RE-RELEASE: Charlie Kirk Court Fight, Delphi Appeal & The Hollywood Fire Devil

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Happy Memorial Day. Here's a rebroadcast of one of our
favorite episodes. We hope you enjoy it and have a
safe holiday.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
This program features the individual opinions of the hosts, guests,
and callers, and not necessarily those of the producer, the station,
it's affiliates, or sponsors. This is True Crime Tonight.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
Welcome to True Crime Tonight on iHeartRadio. We're talking true
crime all the time. I'm Stephanie Leidecker and I'm here
with Courtney Armstrong and body Move in and listen, everybody.
It is Tuesday, May nineteenth, and we have a stack
knight of headlines. Accused Charlie Kirk assassin Tyler Robinson had
a very contentious day in court today. Also, have you

(00:51):
guys seen the documentary called The Crash on Netflix?

Speaker 4 (00:54):
I keep hearing about it, but no, Stephanie, I haven't.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
It's everywhere social media has below up about this case.
It's highly controversial. If you haven't seen it, it's okay
because we're going to unpack the true story behind it. Also,
there's a small update on the Delphi murders and finally,
fired death scene investigator Ed Nordskog joins us to discuss
the mindset of an arsonist.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
And it's ironic, I have to say, because here in
Los Angeles today we are having some fires up in
Seami Valley in Los Angeles, New Yoro thousand and.

Speaker 4 (01:28):
A halfs very terrible.

Speaker 5 (01:29):
I saw that. That's so scary.

Speaker 4 (01:31):
Wishing everybody well.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
But first, Courtney, what is happening with Tyler Robinson. This
was a huge explosive day in court.

Speaker 4 (01:38):
So the twenty two year old Robinson.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
He is the one accused of fatally shooting Charlie Kirk,
who of course was Turning Point USA founder. This happened
back in September of last year at the Utah Valley
University and we remember it because most of us saw
it with or without wanting to. So the defendant, he's
been charged with aggravated murder and interestingly, he hasn't answered

(02:01):
a plea yet.

Speaker 4 (02:02):
Prosecutors have said.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
They do, indeed intend to seek the death penalty if
he's convicted. And during a hearing today the defense and
prosecution they were arguing about whether an upcoming preliminary hearing
in July should be open to the public and the media,
and that kind of hearing is where prosecutors establish probable cause,

(02:27):
so they explain a lot of what their evidence is. Additionally,
defence the defense moved to sanction the Utah County Attorney's
Office for alleged rule violations and improper out of court statements.

Speaker 4 (02:42):
What do you think.

Speaker 5 (02:44):
I saw the armored truck arriving. There was like this
big tank almost I want to see major pulling up
to the courthouse with him in it. I was like,
oh my gosh. Like the security that they have for
this these hearings is kind of like unseen before in
my opinion, What do you make.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
Of the optics of that? Is that something to be considered?
I mean fast it is when a person who has
not yet been convicted enters the courtroom, we learned in
the Luigi Mangioni case, is a big deal, right sometimes
if it's a really big, you know, spectacle, that of
course right there could taint to Jerry Pool and the

(03:25):
live coverage piece of it. I'm curious what do you
guys think about that.

Speaker 5 (03:28):
I think it should be live. I think it should
do to coverage, especially the family of Charlie Kirk wanted
to be on display. I think that obviously the family
should be respected in that sense, and I, you know,
I've always been a big proponent of you know, things
being out in the open, transparency. You know, things shouldn't

(03:48):
be done in the dark, so to speak. So I
definitely think it should be a public What about you, guys, Well,
I got to say, because I before today's.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Hearing, I was one hundred per and I do think
that the trial itself should be covered with cameras, as
you said to the you know, so there's the public
can see what's actually happening. I thought the defense made
a really good point, though not only of course, they
argued that the live media coverage will generate adverse publicity

(04:19):
for their defendant. Understood, however, this is what stands out
the defense attorney Stacy Visser. She noted that preliminary hearings
it relies on what they call reliable hearsay and evidence
that eventually might be ruled in admissible at a trial,
which therefore could jeopardize the defendant's right to a fair trial.

Speaker 5 (04:41):
I think that's fair. I mean, I don't need to
see the prelim you know what I mean. I don't
need I don't need to see a grand jury. Obviously,
I don't need to see a prelim. I do think
the trial itself should be public, but I'd be totally
okay if the prelim was closed.

Speaker 3 (04:56):
I'm with you on this one completely. And by the way,
trials should be live because it's going to become increasingly
more difficult to hear coverage, you know. I think we're
entering a time as AI enters the equation on social media,
how things are being covered outside of the courtroom is
really it sometimes can be hard to track. And let's

(05:17):
be honest, courtrooms are filled with emotion and nuance and
the layers of being there is hard to it's hard
to ignore, and I think people just generally seeing that
and can interpret it fully. I think then people won't
feel confused all the time.

Speaker 5 (05:35):
I think that's a fair point.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
Yeah, and that's a lot of the prosecution's argument, you know,
both that the public and the media do have a
constitutional right to open proceedings for all the reasons you
just said, Stephanie, and this one particularly in this case.
The deputy County Attorney Chad Grunander, so he emphasized that

(05:59):
these open hearings are vital to counter online conspiracy theories
that do surround this case, I think more than more
than anything that comes to my memory.

Speaker 5 (06:10):
Wow, Yes, I think you're probably well. I think there's
been conspiracies in every case. I just feel like the
conspiracies in this one are so big, you know, and
being right and being said by people with big microphones. Right,
and so I think that I think that the transparency
is going to be important. However, I also think that

(06:31):
no matter what kind of transparency has shown, the conspiracies
are still going to run wilds.

Speaker 3 (06:40):
I would imagine that would lower that a little little bit,
but it is so true this particular case. I mean,
obviously for good reason, we watch somebody lose their life.
This is somebody's you know, husband, and he's a father.
That was you know, a terrible, terrible thing. But it
has also become so divisive and political as well. So yeah,

(07:01):
I don't know the spectacle of it all though, with
cameras outside of the courthouse, I don't know what the
workaround is on that.

Speaker 5 (07:11):
I'm not sure about that.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
But well, the prosecution had one more argument point, and
that was to maintain an open courtroom but implement that.

Speaker 4 (07:20):
They referred to it as just a middle ground, and to.

Speaker 1 (07:25):
Restrict the public and media from viewing or copying or
handling sensitive exhibits, and that includes two videos of the victim,
Charlie Kirk's killing. They're both making really reasoned arguments. I
have to say, but in this case, for the prelim,
I do go with the defense and have that closed,
because if evidence is said, that is then an admissible

(07:50):
that that bell is wrong.

Speaker 3 (07:53):
One, which is why sometimes people do want that to
be open and visible for that very reason. It's probably
a strategy. Oops. Sorry, I mean to say that, you know,
and now boom, it's out there. You can't put it
back in a bottle. So that is something to keep
very sacred.

Speaker 4 (08:14):
So we'll see, this will be rolled on.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
There was one other big sort of argument today and
that was a request for sanctions against the prosecution. So
Richard Novak, he's the defense attorney, and he's now accused
one of the prosecutors, Christopher Ballard, of contempt of court,
and he cited a Fox and Friend's appearance where Ballard

(08:37):
went on he discussed forensic evidence as well as the defendant,
Tyler Robinson's guilt. So that seems very off color and
inappropriate to me.

Speaker 4 (08:50):
I don't know. What do you guys think.

Speaker 5 (08:51):
I mean, you know, I mean we have seen prosecutors
give press conferences before. I mean, we just recently saw
the prosecutor in Los Angeles give a press conference about
David's guilt. I mean, he wasn't sitting down with Fox
and Friends, but he was giving a press conference. Bill
Thompson in Idaho, you know, when Brian Coberger was arrested.
We learned some things about that. I don't necessarily think

(09:15):
that that is prejudicial. Necessarily, I think I would be
kind of more talking about, you know, the statements like
from the president and stuff. You know, that would be
more my thing. But you can't really sanction the president
of the United States in court, you know, at the
state level. So maybe that's probably why they didn't. But

(09:35):
I don't necessarily think that's super sanctionable. But that's just
my opinion.

Speaker 3 (09:40):
I don't disagree.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, so we'll see, we'll see what the judge comes down.
So there wasn't an there wasn't a ruling today. But
these are all the main arguments that played out, and
the judge, Tony Graft Junior, he's taking the arguments under
advisement and he's going to issue his decision. It's going
to be during a virtual hearing on June first, so

(10:05):
that is coming right up, and then after that the
defendants you will also be there virtually, and then it
will be followed by an in person hearing on June twelve.

Speaker 5 (10:15):
That's going to be very interesting that, you know, and
the bullet is still kind of a thing that the
Deputy County Attorney Ryan McBride and the prosecutor, Christopher Ballat
argued that you know, this bullet framing how they said
the bullet doesn't you know, match and whatnot, that that
was a big problem today because the bullet they said

(10:38):
that the it emitted crucial content right context. The ATF
report did not exclude the bullet. It simply could not
decisively include it, as you know, it had shattered. So
that's going to be interesting. This is true crime tonight.
We're on iHeartRadio. We talked true crime all the time.
What do you guys think. Should this trial be open

(10:58):
to the public and televised for all to sea or
is it better for the country and the family that
this all be done behind doors. Give us a call,
let us know, let's go to a talk.

Speaker 6 (11:08):
Back regarding the death of the lady that fell overboard
in the boat, what about their cell phones when she
fell over? Didn't have a phone that he could make
a phone call off that boat or can't they track
the previous locations of the phones and stuff to determine
how accurate the story is, because I believe her phone
would turn off once it hit the water. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (11:28):
That's totally a great point, great question.

Speaker 5 (11:32):
Brian Hooker said that his cell phone, because that was
like the first thing I think all of us thought of, Well,
why didn't he call somebody? Right? He says that his
cell phone didn't have cell service. He said it only
works via Wi Fi okay, and he doesn't have a
signal because he's not near the boat or near a
Wi Fi signal, so he had no way to call now.

(11:53):
Lynette's daughter said that her mom carried her phone with
her all the time, all the time.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
Of course, she's a functioning person in the world. She's
not get on a boat without any form of communication
with a man who she was already like if something
happens to me, you know who, and is basically pointing
at his picture without anybody knowing, you know she was
giving some signals. This is unbelievable, and it's such a
great point. I mean, the basic where if maybe the

(12:23):
phone fell out of her pocket, if this in fact happened,
which let's assume it did because he claims his innocence,
But if in fact that did happen, of course she
had the key to the boat, where in her phone
probably fell in the water as well. Can't we contrue?
You know, get that, And that's a point we know timestamp.

Speaker 5 (12:42):
Well, we know too that when they searched the boat
they took like some kind of cellular devices or cellular
equipment of some kind. It was mentioned in a couple
of different reports that they had taken some electronic equipment
that was related to cell service or I can't remember these.
Zach Burbage understood that it was something along those lines.

(13:03):
So yeah, I don't know, but yeah, Brian Hooker is like, oh,
my cell phone doesn't work without a wifis which I gave.
If you don't have cell service and you make all
your calls or a Wi Fi, okay, fine, but that's
weird and that's a little convenient to me, right.

Speaker 4 (13:18):
Is it something about being in another country or no, I.

Speaker 3 (13:22):
Don't know why I would you not have your phone
if you're in another country and just going to get
on a boat and open water without any form of communication.
She was obviously being very careful if she had the
key to the boat in her pocket.

Speaker 5 (13:36):
My cell phone works down there.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
No, my cell phone for sure wouldn't work. And by
the way, if it were me, you'd all roll your
eyes because she didn't have her phone. Yes, but I
feel like she would have had her phone, I feel,
and that's what I happened.

Speaker 7 (13:51):
I don't think it's odd to have your phone overseas
and not not working. Like when you do dock back
in your natural country or wherever you're from, service comes
back on. So to me, it's not odd that you
would have a phone that only works that didn't work
in that area.

Speaker 5 (14:06):
And maybe it's that kind of situation where you know
that he didn't have like the right SIM card for
the country he's in or something, and that's why it
only works via Wi Fi. But I don't even know
if that. If that's a thing, well, and then she's just.

Speaker 3 (14:21):
The time stamp. It's less about him being able to
communicate and get help, right, It's more about just the
actual pin of Okay, that was the last time she
was you know, likely nearby. You know, if he was
trying to stage something, would it have been appropriate to
even toss it over? If this was something that was

(14:43):
you know, thought through beforehand, which, man, I hope that's
not the case. Let's assume that's not case.

Speaker 5 (14:48):
It kind of feels like it is a little bit.
It kind of feels like it is the case a
little bit, especially with the bartender.

Speaker 7 (14:55):
Right, every time we talk about it, I feel that
way more and more. Like I at one point I
was like, poor mister hooker, why are they all going
after him? And now sure, huh, I'm changing too.

Speaker 5 (15:04):
Well, they've had the boat for a hot minute too.
Now they might have found something. But I mean maybe
by now right it's getting processed that hasn't been arrested,
so maybe there's some true to his innocence, and let's hope.
So let's hope you know that he is innocent, because
you know, you don't want anybody to hurt their wife much, brother,
you know. Anyway, we'll stay updated on that when we

(15:25):
come back though. The case they called a murder by
car crash and why a new Netflix documentary about convicted
killer Mackenzie Shrilla is now creating a fresh backlash. Keep
it right here True Crime Tonight.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
Welcome back to True Crime Tonight an iHeartRadio. We're talking
true crime all the time. I'm Stephanie Leidecker here with
Courtney Armstrong and Body move in. Taha is with us,
of course, our face producer, and of course we have
Sam and Adam in the control room. Listen, big turnout
last night on the music it seems like I hate
We've gotten a lot of positive feedback, so more to

(16:10):
talk about on that front. And listen, have you guys
seen this documentary called The Crash on Netflix. It's just
buzzy right now. If you're on social media or on
any of the boards, it seems to be dominating the conversation.
So we figured we would unpack the real life case

(16:31):
because you guys were following it pretty closely when it happened.
I was kind of from a distance. But it's an
everyone and that documentary is craziness.

Speaker 5 (16:42):
Yeah, it's not doing any favors for Mackenzie and her family, right,
So let's at the table. Let's at the table first,
and then we can just start talking about it. Okay. So,
on July thirty first of twenty twenty two, it's like
four years ago now, seventeen year old mckenzi Shrilla she
intentionally crashed her twenty eighteen Toyota Camry into a brick

(17:06):
wall in Strongsville, Ohio, while traveling at over one hundred
miles per hour at like five thirty in the morning.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
Now.

Speaker 5 (17:15):
The crash resulted in the immediate deaths of her two passengers,
while Mackenzie she had severe you know, injuries and multiple
bone fractures. And it was initially considered like a tragic accident, right,
but investigators uncovered evidence that provide, you know, proved the

(17:35):
crash was a premeditated murder suicide attempt that was sparked
by Mackenzie's fear that one of her passengers, her boyfriend
Dominic Russo, was going to break up with her. Oh okay, yeah,
good lord.

Speaker 3 (17:51):
So that was a very good settle, by the way, Yes,
that's a very excellent sat Okay. Yes.

Speaker 5 (17:56):
So last Friday, just on the fifteenth of May, Netflix
released a documentary it's called The Crash on the Case,
and it's triggered like a fresh wave of public backlash
and it's directly, you know, kind of impacting Mackenzie's direct family. Now, yeah,
I don't think this went the way they thought it
was gonna go.

Speaker 3 (18:17):
No, No, it appears that it's gone very sideways.

Speaker 5 (18:19):
It's a must watch.

Speaker 3 (18:22):
I can't wait. If you haven't watched it, please do.
I've only been able to binge little pieces of it
because but I'm seeing it so many.

Speaker 5 (18:29):
Places that it's a possible not to.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
So it's an important case because, yeah, I had a
certain opinion of it at the time. It's really a
look at a family and parenting and the sort of
interesting generation of people behind bars that have like no
connection to what their actions are equaling. And I see

(18:53):
that as a little bit of a trend, and it
might just be a timing thing since this case is
not a new one.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
So when you said didn't go the way they planned,
did the accused Mackenzie, Shriilla and her family participate in
this documentary where they they did?

Speaker 5 (19:09):
And they did come across the way I think they
thought they were going to come across because I have
not seen it, but I have seen the reaction from
people to it. It's all over my TikTok, like every
other video is like people talking about this documentary and
how infuriated it made them at the parents and Mackenzie,

(19:30):
you know that she's the killer in this, about how
flippant they are about it, and apparently like after the crash,
you know, Mackenzie went to the hospital because she was
severely injured, and she was making like dance like not dances,
but like singing like songs about how you know, she
doesn't care, and just making it like like nothing had happened.

Speaker 3 (19:53):
And she was famous in a way, like this was
sort of something that she was leaning into. Remember at
the time, she was considered a victim, not the perpetrator,
but it was sort of a grab attention grab at
a very difficult time.

Speaker 4 (20:08):
So yeah, it felt wildly totally wrong.

Speaker 5 (20:12):
Scented, but I understand. Go ahead.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
Please, First of all, I am you guys are really
making me want to watch this doc immediately and listen
if you are just joining us, this is true crime
tonight and we are talking about a documentary the crash
and the actual crime behind it, and we actually have
a talk back right now.

Speaker 8 (20:32):
Hey girl, so are you all watching the crash on netfoot?
It is crazy and this Mackenzie girl is totally giving
Judy as I love you.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
Okay, really I feel like we're like jumping the shark.
But boy, do you and I think the same you know,
same thing. It is like watching craziness. Like I don't
even know that they're aware how completely out to lunch
their parenting is. It's it's a scary, like parasocial look
at parenting. I don't know what the connective tissue is,

(21:05):
like was everybody just is this like the aftermath of
COVID that the the you know, she seems so desensitized.
You know, let's assume that this young girl was in
shock and that she's innocent, but there's some like really
kind of wicked conversations between mom and daughter when she's
behind bars. It saw this clip out of context, but

(21:27):
there's hard to unhear it. It was played in court
of you know, them kind of realizing that this story
is like global news I'm paraphrasing, but like it had
caught caught on, like there was fame being attached to it,
and you know that kind of intersection between the fame
of doing something infamous like this and a young girl's

(21:49):
mind and the parenting behind it. Is pretty it's wild.

Speaker 5 (21:53):
I want to talk about a little bit about the
evidence because we said we were going to talk about
the crime behind it, right, Yes, just for those who
don't know why she was convicted of this. So on,
there's onboard vehicle computer diagnosies that were done that showed
that she pressed down on the accelerator pedal and it
was fully depressed at the time of the crash, and

(22:15):
the brakes were never applied, so her foot was on
the pedal all the way down and the vehicle successfully
navigated a high speed left right, a dog leg turn
immediately before the impact, disproving the defense claims that Mackenzie
blacked out, all right, because they said that she blacked out.

(22:38):
It was a terrible accident, but it navigated this complicated
turn right before the crash, so that was disproven. Then
they used GPS tracking and that revealed that she had
scouted the crash location three days prior to the accident.

Speaker 3 (22:57):
That was really hard to come back from. That evidence
was to come back from. But again, this is a
young girl. Frontal lobes not fully developed. If we're giving
the benefit of the doubt, he was seventeen, right, you know,
seventeen years old, like what a wacky day? Like is there?
And then but the aftermath was real weird.

Speaker 5 (23:15):
Oh so the aftermath okay, so yeah, the TikTok in
the social media controversy, right because Mackenzie during her hospital recovery,
it sparked a lot of outrage. You know, she posted
those videos from her hospital bed that I had mentioned.
She made satrical tiktoks declaring I'm just one of those
girls that can do a lot of drugs, and photos

(23:38):
of her and her friends that were dressed as corpses
for Halloween. You have to remember there were two young
men who she killed in this accident, this car wreck,
well this car wreck, I should say non accident. These
two young men, they're gone. That is deplorable what you
just described.

Speaker 3 (23:56):
And the mom is sort of giggly about like they
have an AFT. I just can't wait to discuss it
when you see it. Sorry to continue, no, please.

Speaker 5 (24:05):
You know you know I had mentioned that it's impacting
the family rather adversely. Right, Well, today it was revealed
that Mackenzie's father, Steve, was placed on administrative leave from
the Catholic pre K School, where he's an art and
digital media teacher. Viewers in the school community heavily criticized

(24:27):
him for several of the moments in the film. Over
Mackenzie's lifestyle, Steve stated the dad, he said, I don't
have a problem with her smoking dope. If you're going
to smoke a drug, that's the one I believe should take. Now,
it's important to note that police found mushrooms like psychedelic
mushrooms and a digital scale in her possession at the

(24:51):
crash scene, and Dad's totally okay with it.

Speaker 1 (24:55):
She said, Does the scale indicate that she was then
selling or somebody was selling drug? I don't think you
need a scale to use them.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
I don't know now we're deep in it, but there's
a scale involved. Seems like this is not, you know,
a drive by with marijuana in the kind of cavalier
nature that mom and dad again not trying to pile alon.
Mom and dad seem to have a lot of pie
alon happening today. But I think it's an interesting conversation point.

(25:25):
If you just pull a shame out of the conversation,
I'm sure even they would be an interesting thought, you know,
even watching themselves, they'd probably have an opinion about it. Well,
they do really interesting.

Speaker 5 (25:39):
The father, you know, he's been very critical of the
editing that was done in the documentary. He's very critical
of it. He does maintain that, you know, his daughter's
innocence and claims the crash was an accident, but he
has expressed frustrations with the documentary's editing. But the documentary
did not I can't and they forced him to wear

(26:01):
the shirt that he was wearing. Because another thing that
he's getting criticized is the shirt that he was wearing.
Apparently I haven't seen it, but it's got a big
boom across, like in letters across the shirt, and people
found it really insensitive.

Speaker 3 (26:16):
We have to discuss that. Can we pause even right there?
So imagine he's wearing like a button down over a
T shirt. We've all seen that look and sometimes the
logo you can't fully read it, but it looks like
something actiony, right it kind of so you see it
if you're looking for it. But he literally says boom
and you know, with like it looks like an explosion almost,

(26:38):
which seems yeah, so tonally ridiculously inappropriate. Much like your
daughter who dressed like, you know, a dead person on
Halloween after tour for friends, including her boyfriend, were killed.
You know, even if you were innocent, that would be
incredibly inappropriate, but the parents were really odd about it.

Speaker 7 (27:02):
So yeah, Can I ask a quick question for the
two people who are involved with producing docs. If he's
sitting down to do an interview and you see that
shirt that says boom, do you even consider the idea
of saying, hey, maybe you should change or let me
just curious what you're feeling would be.

Speaker 5 (27:22):
For I was told, you know, as somebody in the documentary,
I was told, don't want anything with any writing on it.
Don't wear anything that's gonna look weird on a camera.
Wear a dark or light, solid colored shirt with no logos,
no writing, no nothing. If I would have shown up
with even like a polo little alligator, they probably would

(27:44):
have told me to change.

Speaker 3 (27:46):
And that's my experience too. And here's why from a
practical standpoint, in a trademark perspective, if your logo on
your T shirt is being worn and presented in a
program that could have legal trademark issues, typically you'd have
to remove it, or turn the shirt inside out, or
you know, take a ball cap off, that kind of

(28:07):
stuff and they know that in advance.

Speaker 5 (28:09):
And even for the mole they were, you know, because
the reality show, they're like no logos and' like what
about my nikes And they're like, well that'll be probably okay,
but no logos allowed. And even some of the clothes
that we brought, like if they had like stripes on them,
they're like, no.

Speaker 3 (28:25):
Absolutely, Oh it's the worst us. Yeah right, you're like,
the screen kind of goes craziness so it doesn't even
look like the sweater when you're watching it on camera.
So yeah, those are some of the rules. So back
to your original point, they had to have seen it.
Is that a choice? Do you let it slide? I
don't know the answer. I would have, for certain assumed

(28:48):
because there was some sort of a graphic tea that
that would have had to be removed. Or this guy
just didn't really notice it and it is like universe.

Speaker 5 (28:58):
And they even that shirt to put over it, that's right.

Speaker 7 (29:02):
Yeah, I think they were trying to cover it in
some way, shape or form, or he might have given
a lot of pushback and said no, I'm wearing this shirt,
you don't tell me what to do.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
So and if he is being the purest document that
the director. Then you would in that instance you would
say you would say nothing like alo, how this person
is choosing to show up and represent themselves.

Speaker 7 (29:25):
Truly a hill to.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
Say what's nice and what's not nice. You know, it's
all very specific. It's all very you know, a person's choice.
So if they want to wear you know, dynamite on
their clothing, you don't want to wreck the vibe. But
there is a legal trademark issue. So yeah, I mean
it was a discussion I'm sure with someone at some point.

Speaker 5 (29:46):
Well, he's getting some backlash for it. And then the
last thing is that Steve and his wife Natalie, you know,
they defend their daughter Mackenzie obviously, but they also said
that she they defended her against from the classmates that
she was a bully who once told a peer to
end their life, despite school records confirming her history of

(30:10):
disciplinary action for bullying. So it's almost like we're getting
gas lit by the parents a little bit like she
wasn't a bully, but the school records show she was,
and she was so insdisciplined.

Speaker 3 (30:20):
It's like completely like I don't see no evil, hear
no evil. It reminded me of some of the parents
we've covered on the show over the past year who have, like,
for example, given their child who's underaged, who has you know,
a mental health history, a gun for Christmas when you know,
the principal even said please no guns around this kid.

(30:42):
He seems a little off. And then that kid goes
and uses said gun. You know, where are the parents
in this? I think is kind of the convo. Again,
not placing blame. I just think it's an opportunity to
kind of see it play out and how it's played
out and really learned from it because it's it.

Speaker 5 (31:00):
Is really shocking, and I can't wait to watch. I'm
gonna watch it tonight because I watched another TikTok of
this girl and don't know what's going on. I'm gon
be upset, so I need to watch it tonight.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
Yes, I like that commitment, So listen stick with us
because later in the show we have fired death scene
investigator Ed Nordskog joining us to really unpack the mind
of an arsonist and just some general safety things out
there with fires.

Speaker 3 (31:25):
And if you're just joining us, we'd love to hear
from you. Live eight eight eight three one crime because
there's been a little bit of an update in the
Nancy Guthrie case, obviously Savannah Guthrie's beloved mother. The search
continues and everyone still wants answers. Courtney, do you want
to give us a little setup there?

Speaker 1 (31:46):
Yeah, Well I can tell you who does not appear
to have answers, and that's Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos.

Speaker 4 (31:52):
So.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
This is, of course, regarding the missing eighty four year
old Nancy.

Speaker 4 (31:57):
This back in February.

Speaker 1 (31:58):
First, when she went missing from home, and authorities, you know,
believe she was taken against her will. Many of not
most of us, have seen the surveillance footage showing a
massed individual the night she went missing, tampering with her
doorbell camera. Well, the sheriff nanos He revealed in a
new interview that he's no longer in personal contact with

(32:22):
Nancy Guthrie's family, and that is a shift from the
earlier time when he was indeed occasionally texting and calling
Savannah Guthrie, Nancy's daughter. So, I mean, I think that
a lot of this has to do We've spoken before
about the FBI and the Sheriff's office.

Speaker 4 (32:45):
They're at odds.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
I don't think that's a secret and a lot of
this really it just seemed like it's now a formal separation.
And you know, Sheriff Nanos just wanted to say he
stepped back from personally handling these updates and he's going
to leave that to the case investigators, to the FBI.

Speaker 4 (33:07):
Uh and on the ground the technobrian.

Speaker 5 (33:09):
Yeah, I think that's appropriate. I mean, if something happened
to me, God forbid, or my brother the chef, I's
to make as sheriff is then calling me that the
investigators are not the sheriff.

Speaker 3 (33:23):
No, anythings can get lost in translation. And there was
always a little bit of this target on the Sheriff's
back too, that he was a showman or that he
was taking the spotlight or milking it, maybe because of
the connection to Savannah Guthrie. And then you know, just
the general you know, attention this case was getting globally

(33:44):
was you know, really heard of. So, you know, I
can't believe we don't have answers. And you know, for
Savannah who still has to go to work all the
time and push through this, this is a terrible thing.

Speaker 5 (33:58):
I cannot imagine not knowing what happened.

Speaker 1 (34:02):
Dear mom, I mean it's coming up on four months.
Oh my gosh, it's coming up on four months. So
really it's kind of the entirety of the update is
just that the sheriff Nanos has, you know, hands it
off communication with the Guthrie family and that's what's going

(34:23):
and as of today, no new information.

Speaker 5 (34:27):
Well I can get right into the next update if
you guys want, let's do it. It's a little bit bigger.
This is in regards to the Delphi murders back in
twenty seventeen, the day before Valentine's Day, February. I can
do this from memory. Before the day before Valentine's Day
and in twenty seventeen, two young teenage girls, Abby Williams

(34:50):
and Liberty Libby German, they vanished while hiking a trail
near the mon On High Bridge in Delphi, Indiana. They
were found murdered the following day. Despite a vital smartphone
smartphone audio and video recording of the suspect that was

(35:10):
captured so bravely by Libby, the investigation stalled for over
five years due to a misfiled police tip. Okay, the
oversight was discovered in twenty twenty two, leading to the
arrest and subsequent twenty twenty four conviction of Richard Allen,

(35:31):
who was sentenced to one hundred and thirty years in prison. Now,
now this is the update. The Indiana Court of Appeals
has granted Richard Allen's defense team oral arguments that you know,
for his appeal and it's going to happen on September
twenty first to challenge that conviction. I mean, this is

(35:54):
a huge win for Richard Allen. Wow, some massive win.
You know a lot of people there are I mean,
this case is so divisive. I talked about this a
little bit with Taha.

Speaker 9 (36:06):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (36:07):
You know, you either believe one hundred percent that Richard
Allen is guilty and when he's where he belongs, or
you believe that he's been railroaded. Because listen, I follow Delphi.
I I followed it for seven eight years, like the
whole time. You know, the first time I ran across
Delphi was back in twenty twelve. We had just come

(36:29):
off the Lucah thing, like it was kind of like
happening around the same time, and there was a Facebook
post on my feed that said find the Snapchat killer.
And I was like, what is this? And it was
a video of the bridge guy and the bridge guy
is walking towards the girls on the Mona High Bridge
and then it edits and then all you hear is

(36:51):
down the hill or guys down the hill, and it's mumbled.

Speaker 3 (36:55):
You know, now that you're listening for it, it seems
very very clear. It's kind of unimaginable audio because it
was from one of their cell phones. If I'm not mistaken, right.

Speaker 5 (37:07):
Libby's Libby's cell phone. Yeah. In my opinion, it was
very brave for her to get this footage, and so
I was immediately like, oh my gosh. And I mean
from that day, I've been following this case. So let
me just give a little bit of background, a little
bit of background. We don't have a lot of time
because this case is so complicated. But in September of

(37:28):
twenty twenty two, a volunteer discovered a misfiled tip from
twenty seventeen from Richard Allen himself, who had self reported
his presence on the trail. But you know, it was
mistakenly filed, so they never really you know.

Speaker 1 (37:46):
I'll investigate the tip and accidentally put it away, I see, right.

Speaker 5 (37:51):
So he was arrested and charged and while incarcerated, Richard
Allen confessed to the murders over sixty times, okay, writing
in person and over the phone to his family, inmates,
and prison staff. The prosecutors claims that these confessions revealed
exclusive crime scene details, right, that only the killer would know,

(38:14):
and that was very damning. Right. Forensics linked an unfired
forty caliber bullet found between the victim's bodies and the
crime scene, and they linked it to his pistol. It
was on fired. Very interesting, wow. It cited distinct marks
left on the casing. And testifying in court, the state

(38:36):
Police master trooper matched Richard Allen's voice to the bridge
guy because we hear bridge guys say down the hill, right,
and he says that he matched the voice. Richard Allen
admitted again he self reported that he was on the
high bridge trailed during this timeframe. Now, there's a lot

(38:58):
of issues with this case though, all right, the Indiana
Court of Appeals will he'll hear these oral arguments on
September twenty first, at ten am at the Indiana State House.
Each side is going to have thirty minutes to present
before a three judge panel. The defense argues that the
trial was fundamentally unfair because the jury only heard half

(39:20):
of the story, focusing on three main pillars. Okay, okay, Now,
these confessions they say happened during a psychotic break, all right.
The defense argues that Richard Allen's sixty plus confessions were
involuntary and produced the product of a man that the
state broke. Richard Allen didn't go to jail. He went

(39:43):
to prison while he was under trial. He was in
like hardcore prison, all right. He spent thirteen months in
solitary confinement, during which his weight dropped fifty pounds. Fifty pounds.
He went from wow. During his confessions, he ate his Bible,

(40:06):
he smeared the poop on the walls and stuff. He
was rolling around in it.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (40:10):
He drank the toilet water and believed the world was
going to self destruct if he went to sleep. He
was having I mean legit, he was having using his mind.
He was losing one hundred percent. And also he confessed
to crimes that didn't happen. He said he shot the girls.
The girls were not shot girls. They were killed with

(40:32):
a knife.

Speaker 3 (40:33):
And they were placed too. If I remembering this correctly, right,
So the actual crime depends on the US.

Speaker 5 (40:39):
Interesting, it was very posed, right, he had the girls
weren't wearing the right clothing. Libby sadly was nude and
Abby was wearing her clothes. There were sticks placed over
them that the FBI kind of said, this looks kind
of like a ritual killing, right.

Speaker 7 (41:00):
Didn't you say earlier in his confession that he pointed
out exclusive crime stead details. So how would he know
those details?

Speaker 5 (41:10):
Well, that's I'm gonna get into some controversy here to now.
I told you this is a controversial case. There is
a detail that the doctor, the psychologist that worked at
the prison, doctor Walla, She said that Richard Allen saw
a white van and got spooked and that's why he
killed the girls. Well, doctor Walla was in a bunch

(41:33):
of Facebook groups about the crime and followed a bunch
of YouTubers talking about the crime, and one of those
YouTubers said that I think this white van spooped him off.
And now suddenly it's part of his confession. Ah, you
can see why oral arguments have been granted. God right,

(41:54):
you can see that it's possible. And you know they
argue that this odin theory that I mentioned that the
FBI mentioned was suppressed, and it was they were not
allowed to present this alternate theory because you know, there's
a high level you have to meet in order to
present third party calpability, right, you have to meet a
certain level, and the judge goal in this case ruled

(42:16):
that they didn't meet this level, so they were not
allowed to present this odin theory that they were this
happened in some kind of ritual situation. In the brief,
Allen's attorney said that within a week of the murders,
the Carroll County Sheriff's office enlisted the FBI's Behavioral Analysis
Unit to evaluate at those sticks you know, that were

(42:39):
put on the girls well related to pagan rituals, and
the FBI said it remains possible that a new believer
or a rogue believer in Odinism, this Norse you know,
religion was involved in the case. And then a Purdue
a Purdue professor said that the victim's body, it could

(42:59):
it's very plausible that this was a Norse Odinism situation,
but they were not allowed to present that. So they're
going to be able to argue that as well. You know,
there's just there there's a lot with alfire.

Speaker 1 (43:15):
So was so the the defense boiling down because I
did not follow this case like you, I mean not remotely.

Speaker 4 (43:24):
And so is the issue.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
So the defense is saying, listen, we weren't able to
make a proper defense because we weren't allowed to introduce
these things.

Speaker 4 (43:33):
And that is that correct?

Speaker 1 (43:34):
And if so, is it falling on the judge being
too harsh and not allowing evidence in?

Speaker 5 (43:40):
Is that listen? Yes, it's such a good question because
there were some issues with the judge and the defense team.
In fact, the judge dismissed the defense team and said
that they're off the case at one point. You're not
allowed to do that. They took all the way to
the Indiana Supreme Court and they the Supreme the Indiana

(44:00):
Supreme Court said yeah, you can't do that. So they
got back on the case. But I mean, there were
a lot of problems with the judge, judge goal and
the defense team in this case. They also claim that,
you know, we've talked about Frank's hearings before. I think
where the defense will you know a pine that the
sheriff lied in order to get a search warrant. Well,

(44:22):
they're saying that happened here as well, and that they're
Frank's motionless denied. They're going to be arguing that they
believe that the search of Richard Allen's home, which uncovered
this gun that match this unfired bullet, was unconstitutional due
to law enforcement omitting very important things that happened in

(44:42):
the case. So there's a DEI is And listen, I
don't even know everything, you know what I mean, there's
people that know everything about this case. I am not
one of those people. But I'm like kind of like
sitting on the fence, you know, like I don't want
to support a child killer. And and at the same time,
I'm like, I don't know if he's the one. You know,

(45:04):
I don't know that bullet.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
Also, it's again and I'm coming in so neutral on
this of course.

Speaker 5 (45:12):
Yeah, but the bullet.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
Seems convenient, Like, how do you accidentally drop a bullet
right where a murder happens.

Speaker 5 (45:20):
Well, it wasn't fired. How do you match ballistics of
an unfired bullet. It wasn't a fired bullet. It was
an unspent bullet.

Speaker 4 (45:30):
Like it fell out of someone's pocket.

Speaker 5 (45:32):
Well, and again you have to understand too, this is
rural Indiana. And this is like kind of like a
nature area. I don't know, people go shooting or squirrel
shooting and.

Speaker 4 (45:43):
You know whatever.

Speaker 5 (45:45):
I don't know, I don't know. I just I've never
experienced a trial where there's ballistics on an unfired bullet.
You know how like you the guns have those like
pins that like you cock it back in it. That's
what they matched, like the cock thing. I don't know
what's called the you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (46:05):
Yeah, and himself there, he was so sporting having been
in a dead and around the area. Because it was
inclement that day, there was there was a reason that
people were home from school, sol teens were all off,
which also added to the confusion.

Speaker 5 (46:24):
That's right, that's right.

Speaker 4 (46:25):
Well, we'll keep you updated, but listen.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
Humming up, we are having arson expert ed Norskog, and
he's expected to testify in the upcoming Palisades wildfire trial.
He is going to join us and break down how
investigatives trace massive wildfires back to the origin.

Speaker 4 (46:44):
We're very excited. Keep it here True Crime Tonight.

Speaker 1 (46:58):
Welcome back to True Crime Tonight and I radio retalk
True Crime all the time.

Speaker 4 (47:02):
I'm Courtney Armstrong.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
I'm here as always with Stephanie Lydecker and body Movin
and listen, don't forget if you have missed any part
of the show, you always would catch us on the podcast.
And we want to hear from you. Give us a call.
We're at eighty eight three one Crime and you can
specifically call now if you want to speak with Ed Norskog,

(47:26):
who is a fire death scene expert and serial arson analyst.

Speaker 5 (47:32):
Hello, Ed, Hi, ed herd Hi, Hi, We're so.

Speaker 4 (47:37):
Happy to have you back.

Speaker 1 (47:38):
And when to sing your praises and tut your horn
for just one second because it's a big deal. Ed
is literally one of the most experienced arson investigators in
the whole country. Spent more than thirty years with the
La County Sheriff's Department and has investigated more than twenty
one hundred arson cases.

Speaker 4 (47:56):
Wow, and which is I mean? How about that?

Speaker 1 (47:59):
And it's interesting, So fire death scene analysis expert.

Speaker 4 (48:05):
It's a rare specialty.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
It combines homicide investigation with arson science.

Speaker 5 (48:13):
So yes, here we are.

Speaker 9 (48:15):
Corners and corners work too. The corner aspect of it.

Speaker 3 (48:21):
Too interesting, what an incredible job, by the way, that
is so important and meaningful. And yes we're so glad
to have you shed some light. I think definitely absolutely.
So listen, we know that you are going to be.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
Testifying about the Pacific Palisades and Malibu fires, so we
will stay away from that. But can you actually go
back and tell us how in the world you got
pulled into this world of arson investigation and carve out
this unbelievable career.

Speaker 5 (48:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (48:57):
Well, I'd like to say I have altruistic motives, but
I did it for the money, with no doubt the uh.
I worked for Los Angeles Sheriffs and it's literally the
highest paying job on the whole department. But I didn't
really know that when I applied. It was just it's
interesting in the detective world to stay in the two

(49:19):
most senior jobs are either arson or homicide, and if
you're going to spend the rest of your career in
one of those, I chose arson. Didn't really have a
love for it, and once I got into the business,
I actually really really enjoyed it. So I've had quite
a bit of a good good success with it.

Speaker 5 (49:37):
Is what's like, what when you first arrive on a scene,
what's the first thing you look for that would stand
out as suspicious?

Speaker 9 (49:48):
Are you talking about any fire scene or like a
wild plan. I don't know. If you guys want to
focus this is it's a huge Yeah, yeah, you're gonna
the firefighters. So when I arrived, firefighters are usually putting
out the fire. They're usually just about done putting out
the fire, and they'll have the first clue of something
not wrong at the location. Maybe they walked in and

(50:10):
there's a dead Maybe they walked in and there's a
dead body. Maybe they walked in and there's a gas
can with a highway flare sticking out of it. That's
called the clue. And so that's that's where my work begins.
But without that obvious evidence. Without that obvious obvious evidence,
we do basically scene profiling or analysis, which is the

(50:34):
time of day is very important most fires. Why do
fires start at certain times? And then if it's a
structure fire, did anybody perish? Most people should and do
survive structure fires. So it is suspicious on its face
if there's somebody deceased, and if they are deceased in

(50:55):
North America in a structure fire, it's predictable who it
will be. So I teach whole classes on looking at
your victimology of fire douts and who should die in
a fire, not really should, but who you will normally
find on an accidental type event, and it's very predictable
in modern times who's going to die, which groups of

(51:18):
people and things like that. However, if there's people that
are outside of that norm young, healthy, ambulatory people, people
that can move fast, they should never die in a fire.
So something else is going on there. Maybe they're drug overdose,
maybe they were murdered, maybe they were too drunk. So
that's when you really step up your game. Fire has

(51:39):
changed the scene, and then the fire department has changed
it even more. So, fire suppression has changed it even
more and so the job of the fire investigators first
figure out what the heck happened here? And it's even
a crime. It's a crime.

Speaker 5 (51:54):
Yeah, you mentioned something interesting, like maybe there was a
drug overdose or you know, if you young and healthy.
Do people often use fire to cover up or try
to cover up like a murder, So like I'm going
to shoot my wife, but I'm going to burn the
house down to kind of cover it up.

Speaker 3 (52:12):
Does that happen just in the news right now with
the man who tried to do this to his brother
allegedly in a scenario family. Yeah, breaking story story for
a different day.

Speaker 5 (52:21):
So I guess it does happen.

Speaker 9 (52:24):
It happens all the time. It's okay, it's very difficult.
It's so wrap your mind around this. It's very difficult
to murder somebody with fire. In fact, it's most too impossible.
Most of the time. You can't murder an intended victim
very well with fire. It's a slow moving weapon, you
can't aim it. Most people are unsophisticated on how to

(52:47):
use it. So fire usually comes after a murder, if
there's a murder involved, or if the people are already
incapacitated somehow, maybe they're unconscious, maybe they're bound and gagged
in a back room, and you set the house on fire.
But just trying to kill somebody with fires actually extraordinarily

(53:08):
difficult to do. So we see it in that that
that murder or fire after the death scenario.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
Interesting, and you had mentioned, you know, there's a vast
difference between sort of structure structure fires and nature fires.
What about when there is an absolutely massive wildfire that
you have been brought into, how do you even begin
to begin?

Speaker 9 (53:34):
Yeah, so modern days, it's pretty easy. I work. I
still work in the Los Angeles area, so we're very
close to a mega city of you know, eleven twelve
million people. You're always gonna have somebody that's sought. So
we always have some witnesses that can point as roughly
where they first saw fire, and we're spoiled. In Los Angeles,

(53:56):
the police and fire departments have lots of helicopters. Investigators
will go right up into a helicopter right away and
get an overhead view of a wildland fire. And if
wildland fires happen on high wind days, it's very easy
to figure out where they started. You just go the
furthest blackground upwind. You just follow the burnt ground until

(54:20):
it gets to a very narrow spot and that's where
the fire started. That's on high wind days, so if
the wind's really blowing, it makes it easier to figure
out where the fire started. If the wind's not blowing,
then fire will spread slowly three hundred and sixty degrees
on the ground, and that's a lot more work to
figure out exactly where it started.

Speaker 5 (54:43):
So it spreads in a circle.

Speaker 9 (54:46):
Yes, if everything's the same, there's no hills, there's no hills,
there's no barricades. Fire will burn generally in a circle, so.

Speaker 5 (54:56):
That's how you find the ignission.

Speaker 9 (54:57):
Point, right. But then once it's burned out a few
hundred yards, it's in the firefighters have come and dropped
water on it or sprayed water. Now they're destroying what
we call our fire indicators, which tells us how the
fire moved. So we try to get there very quick
before they've destroyed everything, and try and read all these

(55:21):
fire patterns backwards to where the fire started.

Speaker 3 (55:27):
It's everybody's worst fear too, you know, like the idea
of being caught off guard in one of those situations.
And by the way, we so respect you not being
able to talk about the Palisades fire, but there are
so many other fires happening real time and popping up.
Is there something productive that we should know just in
the basics, just to remind people how to just protect

(55:49):
themselves or their home and broad strokes. I know some
of this sounds obvious, but some of it's really not.
In the moment.

Speaker 9 (55:58):
Well, the most common thing, if you live in a
fire prone area with dry vegetation, obviously keep it away
from your structures. And there's laws that you're supposed to
do that. It means everything. But if you have even
if you have good clearance around your home, if it's
a high, windy it's impossible to stop a large fire.

(56:18):
The biggest fire agencies in the world cannot do it.
They can focus it, they can kind of push it
into a direction, they just can't stop it. So yeah, anyway,
so you're not gonna be able to stop it. So
you need to know how to get away from it.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
And yeah, what are some of I think you're saying
for basics that people should just know in the moment, Okay,
there's a fire and I need to leave my house.

Speaker 4 (56:47):
Is there Step one?

Speaker 3 (56:49):
If you get into the house, first step is that accurate.

Speaker 9 (56:53):
Move very fast, always have gas in your vehicle unless
it's electric, and and know the streets to get out,
because remember, as you're trying to leave, a bunch of
police and firefighters are coming your way. You're going to
block these narrow streets very quickly, So get out as
quick as possible before they all show up.

Speaker 3 (57:15):
And sometimes the navigation might not be working. So even
if you have navigation and you're trying to go through
some cross streets in and around, that's not even necessarily
the perfect ticket.

Speaker 5 (57:25):
So have I something in your art, A good old atlas.

Speaker 9 (57:30):
I don't think a lot of people know what that is.
You can find them an you can find them at
antique stores. Yeah, mass, I mean little things like that
people forget during any sort of catastrophe, for whether it's
floods or even the smoke from fires, it actually affects
your electronics. And if you're just a slave to that

(57:51):
cell phone or to some sort of guidance system, you
kind of got to know how to get out of
your neighborhood at least get to someplace fairly safe close
to you.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
If you're just joining us, this is true Crime tonight,
and we're so thrilled to be joined by Ed Nordskog
And he's one of the literal leading experts in fire
death scene analysis. If you have any questions for him,
you can give us a call eighty eight three one Crime.

Speaker 4 (58:20):
So you're are there, Like, excuse me? With arsonists?

Speaker 1 (58:25):
Do they tend to share similar behavior patterns? Is there
a commonality?

Speaker 5 (58:30):
Yeah?

Speaker 9 (58:32):
So Hollywood has programmed us to believe that, and that
says it's not true. It's so complicated. There's so many
subtypes of arsonists, and one of those is a serial arsist.
So a serial arsonist by definitions three or more fire
events in their lucks that are that are unconnected. That's

(58:54):
a serial arsness somewhat similar to serial killer. But people
of forever and when I go to court, this will happen.
When I go to court, people always want to conflate
an arsenist versus a serial arsonist. So you guys are
in the true crime. You know who Scott Peterson is.
He's a famous white male who killed uh, who murdered

(59:16):
a victim. Yeah, and then you have then compare him
to Jeffrey Dahmer, who is a famous white male who
murdered several victims. The only thing else to have in
common other than being male is their murderers. But they
have nothing else in common, so you cannot compare the two.
Scott Peterson is a one and done murderer, I mean,

(59:39):
unless there's stuff that nobody knows about. And of course
Jeffrey Dahmer is one of the more famous serial killers.
In his target selection was different, So nobody lumps all
murders into the same into the same categories, but they
seem to do that with arsenists, and so at times
when I go to court, I have to I spend

(01:00:00):
a lot of time fixting that Jerry's mind and the
judges and sometimes the attorneys because they've always been given
this stuff that all arsenists do this, or all arsenists
do that, and none of that is true. There's no
one profile for an arsenists. There's dozens of subtypes based
on motives and their psychological makeup. Even amongst serial arsenists,

(01:00:23):
there's at least thirty different types of curial arsen So
I study that. I've been studying that for twenty plus years,
and I've looked at sixteen hundred cases of serial arson
and they're all different, and they do share some So
to answer your question and long winded, they do share
some general traits, the majority of them do. But one

(01:00:46):
end on arsenists, or could be a guy bringing his
car for insurance fraud. He's not a real arsenist. Yes
he'll be convicted of arson, but he's not a real
arsenist that I'm concerned about. We'll prosecute him, but he's
not probably not gonna write a fight again. So if
somebody you know does the fire because they're upset, they
probably aren't going to light another fire. But it's these

(01:01:08):
people that have a psychological edge or need for fires,
that's the ones that really interests me. And that's the
ones they'll light fifty to five hundred fires and just
keep going and going and going until we catch them.

Speaker 5 (01:01:25):
And is that just a power grab?

Speaker 3 (01:01:26):
They're doing that because they want to feel powerful in
some cases.

Speaker 9 (01:01:31):
Wow, Well, so that's a great point. Steph is the
ATFS and FBI have long believed that it is a
flexing of power, power over the fire department, power over
their their neighbors, and that may be a segment of it.
It's kind of hard to measure that. When I've interviewed,
I've interviewed. I've interviewed over three hundred and fifty of

(01:01:52):
these people, most of them I've arrested and then got
to interview them. Is the majority of them all expressed
to me that they were angry, angry, upset, and really frustrate.
And so those were much more common feelings than someone goes, oh,

(01:02:12):
a need for power or excitement. Those are not very
common things to me. It's more anger, frustration, resentment, and
just frustration.

Speaker 1 (01:02:22):
So interesting, Thank you, for that, you know, just overview
and listen, stick around because Ed Norskog is going to
do so.

Speaker 4 (01:02:32):
And we're going to talk about one.

Speaker 1 (01:02:33):
Of the biggest serial arson cases in Los Angeles history.

Speaker 4 (01:02:37):
It's the Hollywood Fire Devil Case.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
Keep it here, True Crime Tonight.

Speaker 3 (01:02:52):
Welcome back to True Crime Tonight on iHeartRadio. We're talking
true crime all the time. I'm Stephanie Leidecker here with
Courtney Armstrong and body move in and where we are
talking all things arson. If you are just joining us
and new to the conversation, we're talking about all things
fire and both preventing it, but also some really important
cases that our very special guest, Ed nord Skog has

(01:03:16):
covered himself. So we have the guy Court. Do you want
to give us a little bit of a setup.

Speaker 1 (01:03:22):
Yeah, absolutely, so we are going to talk about the
Hollywood Fire Devil case. And it was it was just
an infamous serial arts and investigation in Los Angeles that
happened right here. It started over New Year's Weekend in
twenty twelve, and there was a serial arsonist who literally

(01:03:43):
terrorized Hollywood. They said, fifty two fires in just three nights,
which we need to get into the details because I
can't physically imagine that. And those fires stretched from cars
to apartment buildings and triggered one of the largest serial
arsen task forces in US history. Eventually the suspect was

(01:04:04):
identified as Harry Burkhardt, who was a German national who
was later linked to fires in Canada and Germany as well.

Speaker 5 (01:04:12):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
And Ed Nordskog, he was the lead investigator on the case.
And what do you remember about that first night when
these fires started, like, just take us there to that moment.

Speaker 5 (01:04:25):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 9 (01:04:27):
All right, I got about ten minutes to tell you
ninety six hours. So I was in an uncomfortable position
because I was on duty and I had just released
my very first book three weeks before that on serial arsenal,
and so I became the leader of this task force.

(01:04:47):
And more than one fire chief said, I find it
very suspicious that you just wrote a book on Cereal
arsenis and now we have the biggest seerial arsen case
in LA history. So angry chiefs. So that marked my
part of my first two days. Anyway, So what happens.

(01:05:11):
It's easy to describe what happens because he did the
exact same thing like a robot. Fifty two fires in
a row with almost zero deviation. So in Los Angeles
in twenty eleven, they had just had these big occupy
movements fit in, took over City Hall, thousands of people,

(01:05:33):
and they sat there and sat there and sat there
for weeks and whatnot, and they broke up right before Christmas.
So ten days later, all these fire starts, and immediately
in what the very first night was the twenty ninth,
just before New Year's seventeen fires in one night. All
of them were structure fires, which is extraordinary because California

(01:05:57):
is a fire safe state. As modern building there's they'll
get two or three structure fires on a given busy night.
Seventeen not in just all through Los Angeles seventeen within
you could you could walk to all the scenes. So
and what they were is the individual unknown person had

(01:06:18):
went into if you know Hollywood, there's car ports underneath
the living quarters, underneath the apartments. Sure most of them
are open. Most of them are open to the street
without security. So they would have ten to twenty cars
underneath apartments for people's sleep, which is dangerous. And the

(01:06:39):
arsonist walked into a car the car port right after
midnight on the twenty ninth, and he set a fire
a fireplace log. You know those duraflame style logs. Yeah,
well there's small versions of those, uh, And he set
one of those underneath the front bumper of a car,
and he had a little chemical booster. They sell them

(01:07:02):
out to the same grocery stores or buy the logs,
or they make the flames on the log go from
about two inches to about twelve inches and he would
light that with a little torch and walk away. It
would take him about twenty seconds to do all that.
And he had this whole setup in a bag like
he's a food delivery person, so he had tactics, he

(01:07:24):
had some skills. He was only on target for under
twenty seconds. Once he would set that. It would probably
take ten minutes before the fire to really develop and
for anybody to really notice it, even in the middle
of Hollywood, which is extraordinarily busy area. Even on this
even in the neighborhoods, there's always people out, especially in

(01:07:45):
the middle of the night. It's just it was just
right around Sunset Strip and all that stuff, and these
fires would start one car on fire, and then because
they're underneath the building. The heat would radiate and go
boom boom, boom boom and start five cars on fire.
Now the whole building is on fire and people are
jumping out of windows. This all went on the first night.

(01:08:07):
He did seventeen of those, and the scenes were all
close enough to walk to. But what he did to
confuse us, not intentionally, is Hollywood is from Los Angeles City,
which would have LAPD, and West Hollywood, which is right
next door is La Sheriffs. So it's four different agencies

(01:08:30):
LA City Fire, LAPD on one side of the street,
LA County Fire, and La Sheriff on the other side,
the four biggest agencies in the Western United States. By
the way, we were begging for mercy. By the second night,
nobody had lit to this day in the US history.
That many fires in that short period of time, and
there were significant fires. They grew, most of them grew

(01:08:53):
quite large. And so you have this relentless onslaught of
arson in a short are to the point where everybody
was confused. That that the fire dispatchers believe there are
so many calls of one hundred and thirty fires went
off in one night when it was only seventeen. So
I got lucky. My partner and I we went to

(01:09:14):
the very first scene and it was a failed event.
There was smoke coming out of underneath the car, and
right next to the whole building's on fire. And on
the other two blocks away we can see another building
on fire. But we're looking at a car port with
smoke coming up from a car. So I crawled under
the car and I found this fire log in a

(01:09:36):
bag with a little chemical booster. And I was stunned
because I've done thousands of arsons and I wrote a
book on scenery devices. I'd never seen anybody use this
to burn a car. And what I didn't know at
the time was extremely common in Europe to do that.
So and our offender was from Europe, and so anyway,

(01:10:00):
he did that, and then he just jogged down the
street and did another one, and then went around the
corner and did another one, and so on so on,
and by four in the morning he was back in bed.
And so the next day we brought it in a
task force of about forty investigators who said, this is
you know, wow, somebody lit all these fires. We quickly
realized every single car had the same exact device underneath

(01:10:23):
it in the same exact spot, to the point where
it was so robotic that only only one person could
have done that. You can't get groups of people to
act consistently like that. So that's a bit of profiling
for you there. But our problem was the next morning,
the politicians wanted to pretend they're investigators, which ask any

(01:10:43):
good detective that happened in every major case all of
a sudden, the mayor and then maybe the sheriff himself
or the police, you think they're investigators. They want to
come and tell you how to do your job, and
bring the media and bring council members and people like that,
and they did that. So we had an investigators with
just about twenty investigators, and over two hundred people showed up,

(01:11:04):
and only ten of them were investigators. The rest were
politicians and the media and whatnot. So we had problems
from the start protecting our our case sensitive information. We
actually had to hide it from our own department, and
we had to hide it from our own departments and
give them fake information, which is what we did for

(01:11:25):
three days just to throw them off so they wouldn't
bother us.

Speaker 5 (01:11:30):
Oh my, So we were under enormous pressure. This was
you guys were under enormous pressure that you were even
fitting to your own people so that you could discontinue
your investigation without getting bothered.

Speaker 9 (01:11:42):
Is that right right? Because we knew we had a
unique event. We knew that right away, because nobody'd ever
seen anything like that, and we knew that we had
a unique device, so we needed to protect that from everybody,
and we in the first night, we recovered seventeen those devices.
Some of them were burned quite bads, but we could
figure out what they were, and so we all day

(01:12:03):
long we wrote reports. So we've been up all night,
worked all day, and then at sundown the next day,
we all went home to get some sleep and go, oh,
this guy did so much work, he'll never come back.
He started by eight o'clock at night, and he did
seventeen more fires, and then he started burning a couple
couple famous people's homes. And by the second first after

(01:12:24):
the first night, everybody wanted to play and be detective.
After the second night, nobody wanted to be detective. They
were done because they all got freaked out that it
was going to ruin their career. So they all wanted
to leave that, and so I went to the head
of LAPD and the head of the sheriff. I said,
I need two hundred three hundred investigators. I don't need you,

(01:12:44):
just patrol offers I need and LA can do that.
Los Angeles can do that. And they gave me four
hundred people between the FEDS, five federal agencies and all
this stuff. So by the next night I had four
hundred people working for him, which I've never had in
my life or ever will again. And we caught the
guy through using basic police work, which is we went out,

(01:13:06):
went to every scene, obviously, pulled the evidence, and then
canvassed by knocking on doors. And we knocked on several
thousand doors and one day with all these investigators, and
that was just when ring cameras were coming in and
so there wasn't a lot of them, but there's enough.
And that we were getting glimpses of the same person

(01:13:27):
over and over, and then we figured out a vehicle
it was had Canadian plates on it. And this person
was very distinctive. He looked like a vampire, except a
chubby vampire, but he had a ghost white round faith
and slicked back hair and he never changed his clothes
they were dark black. And for the whole three or

(01:13:47):
four days, because I know I interviewed him, he's stunkd
I haven, but I never went home. I never slept
for almost four days. Just every time I tried to
go home, he'd start lighting more fires. Right in the end.
In the end, we tracked his vehicle that we found
from across the border. We figured out what it was,
and we put out a bulletin to our patrol guys,

(01:14:09):
and they caught him four minutes after we released the
information and he was out lighting fun. Yeah, it took
four minutes once we got all the right information, and
by that time we had we looked at seven hundred tips,
and we looked at probably seventy or eighty pieces of
video and figured out put everything together. And it's just

(01:14:30):
it's just managing massive amounts of information and people to
try and do that. And I was busy for a
while and all the stuff. So we caught the guy
so fast that everybody forgot about it with him a
few days. It was the biggest story in the media
for five days and then it was over. Then it
then everybody got awards and medals and letters, except the

(01:14:53):
actual investigators on the case were They were on the
Ellen Degenerous show, on various TV shows, Good Morning America,
all these all these chief officers and whatnot. They had
nothing to do with the case.

Speaker 1 (01:15:08):
Okay, if we had medals to give collectively, we would
give you one because what you just described is such
a perculean effort in the face of just a monstrous
amount of fires going on all at once, and just
your forethought to it's wild and it's laudable.

Speaker 3 (01:15:27):
And the passion that it requires as an investigator to
stay so steady and so mindful of just the evidence
in front of you with no conclusions. It's so dangerous too.

Speaker 5 (01:15:38):
And think about it. You're up for four days, three
or four days, right, you have to have your wits
about you to invest exactly, and you're not getting any sleep.
You're under immense pressure. The media is on you. The
mayor's visiting you apparently, Like imagine having to keep your
wits about you and solve this case at the same time.

Speaker 9 (01:16:00):
Yeah, that's right, we have we have such a short time.
This is so fascinating. It's a five hour breakdown that
I presented to like the FBI people on how to
deal with the case like this because of all the
other weird stuff that came in. There was we saw
multiple other arsens by the way, in this while doing this,

(01:16:20):
because from all the tips we got there were other
arsenists and then we and then we were arresting fake
police officers and fake firefighters who showed up. So we
had so much stuff going on to interfere with our investigation,
not to mention a lot of our own brass. They
wanted to be the one to release it to the
media and we were hiding it.

Speaker 5 (01:16:42):
Wow. Ed, thank you so much for joining us tonight again.
Ed Nortzkog. He's the author of the Arsonist Profiles, Portard Minds,
and Tortured Is Like a Torch Like a Fire Torch,
Fire Death Investigation, and Arson and Destigations in the Wild Lens.
You can find his books and more of his work,

(01:17:04):
which I definitely want to dig into at arsonprofiler dot com.
And I can I say this about this next weekend
you're gonna find out at crime Con. He's going to
be presenting at crime Con. I can't wait to see
you there. Ed, He's going to be there on He's
gonna be presenting on Saturday, the Big Day. He got
a big good bill there, so you'll find him at

(01:17:27):
Arsonprofiler dot com. Ed thank you so much for joining us.
We love having you on. You're such a good wealth
of knowledge. We totally appreciate. I can't wait to meet
you on Saturday, Arsonprofiler dot com. And stick around. We
have a lot more to dig into. We got some
really good talkbacks coming up tonight, everything from a heartfelt

(01:17:47):
reactions to wild opinions. Get ready to laugh, maybe a
little argue, and maybe you can yell a little bit,
a little bittle, a little bit, stick around, little bit
of crime tonight, a little.

Speaker 3 (01:17:58):
Bitt Welcome back to True Crime tonight on iHeartRadio. We're
talking true crime all the time, where some of the
time I'm Stephanie Leidecker here with Courtney Armstrong and body

(01:18:19):
move in. And what a great guest. I mean, he's
so just talking about Arson and yeah, everybody make sure
you go out and see him at crime cos I.

Speaker 5 (01:18:30):
Wish we could have asked him about the Palisades fire though,
I mean he's testifying.

Speaker 3 (01:18:34):
He will be testifying, so maybe after maybe after he
gave the show and we can talk exactly.

Speaker 5 (01:18:41):
There's a lot of questions I want to ask, but
you know.

Speaker 4 (01:18:45):
Exactly, and I didn't.

Speaker 1 (01:18:46):
I mean, that's why I didn't even Yeah, go within,
we could have gone closer, but honestly, it's not worth the.

Speaker 5 (01:18:56):
It was so funny, not funny, funny, not funny. But
he was talking about Hollywood, and then he said, and
then in West Hollywood. And I just happened to be
looking at Taha, and he goes.

Speaker 4 (01:19:07):
Straight up, that's where.

Speaker 7 (01:19:11):
What's happen.

Speaker 3 (01:19:14):
In my neck of the woods.

Speaker 5 (01:19:17):
But he made a face and I couldn't have a giggle.
I was like myself.

Speaker 7 (01:19:21):
I was, gosh, I don't have the worst poker face,
so you can tell when something happens to me.

Speaker 3 (01:19:25):
All of us kind of have bad poker.

Speaker 5 (01:19:27):
Well, I don't know, we really well, I.

Speaker 3 (01:19:29):
Guess we wouldn't know because the poker facers are so good, Taha.
You and I for sure do not have good Oh.

Speaker 7 (01:19:34):
I said a million times. If you want money, I
have a second money.

Speaker 3 (01:19:38):
You guys would probably you know, could pick and choose.

Speaker 5 (01:19:41):
If you guys come out to crime Con. We are
going to play around a poker to see who has
the best poker face. Okay, let's do it wouldn't that
be fun, like just like fun little dollar game or something.

Speaker 3 (01:19:52):
Yes, yeah, and I know you're going to be great. No,
I'm probably good gambling though.

Speaker 5 (01:19:58):
No, scorty, No, I haven't played poker in years.

Speaker 10 (01:20:03):
Like I'll.

Speaker 3 (01:20:05):
Together.

Speaker 4 (01:20:06):
You're welcome. When do I have people?

Speaker 7 (01:20:09):
Yeah, I know, I just.

Speaker 3 (01:20:10):
Feel like you know everything. So just like knowing a
fine hand of poker just seems like it's something in
the toolbox. I mean, that's the coolest way, you know,
as people who just like know how to kind of
playpool casually and just can go up there and hold
the sticks and like.

Speaker 5 (01:20:27):
You just need to do that.

Speaker 4 (01:20:28):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:20:28):
It's one song on the piano that kills you know,
it's like beautiful.

Speaker 7 (01:20:33):
It's funny. I almost see bodies like you can maybe
count a card if you you.

Speaker 9 (01:20:37):
Know the.

Speaker 5 (01:20:40):
I think I am.

Speaker 1 (01:20:42):
Puts on her sunglasses and nights it's don.

Speaker 4 (01:20:45):
At the table.

Speaker 3 (01:20:47):
Like this movie. Yes, that's sexy, shaggy hair.

Speaker 4 (01:20:51):
Yes exactly.

Speaker 3 (01:20:53):
I like those sunglasses. They look good. Yeah. So in
the movie, in my mind, you know, body, you kind
of are solving all of it and making sure everyone's
like where they're supposed to be and coordinating it and.

Speaker 7 (01:21:06):
All the things like our own Ocean's eleven, something like.

Speaker 3 (01:21:09):
Exactly you're in the band baby, maybe something that go down.

Speaker 5 (01:21:13):
Let let's go to a talkback.

Speaker 10 (01:21:16):
Hey, Patrick from Kentucky's Love You Guys that movie. The
only thing you're probably upset with is they're making a
movie about them and they're not getting part of it.
That's probably one they're mostly upset. And I think, krudios
to them, what do you make the movie? Because they
are good actors. I really to see this movie play out.
Thank you, love you'all, we love you, Thank you.

Speaker 5 (01:21:38):
So he's talking about the Matt Damon ben Affleck lawsuit
of those cops are suing ben Affleck and and uh
Matt Damon for making this movie. It's like loosely based
on one of the crimes they worked on, right, and
they're these these two retired cops are suing them for defamation.

(01:22:01):
I think is that I can't remember, but basically it
comes down to make them look bad, right.

Speaker 3 (01:22:08):
And they believe that the portrayal is kind of a giveaway.
So in their town or in their maybe their buds
at work are all saying, oh, it's based on you guys,
and it's not a great look. But you know, Ben
Affleck and Matt Damon, can they really do any wrong?

Speaker 10 (01:22:26):
No?

Speaker 7 (01:22:26):
I know I feel the same way. I can't get
up there. I mean they can, sure they can.

Speaker 5 (01:22:31):
But Ben Affleck did marry Jlo?

Speaker 3 (01:22:35):
You have?

Speaker 8 (01:22:35):
J Loo?

Speaker 5 (01:22:36):
Yes you have. You're not I'm not a Jaelo fan.

Speaker 1 (01:22:40):
I'm with you on that party and I love this
is so this is a thousand years ago. But Matt
Damon was what's the kosha? The teasing ben Affleck. Do
you guys remember when he did that music video where
he was literally smooching her behind on a yacht.

Speaker 3 (01:22:58):
Oh yeah, yeah, that video how You Come video and
Jenny by the Black Air Come on Miami. Yeah, it
was very famous and.

Speaker 7 (01:23:11):
The same team, you guys.

Speaker 1 (01:23:13):
She got him to kiss her shiny heimy with all
the oil on it on the yacht like exactly.

Speaker 7 (01:23:21):
Miami vibes that he was. You know, I disagree. I'm
a fan j Lo. If you're listening, I'm a fan.

Speaker 4 (01:23:27):
So all right, you take Patrick, You're great, Thank you.

Speaker 5 (01:23:34):
I think she's annoying. I can't help it. I stop stop.

Speaker 3 (01:23:42):
So we're not going to go see her in Vegas.
Partying at crime Con. We're not going to go check
out the the performance of Okay.

Speaker 7 (01:23:51):
I'll return the tickets when we're.

Speaker 3 (01:23:53):
Okay, fair enough, take this back tomorrow. I'm glad we're listening.
I'm glad we're having a conversation now. That would have answered.

Speaker 4 (01:24:03):
Wearing your day Low shirt totally another do another.

Speaker 11 (01:24:07):
Talk at high True Crime Team. I was wondering if
at some point you would be willing to cover crimes
against animal, especially stuff like this yabo that's through the
rock at the Monks Feel in Hawaii. Also check out Ethan.
It's a dog and he's on social media and they
call him Ethan Almighty. They're making a movie about him,
starring Samuel Blair. It's a dog that was left near

(01:24:29):
death in a parking lot of a humane society in Louisville.
And he's also going to be at Crime Con this
year in Vegas. And the man that adopted him his
tirelessly campaigned to have legislation passed in Kentucky to make
it a felony to abuse an animal. Love you guys,
listen to every show. Thanks love it.

Speaker 5 (01:24:47):
Oh girl, you know you really are speaking to my
heart right now, you know, this is Bobby and obviously, uh,
you know, crimes against animals or something that I'm very
passionate about. But I will tell tell you it's hard
to talk about because people don't want to hear it.
People when I bring up, like because I've to you know,

(01:25:08):
John Green and I and whatnot, We've done other cases
outside of the one that was featured in Don't Have
with Cats, And when people ask me about them, like, hey,
what are the cases that you worked on? And I
start to tell them because they asked me, they kind
of like their eyes kind of glaze over and they
just kind of start walking way backwards, like ooh, oh oh.

Speaker 4 (01:25:28):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:25:29):
Like one thing I learned throughout the last you know,
twelve years or actually fourteen years of doing this is
that there's three things that people get really upset about,
and rightfully so abuse of children or you know of
any kind, abuse to the elderly, and abuse to animals.

(01:25:52):
I think it's the defenseless part of you know, these
different distinct, very distinct thing and I listen, I totally
agree it's hard to hear. I think it's important to
hear though, because you know, it sheds light on the
epidemic because there is an epidemics of animal abuse in

(01:26:15):
this country that goes unpunished. You know, it goes and
talked about. And it's also a precursor for a lot
of a lot of things.

Speaker 6 (01:26:25):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:26:25):
I did that presentation with doctor Chris Mahandi at Crime
Con a couple of years ago about animal abuse and
how I'm you know, talking about it right now, and uh,
you know, I learned a lot from him about the
precursor and like domestic violence, it's a massive precursor to
domestic violence. It's also a reason spouses hurt animals is

(01:26:51):
to control their pop Sometimes it's revenge. Sometimes it's a
way to keep them. Many women won't leave their animal
behind because they aren't accepted in shelters, and so the
animal stays at home and continues to be abused. It's
a listen. If it were me, I would have a

(01:27:12):
show seven days a week about the cases against animals.
It's just people don't want to hear it.

Speaker 7 (01:27:19):
Too.

Speaker 3 (01:27:19):
Yet you do want to hear it because we all
love animals so much.

Speaker 12 (01:27:23):
It's hard to heard, That's what I mean. It's hard, yeah,
and I get it. It is hard. It's hard to
talk about. It's hard to look at by the way,
I get it, all of.

Speaker 3 (01:27:36):
Those cases that were just mentioned, And thank you so
much for the thoughtful talk about Thank you that we're
shocking to see where you're like, what is wrong with
a human being who would try to harm an endangered species?
Or you know, break into the zoo where punch the
monkey is you know coming you know, it's like, I mean,

(01:27:58):
come on, this is where I you know that for
away the key It gets in me and you know
where I'm like, that is just really can you just
be kind? And yeah, and then some of the sicko stuff,
the beagles being removed from captivity. I don't know if
you've been catching what was happening on these animals farms,
these breeding farms where they're being used for labs. Body

(01:28:20):
would speak to it better than me, but basically, this
farming of beagle dogs and I've only seen the release
of it, you know, very a lot of people have
rallied to kind of storm this farm and release these
you know, sweet beautiful dogs that are held captive and
being used for experiments and sold to labs for experiments. Yeah,

(01:28:43):
it's so anger inducing. I wonder why my beagles.

Speaker 5 (01:28:49):
I actually don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:28:50):
It's a really interesting observation. It's the answer.

Speaker 1 (01:28:55):
There's fifteen hundred of them have been released and are
very hopefully, very soon on their way to homes where
they sleep on pillows upon pillows upon couches, as they should.

Speaker 3 (01:29:09):
But that's an interesting thing though, because and I'm one
of them. I feel like everybody and the brother is
trying to get a beagle now because it's so shocking
to see it. You're like, how can I help? How
can I help? The empathy for this release of these beagles.
I would venture to say every one of them has
been accounted for. You know, it seems like there's been
an onslaught of love because it's so painful, So covering

(01:29:30):
some of those cases, I think people really can get behind.

Speaker 5 (01:29:35):
I agree. So not Okay, I'm going to give you.

Speaker 4 (01:29:41):
I'm sorry. I just I googled.

Speaker 1 (01:29:42):
If you want the answer to why beagles are predominantly used.

Speaker 4 (01:29:46):
Oh, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:29:46):
Could I brain handle it? Okay, I don't know.

Speaker 7 (01:29:49):
Seeing it's going to be a little.

Speaker 1 (01:29:51):
Uh. They are predominantly used in lab settings because they
are small, but also because they are exceptionally docile. They
are forgiving and they have trusting temperaments.

Speaker 3 (01:30:03):
The nice ones are the targets. By the way, isn't
that what serial killers also say about their perfect target
ted Bundy. We like them nice and kind the type.

Speaker 5 (01:30:11):
Of person that's gonna hold my books.

Speaker 3 (01:30:14):
If I'm you know, hobbling around on a cane, that
is a real crime. Wow, I mean the crime. I
don't know how people sleep. Did you want to see
something about Yogi?

Speaker 5 (01:30:27):
Yeah, my dog. Yogi came from a situation there was
in Las Vegas. There were one hundred and sixty three
Pomeranians shoved two and there were you know those little
dog crates, the little carriers. There were two and three
in a carrier, in a U haul, one hundred and
sixty of these of these animals, and they were left

(01:30:48):
in the middle of the desert. And then, you know,
and somebody saw it and went up to it and
there were all these Pomeranians in the back of this
U haul And this happened I think it was twenty
twenty or twenty nineteen, and you know, everybody in Vegas
was like, oh my gosh. My mom was like, I
got to get one of those dogs. So we had

(01:31:09):
to enter a lottery. My point in bringing this up
is that there were so many people that wanted these dogs,
and yet so many still in the shelter, right, But
this story brought out people that wanted you know what
I mean. So when you do talk about these things
like the beagles and now have some news I just mentioned,

(01:31:29):
people line up to help.

Speaker 3 (01:31:32):
So that's what I'm saying. So there always like an
outpour of empathy. I think around these types of stories,
I think we should cover more of them, frankly, and
then punch the monkey. We punched the monkey is like
the biggest, perfect, quintessential example of humanity. Everybody should watch
punch the monkeys. You know, entire life to this point

(01:31:53):
has been one to aspire to.

Speaker 5 (01:31:56):
And now some you know dope is breaking into the zoo.

Speaker 1 (01:32:00):
All right, lock them up in their own cage.

Speaker 7 (01:32:04):
Yeah, something something a little fun to end on a
happier note because I'm sien to it.

Speaker 5 (01:32:09):
Yeah, Okay, I have a question for the listeners. Am
I the only one thinking that this entire time the
girls have been saying ta Haa's.

Speaker 6 (01:32:18):
House instead of knowing that that's.

Speaker 4 (01:32:20):
His last name.

Speaker 6 (01:32:22):
I just clicked literally today and I just want to know.

Speaker 8 (01:32:26):
Am I am?

Speaker 3 (01:32:27):
I The only one that is so perfect by the
way it is, it is because it's me saying it
probably taha house, but you know ta Haa's house, like
as if we say, say, have an ad her in
the studio, So it's like we're identifying is in the house,

(01:32:53):
but thinking that in the house.

Speaker 7 (01:32:56):
That's pretty funny that that's the last name. H O
double u ze supposedly Old English German background or something
of that.

Speaker 4 (01:33:03):
Native German.

Speaker 13 (01:33:05):
Yeah, yeah, that's but the judge it could be a
little bit.

Speaker 7 (01:33:12):
But yeah, even I used to work on house Hunters.

Speaker 9 (01:33:15):
And.

Speaker 13 (01:33:17):
I mean TV house Hunters forever. Yes, the tips and tricks, Oh,
we're gonna'pha you in on those later. There's some good ones,
because we've got some good things that have happened. But
in the meantime, I don't think we have time for
another talk back.

Speaker 3 (01:33:33):
But I'm excited about quick.

Speaker 7 (01:33:36):
I know that was a short one because we're running
out of a little bit of time. But tomorrow, can I.

Speaker 5 (01:33:40):
Tell you what I'm excited about? Yes, of course.

Speaker 14 (01:33:43):
Does everyone remember judge Michelle Locke's cool? I love her,
Probably the coolest judge I've ever talked to like, you know,
like I would want to go out for beers with her.
But yeah, I'm back and she's going to talk about
that case with the former assistant principal Ebony Park Girl.

Speaker 7 (01:34:00):
Her trial is coming up. She's the one that was
involved with the deadly Nashville school shooting. So right, it's
gonna be a heavy topic, but Michelle is gonna really
she had some light on.

Speaker 4 (01:34:10):
It and bring some clarity.

Speaker 1 (01:34:12):
Well, excellent and listen, Taha, you will forever be up
in the house, in the house

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Hey Jonas!

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}RE-RELEASE: Charlie Kirk Court Fight, Delphi Appeal & The Hollywood Fire Devil

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Hey Jonas!

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

All Episodes

RE-RELEASE: Charlie Kirk Court Fight, Delphi Appeal & The Hollywood Fire Devil

Hey Jonas!