I was making, but things kept changing because
I kept adding to it and then deleting people off,

(01:10:55):
Like I just don't know It's so hard to say,
but I think think that is probably the best place
to end this particular story because we just don't know.
Did we talk about bot No, it's not a Bigfoot
slash chupa Cabra team up. We're gonna move on, Steve Um,

(01:11:20):
I am ninety nine point nine sure, and imagine you've
ever been Imagine if those two teamed up. I mean,
it would be probably the end of humanity. So let's
give you all of the special details that everybody likes
to hear us talk about at the end of the show,
which is links for some of the research is going

(01:11:41):
to be on our website, and that website is, of course,
thinking Sideways podcast dot com. If you're there, you can
of course listen to episodes and stream them right off
the website. But I'm guessing you've already figured out how
to download a podcast, and you've probably downloaded us from
somewhere else. Uh, if that place happens to be iTunes,

(01:12:03):
Do take the time to leave a comment and a rating,
do it. We really appreciate that we are available on
a ton of other sources for streaming, So whichever one
you use, I'm gonna guess we're on there at this point,
so you can find us on there. We uh, we
of course have the Facebook page and the Facebook group,

(01:12:27):
so you can find us friend it's like us. We
have conversations with folks, put up interesting stuff. It's good times.
I had a huge conversation with yesterday. God, yeah he did.
I checked the email account and I was like, what
if teen new emails the dumbest thing. It turns up
he is in the group for like an hour and
a half. Yeah. Um. We also have a Twitter account,

(01:12:49):
so we are Thinking Sideways without the G in the middle.
If you go check it out this week, which is
going to be like a couple of weeks ago. At
this point, you can see my photos from the Denver Airport.
Definitely doesn't have anything to do with an upcoming show.
Spoilers alert. And most importantly, of course, we have our email.

(01:13:11):
You can send us an email at Thinking Sideways podcast
at gmail dot com. So if you've got ideas for stories,
you've got just general feedback, or you just want a
fanboy fan girl out, go ahead and send us an
email at that address. We have also started looking for

(01:13:32):
some expert help, I think, as we have actually had
a huge outpouring of support. Support. I guess people saying, yeah,
I'm an expert in this thing. So if you are
an expert and you haven't yet emailed us, or even
just like an armchair expert, or you think you might
know something about a thing, just let us know. We
are kind of collecting that list. We're reaching out to

(01:13:53):
people trying to Basically, there are details that we don't know,
and sometimes we think we figured it out, but it's
always nice to bounce that off of somebody who actually
knows about that subject. As I like to say, the
longer we do this, the more we realize we don't
really know anything about We know some things about some things,

(01:14:14):
and we just want to make sure that our podcast
and we are as informed as possible and we get right. Yeah. So,
if you know something about something, send us an email
and we'll add you to the list. Put experts in
the subject line, please, and I will get it yep,
and then we'll take care of that. Yeah, we're looking exerts.
You've actually gotten a single one? Yeah, we have. The

(01:14:36):
only other thing I will say about the experts is
we've We've said this before, but if you want to,
you want to help out. Please understand that we typically
need a couple of day turnaround on response. So if
you're gonna sit on an email, you don't check your
email but once every couple of weeks or whatever the
case may be. Or if you don't think you have
the time, we appreciate the thought, but just you know,

(01:14:57):
don't don't sign up because we're gonna try and get
really quick responses. Yeah, idea and research the last minute.
Will I don't even say we do all of our
research at the last minute. As much as we are
researching up to the last minute, we realized we don't
know something at the last minute, we do he quick?

(01:15:18):
Can you google that crap? Right? What's Wikipedia saying? All right? Wikipedia, Wikipedia.
We're gonna go ahead and we're gonna wrap this one up.
Thank you so much for listening to us to this time,
and we will talk to you again next week. Mr Salt.

(01:15:46):
Oh and by the way, okay, don't take that the
wrong way. She wasn't really saying she's a process. Thank you, Joe.
That's what what I meant. I meant I'm a single female.
Don't worry about it. Just find a moment of female.
You getting any ideas here her She's well armed. Don't
even try it. Yeah, guys armed to the teeth.