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January 1, 2025 69 mins

It's time to Rewind with Karen & Georgia!

This week, K & G recap Episode 26: Twenty Six Six Six when Karen shared the story of Mary Bell and Georgia discussed the tragic death of Lisa Steinberg. Listen for all-new commentary, case updates and much more!

Whether you've listened a thousand times or you're new to the show, join the conversation as we look back on our old episodes and discuss the life lessons we’ve learned along the way. Head to social media to share your favorite moments from this episode!  

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My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories, and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921.

The Exactly Right podcast network provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics, including true crime, comedy, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Say hello and welcome to Rewind with Karen and Georgia
that a lot.

Speaker 2 (00:21):
Of spices and Rewining Rewind that this is our Wednesday episode,
our new Wednesday episode where we recap our old shows
with a new commentary, updates and potentially retractions if necessary.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
I think this one is necessary. Also, Happy New Year's Day.
If you're listening on the day that this comes out,
it's twenty twenty four.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
It's twenty twenty four, No.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
Five five for you. I okay, I got time.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
This being done in the past. Leave it before you
start your new year, which is going to be incredible,
by the.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Way, what a year it's gong to be for you.
It's to be.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
But before we go into the future, let's let's let
us drag you into the past.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Oh, because yes, that's right, fine, because today we are
recapping episode twenty six Little Babies. We were uh and
we named it twenty six sixty six because of course
we did punk rock. Yeah, And it came out originally
on Thursday July twenty first, twenty sixteen.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
I just want to say, July twenty first, in mid
to late July in Los Angeles is a pretty warm time. Yeah,
we were still in your apartment with no air conditioning.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
That's correct. I'm not saying that to you accusatorially. No,
I love it. It's my roots.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
I mean, I but that's all I can think of
when I think of like these, when I look at
these and I'm like, oh, yeah, that's right, and then
I'm like, I was having a great time and sweating
my ass off.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
We were sweating, I was wearing tiny clothes. We were
we talk about in the beginning of this, like the
worry that more fireworks are going to happen. Oh yeah,
because that's Los Angeles. The first like a couple of
weeks before the fourth of July.

Speaker 2 (02:03):
And a couple weeks after. In Los Angeles, it's just
constant fireworks in the a tinder box of a city
that's just like dry wood based insanity. And we were
so traumatized by the week before. That's right when we had.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
The where someone said they almost got in a car
accident because they heard the fireworks from the week before
and drove off the road and thought it was happening
in there, but they shot up.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
We must be careful when we listen to podcasts on
the road.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
We have more power than we realized, and it feels great,
doesn't it.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Though? Here in twenty twenty five, Okay, are you ready,
it's the rewind episode. Now we all get to be
day one listeners.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
So let's listen to the intro of episode twenty six.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Let's start now, let's start right now.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
Let's start right now.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
Fireworks, they are fire work.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
Someone whole building collapses.

Speaker 1 (03:00):
Someone on some social media site said that they almost
got in a car accident when they heard the firework
because they thought it was a gunshot. Oh no, I know. Sorry,
we were just as scared as you were.

Speaker 2 (03:11):
We were more scared because as loud as it was
on the podcast, it was fucking fifteen times louder in
real life.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yeah, they're fine.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Sorry, it was very, very scary, surprising, and to me funny,
it's hilarious.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
It keeps happening, though, so it might happen again tonight.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
And what is it September? I mean how much longer?

Speaker 1 (03:36):
I don't know. So prepare yourself and your dogs, because
I'm sure people some people's has they were like thunder
jackets off.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
But I tried to put a thundershirt on George one time. Yeah,
and when I came home. It was eaten. Yes, it
was like ripped to shreds and parts were gone.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
I know.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
I know that.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Well.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
I put a cat a collar on my cat once
and came back and it was like, here's what I
think of it.

Speaker 3 (04:01):
Yeah, give fuck yourself.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Fuck.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
I mean, I wouldn't want to fucking call her. I mean,
I guess I did when I was fourteen and thought
I was punk I work. I mean that was the nineties, right,
it was, wasn't it. It was all about cat callers
and shit back then. Yeah, punk, fake, punk rock totally.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
I still have mine. It still smells like like Victoria's
secret apple spray, apple body spray.

Speaker 2 (04:23):
No, oh no, you mean sorrow. Yeah, yep, it still
smells like ecstasy.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yeah. Uh hey, how are you? How was your week?
What's going on?

Speaker 2 (04:34):
Hi?

Speaker 3 (04:36):
I've just been working.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
Oh this is my favorite murder. Oh guys, listen.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
I mean, I figure if you press play on this,
you probably know that.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
Uh. If you're one of those rando people, it just
goes through iTunes and picks different podcasts and hits play.
No one's ever done that, right, No, I seriously doubt it,
but welcome if you're that one person.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
If you're the lone wolf.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
Hi, I'm new to this. I'm Georgia. That's Karen.

Speaker 3 (05:05):
I'm Karen. This is my voice.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
Karen was the one singing.

Speaker 3 (05:09):
I do that because it's my passion.

Speaker 1 (05:11):
That's her passion, and she's good at it, and I
will not. I disagree that I'm bad at that. I'm bad.
You disagree that you're good at it.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
I disagree that you're bad at it. Thank you, because
I've heard you do it jokingly and it's not bad.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Oh, yeah, it's not. I guess the secret is not
to try or care or care. Yeah, that's true. Here's
a good segue into the presence we just got. I'm
holding a cold beer to the stab wound that oh
gave myself.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
Okay, can I just explain this very quickly. So we
had Georgia has a little pile of presents waiting for
me when I got home to her apartment for work. No,
this isn't my home, and it was like, I waited
for you so we can open these up. We wanted
to open them off air so it wouldn't take forever,
and one of them I opened two because Georgia was

(06:02):
slightly afraid they could be a bomb or something dance
like Karen's face, so I'll go.

Speaker 3 (06:06):
I was like, I'll go ahead and take the hit.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
I mean, you're off camera talent, so I need this.
I can have the iPad is your brain and I
would love for my.

Speaker 3 (06:17):
Teeth to be blown out? Can I get some awesome veneers?

Speaker 1 (06:19):
Do anyhow?

Speaker 4 (06:20):
It?

Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah? So I did the first two and Georgia was
like I said. She picked up the third one and
I said, do you want me to open that? And
she was like, I can do it. I'm not that
insane or whatever it was you saying anxiety. And then
she went to open it and stabbed herself in the
bare leg with a pair of scissor and it, I
have to tell you, as painful as I'm sure it is,

(06:40):
it's also hilarious.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
It's one of those things. And this happens to me
a lot where I'm glad it happened because it's worth it.
Like I run into stuff all the time and like
do dumb shit, and I'm like, I'm so glad that
that happened.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
Yes, that's humor and life instead of just when you
look down and have a rando. That's the second time
I said that and I've never really said.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
It before at all.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Interesting, what's going on? What teen boy am I trying
to impress? When you look down and there's just a
huge bruise for no reason where you're just like, do
does this mean I have blood cancer?

Speaker 1 (07:14):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (07:14):
Why?

Speaker 1 (07:15):
The majority of my bruises like don't remember getting And
it's not because I'm constantly drunk. I'm not.

Speaker 2 (07:20):
You're not.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
And I mean when I'm drunk, I'm smooth as shit too,
Like I'm good. I'm much better in person when I'm drunk.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
When you're drunk, what I notice is that you seem
to just enjoy every single thing that goes. Really Yeah,
you just have a big smile on your face and
you think everything's kind of funny and like enjoyable.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
It seems like yeah, I like, I think, I like
understand moments so much better and understand people and get
get life better. Yeah, which is like so unhealthy. But
I think maybe I'm not anxious. Maybe that's it. Maybe
I'm amused and not anxious.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
Deep down underneath. When you use beer to uncover your
true personality. Well, we got some oh my god, amazing GIFs.
We just had it like a baby July Christmas.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
What was that that someone slamming the door? But it
sounded like a gun.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
That that sounded like a half firework to me.

Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah, it did all right.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
Start, we got a beautiful card that's the sparkliest thing,
with a really funny, cute joke on the front and
really great printing inside. Beautiful printing, the kind of printing
I wish I could do. But I don't understand why
that looks the way it does.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
I might and I do this. I might trace over
the handwriting labor. It's so satisfying. Can you try that?

Speaker 3 (08:38):
I've never done it.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
It's from this card is from Emily, and she just
said a bunch of lovely things and it was it's
basically a thank you card for our podcast, which is
the cutest.

Speaker 3 (08:47):
Thing of all time. She was raised well girl, and
she likes a card.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
We would like to thank her parents for this card,
mister and missus Emily's parents, right, move on to the
next one.

Speaker 2 (08:59):
Then we got from Candace. She sent us this really
fucking red hurt. She's going to start doing murder zines
and the first one is the murder scene is called
the Matilda Effect. And the first one is about Francis
Glessner Lee there are women.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
In science scenes?

Speaker 3 (09:17):
Oh I thought they were a murderer. No women in
science scenes?

Speaker 2 (09:21):
Sorry, But the first one is about a woman who
did she want to be a cop?

Speaker 3 (09:28):
Did that card.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
Say, yeah, she wanted to be a scientist.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
She wanted to be She's basically if you guys have
seen the documentary The Nutshell Studies, where she really this
woman way back when really wanted to be a doctor
or nurse and she wasn't allowed to because of her family.
I think she was a rich I think she was
from a wealthy family. So instead she started to make
detailed miniature models of composite crime scenes. So she just
made miniature crime scene so that cops could study them

(09:53):
without screwing up the crime scene. And she's just had
this huge effect on crime scene procedure and she's incredible.
I love Candace. You can get these at smut punks.
It's s m U T p U n x dot com.
And she's gonna make she makes other buttons and stuff

(10:13):
that she just makesh it.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
And I haven't seen a fucking zine in real life
and so long I know you magazine, No, I never did.
I made a zine for It's like a tribute to
Ray Bradbury in Dlight combined.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
Wow, because those are the two things you liked what
I liked in sixteen.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
So seeing a zine is like exciting. It's very cool,
and I think you should. I think we should all
support zines.

Speaker 2 (10:33):
You know what I did was I just assumed the
Candace made a zine for all the things I like
instead of what she's interested murder im and in science.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
This was Yeah, it was. It was specifically for me.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Well it is a true crime subject yet, yes, so
and so fascinating. If you get it's called the Nutshell
what's the documentary called The Nutshell Studies? You gotta watch
it in death.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
Yeah, she's it's great, candascinating.

Speaker 3 (10:59):
Thank you, Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
Please keep remaining to be a badass.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
Then we got this amazing puzzle from Holly. She said,
Karen and Georgia, thanks so much for sharing your favorite murders.
I made a puzzle about mine, thought you might like it.
Like it.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
Yeah, we fucking lost our minds.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
I'm so excited.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
I kind of like I kind of begged Karen for it.

Speaker 3 (11:24):
It's a three D puzzle of h. H.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
Holmes Murderer Castle in Chicago, which is the best thing
of all time.

Speaker 3 (11:31):
So I think everybody probably knows.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
But if you're if you just started liking true crime,
HH Holmes, I think they're going to make the Devil
in the White City movie with Leo DiCaprio.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
I thank you, And you can get this at where
can you get hurt the Puzzle? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Wait, wait, okay, you can get hollycardon dot com.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
So it's h O L Y C A R D
E N. And I think she's going to start just
making true crime puzzles.

Speaker 3 (12:00):
Amazing.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
I cannot wait to make this. I'll take photos.

Speaker 3 (12:02):
It's very cool.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
So anyway, she started off with HH Holmes Murder Castle,
which you can watch the movie.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
It's the best story ever.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
If you get creeped out by premeditated, planned psycho murder,
this is the.

Speaker 1 (12:16):
Story for you.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
And I would do it, but they did it on
last podcast on the last I know.

Speaker 1 (12:21):
I am not.

Speaker 2 (12:23):
It's been done a lot, a lot, and it's very
well known and a movie is gonna come out, so
we let we let it got taken care of in
our minds and finally, oh my god. And then finally, Bethany,
who may Bethany Jones. I'm assuming these people are okay
with their names being said.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
Yeah, I think they want to shout out, which yea,
absolutely so.

Speaker 2 (12:45):
Bethany Jones is from the base element makeup, bath and body.
I would call it company.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
And she sent.

Speaker 2 (12:55):
Us her card says, I hope you like your names,
sake lipsticks.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
I loved creating them.

Speaker 2 (13:02):
While listening to your podcasts, all of your podcasts, one
after the other, I twitch, and fittingly, when I was done,
my kitchen looked like a murder scene and I was
smeared red to the elbows.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
I've got a bit.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Rock and roll and made skull bath bombs in your
honor too. See what an inspiration you are. Stay sex,
you don't get murdered. It's so awesome. This box smelled.
We could smell the bath bombs from outside.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
That's why it wasn't a bomb, because I feel like
they wouldn't go to the trouble of making it pleasant
A soapy bomb. Well it was a bomb. Oh my god,
I didn't think that's yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 (13:34):
You were right.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
See you're right all along, psychic, But bombs can be good.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
That bombs can be good.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
So we just got a shit ton of lip glass
and lip bomb and lip scrub and eyeshadow.

Speaker 1 (13:47):
Like a lot of them are named like have quotes
from the podcast. There's a fucking lip bomb called Elvis
want a Cookie and once we got excited and exclaimed
that when we saw it, Elvis lost his fucking mind
because he thought he was getting one. So I had
to give them one.

Speaker 3 (14:01):
Yeah, we kept saying Elvis. I won't say it again,
I know.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
But yeah, there's I mean, our names are on he
on lip balms, this is this is right up my eye.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
So she's gonna make them. She just wanted us to
get the first ones, which is so fucking cool. Yeah,
so you can go to the base element at Etsy. Yeah,
and by Murderino and non Murderino. You guys, we can
have our own makeup line. Fucking love this podcast from Bethany.
It's so cool. It's very cool. Thank you for our gifts.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
Totally worth it to open up, to open you up
to danger and get that pot that po box.

Speaker 3 (14:36):
Hey, look that's plenty of presents. That's plenty.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
I'm okay with the I talked to my therapist about it.
I really fucking lost my shit. Last week I talked
to her about it. I got some pepper spray. The
reality is it's not gonna fucking I mean, what are
the chances that's gonna happen. It's not.

Speaker 2 (14:54):
Then I get scared when you say that, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
All Right, if you really really want to find it,
and if you actually have something that you're making that's
like legit, you can have the po box.

Speaker 2 (15:03):
Also, there's eighty million ways to contact us, so that
you could probably say, hey, here's what I'm going to
send you totally, and here's a copy of my driver's license,
so that if I do harm you in any way.

Speaker 3 (15:12):
Right, and now we have evidence, contacted evidence. It's all
on the internet.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
So that was present present, That was present corner, what
we call present corner.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
Okay, we're in. This is fun. So we start opening
like gifts from listeners, which I know scared the shit
out of me in the very beginning.

Speaker 2 (15:35):
Yeah, clearly, I mean you're taking true precautions and then
hurting yourself in that in the process.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
It sounds sounds like me. That sounds like me, through
and through taking precautions, hurting yourself on accident.

Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah, I mean I can relate. Yeah, I think that's
very relatable. Also, I think we were doing a lot
of those kinds of Okay, strangers are sending us big boxes.
We just got to go with God on this one. Yeah,
and like play along. And I have to say this.
We've been doing this for almost nine years. We've been
given a lot of amazing gifts, a lot of hilarious gifts,

(16:08):
a lot of downright weird gifts. And I maybe shouldn't
be saying this, but we've never gotten us scary.

Speaker 1 (16:15):
Get Oh, I've never felt threatened by a gift except
that doll that had the happy face and the sad face.
But the person who gave it to us it was hilarious.

Speaker 2 (16:23):
It was hilarious and God, I wish I could remember
her name, but also knew that that's what they were doing.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
We needed it. Yeah, it was great. And do you
remember we sent it to a listener? Yes, someone won it.
Who has that?

Speaker 2 (16:35):
If you lead the scary two phase doll, please send
us an email of how your life has been going
since it entered your home.

Speaker 1 (16:42):
We must know. And actually, so what's really cool about
these gifts that we just opened is that at Holly's store,
who gave us the hh Holmes Murder Castle puzzle, is
still active at Hollycarden dot com. Yeah, she has a
whole empire over there. Amazing check that out.

Speaker 2 (16:59):
Yeah. And also we talked about The Devil in the
White City and we got so excited because the movie
was supposed to come out or nine years ago. It's
never come out, but all the same people are still
attached and it is essentially it's Leonardo DiCaprio and I
think it's supposed to maybe be Scarsesey. I can't remember,
but it's a famously cursed project. Now, yeah, because I

(17:20):
want to watch it now though I want it.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
But I want it. It's like that idea.

Speaker 2 (17:25):
I just saw TikTok on it and there's a shot
the opening TikTok. The opening picture of the TikTok was
this the scene from the statue's shoulder overlooking that big
pond or.

Speaker 3 (17:38):
Lake or whatever.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
They built it in the state there or that what's
it called fair ground fair, World's Fair?

Speaker 2 (17:44):
Yes for the yes, exactly for the World's Fair. But
they built it like it was all white. It's an
incredible looking thing that like I got to actually see
this one picture that I was like, oh my god.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
And then of course the Ferris Wheel. You know it's
so crazy is that when this came out, this episode,
TikTok didn't exist. Is that true? I'm making that up.
I think it's true.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
I think it's true. I bet you it was. I
wonder if Vine had even been shut down. Yeah, shit
like Vine walked so that TikTok could run.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
Remember when we were Vine stars? Meant were we?

Speaker 2 (18:16):
Now?

Speaker 1 (18:16):
I don't know we could make that up. Pat Walsh
was a Vine star. Yeah, he was. Oh that's so cue.
He would get on there and sing little songs like.

Speaker 2 (18:24):
Oh, the girls are going to a pizza party.

Speaker 1 (18:28):
Yeah Vine, Okay, legendary.

Speaker 2 (18:30):
So let's now, as we always do, the podcast, take
a left turn, because this episode is horrible. It's horrifying.
Its child murder abuse. This is basically a listener warning,
but it's not just about child murder.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
It involves brutal child abuse. It's funny how our stories
start to sync up at this point where it's like
we both had the same mindset. Yeah, and so this
episode is especially horrible because of that. But I also
find it really interesting. As I was reading through. It's
clear that we're you and I are understanding how to
talk about true crime in a way that we hadn't

(19:11):
been taught make may I correct? Just starting to understand,
starting to understand, yes, in a way that we didn't
we weren't taught, and that we were figuring out from
listeners notes and from the way it made us feel
and not. And so there's a lot of comments here
that it's almost like you can hear us feeling out

(19:33):
our own empathy and what it means and what it
doesn't excuse, but you know, how to think about the
story these stories. Yeah, and so it is a different
time completely, and I think you and I are clearly,
you know, feeling our way through that.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
I mean, I think about it all the time where
and we've talked about it a lot. But it's like
growing up on quote unquote true crime and the way
the me used to treat it was normal to us.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
That's that's just how it was salacious. You're trying to,
you know, slation sell these stories.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
Killer centric just kind of it pop culture, and so
us coming in from that stance in twenty sixteen, looking
back now and looking back basically the whole time is
just kind of like, why are we Why are we
this disconnected?

Speaker 1 (20:23):
Why aren't we?

Speaker 2 (20:24):
And I mean disconnected maybe isn't the right word, but
it is like, yeah, you can, you can hear us
slowly start and realize nothing is black and white, nothing straightforward,
and at the same time like, oh, you know, the
woman from your story later went on and got to
tell her story and it was a complete like flipped
that kind of very singular media narrative that we learned

(20:46):
and kind of went with when it happened.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
Right, Like, the story can be nuanced without taking away
the perpetrator's culpability, and you can understand a story and
people's motivations and ways without saying that they didn't deserve
the punishment or the justice exists and so does empathy,
but you know, how do we look at that? And
I think we had to do that in a different

(21:10):
way for this podcast.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Right, and in a way that it's embarrassing to go, oh,
I never I didn't really think of the victim's family,
but no one really did in a fourth right way
that we could have copied, like everyone now gets to
copy everybody else get caught up and is doing better
and doing better because, of course, all of our anonymous
internet friends have logged on to say do better. Ye

(21:34):
many many times that okay, okay, okay, So we'll do
our best, all right. So let's get into Karen's story,
A classic story, one that I can't think about without
thinking about you as a child, because she truly does
look exactly like you.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
This is the story of Mary Bell. Do you want
to about our favorite murders?

Speaker 2 (22:01):
We might as well, Skippers come back to us.

Speaker 3 (22:04):
It's time I think year first, is it me?

Speaker 1 (22:07):
I think so?

Speaker 2 (22:09):
The murder that I chose this week, yes, Karen, And
my favorite murder is one that's always It's been one
that like the first time I read it, I couldn't
I would have to turn my eyes away from the page.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
Because it is.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
Horrible and horrifying, but also like there's an underpinning of
salaciousness to it that I thoroughly enjoy. It's about Mary Bell,
the child child killer. Buck, Yeah, the childhood child killer.
Now what I realized in looking through my researchers, my

(22:46):
research chearches today, I mean from weeks.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
Ago, research just piles and piles.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
Every night I go to the city library, like Morgan Freeman,
and I let the guy play.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
It's the same one from a ghosts Ghostbusters movie, right,
the big huge cavernous ghosty.

Speaker 2 (23:05):
Yes, I go down to the basement where the very
old did ghost librarian and Graff is involved. You just
for for hours hours. So in the pictures of Mary Bell,
which we should put up on the Instagram page, well
that's what I look like when I was like exactly.
So I've always had a bit of a connection to

(23:28):
Mary Bell, uh in certain ways, but I also know
and we got called out. I think it was on
I can't remember the one the girl's name, but the
girl that shot up the school I.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
Don't like Monday, Oh my god, Mary anyway.

Speaker 2 (23:46):
Sorry, it's Lisa, that that girl we kind of got.
There's a couple of people are like, we were being
too sympathetic to her or being like too nice when
normally we're mean. If it's like a man and that's older,
we're mean and like, hang am.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
I and disagree with that.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
I know, I mean, everyone has a lot to say
about everything, but.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
At that point I'm not gonna argue. I agree.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
Well, I brought it up because I was thinking, is
that how I'm going to be about Mary Bell. But
the truth is, I honestly believe that Mary Bell is
a psychopath. I think she anytime she seems sympathetic, it's
because she's trying.

Speaker 3 (24:24):
To seem sympathetic.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
I think she is, like I think she's nightmare. Like
we need to talk about Kevin the bad seed. She's
the reality of all of that fiction, evil.

Speaker 1 (24:35):
Child, right, like nothing can be done.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
Now.

Speaker 3 (24:38):
I think there's a reason she's that way.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (24:40):
She may have been born that way, because they do
talk about how she from an early age like didn't bond,
but she had this fucking crazy mother. Either way, to me,
I'm I just want to say it at the start,
I'm not.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
I'm not defending Mary Bell.

Speaker 1 (24:56):
Okay, But I also want to say another thing about it.
Whenever there's like a child laster or someone we talk
about their past and are like, yeah, that sucks. What
are we I don't. I don't think we were softer
on her. I don't either. I think we're always like
investigating the past of the person who's killing people. That
doesn't exonerate them from.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
But I think sometimes you know, when it's personal opinion,
which is all all of this podcast is, sometimes more
empathy will come out. Even if you have it, you
won't express it. Like I don't have a ton of
empathy for Richard Ramirez, even though we did get hit
in the swing and we have the worst uncle in
the world.

Speaker 3 (25:32):
Whatever.

Speaker 1 (25:33):
Yes, we're just saying, it's understandable that this person didn't
become a normal member of society.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
Yes, And for me, that's what's interesting to me when
you can when it's not just oh, you were born
with this defect where you do not have mirror nerons
and you do not empathize with other human beings. That's
one thing, But like if there is like a little
path you could have been normal, if you didn't experience
this parent or this aunt or whatever it's some awful

(26:01):
pit that you fell in in your childhood. To me,
that's like, that's really what's fascinating.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
That's the Slash study. That's the study.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
The the effect that they killed someone and murdered them
and raped and all the horrible things, that's the effect
that you know, there's a cause and effect, yeah, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yeah, And the cause is fascinating, right, And if I
had a an education b didn't have a d D,
I would probably read up on it a ton and
become some type of a of a learned expert about
it and.

Speaker 3 (26:33):
Me too, And instead instead.

Speaker 2 (26:36):
I have I work in TV, so I am rewarded
for not paying attention.

Speaker 1 (26:40):
And also what we do have a we do have
a true crime podcast. So I think we're good. I
think we're basically doing that.

Speaker 2 (26:48):
Uh yeah, we're doing our best anyhow, Sorry, go on.
Uh no, so I've I've always found Mary Bell fucking fact.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
Say so this happened in nineteen sixty eight.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
Oh, actually I thought it happened a lot longer ago.
That's cool.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
Sixty eight.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
Yeah, and it happened in new in the inner city
suburb of Newcastle in England. That's Stephen Kingstown right, No, no, no,
in England, never mind Newcastle.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
No, Newcastle Rockets Castle Rocket.

Speaker 3 (27:21):
Oh yeah, Castle Rocks the Yeah, he's all about Maine.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
Can we just strike all of that from the record.

Speaker 2 (27:26):
Yes, absolutely, we're gonna go in and edit this down
so good. We're not No, we're not at all, and
we never do.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
Okay. So she was born to a.

Speaker 2 (27:40):
Unwed, unstable, seventeen year old sex worker named Betty mccricket,
and Betty used to leave her daughter with relatives and acquaintances,
just dumped her off anytime she could because she had
to go. She I guess she would go into Glasgow

(28:02):
a lot and work as a sex worker.

Speaker 1 (28:08):
Even as a non seventeen year old sex worker. That
I was the thought of having a child at seventeen, nightmare, nightmare.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
It's just it's what a great opportunity for a ton
of bad decisions like this one where she once gave
Mary to a woman she met on the street outside
an abortion clinic.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
Shut up, yeah, Betty was doing it so.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
Her Apparently their household was filthy and sparsely furnished, and
Betty's family members said that Betty tried to kill Mary
more than once in her first few years away and
tried to make it look accidental. So they all became
very suspicious when Mary quote unquote fell out a window,
had drama possibly, and also when she accidentally consumed sleeping pills,

(29:01):
so they think she could have definitely gotten brain damage
because she had sleeping pills, iron pills, and apparently Mary
sorry Betty, would feed the pills to Mary and tell
them they were candy. There are some people who now
say that they think Betty probably had munch Houses by proxy,

(29:22):
which is the fascinating disease where a parent gets addicted
to the attention and sympathy that they get from a
sick child, and so they make the child sick on purpose.
It's basically what happened in the movie seven when he
when the barfing girl finally brings him back to her.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
That's a great scene.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
No seven, fucking the other number movie this sixth sense.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
Our brains are sinking up because that was just oh,
you know what's so hilarious.

Speaker 3 (29:57):
Yeah, we're we're it's like our mistake, brain. They're like, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 (30:02):
I did the same thing where when I was talking
about the polyclass murder, I called it.

Speaker 3 (30:07):
I called it clover.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
Field, which is a movie and the city name where
her body was found as Cloverdale. And Adrian, my friend,
that yeah, but I think I only said it once.
Adrian texted me and she's like, dude, it's Cloverdale. You
you went there for softball games? What are you doing?
And I was just like, she's like, I'm the only
one to notice, but seriously.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
It's a Cloverdale. Yeah, grow up.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
Maybe you were just trying to protect the town so
people like, so the looky louse wouldn't show up there, right,
that's what you were doing.

Speaker 3 (30:37):
Just stay away from Cloverfield.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
So bad news obviously, And in her upbringing and so
of course at school, Mary was known as a chronic liar,
disruptive pupil. She on occasion would voice her desire to
hurt people. She did a lot of kicking and punching
and and lying, and so all the kids they would

(31:04):
make fun of her a lot because she was just
basically a monster and a mess. And later on as sorry,
I was trying to figure out where when a good
But basically later on it came to be discovered that
Mary's mother would use her and sell her in prostitution

(31:26):
as well, from the age of four. So she, I
guess this is another thing that does fascinate me. This
is another thing that like that kind of trauma can
affect you and does affect your personality. So she was
subjected to really awful things at such a young age

(31:47):
that they think that that probably plays into the psychopathy
and the behavior.

Speaker 1 (31:53):
Yeah, you're like, this isn't a safe world. World, Nothing
is safe. I need to fucking defend myself and.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
I want to start hurting others the way I'm being here,
and it's a way they's normal.

Speaker 3 (32:03):
It's the way children.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah, it's the way children communicate that they're being hurt
when they know they're not allowed to talk about it. Fascinating, totally, Okay.
So on May twenty fifth, nineteen sixty eight, two boys
playing in an abandoned house found the corpse of four
year old Martin Brown lying in an upstairs room. Mary
Bell and her friend Norma Bell, who was not related

(32:26):
to her, they just had the same last name, followed
the boys inside the house, and when the police arrived,
the two girls had to be ordered out. So they
really liked looking at this dead were they? Mary was
just about to turn eleven and Norma Bell was thirteen,
but Mary was the dominant of the two, like a

(32:48):
little more mature and smart. There was no obvious cause
of death, so it was assumed that Martin Brown had
swallowed pills from a discarded bottle, which was found nearby.
The Next day, Norma Bell's father caught Mary choking Norma
and he slapped her face and sent her home. He's choking,

(33:09):
she was choking her so bad.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
Holy shit.

Speaker 3 (33:12):
The day after this little boy died.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
So four days later, Mary Bell appeared at the Brown
residence asking to see Martin, and when she was reminded
that Martin was.

Speaker 3 (33:26):
Dead, wait, she showed up.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
She showed up at the dead boy's house asking to
see him, and when the adult that answered the door
reminded her that Martin was dead, it was the mother
that answered the door. And when the mother said he's dead,
Mary said, Oh, I know he's dead. I want to
see him in his coffin.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
Oh my god, could you Oh what would you do?
I'd scream, I'd run screaming.

Speaker 3 (33:50):
I mean a little girl too. Yeah, who's yeah? Okay.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
So two months later, three year old Brian Howe goes
and immediate search is mounted and Mary Bell tells Brian's
sister that he might be playing on a heap of
concrete blocks that had been dumped out in a nearby
vacant lot, and which is where he was discovered dead
from manual strangulation. Legs and stomach and penis mutilated with

(34:19):
a razor and a pair of scissors. The police discover
at the scene the letters M and N were scratched
into his stomach.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
Fuck.

Speaker 2 (34:28):
So as the investigation narrows Mary. So somebody that had
been walking by said they saw kids around that pile
of stones that day. And then when they took the
three year old's body into the corner, he said, it

(34:49):
looks like he's strangled, but it's such light force that
I think we're looking at a child murderer. So then
the cops went around and started interview all the kids
in the neighborhood, and Mary and Norma were both dinged
right away because their stories kept changing.

Speaker 3 (35:09):
Mary acted super weird. They got freaked.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
Out by how creepy and weird she was, and Norma
couldn't stop giggling, Holy shit. So Mary, when the investigation
got narrowed onto Mary Bell, she suddenly remembered seeing an
eight year old boy with Brian on the day he died,
and she said that the boy hit Brian for no reason,

(35:33):
and that she said that same boy had been playing
with broken scissors. But the boy she was naming a
specific boy. She was basically trying to pin it on him,
but he had been at the airport that afternoon. And
so the thing that Mary didn't know is that the
scissors were confidential evidence.

Speaker 3 (35:52):
No one knew about the scissors.

Speaker 1 (35:54):
Oh, Mary, that was a public when you're a ten
year old murderer, is that you didn't You don't understand.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
You can't keep your shit in line, dude. Yeah, so baffling.
She essentially implicates herself with the scissor comment, and she
had described them exactly, so she's trying to pin it
on the other boy, and in doing so, she's like
they were silver colored and there was something wrong with them,
like one leg was either broken or bent. So she

(36:23):
basically describes the exact scissors to a tea.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
I mean, smart, smart, smart investigating by the cops that
they like figured the shit out pretty quickly.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
And can you imagine sitting in an in a room
across from an eleven year old girl when you see
this picture, big blue eyes, little button nose, kind of vacant.
Just think baby Karen, But just think baby Karen.

Speaker 3 (36:48):
I was a precious lamp.

Speaker 2 (36:49):
But she's lying to you, so you're buying her at first,
and then she give she does the old in glorious
bastard's holding up a.

Speaker 1 (36:58):
Three and you don't even want it to be true,
like you're not even like we're gonna get this guy. Oh,
it's like wait a second, you just said this wrong thing.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
Creepy enough that the coroner says, you're probably gonna want
to look for a kid because a kid strangled a
three year old.

Speaker 1 (37:13):
So you probably don't want it to be true, probably
children of your own. And this little girl is like.

Speaker 2 (37:18):
Yeah, the scissors, I mean, the children just go down
your back. So so, uh okay, I did the slidy
thing again, which.

Speaker 3 (37:30):
I always do.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
So Brian Howe was buried on August seventh, and the
investigative detective was named Detective Dobson, and he was there
and he says Mary Bell was standing in front of
the house house when the coffin was brought out. I
of course was watching her, and it was when I

(37:53):
saw her there that I knew I did not dare
risk another day. She stood there laughing, laughing and rubbing
her hands. I thought, my god, I've got to bring
her in or she'll do another one.

Speaker 1 (38:06):
Holy shit.

Speaker 3 (38:09):
So they bring in Mary Bill.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
Why are you laughing a psychopathic?

Speaker 3 (38:15):
Because it's me.

Speaker 1 (38:16):
She's also rubbing her hands together right now.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
No, because I'm picturing it, and it's like, how they
why don't they make this movie? It's the creepiest thing
of all time. This is like the Ring, except for
the girl has her hair back out of her face
and she's like she thinks she's getting away with it.
She wanted to kill that little kid. She killed him,

(38:39):
and then she wanted to see his dead body get
carried out of the house.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
It's just what's so crazy is the like, you know,
when adults kill, they like try really hard to hide
it and try to outsmart people. That's like what you do.
But this little person, who I guess you can argue,
didn't understand that either death was permanent or what it meant.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
Maybe maybe maybe or she enjoyed the feeling so much
that she had done it. She you know, because there
was some killer that we talked about where they said
I want people to feel on the outside the way
I feel on the inside.

Speaker 3 (39:15):
Was that that one of those Cheshire murders?

Speaker 1 (39:17):
Yeah? Oh?

Speaker 3 (39:19):
Or was it the person you talked about last think?

Speaker 1 (39:21):
No, either way, this is a factual sexual.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
Stact based It's that thing of like when you finally
feel right in the world, is when like, that's how
she felt right. She killed that she had the power
to take his life away and put him in that box.
She finally had power, but she also had to be
a little bit.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
Like arrested in her in Yes, she couldn't be smart enough.
She couldn't have been smarter than a ten year old.
She was just didn't understand right, No, no, I'm wrong.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
You don't think so go on, because this is where
it gets crazy. This is where this is where well,
this is where it shows that she was raised by
two criminals because her mother ended up marrying I think
his name is Billy Bell, and he was like a
career criminal. And so they clearly talked about being arrested,

(40:18):
going in and out of jail and all this stuff.
Because when she's arrested, first of all, when they say
you are going to be charged with murder, she said,
that's all right by me.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
Whoa, And.

Speaker 2 (40:33):
She she sorry.

Speaker 3 (40:40):
When she was in jail, there was a stray cat
in jail.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
Fuck and elviser, Yeah, Elvis, you're not gonna like this.
She grabbed the cat tightly by the neck and the
guard told her not to hurt the cat, and Mary
allegedly replied, oh, she doesn't feel that in any way.
I like hurting little things that can't fight back. In
another incident, a policewoman said that Mary said she'd like

(41:08):
to be a nurse quote because then I can stick
needles into people. I like hurting people.

Speaker 1 (41:15):
Oh my god, m hm.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
So there was kind of a naive quality about it.
Then also the jailers once she was in there, she
calmed down a little bit after a while, and a
lot of the jailers liked her, the guards, you know,
because they said she was very smart, she was very sharp,
but she was a chronic bedwetter. Yeah, and she's got

(41:39):
one of the pieces, probably too, if we count those
being overdosed on drugs by your mother and dropped out
of a window. Sure probably got two at least. What's
the other one?

Speaker 1 (41:51):
Fires?

Speaker 3 (41:51):
Fire? Yeah, No, no report of fire on her.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
But she was terrified of going to sleep because she
was afraid she was going to win bed. And she
said to one of the guards, I usually do. And
at home, her mother would humiliate her anytime she wet
the bed, so she would rub her daughter's face in

(42:16):
the pea when she found it, and she would hang
the mattress outside so the neighborhood would see it. So
when they went to trial, Norma was acquitted of all
charges and Mary was convicted of two counts of manslaughter,
so I think it.

Speaker 3 (42:35):
They say that Norma was there.

Speaker 2 (42:37):
Norma had like eight brothers and sisters or some huge family,
and their whole family was there supporting her, and she
did a lot of crying on the stand and saying
Mary did it, Mary did it, and Mary did the
same thing, or saying Norman did it. But all she
had was her lunatic mother who was wearing a blonde
wig and would freak out so much and cry and

(42:57):
do all these things that her wig would have all off,
and then she would get up and run out of
the courtroom and then come back. And so because of that,
munch Housband's by proxy like this was her drama. She
was basically, you know, say, in the very slight chance
that Mary wasn't guilty, she was condemning her anyway, because

(43:18):
no one had sympathy for that family, whereas everyone was like, oh,
this little girl's just been set up by Mary Bell.
And then in the tabloids, Mary Belly just became just
the face of evil. For years and years, they didn't
have anywhere to put her because they didn't have they
had never had to deal with sending an eleven year

(43:40):
old girl to jail. So there was like lots of
places for juvi for little boys, but none for little girls.

Speaker 3 (43:45):
So they had to keep her.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
They kept her in like a separate quarters in a
boy's detention center wow, for a long time until she
was in her teens. When she was in her teens,
she escaped jail for a little while with two other boys,
but then they were only gone for two weeks and
then they went back.

Speaker 3 (44:03):
She spent.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
Up until her like I can't, I don't, I can't
find it now. I think it was like in her
mid twenties in jail, and then when she got out,
all of England was like freaking out. They were super pissed.
She made money off a book that someone wrote about her.
Again they were like we need to pass laws, you know. Whatever.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
She got out and then what she.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
Ended up becoming a grandmother like a mother and a grandmother.
She got pregnant. I don't think she got married, and
then she was.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Did you change her name?

Speaker 3 (44:41):
There was they passed a thing where they kept her.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
Yeah, she's she now lives under a pseudonym and they,
like the British people, wanted that repeal. They wanted to
make her live as herself, but they they whatever. They
continued the ruling that she could live under a pseudonym
for the rest of her life.

Speaker 1 (45:06):
Okay, wow, we are back, Karen. Do you have any updates?
I wanted to know, like where is she now? So bad?
It's good that we don't, yeh. However, there's this part
of me that wants to know. I know.

Speaker 2 (45:19):
I mean, like that's like the other media training that
we have, which is kind of like this is now,
we get the fifteen year update, the thirty year update,
like whatever. But no, they're the adult Mary Belle and
her daughter remain anonymous. They're protected under an order from
the UK's High Court. So I think that's all good.
I mean, I was talking to Alison Agassi, our writer,

(45:41):
about this story and how like this child was raised
with a mother who was actively trying to kill her
all the time and horribly abusing her. And then it's like,
it's just mind blowing to be like that. If that's
your perspective and that's how you get treated, we can't know.
It's hard to imagine because we take for granted that

(46:05):
we were picked up and held and cared for and
looked in the eyes, and I kill children.

Speaker 1 (46:09):
Psychology in the past like ten years at least for myself,
is learning that the tools you learned as a child,
that you had to learn that helped you get through
that period were actually helpful. And so in a way,
this empathy that Mary Bell was able to turn off
completely and have no care about anyone else and not
understand other people's feelings was actually beneficial to her because

(46:33):
she was being horribly abused. It just turned into hurting
other people as well, you know.

Speaker 2 (46:40):
Right, which is I think kind of a common thread
in all these stories. Right, you can't consistently hurt a
child and think that that child should just be resilient
and hey, they're kids, they'll get over it. Like, it
doesn't work that way. Yeah, the tools that you learned
to protect yourself, you know, can turn on you and
aren't always positive. Right, So also there are tools that

(47:03):
you're just getting like and then as you grow up,
you later when you realize that of like, oh I
don't need this anymore. It can be like shameful or embarrassing,
but it's like, but that's just the human experience. It's
like you could you just do it until you know better.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
That's what everyone's and you think it's who you are,
it's your personality. I'm talking about myself at this point
about like dissociating.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
And I'm only ever talking about myself, and that's yours.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
Talking about yours all the time. It really helps, Like
you don't realize, isn't your personality, It's just like your
learned behavior, because it fucking helps. It helps.

Speaker 2 (47:33):
Well. Also, I had that realization about five years ago
where it's like, oh, that's right, stand up comedy and
want you to be a comedian was a coping mechanism, right,
What what I could have.

Speaker 1 (47:47):
Just been like a marine biologist like I wanted to.
You don't think marine biology is a fucking coping mechanism too.
I think it is so just staring at whales all day.
Oh well, I hope your childhood was great. Guess I guess.
I guess you can focus on Kelp all the time,
not terrified of the ocean.

Speaker 4 (48:04):
Well, congratulates, be nice, must be okay, okay, oh this guy,
this story, Oh we have to now go into I
think we talked about it at the time.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
I think we have talked about it multiple times since.
I will say it now. Potentially one of the most nightmarish,
horrible human story ever, just absolutely terrible. George is about
to cover the death of Lisa Steinberg.

Speaker 3 (48:40):
What's your favorite murder the week?

Speaker 1 (48:42):
Mine is also a chi is it?

Speaker 3 (48:45):
Really?

Speaker 1 (48:46):
This is a wrong episode for parents. It is very weird.
That's crazy, very weird. But this is this is why
this is a parent a parental murder. And this one
stuck with me for all has stuck with me. I've
read about it for a long time because there's a
photograph of the little girl who gets killed.

Speaker 3 (49:07):
Oh you're oh, you're saying the child is murdered.

Speaker 1 (49:10):
Child, got a child murder? Yes, got it. So there's
a photo of the little girl the day before her death.
That really fucking stuck with me. I hope that. Do
you hear that?

Speaker 3 (49:22):
Yes, it sounds like thunder.

Speaker 1 (49:23):
My fucking downstairs neighbor plays some video game World of
War call of duty thing, Yes, call of duty, And
it's just so if you hear that, I'm sorry. So
Lisa Steinberg's poor little angel baby.

Speaker 3 (49:36):
That's the one. That's the one.

Speaker 1 (49:38):
My god, it's heartbreaking. This is the worst story. Okay, sorry,
it's okay, No, you're right. I'm breathing not because I'm okay.
So it's in nineteen eighty one, forty five year old
Heda noos Bomb and forty six year old Joel Steinberg,
who was a defense attorney who sometimes handled adoption cases.
Joel was They took custody of an infant girl named

(50:00):
that they named Lisa, and they illegally adopted her. The
child's birth mother had paid Steinberer, the attorney, a five
hundred dollars legal fee, to place the child with a
Roman Catholic family, but they just kept her instead. They
were Jewish. I don't think that matters, but they why
whatever anyways, So this Hetta and Joel were a well

(50:21):
educated They were upper class New York couple. They lived
in Cornwich Village in New York City. At school, Lisa's
teachers said she was bright and friendly, but they worried
about her writing at school with bruises and chunks of
hair missing from her head, and she would tell them
that her little brother, who was also a younger it

(50:41):
was an adopted child, had hit her, and none of
them had ever made of reports of abuse, which changed
a lot of stuff in the system. So there's a
photo from Halloween, the day before this big incident happens
that one of the teachers took of Lisa, and it's
just a photo of her at her It's Halloween. All
the other children are dressed up, and she's wearing her

(51:04):
normal clothes and she's just kind of staring off and
this with this sad face, like an empty sad face.
And the next day, on November first, nineteen eighty seven,
had the mother calls the police to report that her
daughter had choked on food. That's what she said. And

(51:25):
when the police arrived, they found six year old Lisa
Steinberg unconscious and she had multiple bruises on her body,
and the mother had a claim that she had fallen
a lot lately on her roller skates. So, according to
initial reports, on November one, at around seven pm, Joel

(51:47):
Steinberg had somehow rendered Lisa unconscious with severe blows to
the head. And what Hetta later said as the reasoning
was that Lisa wanted to go quote, Lisa wanted to
go to dinner with her father, but he did not
want to take her, and then he inflicted the head
injury because she wouldn't stop bugging him. I wanted to
go to dinner. Before he left the but before he

(52:09):
left the apartment, Lisa was unconscious, so he left and
the mother, Heda, was alone with the kid who was
dying for roughly ten hours, failing to notify police or
medical personnel. Joel left and came back. Many times they
were freebasing cocaine, sometimes together because they were also like

(52:30):
weird drug addicts.

Speaker 3 (52:31):
Yeah, and she says she didn't.

Speaker 1 (52:37):
Hada said she didn't call authorities because she believed that
Joel had supernatural healing powers and she was waiting for
him to come home and fix her, which we'll get
into and a bit.

Speaker 2 (52:49):
Don't do drugs. If you're going to do drugs, don't
adopt children. Stupid motherfuckers.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
So around six am the next morning, Lisa stopped breathing,
and shortly after Steinberg called nine one one at news
bombs urging. Lisa died four days later in the hospital,
and it was the term of the cause of death
was a head injury, apparently inflicted by what they say
was a rubber headed hammer. Holy shit, I know it's

(53:15):
heartbreaking the sat Vincent doctors. This is according to Joyce Johnson,
who wrote a book called What Lisa Knew. The doctor
showed a quote map of pain on her body. Yeah,
you know, this poor little thing. Man. I wish, I wish.
I they also, let's see, the house was filthy and

(53:37):
contained large quantities of cocaine and other drugs, and the
couple was arrested on child to beast charges. New York
law states stated at the time that if one parent
beats a child and the other stays silent about it,
each is equally guilty. But good, I know, but Hetta was,
I mean, is it? Because is that giving any understanding

(53:59):
to the to the other parent who didn't do it,
who was probably abused as well and victimized you true,
we don't know. But here's the Heta was later found
to have been abused by Joel throughout their relationship. She
suffered from nine broken ribs, a broken jaw, and a
broken nose. And if you look at photos of her

(54:20):
at this trial and right after this happened, this person
is fucking disfigured. Yes, like this person's that she had
to get a cartilage from her quote good ear taken
out to reconstruct her nose, which had collapsed.

Speaker 3 (54:34):
Because he'd punched her so many times.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
Yeah, So she wasn't prosecuted due to the belief that
years of abuse had rendered her incompetent at the time
of the murder. And instead that makes sense, Yeah and yeah,
let's we'll talk about fucking culpability man. Instead, she was
sent to a psychiatric hospital in exchange for her testimony

(54:57):
against Joel. Heta was not prosecuted, and Joel was charged
with first degree manslaughter. So the trial, huh, okay, go ahead,
Why not murder? I don't know, I don't know, okay,

(55:17):
oh you know why? Because later it was said that
if Heda had called the ambulance at that moment, Lisa
would have survived for sure.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
So so it wasn't his intent to murder when he
did kill her, right, Jesus Christ?

Speaker 1 (55:38):
Breathing, breathing, breathing, breathing. What just right now, Seapoham green Wall.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
We're here in twenty sixteen and not in eighties New
York in this horrible apartment.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
What do you feel under your hand?

Speaker 2 (55:49):
When I just remembered as you were talking describing her appearance,
there was an amazing article in Oprah's magazine that she
had a NUS bound wrote she.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
Wrote a book, did she? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (56:02):
I bet that was just publicity then and it was
just an excerpt from the book, and it was unbelievable.
She wrote a book about she does like uh talks.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
And about being abuse abusive relationships, and she wrote a
book about about it that I didn't really want to
include because I don't want to make this about Okay,
you know.

Speaker 2 (56:17):
What I mean? Yeah, yeah, but we you know I'm
not she wrote a book. It's just the side by
side of her when she was young, when she first
met him and when she was arrested is crazy. She
looks like an old witch and she was this gorgeous
young New York woman, yeah, when.

Speaker 4 (56:33):
She met it.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
I mean, this is the problem is I've never been
It's not a problem. This is great. I've never been
in an abusive relationship before. So I don't know the
fucking the head games and the and the the way
you have to rationalized nationalize things in your head because
this person you care about, you know, is doing these things,

(56:56):
and you want to believe that that they have no
control over it, that they're not doing it on purpose,
that they would never hurt you.

Speaker 2 (57:01):
Otherwise your whole fucking world is just shattered. And that's insane.
And on top of that, they're using strong they're freebasing
at this point, I mean freebasing cocaine is like, you're
you're doing crack your crackhead, you're a psychopath.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
Yeah, okay, and they were. There was also some weird
like cult stuff and they had been convincing her that
she like mind games with her, that she had been
sleeping around and had been hypnotized, and there was just
some very fucked up mind games with the schedule. So

(57:34):
so all right, so the trial, So this is actually
the first trial which made New York, which turned New
York into the forty fourth state to allow television cameras
in the courtroom. Oh I was like, yeah, fucking watch
like people tuned in constantly for this. So during the trial,
they said that Lisa's injuries were severe, but she would
have almost certainly survived if given prompt medical treatment. So

(57:57):
this is probably why he had manslaughter. So the jury
wanted to convict Steinberg on the more serious charge of
second degree murder, but they couldn't because so they could
only convict him of the of the second of the
second most serious charge, which is first degree manslaughter. So
the judge then sentenced him to the maximum penalty. Then available.

(58:21):
Guess guess how long that is.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
Karen God?

Speaker 1 (58:25):
Is it seven years, eight and one third to twenty
five years in prison?

Speaker 3 (58:30):
And he's a lawyer, right, yeah?

Speaker 1 (58:32):
Yeah. So on two occasions, so Steinberg served his time
on two occasions. He was denied discretionary parole because he
never expressed any remorse for the killing.

Speaker 3 (58:43):
He never said he was he hit her.

Speaker 1 (58:46):
He was always an argument that will thing mustn't happened
with Heda, yeah, a girl. But on June thirtyeth, two
thousand and four, he was paroled under the States quote
good time law. I mean he did good time. He
was a good inmate. Congratuate fucking elations was.

Speaker 2 (59:04):
He wasn't a good father? Yeah, he was a rotten
father and husband. It's insane, all right, Okay.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
It mandates the release of inmates who exhibit good behavior
while incarcerated after having served as little as two thirds
of the maximum impossible sentence. After his release, he moved
to Harlem and he works in the construction industry. He
continues to maintain his innocence. But there was this really
great New York magazine article where this journalist I don't

(59:34):
have his name, was like clearly like this guy's full
of shit. He was interviewing his attorney, who's like just
a fucking dick lick motherfucker. Excuse me?

Speaker 3 (59:46):
Why now.

Speaker 1 (59:49):
What?

Speaker 3 (59:50):
Why don't we say fuck every five seconds?

Speaker 2 (59:52):
Why?

Speaker 1 (59:52):
Excuse myself? Excuse me?

Speaker 3 (59:54):
Excuse me for that?

Speaker 1 (59:55):
Something about dick lick motherfucker was a little more. That
was one step tow far Weirdly, that's something I say
on the regular dicklick motherfucker. Learn it in the magazine
article he like needled Joel, and finally Steinberg finally admitted
that he quote pushed his daughter a little quote with

(01:00:15):
the soft pad, you know, on your palm. He finally
kind of gave in because the whole article they were
trying to the lawyer was trying to make it seem
like Joel was the victim of this like media slander
to make how to look innocent and him look guilty,
and it's like just what a piece of shit got.
In two thousand and three, Steinberg was ordered to pay

(01:00:38):
Lisa's biological mother, the one who gave her up for adoption,
fifteen million for the quote heinous outrageous crime of murdering Lisa,
which I'm a little at like do you deserve that money.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
No, but still I like the idea he has to
pay and.

Speaker 1 (01:00:56):
Then but then a civil suit had a was wanted
to collect three point six million from Joel for eight
years of beating she said she endured and the permanent
disfigurement she has suffered.

Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
Which at that point, I'm a little like, this child died.

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
You need to walk the fuck away? Yeah, Or am
I being insensitive?

Speaker 2 (01:01:19):
I mean there's a lot of ways that we can
offend people in this, but here's this is my stance
because I remounting money is like the wanting money is
bullshit because you I understand that she was in an
abusive relationship. I also understand that she was a drug addict,
which is a lot of people don't have empathy for that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:41):
I do, And I understand that you.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
Go into a place that is inexplicable and indefensible a
lot of the time. Yes, you don't ask for money
for doing that. You make reparations, You fix your life,
you make your amends, you clear away the wreckage of
your past. You don't ask to be paid for the
thing you fucked up.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
And the thing about it is like you were an
adult in this relationship as mind fucked as you were,
as victimized as you were, you stayed in it. You
chose to stay in it until this awful thing happened.
If that hadn't happened, you would have stayed in it
and the children would have still been abused. It's just

(01:02:23):
so happens that Lisa died that you got out of it, right.
And there's so many examples I'm sure listeners too, who
have figured out a way to get out of abusive
relationships and how fucking difficult it is and awful it is,
but you fucking do it, and that's your choice as
an adult. Okay, we're back. Yeah, it's hard to listen

(01:02:46):
to us talk about and debate even with ourselves and
our own conscience, like who deserves what and why as
you know, when it comes to justice and reparations, and
you know, it's just such a different it's such a
different mindset back in twenty sixteen than it is today.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
Well, it's just ignorance. I mean, like it's not I
don't think you and I have ever pretended to be
anything or not, and so when we were having those
kinds of conversations, it's literally just and I think why
people like this podcast were just regular people that are
like sharing, are kind of like, Oh, I guess this
is what I think about this. And I think that's

(01:03:26):
why listeners like it, because then they literally can be like,
here's what I think about it, and here's why your
answer either delights me or discuss me. And then it's like, oh, right,
what are we doing? Like we're doing critical thinking together? Yeah,
I mean we got I remember us getting follow up
stuff about Head and us Baum and really good information
that was like it really did feel like the beginning

(01:03:48):
of bigger picture more to consider. It's not just you
and I sitting in your apartment chat.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
Totally, and you know it's interesting to me about this
is I am in the middle of J. C. Do
Guard's memoir A Stolen Life, and it is harrowing and
difficult and mirrors this story in a lot of ways
and is really even now in twenty twenty five, opening
my eyes to the abuse that victims endure and jac

(01:04:17):
just goes through this thing that is mind blowing and
I will never understand and you can never understand unless
you've been through it. And just the space you need
to leave open for people who have been in abusive relationships,
and that just the understanding that you will never understand. Yes,
So I'm trying to wrap my brain around that and
looking at the story from that angle as well. Yeah,
is really eye opening to me.

Speaker 2 (01:04:38):
Really quick, Did I ever tell you about Adrian's mother in
law and JC do guard? Now? Okay, I'll try to
make this as fast. Okay, Adrian my sister's friend, Adrian
yea who she's also my friend.

Speaker 1 (01:04:50):
That's now the.

Speaker 2 (01:04:50):
Longer title that she has. Her mother in law, Pushpa
is this brilliant woman who she's the teacher she is? No,
that's my sister, nor English teacher.

Speaker 1 (01:05:04):
Wasn't Adrian's mom the English teacher? That's Adrian's mom, Judy. Oh,
who are you talking about? Her mother in law?

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
Got it? Okay?

Speaker 2 (01:05:10):
Pushbah And Pushba was a parole officer. Oh in that area.
And that's a big deal in the story. It's a
big deal because Pushba got sent to that house and
she went back and said, and something's not right. They
wouldn't let me in the front door. She actually tried
to look over their shoulder. He was like, at the

(01:05:31):
front door, wouldn't let her look inside. Then she went
around even though he was like yeah, no, no, it's
all fine. So then she went around and peeked over
the fence, saw the tarps, went back to work, and
was like you got to go in there. Something's wrong there,
blah blah blah, and they were like we don't have
any cause they basically didn't listen to her. And you know,

(01:05:54):
you've got to be a nosy neighbor. Well, and also
like that kind of thing where it's like, especially that
specific situation where she was held there for so long,
it's so awful and like the idea of at any
point something could have changed and it was just like
somebody on the other end being like it's not that
big of a deal is so frustrated.

Speaker 1 (01:06:12):
That's a huge part of the story is like in
her mind, it's like no one cared, no one was looking,
and it was just it was just a peek over
the fence away because they didn't realize that the backyard
went on further than it did. Right, there's like a
false just where she was being kept Yep. Yeah, yeah, wow,
that's incredible. I mean, be the nosy neighbor, you guys.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
That's the push was the one where when Nora was
like five years old Push but asked her what she
wanted to be for what she wanted to be when
she grew up, and Push was a Sri Lankan and
Nora was like, I want to be a cheerleader and
Push but goes, don't be a cheerleader, be a doctor.
So we say that to Nora all the time, she

(01:06:56):
will be you fucking know it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:58):
I think it worked. I think it worked on her.

Speaker 2 (01:07:01):
I think like just being able to accept that you
have blind spots, not that you're bad for them, not
that it means anything except for that you're a human being.
But just like the humility of going, yeah I must
and I know I do, and the way.

Speaker 1 (01:07:15):
I see the world is just that the way I
see the world is from my own experiences, and.

Speaker 2 (01:07:20):
That's a very singular experience. It's a very and also,
you know, having the Internet suddenly like the world was
like there's more than your experience and here it is
right here, and now you should have known this already,
and like it really was this very insane dividing line
of like all of a sudden, there are people snapping
their fingers being like you should be smarter than this.

(01:07:41):
It's like I know I should be smarter than this,
Like it's crazy. So yeah, those kinds of like I
could never imagine. Therefore, I don't even know.

Speaker 1 (01:07:52):
I don know what you don't know. You don't know
what you don't know. Okay, I've a couple case updates.
The baby from the story, Baby Mitchell, his adopted younger brother,
was returned to his birth mom. He was given a
new name, and he eventually graduated with honors from his
high school, earned a college degree, got married, and pursued
a career in banking. So beautiful, Thank God for that.

(01:08:14):
Thank God. Around the time Joel was being released from prison,
which fucking Jesus Christ had a news bomb, changed her
name and moved out of New York so he wouldn't
be able to find her. Her exact whereabouts are unknown.
And you know, you heard us talking about abusive relationships.
So if you or anyone you know is struggling to
leave an abusive partner, we wanted to give you a

(01:08:34):
few resources. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:08:36):
The National Domestic Violence Hotline is free, confidential, available twenty
four hours a day, and it's one eight hundred seven
nine to nine safe seven two three three, So that's
one eight hundred seven nine nine.

Speaker 1 (01:08:49):
Safe and their website is Thehotline dot org, where you
can find resources and also get involved in supporting survivors,
either through volunteering or hey, donation, Oh we do that.
Let's please ten grand to the hotline dot org, the
National Domestic Violence Hotline.

Speaker 2 (01:09:07):
Yeah, and if you have anything to give this New
Year's that would be amazing. I think that's an incredibly
helpful charity to support.

Speaker 1 (01:09:15):
Definitely, well, that was a heavy episode. There was. At
least we ended it on a donation. We ended on
donation and a happy new Year. That's right. Hey, Happy
new Year. Everybody, stay sexy and don't get murdered. Good Elvis,
do you want a cookie?
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Georgia Hardstark

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